Mobile Ministry Magazine

One of the things that I am really beginning to enjoy about the Charlotte area is that there is time to think in the mist of doing. Meaning, for all of the looking for an apartment, people to fellowship with, and learning my ways at a new job, I am getting a hold of the aspect of this walk that says "take it easy and let the Lord direct." If you will, there is not nearly as much pushing on my end as there was before.

Tonite, I attended Bible study with my church (wellspring-community.org if you are interested in visiting) at a local coffeehouse and had a chance to look at the use of tech in Bible study areas, open areas again. Granted, I was the only one there using a mobile device of any kind to crack open the Scriptures, but I saw some room there for sharing digitally were in a "church room" setting there might not be as much the room.

For example, we were talking about Romans 11:11-24 (see zbible.mobi if you want to look that up) and there are a lot of intersecting ways in which we looked at that section of Paul's writings. One part that I tend to enjoy is the historical end, so I was in Bible+ (http://palmbibleplus.sourceforge.net) cross referencing and looking at the commentaries to where the Jewish and Gentile cultures had these "perceived divisions." What I liked about that is that the digital Bible and resources enabled to quickly spot a connection and then use it to ask further questions about the points our pastor was teaching.

Another aspect that would have been fun, and is something we actually migght explore, is making a digital copy of the outline for the night's study available to text (SMS) or beam (IR or Bluetooth) or email (since there was free wi-fi). We could use the tech to put everyone on the same inital level of looking at the Word, and then use the outline to foster dicussion that would go into its own "rabbit holes" if you will. I think that this is really doable with SMS as serrvices such as 4Info (4info.mobi) allow you to get an SMS of a verse right to your device. It's a pretty neat wayt o just jump off things with a techie twist.

So yea, I'm thinking. I get a whole day of coding in front of me to think of how mobile tech is or is not as effective in respective situations. More often than not though, I am finding that it is more effective to start with the mobile base, and then go from there into the other uses. Things like blogging from your mobile (laptop, PDA, or smartphone) an idea or verse that just came to you allows one to share those random "God-moments." And then still having a mobile that plugs into your way of life allows for other social dynamics to happen. Not that it is at all needed, but the devices and services we use do foster some relational aspects of this walk that we can encourage if for a short time, while we all press towards Him together.