Mobile Ministry Magazine (MMM)

A few threads of conversation and insight cross my eyes this week where I saw a parallel between a few industries and religion, especially when mobile technology is considered. The first would be in a Twitter conversation, here’s that thread:

(@rcadden) Watching the local news is quite possibly the most depressing thing EVER. Do they *ever* cover something positive?
(@Texrat) @rcadden negative sells.
(@ARJWright) @Texrat the fact that news has to be sold in order to be watched is a bigger problem IMO @rcadden

The second part of this thread comes from Tomi Ahonen’s recent article talking about why every retailer needs a mobile strategy:

…Then there is the US stat that shocked me. Pew has been interviewing US consumers for many years about their internet and mobile habits. And they inserted a new question to their latest survey, for which the gave results yesterday. What is your preferred means of contact. And have a guess what US adults said about SMS? Pew reports that 31% of US adults – not teenagers – adults said their preferred means of contact was SMS! And another 14% said they preferred SMS contacts some of the time (at other times voice calls).

The survey was not about retail, it was not about advertising or marketing. But it is a mind-boggling stat. If 31% of American adults prefer to be contacted by SMS, it will be even more for the youth, obviously (heavily SMS addicted as every survey of US youth has reported over the past four years). And even if we say 31% overall, that means 3 out of 10 American consumers prefers contacts via SMS. Why isn’t every US company, advertiser and brand using SMS as their primary vehicle of marketing communications? Only a quarter of Americans own smartphones and a smaller fraction of those use apps, and out of one million published apps already, if your brand does a ‘smartphone app’ strategy for mobile, that is the iSyndrome, that is what Martin Wilson has taught us, is the mistaken belief that creating an iPhone app is tantamount to a mobile strategy…

Obviously, we see here that the industries that I am drawing parallels to are the news-journalism and retail industries. And the common function here is that both are driven by what is sold to them.

In the former (news-journalism), there’s a position that’s similar to something that I’ve heard many times in various religious circles, “we shouldn’t have to sell to them what we offer.” And yet this is exactly the problem and the opportunity for religious groups. Its not uncommon to see in churches that are the product of the past five decades of suburban America a sense of using culture, branding, and public relations to market “the church” to their communities. Now, we cna argue of that’s successful or not, but the fact is, much like news-journalism, there’s an intent to sell the perspective of faith that’s either taken on or missed.

But, then the question becomes on “how to sell faith.” Sure, we have those tried and true methods (street evangelism, social services, libraries, etc.), but what happens when we take advantage of those opportunities that are right on the spot? Many people have the chapters in their faith stories where it wasn’t a prepared presentation that called them into an awareness of God, but a random moment where the relationship and the message got personal with them. Using the above snippet pulled form Tomi and Pew Internet, 31% of adults prefer to be contacted by SMS – are they being sold your story of faith? Or, are you in the position of waiting for them to hear some good news by chance in their regular stream of living?

I’d argue that we’ve got a product to sell, and that we would be smart to take advantage of what the culture offers while the opportunity is here. How you do that is a matter of paying attention to the context of your community and speaking those things that are relevant. See the examples of retail outreach in Tomi’s article, opportunity is all about taking your imagination and running towards something others will be willing to invest their attention (and later lives and faith) in.