When we look around the Body towards what people are doing with mobile tech, it is always refreshing to see local communities stretching their use of tech in global-touching manners.
Wes Allen, a brother that I was blessed to meet in person at BibleTech 2009, has recently written a post about how his church is connecting with missionaries in Thailand via Skype. Here’s a snippet:
On October 31 Central Baptist Church of Riverton-Palmyra marked the last week of the World Mission Offering by having a missionary come and share with us during worship. This isn’t that unusual a practice. After all, churches have been bringing in missionaries as guest speakers for centuries. What marked this conversation as “different,” was the location of our guest speaker, Kit Ripley. She was literally on the other side of the globe, in Thailand. What made this conversation was the advent of free video conferencing over broadband Internet – pioneered by software like Skype…
As we have seen with this tech over several years, the ability to connect with one another doesn’t always need to start and end with the physical presence. There are moments where going virtual are more cost and time effective, and can open doors to other ways of empowering our communities and one another to use the tools at our disposal for the cause of the Gospel.
Besides Skype, are you taking advantage of virtual conferencing solutions to connect groups across distances? How have those relationships been challenged or strengthened in using these technologies?