Mobile Ministry Magazine

I am one part a member of Nokia's Blogger Relations team, and have recently been invited to be an S60 Ambassador. Essentially, I speak about Nokia's products to people when I see that there's a need for them. In some cases, I'll get devices or services to try out and then report those findings back to Nokia. For them, it's an effort to see how people are using their devices and services. For me, it's a chance to see how mobile technology can enrich and empower lives.

The better part is that there are relationships that happen. Being able to live in Christ around them makes having opportunities like these presented by Nokia and other companies kinda neat. Here are a few of the recent reports that I filed to Nokia's S60 Ambassador's program. For those of you looking at ways to see how mobile tech fits, this is how I go about learning and applying.

Episode 1: The Young Mother

I went to visit a friend of mine on the other side of Charlotte as she has a 1yr old kid who has provided for several great photo opportunities. She and I talked about her e-learning class that she is taking and some directions that she could go with content for her blog. I recommended the idea of the phone as the literal center of the Internet for the school by using the Mobile Web Server.

First, I had to explain to her what the Mobile Web Server is and what kind of functionality that it opens up. Then, I told her that I could show her what it would look like. So I pulled out my N75 and turned on the Mobile Web Server. We navigated through each of the pages on her laptop that was in front of us, and I showed her how such a setup would make for a different take on distance learning ventures.

She was amazed that my phone could do that and asked why it was that her 3555 was not able to do the same things even though it was a Nokia phone as well. I explained to her that while they were from the same company, that they used different operating systems. One of the applications that she'd become a bit intrigued about is Jaiku; especially its ability to link with the address book for presence notification. That was something that she wanted for her phone. I led her to Yahoo, and there she learned about Yahoo's oneConnect service. Unfortunately, she does not have a mobile [data] plan, and does not see getting one; so downloading that was out of the question.

he problem that she posed to me was how to get more out of a phone like mine without being online. Considering that I do so much online via my N75, that really left me without many words. Other than the Bible, voice, and SMS, the rest really is the Internet. Making my phone compelling towards those who don't need that functionality will have to become another search of mine.

Episode 2: The Church Admin

Monday night is usually bible study at It's a Grind Coffeehouse and that is where I was again this Monday. Having had a successful demonstration of the Mobile Web Server running on my N75 earlier Monday, I decided to pique the interest of one of the administrative workers of my church and get her idea on such a solution.

First, I gave her a small demonstration of the software on my device, and then used my N800 Internet Tablet to show what the site actually works like in a web browser. At that she was impressed, but I could see not convinced at its usefulness. I then changed modes to talking about how there is always some information that one wants to keep personal, but other things, like pictures and availability that would come in handy for some people to know.

I then set my Gallery to show the pictures from my memory card and showed her how that page could be set with permissions. I then showed the Contact, Presence, and Calendar screens and showed that these can be controlled with a simple group that is created on the phone.

She looked at the phone and said "that's interesting. Your phone is a powerful little thing." Powerful indeed, but as a device that connects, its hard to beat.

Related Items:

• Nokia's S60 Ambassador Program
• Nokia's Mobile Web Server
• N75 Live-in Review Update
• MMM's N95 (via Nokia Blogger Relations) Review
• Yahoo's oneConnect service

Labels: Bible, church, community, device, family, Jaiku, mission, mobile, mobile accessories, Mobile Web Server, mobility, N75, Nokia, phone, software, tech, urban, usablity, Yahoo

I unintentionally tend to sit on some news stories. Hoping to speak about some things when there is an open slot or the chatter on the interwebs isn't so loud about it that it would get lost in the shuffle; some things just get pushed to the back a bit. Here's some of those items that aren't too flaccid in terms of timing, but definitely useful for various applications.

• Logos post address Spanish-oriented resources.
• The latest GMPSoft newsletter has several deals on various electronic resources for your PDA or smartphone including a Bible Bundle which includes the Greek UBS4 module.
• Something to make you think on how to approach little ones with the subject of hearing God and prayer even when its something that the Bible may/may not talk about ;)
• Palm Addict has a random giveaway of a 15 inch Mac PowerBook going on right now. The rules are to send in a post relevant to how you are using mobile tech. If not something that you need, definitely enter for someone in your circle who could use a computer but may not have the means to attain one.
• Swerve, a ministry of Lifechurch.tv, has two post titled 10 Things.... The first deals with Introspection and the second Ministry. Hands down, a very solid read and meditation piece for the weekend.
• And finally, the Carnival of the Mobilists at Mobilestance has plenty of readings from the past week in mobile tech.
• Forgot this one: YouVersion has done some updates that have improved performance and added a few new versions to the fray. Unless you are on an Internet Tablet like me, it really should work very well in connected settings as both a journaling and group Bible study tool.

Don't forget that we published MMM Issue 5 earlier this week. Several articles and insights there as well for your own mental scratchpad.

Labels: accessiblity, Apple, Bible, Carnival of the Mobilists, community, devotion, family, issue 5, mobile accessories, mobility, Spanish, stewardship, study, tech, worship

Image from Wikipedia

For many of you, its not an issue of "if" to extend your offices, by using web and mobile technology, its a matter of "how."

To answer the "how" we are going to look at a few areas: engaging people to use the tools and selecting what works best with your budget.

Engaging the Team

A major hurdle to using anything new is getting people sold on the idea that it would work best for them. Unfortunately, we are creatures of habit. Doing something different, especially when it comes to utilizing mobile devices, services, or applications can be a bear.

One thing you want to have in place before you roll out a solution is some type of easy to access help system. This should be in two layers (simple): knowledge base and people (in that order). The first questions people ask are the "how do I do this" ones, so making sure that this is populated, and constantly maintained, is of great importance. This resources should be emphasized during any training, and a part of a weekly routine of checking on the progress of implementing a solution.

What this looks like to the minister's on-the-go-office could be a wiki that is saved on the mobile device with common topics. It could be a contact entry that is constantly synced with a note detailing how to do immediate problem solving.

The people resource should be the second and final one. This is where one asks for assistance in doing a feature, or needs a refresher in what was taught originally. Everyone needs a point of contact, and assuring them that there is a person that can be contacted makes it easier for people to accept that there's a change in the workflow in the mist.

Actually getting the team to use those new tools might be less difficult if it could be implemented into the normal routine. For example, in one SharePoint installation I was a part of, instead of making the entire enterprise use it all at once, we made the departments use it only for announcements. We left it open for individuals to play with, but made them know that the only way to know about what was going on was to visit the SharePoint website. Over time, we rolled out more and more SharePoint-only features, backed up with training key users on more features so they would talk about it, getting others involved into using it on a more consistent basis. Basically speaking, giving it to them in small bits is better than force-feeding.

Budget Concerns

One of the questions that is always asked when talking about extending one's office using mobile tech is the cost. Cost doesn't just include the money, its also inclusive of the time, the administration, and any thing else that is not actively using the tech. Balancing cost versus use is hard, but here are some things to think about when evaluating cost:

• Are those providing support or those building the system a volunteer who may leave at any given time?
• Does using a mobile device require additional learning outside of just using office tools, such as user interface and system maintenance issues?
• What is the backup plan? Will implementing a backup plan cost as much as implementing the primary plan? Can using the backup be easier for users than using the primary?
• What are the cost savings/expenses of an entire ministry team being online? Are subsidies or grants available to offset the costs of running/not running a physical office?
• In extending the office, what are the costs to family, friends, and ministry endeavors? Can appropriate boundaries be kept?

Addressing Smaller Offices

Some of you reading this might see these as all well and good, but you are part of a 5-man or smaller team. Things just aren't that deep (in scope or budget). So what can you do?

Take advantage of web suites like Google Apps or Zoho Office. While providing a centralized interface for work, it will also keep things manageable in one area. Using smartphones, Internet Tablets, and UMPC devices are a good means to take light work on the go. Remember though that more devices are more things to manage. Choose the device carefully, basing the costs and engagement on what you already do and what you need to do better.

Labels: browser, community, device, email, family, Google, mission, mobile accessories, mobility, networking, SharePoint, stewardship, study, tech

Monday, I had a meeting with one of the pastors of my church and we talked a bit about getting more out of our church website. Essentially, he wants to use the website bettter to cut some of the administration costs and time to do things. I just wanted to be notified of things in a more upfront, and user-engageable manner. But because both of us are techies, we tended to take things a bit further than some people are willing to go right now with their use of web and technology. So what we did was scale back our thoughts a bit, and then hit on some areas where we could be a good stweard of the web resources we have, but also make those invitiing options for our community.

Here are some of the things we talked about that might prove helpsful to some of you who wish to add some web or mobile-friendly aspects to your ministry efforts:

• Instead of printing announcements and having left overs that just get thrown away, print 1/2 to 2/3 of what you would normally print and then have cards that just list your website address on them to give out when you run out. This drives traffic to your website, and allows your ministry's brand to stand out some more.


• If you have a blog, post a small blurb every week that is just a bulleted listing of the announcements. If there is something that is special or requires more details (such as a teen outing, or study outline), break that out in an occasional single post. Then, when doing announcements, use a screenshot of that posting so that people associate announcements with your website. Here, you can mention using RSS in order to keep up with these items.


• Be innovative in what you post online. I recommended that we post a small outline of our Monday night Bible study on our blog a day or two after the study. This way people who are searching (Google, Yahoo, etc.) will be able to see that we have a study going on, and those who were there would have an additional resource when they want to refer to something said later in the week. Again, emphasize the use of RSS here so that you can empahsize purposeful Internet time.


• Encourage leadership to use web applications for generic things such as teh church calendar (Google Calendar, Upcoming, etc.) and then web-based services such as Evite for special services and events. For example, we talked about using a custom Evite invitation for Easter Sunday services.


• Remind people that their cell phone number is also an email address. For some carriers, you can check these emails online instead of on the device. But, you will receive a text message about them all the time. Using this address for time-sensitive information will help people to keep in the front of their head what the ministry wants to do with them.

These are just a few things, but ways in which technology can be used in a manner that addresses a need to inform, and also a need to trim the fat in terms of administration time. I encourage you to ask those techies in your communities who are project managers and team leads on how to implement these types of things into your ministry efforts. Stwearding this resource well is just as important as any other.

Labels: community, education, email, family, mobile, software, tech, usablity

One of those things very easy to fall into when you have gotten online (email, blogs, etc.) is developing a personality aspect where you live for the attention you get online rather than just letting those web/tech things be a matter of fruitfulness.

I read an article at Lifehacker that pointed to a negative aspect of being unsearchable @ Google. While we can all agree that being searchable is a good thing. Making that attention-grabbing/getting as a reason to be online is unhealthy.

One recent tech consultation spoke to a parent on how understanding the web and what it does to our ego is key to understanding both the dangers and benefits of tech. Anytime it becomes less about God and productivity and more about us, we have made the tech an idol and it needs to be cast down.

Let your legacy online ALSO speak towards being Christ like.

Labels: devotion, family, mobile, usablity

A friend of mine recently went on a mission trip to encourage Christians in Israel/Palestine. The letter below is his follow-up letter that he has allowed me to post. I ask that you consider his words, and his call towards unity in the Body.

I'd like to thank you once again for your time, participation and support for our mission trip to Israel and Palestine. The trip came and went without any life threatening or seriously harmful situations and each of the 10 members of our team has both grown and learned a great deal thanks to our experiences in this area. As I promised, I would like to take this opportunity to follow up with you and share the experiences and insights learned during the trip.

After I got back from Israel, people would obviously pose the question, "How was your trip?" I can't help but think that that question is laughably simple. I say that because of the sheer volume of incredible people and experiences that we were exposed to. It's difficult to figure out where to start. But to answer the original question, the trip was great!

I'll start with a quick summary of our group's mission statement. We did not go to evangelize, or build a school, or to administer medical supplies as some might expect. 1 Corinthians 12:25b-26 says regarding the church, "...there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it." As a group, we wanted to go into the Palestinian territories and stand with the Palestinian Christians there, to try to experience the sufferings that they are going through, and to do what we can to encourage them in the face of hardship or persecution.

The first day and a half that we were in the country was spent seeing the tourist spots in Jerusalem. Some of our members, including myself, were upset about this. We came to get down to business! We are not here to see the sights! However, in retrospect, those moments were invaluable in teaching us an overview of the culture and people in the land.

Specifically in these moments while we were traveling from church to church, we saw how the "body of Christ" interacted with one another. Most noticeably, we saw the distrust between denominations. Each denomination insists on having a presence at each of the holy spots. Sometimes a church was partitioned into different areas operated by the different denominations. Each time a ritual was performed by one group, it was repeated by the others. This seems to me to bear the assumption that they believe that God doesn't recognize rituals from other denominations. If He did recognize them, then there wouldn't be any need to repeat them. Once we had opportunities to speak with them, we were repeatedly told by them that people from other denominations were wrong, that they were not Christians or that they were condemned to hell.. If they couldn't share the same building-which was often-they would build another church and claim that this church was the true holy spot.

This wholesale judgment bothered me to the point where I began to think about this more. And upon thinking about it more, I realized that this is not as foreign a concept as had originally struck me. These kinds of statements are all over the Western church, not just limited to the Middle East. They can be heard from the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant churches, the Church Of Christ, and others. It took a trip to the Israel for me to be able to look back and recognize this situation in my own culture. Since much of the New Testament, and because of that our trip, was focused on unity among Christians, theses divisions seemed much more visible. It was humbling for me to come to these realizations since I was so quick to see the shortcomings in others what I was ignoring at home.

After we finished our tour and meetings in Jerusalem, we began to move in and out of the West Bank nearly every day. As the trip was approaching, I was personally concerned about these transitions and the time we would spend in the territories. The impression is that the territories are very violent and personal safety is at a premium! We found this to be completely untrue. At no point during the entire trip did I feel threatened. In spite of the Palestinian people officially being in a state of uprising, at no point did I see any people acting in such a way.

Quite the opposite, we were constantly in the company of very friendly, very hospitable people. During our stay in the Bethlehem Bible College, we were asked to break into groups of two and accompany a student home for dinner with his or her family. We had a few very intimate and personal interactions like this and I found them to be the highlights of the entire trip. Another team member and I went with a student named Nader. I am typically known to be a picky eater but I can say honestly that his mother makes really tasty food! They would not let us tell them no! They repeatedly piled on food to our plates, served us two deserts along with coffee and tea. When it came time to leave they tried to make us promise to come back and have dinner with them again over the next few days, which unfortunately we couldn't since our days and nights were already booked. When Nader returned us to the College, I told him how great his family was and how much we enjoyed ourselves. He was so pleased that we had a good time that his face was beaming with a joy! It was an enthusiasm that I don't really see very often.

Another such instance was also when we were in Bethlehem and we met with Pastor Nehad and Jamal from the Immanuel Church. These two men spoke for several hours with only an occasional pause or interruption by our group. Their stories are truly amazing and awe-inspiring! After they were done talking, they took us to the church's book store where we had a chance to buy some gifts. I approached Pastor Nehad, thanked him for taking time out of his schedule to come and talk to us and gave him my thirty second summary of our trip's purpose and I saw his face fill with happiness and relief. He told me how genuinely thankful he was that we came and listened to him speak. But in his eyes there was fatigue and I felt that he wanted rest.

He told us how he and other Palestinian Christians feel alone. As I have already said, the denominations do not find solace in one another. The Israeli government is openly unconcerned or even hostile. The Palestinian government is ineffective. The response from other non-Christians is uncertain. Relations with some are great while others resent them for being nonviolent.

Then when they turn to the Western church for solace, they often get shunned in the name Zionism. Some people tell the Palestinian Christians that they have no right to live there and that their presence in the Holy Land is delaying the second coming of Christ. We heard stories of Western churches holding fund raisers to buy tanks and helicopters for the Israeli military for use against the Palestinian people!

I don't want to make a politically loaded statement and I'm not picking a side about whether Israel should be there or not. However, our group got to see firsthand the effects that our churches are having on the Palestinians by asserting these views. Palestinian Christians have very few people to turn to for support. Numerous times throughout the trip we were told that they feel alone with no one to turn to. Some, like Pastor Nehad, are weary from the daily struggle and yet still working. Others told us that they have given up hope in a better life. I like to think that the Western church has everything all right. Yet as part of a group of people that are supposed to be known by their love and support of each other, I am absolutely humbled by the fact that these things come so unnaturally to us.

I believe that is why people like Pastor Nehad were so encouraged by our presence. To me, it seemed like we were doing nothing. Many times before and during the trip I was concerned with our effectiveness since we didn't have concrete goals. We weren't there to convert X number of people or heal Y number of diseases. Success could not be measured in traditional ways. We were just going to go, humble ourselves and learn from these people. And it really was an encouragement to them! Just the fact that we cared about them and listened to their stories visibly raised their hopes and spirits before our very eyes. It was an encouragement to them and it was a blessing for us to be able to do this service for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Each of the groups that we talked to expressed hope that God was working in the land and that was gaining traction. People are experiencing miracles. Non-Christians are coming to Christ. Muslims are seeing dreams and visions of Jesus and are coming to Christians to learn more about him. Opportunities are arising that put the bible and Jesus in the spotlight.

I hope I do not sound like I think that everyone needs to drop everything and run to support the Palestinian people. Neither do I think that people need to abandon their support of Israel. Yet just like every other situation in life, there are two sides to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that many people don't acknowledge. The great majority of the people we met in the West Bank were just regular people. They don't want war. They don't want Islamic extremism to take over the world. They just want justice, peace and to give their children a better life. As one of our hosts told us, "When people think of us, we don't want people to think of terrorism. When people think of Palestinians, we want them to think of Jesus!"

See the photos of this trip.

Labels: Bible, church, community, devotion, family, Israel, mission, Palestine

I was just talking to a brother and he was telling me that he wanted to do a few more things from his smartphone in an effort to create more time for his family and stay off the computer. And while I am well convinced that can be a very positive move, what does concern me is that sometimes we try to use tech to solve an issue that is more than just a issue of tech. Sure, we might be spending more time playing "home admin" or browsing when we could be studying and fellowshipping. But just changing the tech cannot be the resolving item, we really do have to get down to the core of what it is that we are using tech to substitute for, and then (if then) use the tech as a facilitator of growing with God and our families. As much as these tools can really help, sometimes they just have to take a backseat to relationship and study; and only when those are in the right place can we bring them into a place where they are really aids to ministry.

That all being said, how have you used tech to improve your relationship with God or friends/family? And when you saw that improvement, was it the tech, or something deeper that was the item changed?

Labels: community, devotion, family, mobile, worship