This has been sitting on our server (and in Dropbox) since the end of the Mobile Ministry Forum (MMF). Might as well let it out a bit and see if we can actually move forward with that podcast idea 😉

Link to interview (MP3)

This is an interview with Jerry Hertzler, one of the attendees to the Mobile Ministry Forum. He agreed to do this interview (about 12min), as did a few other attendees, as part of fulfilling one of our initiatives to increase the voices of those individuals and organizations whom are working in mobile ministry (#mobmin) related endeavors.

Production provided by Brad Rhodes (MAF Learning Technologies). Brad and I will be collaborating on future podcasts, this was totally a shot-in-the-dark moment, and MMM is quite grateful for Jerry for extending his time for this (and being gracious towards our delay in getting it up). We are using podPress alongside WordPress to manage this content.

Lord willing, this works and there can be a monthly (?) podcast that start here soonish. Please do give your feedback towards the delivery method, content, and what topics/people you’d like to see in the future. There’s a good bit of future to be spoken and written in this space, and we’ll its time to work that beta tag off of something else.

Note: we are quite aware of the sound artifacts present in this recording, it was something we didn’t find out until after the recording. Suffice to say, we’d be using different software (which has already been tested for the first official podcast).

For more information about the project that Jerry is referring to in the interview, see the mLearning Project by Campus Crusade for Christ International.

One of the common memes heard around subrban churches/church plants that I’ve been around has been this idea of creating intentional communities. If you will, designing aspects of the Christian experience – worship, fellowship, needs-addressing, social justice – as parts of the community that you live in. In some respects, this can look like a small (cell) group which meets for prayer/study, or it can look like a gathering to clean up/clean with the neighborhood to which the church meets.

In whatever case, the idea is that religion – or the behavior of faith – can be so ingrained into what we do that we miss that we actually live with one another. We’ve heard it said in several different ways, but its where this idea of intentional communities comes from – your faith is not what you do for 90 minutes on Sunday but what you do throughout the rest of your life in between those moments.

For some, this is not a problem. Many have been able to design their lifestyles around various religious and faith activities. In a sense, these folks are already intentional whether they realize it or not. Depending on where you live, the culture might also lean towards making a life of religion or faith one that crosses your path. I can recall how on Wednesday evenings how traffic seems much worse than normal between 5pm and 7pm (can it really be true that the entire city is making their way to a Bible study).

Intentional communities also have a prescription of people coming together for more than just their faith association. There’s also the meeting and sharing of ideas and concepts that are colored with various life experiences. Examples of this include the groups that may get together to bowl, watch a movie, conduct play-dates for their kids, talk shop about the latest motorcycles, etc. These communities aren’t just wedded by faith, but life experiences that allow the means for a community to develop in some manner.

Digital Disciples can also be looked at as an intentional community of sorts. The hook withing Digital Disciples is to come together because of faith, but have digital technology as one of the threads around which people can connect. And yes, digital is a very wide and encompassing word – for example, in one of the Digital Disciple meetings that met in Charlotte, we had myself (Antoine), a social media person, a developer, and a person who was geeky, but had none of those other contexts to their use of tech. And so, the conversations and fellowship had to fight a bit harder than some in order to find those digital ties that bind.

That’s no reason to not pursue such a fellowship. If anything that example with Digital Disciples should show how easy it is to assume that your context is the same, or will be received as gladly, as another’s. One of the lessons that I’ve learned with Digital Disciples so far is that you can’t come into it with your context as the primary filter that others will be able to grasp. You have to be able to live with others and it has to be an intentional dropping of your perceptions and expectations in order to do so.

So, if you are one of those techie-types looking for a community of geeks, you are definitely on the right road. Digital Disciples might even be a place to connect and get some of that connection in. But, I’d also caution you to keep your heart open for perspectives and contexts that are digital, but not yours. Intentions have a way of being turned towards unexpected blessings when that happens.

For more information about Digital Disciples, check out the website. If you are looking to connect with a Digital Disciples group in your area, there’s a list of places at Meetup. Either connect with an existing city/group, or propose a city/group/time.

Here are our Retweets of the Week for the past week (Feb 20-26). Several new voices this week, and all with some common themes of culture and context.

• janchip – Download my newly published mobile money research in Afghanistan: http://bit.ly/fp_safeashouses
• kiwanja – Sparxoo’s “Top 5 Mobile Innovations for Social Cause” featuring @Movirtu and @FrontlineSMS. http://is.gd/Fo0MNg #mobile
• futuresagency – RT @martinstrickman: The future of books http://j.mp/fOUPZO@radar on distribution, inventory, pricing, audience ownership, engagement
• bobbychandler – Girl Scouts Using iPhones to Process Cookie Transactions http://t.co/b
• Mobile_Advance – Exhaustive list of off-grid ways to produce your own grid http://bit.ly/eEukvp #mobmin
• Liberationtech – Tech creates global celebrity culture & feelings of insignificance but also creates new global consciousness & movements http://ow.ly/41BcM

Using social media outlets such as Twitter can be an effective means of getting the word out about various endeavors. If you’ve got something related to our goals with mobile ministry, be sure to point it out to us directly (@mobileminmag on Twitter) or via the #mobmin hashtag if its directly related to mobile ministry efforts.

Image via Technorati

We’ve looked at what mobile can look like in the next decade. We then took a look at some internet trends for 2020. Now, we have a look at 2025 by Cisco and the Monitor Group’s Global Business Network. Here’s a snippet:

The four scenarios: The interplay of these uncertainties can result in a large number of plausible scenarios for the Internet’s path through 2025. The report focuses on four scenarios that portray challenging and distinctive alternative stories about how the world might unfold:

• FLUID FRONTIERS: A world in which the Internet becomes pervasive and centrifugal. Technology continues to make connectivity and devices more and more affordable (in spite of limited investment in network build-out) while global entrepreneurship – and fierce competition – ensure that the wide range of needs and demands from across the world are met quickly and from equally diverse setups and locations.
• INSECURE GROWTH: A world in which users – individuals and business alike – are inhibited from intensive reliance on the Internet. Relentless cyber attacks driven by wide-ranging motivations defy the preventive capabilities of governments and international bodies. Secure alternatives emerge, but they are expensive.
• SHORT OF THE PROMISE: A frugal world in which prolonged economic stagnation in many countries takes its toll on the spread of the Internet. Technology offers no compensating breakthroughs, and protectionist policy responses to economic weakness make matters worse – both in economic terms and with regard to network technology adoption.
• BURSTING AT THE SEAMS: A world in which the Internet becomes a victim of its own success. Demand for IP-based services is boundless, but capacity constraints and occasional bottlenecks create a gap between the expectations and reality of Internet use. Meanwhile, international technology standards don’t come to pass, in part because of a global backlash against decades of U.S. technology dominance.

Read the rest of the press release.

To read the full report visit the Monitor Group’s Global Business Network and Cisco Newsroom websites.

2025 is a long ways away. Think back to 15 years ago and the changes that have happened since then. Its safe to say that we guessed but couldn’t exactly predict what would happen now. Nevertheless, there were some lessons and prophets speaking things then that have and haven’t been heeded. What might we be entering into in 15 years that we aren’t necessarily listening to right now?

I mentioned some time back how Evernote has been factoring into my iPad use. Besides being an neat replacement for the Notes app there, and Active Notes on my N97,  it also serves as a scratch-pad and archival place for the posts that appear here.

There are other ministry uses for Evernote that I’ve come across, and some which just sound like great ideas. Here are a few:

• Using Evernote and a mobile bible application to record notes from Bible studies and sermons
• Using the audio recording feature of Evernote to record snippets of voice alongside those notes
• Creating a digital scrapbook of a ministry/missional endeavor
• Using a dedicated (and secure) Evernote notebook to collect images of receipts and other pictorial accounts of various expenses for accounting needs
• Making a shared notebook for a small group Bible study or scrap-booking project

Those are just a few of the items that I could think of. Because Evernote works on just about every mobile and PC platform, the potential for uses can be pretty large and deep. There’s also free, premium, and sponsored options within the service to fit certain means as well.

What might be some ways that you can use Evernote (and its wealth of options via Trunk) to enhance your ministry activities?

From the recent ICCM-Europe Conference, Cybermissions has shared their presentations.

• The Future Of Internet Ministry (a 20,000 ft overview of where Internet ministry is at, also lots of links to resources)
• An Introduction To Mobile Ministry (an overview of ministry using mobile devices and how to get started)
• From Information To Transformation (how to move from just dump-trucking information on to people to actual Christ-like transformation, using technology)
• Phronema; Creative Low-Cost Information Management Using Google Custom Search Engines (a Technology for Missions talk)

A great body of work done here, and lots to chew on when looking at mobile, missions, and Internet.

For more information and to view previous presentations visit the Cybermissions website.

The International Conference on Computing and Mission (ICCM) is an annual informal (NO ties allowed) gathering of women and men who have a common interest in computers and mission. We share a vision of cooperation for effective use of technology bringing the Gospel to every nation. For more information, and dates to their next conference, visit their website or connect with them on Twitter (@iccmeu).

What kinds of mobile(-friendly) applications and services work best for pastors getting up to speed with mobile and social apps?

Though there are several, and a lot of preferred ones depending on the mobile platform you choose, we’re going to highlight a few we’d recommend for certain use cases:

Reading and Studying

• Kindle
• Logos
• Olive Tree
• Bible Web App
• Evernote
• Google Docs

Communication and Fellowship

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Foursquare
• The Table Project
• Meetup
• Greater Calling
• IM+

Budgeting and Administration

• Google Apps
• Dropbox
• Church Community Builder
• Splash Money
• PayPal

Those are a few we like. Pastors, what are some apps that you prefer to use on your mobile?

Bonus question: do accountability apps factor into your recommended apps?

If you’ve not figured from our Retweets of the Week series, Twitter can be a veritable treasure trove of content. One of the more recent tweets to come across the brow was a link to an article talking about Conan O’Brien’s reinvention using the “new” technologies of the Internet (Facebook, YouTube, branding, etc.) versus the “old media” (print reach, TV, radio, etc.) that he was well versed and quite successful in.

What stuck out (besides the writing) was the quote noted at the end of the Fortune article:

Then O’Brien thinks it through like a digital-media guy. “Ten years ago, if my situation with NBC had unfolded, none of this would have happened. Yeah, maybe I was 10 years too late to do The Tonight Show that I wanted to do,” he says. “But I was just in the nick of time. Do you know what I mean?”

Due to his situation with NBC, he had to react differently. Taking the route that he was used to wasn’t an option – that is, if he wanted to continue doing what he is doing.

Can the church afford to not be similar? Can any religious group?

Yes, there’s a notable difference in the way that some leaders interact with tech and the way their communities interact with it (not digital immigrant versus native, a different kind of divide that’s not fully understood or researched). It is a matter of shift – the kind of shift that happens every few generations that drastically alters how we continue living.

I won’t yet take the position that the digital transformations happening endear themselves to larger changes happening to faith cultures (there is a parallel happening) – but I will say that its no longer a time to sit on any sideline and say that you won’t engage. We have to be cognisant of the levels of relationship the Spirit encourages (Acts 1:8) without letting passions for one type overrun the rest (tweet).

And so we are challenged. Not just to become digitally savy, but to refine how we interact with one another in light of church/faith character no longer being “broadcast the message and wait for the results.” Similar to how Conan and others have found with performing, we need to understand that ministering also means engaging.

Engaging is beyond just making a website, establishing just another broadcast channel, and simulating interactivity with SMS and Facebook. It is becoming an active participant within the lives of people who do and don’t make a distinction between virtual relationships and offline ones. Its becoming a voice mediating the struggles people have when their contexts, and brokering the gaps with the same passion that is usually reserved for “being political” to maintain a presence. Its being instead of posturing. All with the results of an infusinon of faith on a level that is altogether familiar, and altogether bent towards the paradigm of life that people live now.

So what are you waiting for? Or rather, what has your faith community stopped waiting for from you and decided to find in another space?

Here are some of the items that we’ve retweeted on Twitter in the past week. By no means is this the entire list (you’d have to follow us to keep up), but these are some of those items that have stood out.

• tomiahonen – 5.2B mobile phone subscriptions and 3.7B ‘unique users’ means 34% of us have 2 or more mobile accounts; 6% have 3http://bit.ly/dNiszj
• anthonycoppedge – When relational (not physical) proximity increases, authenticity happens more naturally. Authentic relationships yield the best results.
• davehackett – Edmiston’s PPT: How Internet ministry can become transformational. Now posted at http://www.cybermissions.org/articles/ #mobmin #ieway
• textually – Schools Swap Old Mobile Phones For Classroom Resources http://bit.ly/hVZGTV
• soonguy – Vodafone Releases Webbox $100 Internet Keyboard for majority world – effectively a working PC http://bit.ly/hXczd0 #mobmin #ieway#missions

If you’ve got something you deem worth sharing, be sure to point it out to us (@mobileminmag) or use the #mobmin hashtag if its directly related to mobile ministry efforts.

These kinds of contests seem to often fly under the normal noise lines of media, or get pushed to the rear of some types of programs, but I think that there’s much to be learned from what Microsoft is doing here with their Technology for Good Contest.

The Technology for Good Contest is a way for Microsoft to highlight some of the work happening within Washginton state area non-profit groups after they have been given donated software. The contest winners draw light to some of the most effective and innovative methods pursued.

This year’s winners included Seattle Works (Increased Efficiency = Bigger Community Impact), Densho (Preserving Stories About the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II), and YWCA Seattle, King & Snohomish County (YWCA Seattle, King & Snohomish County – Technology for Good).

There is a submission gallery which includes all of those who submitted items for this contest, several ideas in here worth doing in multiple regions (Utilizing Technolgy to Increase Health Access, Creating Employment Opportunities for Blind and Deaf-Blind Adults, and Improving Case Management for Homeless Families Through Technology to name a few).

Winners received a $5,000 unrestricted cash grant, up to $100,000 worth of donated Microsoft software, consulting services donated by NPower Seattle, and more.

Given the examples here, how can your ministry or organization take existing work to create an opportunity for the positive welfare of others? Whether or not you get a prize from Microsoft, what ability do you or a ministry have in-hand to effect the immediate community you serve?

And if you have done items of this sort, drop us a line about it so that we can get some more eyes to your efforts (and be less of a silo about what works and what doesn’t).

~ via TechSoup