I was recently exposed to some information that has me looking a bit more circumspectly around the aims and demonstrations of mobile ministry. That information, though confidental in orgin and application, does open a point that is a bit more openly talked about – the need for something beyond missional evangelism as methods of engaging and maintaining faith communities.
Beyond missional evangelism? Yes. Beyond simply reaching outward with messages of salvation. Where are those efforts that reach into the fabric of lifestyles, usually lifestyles which leave little room or consideration for finishing the thought, “what are the ethical and spiritual implications of this course of life I’ve chosen?”
Some of us have heard of efforts such as Business as Mission (BAM), where the aims are to transform the economic fortunes of a community by using the Gospel as a foundational method for training, apprentiseship, and business sustainability. What happens when mobile ministry applies some of the same constructs towards its efforts? I think that we get something that looks like an extension of the experience layers that compose Mobile in Education/Discipleship, Mobile in Media, Mobile in Analytics/Development/Marketing, and Mobile in Missions/Evangelism (read our previous discussion on these areas of mobile ministry).
If you will, instead of starting with “let me give you this religious application,” we go the route of “let me train you will this skill that will enable you to share your life, while displaying a lifestyle that mimics Christ’s.” This can look like creating software developers, but I think that it also looks like multi-linugal teachers. It looks like the person who build the nets for fishing who is learning on the side how to create classes on how to manage issues with his family as a community counselor. It looks like the oral story teller who is learning how to record themselves on video for younger age groups. Or… well, what does it look like?
That document that was shared with me asks that missions takes out of its head this idea that there’s a funded group of persons for short and long term engagements and exchanges that for persons capable of starting and maintining businesses which speak to the need for economic and spiritual enablement in those areas. Given what I’ve seen from rural, urban, and international missional engagements, I think there’s a good chance for spiritually-driven entreprenurs to pull this off. For mobile ministry, this might be the best course of sustainability.
Your thoughts?
Involved in a number of conversations this past week, there’s been this sense that there are two types of people involved within IT: those people who are after information, and then those people whom are about meaning. We see a similar break in life when we think about theology and hear that some topics are better discussed in seminary settings, or that the local church is more about applied theological leanings. Is this respect, I wonder if we do more damage than good because meaning then becomes constrained than enabled.
We See Through the Glass Darkly, Then Clearly
Sunday, November 6th, 2011Read the rest of Unleashing the Next Age of Prosperity at Irving Wladawsky-Berger.
Really. Is easy to be caught off guard by the speed and innovations of new behavioral and technological paradigms. We can see that in some of the tone in the Gospel Collation article “The iPhone as Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“. And yet it is through this reflective lens of what has happened that we move into doing more clearly what does happen. What surprises us, or could surprise us, is that wisdom and excitement of growing more into what it is that God has created us to be while on earth.
While on earth… Really, we see this tech and our behaviors with it as something that is only a glimpse of what is to come. What we gain in looking at it honestly, retrospectively, and even zealously, is this taste of what will be. However, the key is not getting stuck on the taste that we have now and allowing our glasses to clear with better view, a more full/empty view of what is probable. Our behaviors and perspectives then move towards this viewpoint, only to be challenged and changed again when it’s time for that glass to be refreshed.
Tags: Irving Wladawsky-Berger, technology adoption, The Gospel Collation
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