Mobile Ministry Magazine

If there is one thing that I wish that more churches and ministry organizations were able to take advantage of it would be the use of RSS. Not just for things like knowing when the pastor's blog is updated, but for everything (calendars, announcements, contact lists, etc.).

Think about it. Most of the information that you need from an organization is either very static (contact information) or very dynamic (dates to events). What if RSS (and XML in general) was leveraged as a means to get people this information. So, if you will, instead of just going to a website and having to wade through various menus of content. One would go to the page and simply see static information such as the contact information, and the rest would be RSS subscription buttons.

Why strip the data down to the bare essentials you ask? Simply because we can and it would mean that more people could access it the way that is best for them instead of the way that we content producers think is best.

A more indepth, yet similar proposal has been made to the US government (via Ars Technica). If effect, instead of having a ton of websites that are hard to maintain, rarely accessible and standards compliant, just give the information and let the user get to it as they wish. Essentially making portals of information just that. Portals of information - leave the presentation (look and feel) out for the applications that interact with it to take care of.

Given that many of you read MMM though some kind of RSS feed reader, this is something that you are already doing. What kinds of thoughts do you have towards this, and is this something that many churches could really get away with doing in order to streamline their online presence, and allow for more than just the best hardware to engage with them?

Labels: church, community, mobility, RSS