A good deal of the activity in mobile has talked about the potential for video media to be a catalyst for conversations, conversions, and education/discipleship. Here’s a report sent from the Kiosk Evangelism Project about such a change happening in SE India:

Uncle, I’m sending a couple of photos when I’m transferring the video clips. He is a village guy. he is from Hindu religion. he told that he worship their God and Goddess very much.. just I tried to tell about Jesus but he was rejected me forcefully. then I came to general talk just like what is your life, family, what you use to do. then I took mobile from my pocket and started watching videos by myself. then he tried to star in the phone. I told it was Jesus film but he started watching it. I showed him couple of video. and I asked him do you want to download it into your mobile? then he told yes. so I transferred some video clips into his mobile. if I said it is Jesus film, he may reject. you know that some people blindly believe their Gods and doesn’t allow other Gods to come into their life. I think he will know that these clips belongs Jesus Christ.

Its my duty to transfer the clips to his mobile and I done it and the next my Lord will do and He will only change Him. Amen

This is one report of a few that’s come our way. It demonstrates how (in some cultures) that just the behavior of watching and having faith-based content on your mobile device can be a catalyst for conversation or more.

For more information about this activity, visit the Kiosk Evangelism Project.

There’s complimentary activities happening with Open Church, Door 43, and a few other groups within the Mobile Ministry Forum. How about casting your hands to these nets if that’s the kind of impact you see from your mobile ministry (#mobmin) efforts.

Am writing this a few hours after listening to Dr. Markus Pfeffier from Regent University give a talk on the implications of the Internet and virtual environments. Much of this talk I’d already known, but both the speaker and audience were more unfamiliar (association and generational differences). As I listened, I wrote a bit of notes on items covered and not covered and realized by the end that much of what has been, and will happen, when mobile is added to the list for many of you, is that you will draw mobile into the same body of work as you do Internet ministry activities. There is some overlap, but not quite the same.

Let me summarize by restating the tweets (@mobileminmag) that relate to this point published before the writing of this piece:

This morning, listened to chat about the 6th mass media (web) & the need for a ministry response; good to hear others in this space…

Despite talk, still feel that simply shooting for web and social media is a miss for all but a few economies & generations, mobile is better… Mobile includes what we know (& are learning) about Internet as media/medium. Some of us would be good to skip to mobile, then bridge back…

For many, Internet ministry is stuck as a visual/screen ministry; mobile by nature moves well beyond that to spatial experiences… When media moves beyond screen, we get audio, behavioral (gesture), & even potential for smells to augment reality of faith experiences… But, to think like that means you need to know how your biological body functions; that’s the key to understanding mobile… Remember, currently the reach for mobile (individual accounts) is just under 4 billion; reach for net is 1.2billion, unique cross-overs here… But that’s just numbers, mobile = personal = accountable, Internet doesn’t do that w/o analytics, tracking, or optional disclosure…

So, depending on how you see ministry = discipleship, that accountability piece plays a huge factor into where you put energies/resources… If ministry = broadcast then teach/disciple, Net is nearly perfect for channel… Then, net ministry should embrace what makes it unique for the effort… to whom it’s most suited for.

Yea, that was a lot of tweets. And if you saw that stream in the middle of it going up, things might not have made as much sense. But, now looking at the whole statement, we can start to draw some of those needed conclusions that lend towards understanding both Internet and Mobile Ministry efforts.

First, know that there is already a Body of discussion happening about Internet and mobile ministries. Web efforts such as Internet Evangelism Day, Jesus.net, eDot Geek, ministries such as Every Student, Cru, and LifeChurch are some of those voices, and associations such as GCIA, ICCM, the Center for Church Communication, and Catalyst do a great effort towards enabling and facilitating the discussion about Internet ministry (evangelism, marketing, discipleship, etc). On the Mobile Ministry side, there’s MMM, IE Day, Cybermissions, Mobile Advance, and the groups partnering within the Mobile Ministry Forum.

Second, Internet and mobile ministries are subject to cultural, contextual, and generational differences. I don’t subscribe to the terms digital native/digital immigrant (mainly because there is no validated research to prove it, and it’s an assumption based on 100% equal access and ability which is totally not the case). I do subscribe to the differences which can be and continue to be understood when we look at economic class, gender differences, cultural transformations, urbanization/environmentalism, commodities management, change management, and other social sciences which tend to do a decent job of describing the differences that lead to our different uses and applications of communications technologies (yes, that’s supposed to be communications with an ‘s’). You have to understand those pieces in respect to the unique qualities of Internet or mobile. Generally speaking, mobile builds on what you understand about Internet when viewing both as participatory/event communication mediums. Trends point to being able to understand this data, then creating the avenues for appropriate products and services to be developed/enhanced.

About Internet ministry being visual: I am being mean, but truthful. Curent Internet ministry efforts start with visuals. This is either the readability needed for engaging in text-driven Bible apps, social networks, or multimedia streams (ever wonder why audio ministries rely on you needing to read text to download an audio message), or the implementing of the structures which foster digital story creations. Unfortunately, this leaves out those who might have access, but cannot read. Or, leaves out those who don’t have access because they don’t have the terminal with which to engage Internet-first ministries. Mobile, being that it has built on the Internet as a participat-media channel, does much of the same. However it’s not, nor should it be limited to visual-first efforts. That’s worth another article to dive into. But it starts at a basic question, whom are you limiting access to the Gospel to because of what you know or don’t know about those who touch that channel? And if you are going to go visual, at least follow accessibility best practices for the web.

The global reach for mobile is currently almost 3x that of Internet. The purchasing power of mobile is collectively greater than that of Internet. The logistical savy of Internet-based efforts is more mature than that of mobile, as are the tools, services, practices, and standards that make those happen. This means that specific engagements on the Internet have a better chance of success towards some groups more than others. However, you are limited by being online. Unless the effort starts online and is able to get offline, it can only have an effect in that virtual space (the Kiosk Evangelism Project, Door 43, and Open Church projects actually seeks to address this specific limitation/opportunity of Internet efforts).

Therefore, how you (your culture, your generation, your bias) defines minstry will determine how Internet or mobile ministry can play a part in your efforts. It’s possible to do both, but not possible to pigeon-hole yourself so long into one that the other isn’t relevant.

Taking from Dr. Pfeffier and Tomi Ahonen, Internet is the first participatory mass media in the history of humanity (you can argue the performance stage was its precursor), mobile is the second. What Internet ministry cannot do in terms of personalized (not algorithmic) attention, mobile can. What mobile cannot do in terms of being standardized across every device, Internet evangelism efforts can. They aren’t the same. Yet, in order to see digital spaces here and beyond (augmented reality, virtual reality, and cybernetics for example) as opportunities for ministry efforts, knowing this is key to making the most of your time and resources.

The Chief of the Suri tribe, located in Brazil, has taken a fascinating tack on how to preserve his people’s way of life. He’s using Google Earth.

The Suri only made first contact with outsiders in 1969, and have struggled mightily since through violence, disease, and illegal encroachments on their land. In response, Chief Almir decided that outreach was his people’s best hope and he became an environmentalist and activist within the modern state of Brazil. When he saw Google Earth in action, he knew that he had found a tool to help his people fight illegal logging. Chief Almir contacted google, who provided equipment and training, and now the Suri document illegal encroachments with geotagged images which they upload to Google Earth for all to see. In addition to this, Chief Almir is using technology to record the stories of his people’s elders so they won’t be lost to the younger generations.

In all respects, Chief Almir is an admirable figure. He realized that contact with the outside world had already changed his people, and decided to use technology to preserve something of his people’s way of life. He is a man who took up tools in the service of his people. He seems to have been aware that doing would further change who they were, and yet accepted that as a better than the alternative of trying to stay isolated. The change was interesting. For a people who only made contact with the wider world in 1969, chief Almir has a global understanding – realizing that his efforts at reforestation will benefit not only his people, but also the entire world. This is an example the type of reflection I’d like the Church to use when taking up technological tools for ministry.

Previously posted at Painfully Hopeful.

One of the challenges that larger ministries tend to run into when looking at developing a mobile ministry strategy, or even developing a mobile ministry website, application, or service, is that of taking their entire plate of content and making it mobile-friendly. Chances are, if you are at this place in your mobile strategy, you’ve probably hit a nice speed bump. Here are some tips to help you over that bump and move towards something a bit more digestible to your audience.

First: Understand What It Is People Do On Mobile Devices

This part doesn’t take any complicated statistics, viewpoints, or trends studies. It actually is just one of those common sense moments. You have a product or brand experience that you’d like to offer on mobile. How much of that experience translates well into a 10-30 second glance on a 3.5in screen?

Take email, people get notifications of messages. They check it. They might throw out a short reply. Then the device goes back into their pocket. You might get them to scroll a bit. But, you know how it is – get too much scrolling or the subject matter is too thick and that’s something relegated to viewing on a larger screen like a tablet or laptop.

Think about contexts like this. What about your brand experience translates to how people already use mobile devices? Will what you offer on mobile expand on that existing behavior, or invent something new?

Second: Figure Out All of the Features/Services That You Offer

This might come as a shock, but in many organizations, there are a number of people who don’t visit that organization’s website. Even more shocking, you might find that the people who do visit it don’t go to the places that people who don’t work for the company venture to. This mis-association with websites leads people to not know the entire swath of services/products that the organization offers.

Once you’ve figured out what all it is that you offer. Make a two-column list. Title one column “things I’d like to see us do on mobile” and the other “things I couldn’t see on a mobile.” Then, take that first column and, using your mobile device, do those items. Log that experience. You might need to adjust the number of items in one column versus the other.

Third: Determine What is Uniquely Yours to Offer in/on Mobile

Of that listing of items that “you’d like to see us do on mobile,” there are hopefully some items which are unique to your ministry or organization. These might be siloed items (meaning that they have very loose connections to the overall brand/marketing strategy of your ministry/organization) or that they might be so very custom that it might take some signifiant work with either communications behaviors, technologies, or even convincing executive company members. Still, these are unique to your mission, and have some value if you can determine what in these can go mobile. This is where the bulk of your decision process for specific mobile features needs to lie.

Fourth: Reach for the Low-Hanging Fruit First

The last thing, and the most focused thing is taking that list of what you’d like to do, that’s been filtered to what you uniquely do, and then saying no to everything except one. Go for the low-hanging fruit. This will be your initial mobile app/web/service offering. It will allow you to make mistakes, generate successes, and see a faster return-on-investment for your efforts.

The Example (Fictional, Based on a few Real Ministries)

A ministry has been working in the southern region for sometime, and they’ve created a wealth of communications materials (daily devotionals, newsletters, reading plans, and the occasional multimedia piece that coat-tails on a popular local event). They want to “go mobile” but find that they have entirely too much content, and an unwilling content management system (incl the organizational processes) behind it.

They decide to take a look at their goals for going mobile. Thankfully, this is encapsulated in their mission statement (entreat, reach, and teach). These goals – when viewed through some of the unique characteristics of mobile – flow nicely with that initiative. They look at what they offer right now in terms of features (daily devotionals, newsletters, reading plans, and the multimedia items). All of these can go mobile, but only the daily devotionals are unique to them. They decide that their first engagement in the mobile space will have these daily devotionals as their backbone.

Due to the current reach of those devotionals (email and web analytics give this information), they know that developing a mobile website is a better proposition. They don’t have the in-house resource to create a mobile website from scratch (see other Mobile Web App services), so they invest in the Mobify service in order to make it happen. Those devotionals are already on their website, so they just need to use Mobify’s content editor to add their own branding and styles. At the end of the process, they choose a paid option for Mobify since their was little upfont costs in terms of reflowing content or learning HTML/CSS.

They release the next newsletter, daily devotional, and multimedia event with a link to the mobile-enabled daily devotional. The new m.fictionalministry.com website URL points only to the daily devotional which has links at the bottom of it to be shared with social networks. They also realized during the process that SMS (text messaging) also needs to play a part in sharing, and so they investigated Greater Calling and other SMS service providers whom are able to take the mobile-enabled devotionals and send those as a link via SMS.

We now have a ministry that’s utilized their brand position to take a deliberate and specific step into mobile. With minimal effort, they’ve been able to take existing content and make it available within mobile channels using both web and (version 2) SMS. Using the analytic tools within those services, they can see what works and what doesn’t and refine their plans for other areas of their site assets which need to go mobile. And to those portions of their ministry assets that cannot, they don’t lose the positive feelings generated by what does work well. Its not their entire offering, but just enough to feed the mobile appetite.

Resources to Help

• Listing of Mobile Application and Service Providers
• Deciding Between a Mobile App or Mobile Website
• Walk-Through Questions for Building a Mobile Ministry App

He called with the kind of breathing that usually was reserved for marathons. It was a clear signal, and yet I was still having trouble separating the heavy breathing from the message. Perhaps he’d be inclined to tell me again what it was he was after.

“Ok, look. I’ll explain it again. We have a major opportunity here. I… I just can’t say it any clearer. They want to give us money to do this video project, but we’ve got no working camera! You have to find something now! The deadline is only a few hours away.”

I had heard my friend gone down this line before. Moments before we landed here he was again talking about how we needed just one more thing and pressing me into finding it with that vendor just before our gate. Then there was that time when, in the middle of the desert no less, he and I found ourselves with one canteen of water and no gas in our truck. He wanted to walk over “just one more hill,” and I was wanting “just one more moment of rest.” Again, his stubborness came to a head and we made it over that hill to find a small camp of bedouins who had a few gallons of petrol to spare. Whenever I travelled with him, it was like clamaity and opportunity were also traveling partners.

This time things were a little easier. We were in the middle of this metropolis we were both familiar with, due to an even we were attending there. He and I decided that before we’d connect with the other event attendees, that we’d take some time to scout for examples of ministry happening around the city. We figured that if we had a few hours of footage, and about an hour or so of prep, that we could blow away our fellow attendees with a picture of life here and the opportunity it presented to our efforts.

Yet, here were were again. Staring at the ground where the bus just left. Left behind were the pieces of an $800 camera. You know, the kind you see in a magazine and then when you get it into your hands, you realize that the magazine lied – it was a ton better in person? Yea. We had that kind of camera. And on it both still and video footage of life in this dear city. We had everything – people getting arrested from what looked like a domestic dispute; a funeral and wedding procession; even some images of kids in school attire, looking as if they were off to another lesson. We had all kinds of media relevant to the opportunities in this city. But, that was about 10 minutes ago. Right now, we were staring at that opportunity wasted with a destroyed camera.

“Oh, no! Oh, no. This isn’t happening. We can’t come this close to that vision and it all goes away on a simple drop?”

He paced back and forth as I bent down to pick up the pieces – hopefully, there was a recipt we could use after the conference to possibly get a warranty replacement. I don’t know though. We were both exiting the bus when it dropped. It was just a slight brush from someone going in the opposite direction – and then it just kind of fell unlatched from the neck-strap and onto the ground. We didn’t see where it went – only heard. Shame that bus didn’t get a flat from running over it.

“Look, all we can do now is just continue onto the conference. There might be an opportunity another time to do something like this.”

“But, you don’t understand,” he canjoled. “We aren’t going to get an opportunity as clear as this to tell the story of how we see ministry needing to be here without those pictures and videos. They’ve heard us talk about it over and over. We’ve shown them statistics. They barely let us come to this conference. That video, that would have put us over the top. And now…”

I’ve seen my friend like this before (like I said). And he responded the same way that he usually does once the pace-induced pity party starts to end. He pulled out his mobile from his pocket and called his sister. She was always able to came him down and help him to find a moment of faith where he wanted to just throw it all away.

But, as he pulled the phone to his ear, I noticed something differernt. That didn’t look like the mobile that he usually carries. “Hey, when did you get a new phone?”

“Oh, this. Well, I purchased it online from some guy who was selling it. It looked nice and apparently had a decent camera so I went for it.”

“Really? What model is it?”

“Uh.” He turned the mobile around to me to show me the name and model printed on the front.

“Oooh! Dude. You’ve got the Nokia N8!”

“Uh, yea. And… is that supposed to bring my camera back or something?”

“Dude. You’ve got probably the best camera phone available right now. How could you not know that you had that phone?”

He looked back at me as if I just came down off the mountain with some stone tablets. I don’t know everything about mobiles, but I have seen what people have been able to produce from that phone. Its simply astounding.

“Hey, that model has a really decent camera. And, some on-board video editing software. If we can snap some pictures, we might be able to get that video done after all.”

He looked back at me with that “I wouldn’t believe you if you were Jesus himself” look. “Dude. There’s no way a camera on a phone can do something of the quality that we going for. I can’t believe you would…”

“Shhh… just gimme your phone for a second. I think I can find the app.”

Ok. Here’s the place where I should admit that I don’t have a clue as to what I’m doing. I’m the brains behind pulling things together. He’s the techie. And I’m so surprised that he didn’t know about that feature. I remember seeing some videos produced on that N8 published online. Amazing stuff. Nothing that I could do. Clearly, the people putting that out there had much more talent than I. But, a phone, making stuff like that… wow.

“Uhm uhmmm, ok. Here it is. Video Editor.” Clicking on the app I get this screen asking me if I want to take video or pictures already recorded on the device, or simply make a slideshow. “Look. See. All we have to do is take some pictures and videos with the phone and then we can make a video out of it. Shouldn’t be that hard.”

Ding. Ding. Ding.

The city clock. Its on the hour and we’ve got just an house before the conference if we are going to pull this off. I shovel up the pieces from the camera that aren’t too small to pick up and just put it in the camera bag. Then I see it.

“Hey. Look. Look at this! The memory card doesn’t look damaged. Do you think it might still work?”

“Here. Give it to me.”

He took the memory card and started pulling at it with his fingertip. Then, almost like one of those Russian egg dolls, a little card appeared from the larger one.

“If this card works. We might be in business.”

He removed a little door from the side of the N8 and inserted the chip-looking card. The phone beeped and then he started tapping the screen. Something was happening, but I wasn’t sure what was going on.

“Yep. Yea. Uh…wait. Uhmmmm. This might look good. Ok. Yea, yea. Whoohoo! Look, look! The pictures are still there. And…wait a sec… yea. The videos are there too. This just might work.

For the next hour, my friend and I sat down and created on this little phone a video that we woul later show to this conference. They were midly impressed with the video, until we told them it was completly produced on the mobile phone. We related the story on how our camera broke just hours before, but the on-board software on thie phone was enough to actually get us to this point. Sure, it had some rough spots (text formatting, and we didn’t really have much of a script), but for coming from a mobile, it was quite impressive.

As my friend and I walked out of the conference a few days later. He reached over to me to shake my hand. “You know something? I would have never even paid attention to the fact that a mobile phone could do so much if you’d not remembered those videos you’d seen. Thanks. I think that I’ll ignore getting a new camera for a while and see what I can do on this little guy.”

“You aren’t the only one amazed. I’d only seen a few things online. But, to acutally be a part of producing it. Well, that’s just pretty decent. I’m wondering if other phones can do this now. That would be a better photography class than the one we pitched… “Create the Next Great Film on your Phone.” Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

“It does. Though, I’m not sure we should just teach folks how to make a movie with it. There’s a better opportunity out there to capture.”

Over at Church Mag was a post talking about some downsides to using Facebook as the landing site/page for youth ministry activities. There are some good points there, and in terms of general direction, they do indeed make some sense. However, in our comment posted here, we counter-pointed the recommendations made there with a bow to understanding the context of use. Here’s the comment first:

I almost agree with this. Almost…

What’s missing in the article and resulting discussion is the context of the global uses of Facebook. For example, if you are in places where Facebook can be used on a mobile for no costs to the user, and these would be areas where the majority of folks are going online using a mobile, then making FB your website makes a ton of sense, and shouldn’t be overlooked at all. In fact, the expense of making your own mobile friendly site is more, no matter what kind of solution you use there. This happens to be the context for many non-English speaking and FB-using audiences.

On the other side of that, if you can make youth ministry or any other ministry resources available, without the reliance on a social network, or other server platform that you don’t own or can maintain, then yes, it’s a grat idea to not go that route. You can spend that energy on those social networks pointing to your wealth of resources and emphasizing the connections/conversations those services provide instead.

Context is important. Many of your churches need to consider both of my above paragraph as your missions IT focuses need to be different in domestic and international/affluent and non-affluent/mobile and non-mobile contexts.

Context. We said around this point in time last year that context is going to be your most important consideration in the new year (2011) when looking at mobile ministry opportunities. Your mobile or social web engagements rely on you understanding the context of use, environment, people, technologies, etc. You won’t have a ministry solution without understanding this point.

Now, how will that help you with Facebook efforts (referencing this example from the article posted)? Here are some resource items from our Case Studies/Research page worth considering:

• Country-Specific Mobile Web Marketing Guides (mobiThinking)
• Facebook: General/Mobile Statistics
• 2011 ComScore Press Release on Mobile Social Media Growth

See these and other resources useful for crafting and determining your mobile strategy on our Case Studies/Research Materials page.

Now. You can kind of continue to shoot into the dark regarding these matters. But, it does kind of make sense to emulate the activities of those who’s lives we follow (Joshua, David, Paul, etc.) who scouted the land before deciding what and whom they would seek to conquer or influence. Consider the context of what you are trying to do and who will be influenced by it when going online with ministry endeavors. Meet them on their hill, not simply the one where you are comfortable.

Around this point, barring anything having happened to me while on the road in the past 24 hours, we’re almost starting with a presentation titled From the Toilet to the Pulpit at The Geek Fest (at Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte, NC, USA).

You might be interested in following along with the presentation, and as our usual methods, you can view the slide deck here.

For those of you keeping up with our previous talks, there’s some repeat of some of the items in this deck. For the offline discussion, things are more tuned towards the topic title. Do feel free to offer comments and feedback via Twitter (put @mobileminmag in your comments so that we can easily/quickly see it).

Ok, so you have decided that you will take the jump and build a mobile application or website. And in your analysis, you’ve pretty much established that you already know what kind of content it is that you will serve. So what’s left? Well, deciding who exactly to target your mobile efforts towards is one item. Take a look at this graphic recently produced by Asymco which speaks to the published information about global shipments of mobiles

From this graphic (not to mention the data that went into it) we can get an idea of some potential targets for an application or a website on a global scale. For example, we can see from the blue in the graphic that there’s a considerably larger percentage of persons who don’t use smartphones, though this number seems to be getting smaller on a consistent basis (you won’t hear doomsday analysis of the feature phone market here, the numbers bear this as standing strong for the foreseeable mobile futur – i.e., 3yrs easily).

Coming Down from a Global View to A Regional One

Now, this graphic only helps if you are thinking of rolling out something on a mobile global-reaching basis. For many of you, the reach is considerably more regional, and so information like that which Asymco has provided looks best when put against other data, for example, this information from the IDC:

…In Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ), feature phones recovered in the third quarter on the back of Nokia’s resolved inventory channel issues in China combined with the strong showing of its dual-SIM handsets across emerging markets like India and Southeast Asia. With Nokia fighting back at the Chinese low-end competitors, the proliferation of these smaller brands has slowed as margins hit razor-thin levels. APeJ smartphone growth last quarter was driven primarily by Samsung and HTC, as well as ZTE in China. In Japan,the market rebounded sharply after two quarters of either low single-digit growth or outright market decline following the natural disasters of this spring.

The Western European phone market declined as a result of lower demand for both feature phones and smartphones. The smartphone device type growth was mainly driven by mid-tier Android devices. High-end smartphone growth was negatively impacted by Apple’s fourth-quarter iPhone 4S launch, which caused consumers to delay purchases. Meanwhile, Nokia’s transition from the Symbian to the Windows Phone operating system as its primary smartphone platform led to a transition. Feature phones declined as consumers that replaced their devices upgraded to smartphones while others held on to their devices for longer periods of time. Overall the Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMA) markets showed strong growth due in large part to Nokia’s rebound in the regions. Bucking its global troubles, Nokia had a very strong 3Q11 due to feature phone growth. Its smartphone decline continued, however, but it remained the market leader in the region. Among the niche smartphone brands, HTC did particularly well in some markets, including Russia. RIM continues to make progress in the Middle East and Africa, but fared less well in Central and Eastern Europe…

Read the entire Q3 2011 IDC Press release

Now, this information from the IDC is a snapshot of what’s happening with the entire mobile industry (like Asymco’s data), however gives a more detailed snapshot of what’s happening in Q3 of this year compared to next year, and also considering regional and manufacturer differences. This is solid information, and allows an effort to craft a mobile website or application to center onto cultural and distribution details that are a bit easier to manage (languages, platform focusing, etc).

Identifying Opportunities, Tools, and Your Users

What’s left after this is to look a bit more into what it will take to actually build the mobile application or website. For that information, we have to take a look at a few facts: (a) where are the opportunities, (b) where are the tools, and (c) where are the users.

What are some of the opportunities for faith-based mobile apps, websites, and services?

• Games
• Funding (not just fundraising)
• Group Communication
• Education
• Health and Wellness
• News and Information

Or, what are the categories that see the most application downloads (this information is hard to come by, for example just Apple App Store data here; pulling this together requires some effort)?

Where then can we find some of the tools to take advantage of those opportunities?

• mobile service directories (for example the Wireless Industry Partnership)
• the developers/publishers’ sections of mobile platform websites (for example, Forum Nokia)
• other believers working in this space (for example, the Mobile Ministry Forum)

Specifically Design for Your Specific User

And finally, we’ve got to define where the users are for our application. Not the mythical user. Not the “if we put an app out there, it will be used because they have a mobile” user. The hard numbers. Who in your communities, areas of influence, have expressed such interest in a mobile solution from you that it has effected the ability of your current media offerings to grow? Or, how has the success of mobile for your competitors/partners driven your customers and stakeholders to question your mobile strategy?

It is here that you will want to start researching your user base (or prospective user base) towards whatever mobile experience it is that you intend to craft. That doesn’t mean that you are designing something to please them (part of the effect of mobile is that you surprise and delight because you offer something people didn’t know they wanted), but it does mean that you have a pulse on what they use, what works, what doesn’t work, and where potential consumers of your mobile lie.

Analyzing your user base might mean digging into information that you already have (website visitor data, attendance data, response data from polls/surveys, etc.). And it also might mean that you need to generate means to learn more about your community (surveys, focus groups, feedback forms for events, etc.). But, you have to identify exactly who it is that will be using your applicaiton. Try creating personas for these specific users and then (before developing anything) testing the ideas that you have against them. Then, when you get to the point of testing and looking for feedback to your application, you have some benchmark against which to determine where you proceed with your mobile activity.

Of course, you don’t have to do this work of figuring out your audience. You could very well be the next Steve Jobs and literally have a intuition towards what will work. You also have to have the discipline to make sure that it does work.

Resources, Encouragement
We have some resources that should help you through this process here. But, as we noted above with looking at your users, much of what you need to know about making a successful mobile applicaiton, website, or service is already within the people you serve. Know them, and you know what works.

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?

We hear it in sermons often, “the church isn’t what happens in the pews on Sunday, but what you do in your communities throughout the week.” And yet we continue to place the event of sitting for singing and the preached word as central to the sustainability of faith. What if we could be the kind of roving fellowship to which a static location wasn’t key to spiritual sustainability, and the types of interactions as well as our travel in between them, became the mode of living? What if fellowship was determined to be most effective when it was a series of smaller, sometimes more random, meetings, and then the weekly gathering was a look at the stories that happened in those moments – a weekly YouTube channel of your social connections around your city and places of life/work/entertainment? Would it look something like the Mo Mobility System?

I hear it often from pastors that they’d want more members that think and act like this? But, without incentives for organic fellowship, or being able to model such mobility to people who aren’t single, entrepreneurs, or upwardly affluent to gather like this, how could you pull this off? Is reinventing our cities the answer where our churches aren’t able to move out of that behavioral caste?