Really simple question as those of us in the USA celebrate Independence Day today:
Has the introduction of mobile into your life given you more or less independence in ministry?
Let’s hear your responses in the comments and on Twitter.
Posts Tagged ‘community’
Is Mobile Independence for You/Your Ministry-Org?
Monday, July 4th, 2011
Should Our Church Have a Mobile Website?
Monday, June 27th, 2011
I was asked this question last week and while I had a quick answer off the cuff, I wanted to sit on it a bit and consider whether that was the right answer or not. Certainly, having a web presence makes sense, but does that necessarly mean a mobile website for your church, or to just be easily found if someone is using their mobile device?
Why You Would Have A Mobile Website
Clearly, having a mobile website makes sense if you are (a) a missions organization and you want the widest exposure to your vision and resources, or (b) a faith community that locally serves a significant population of those persons who are likely to be using mobile devices to find you, or find out more about you. These are just two examples, but clearly reasons for being available in a format on a mobile device, with your message specifically geared to the means and attention span of that context.
Why You Would Have a Mobile Application
Another prevailing opinion is that it might serve your ministry better to have a mobile application. Discovery is usually the reason for doing this, but I’d like to propose that you would think better. Applications should not just be reformatted websites, they should utilize the capacities of the mobile device, and offer something that a mobile website, or even your full website and marketing strategies, cannot offer.
A good case for having a mobile application for a ministry is when you produce several types of content which are better served locally instead of being streamed. Youth, sports, and even elderly organizations could also look at creating a suite of games or puzzles which better articulate their lessons and engagement strategies. An application, in a sense, is a place to experiment with the kinds of engagement that can’t happen otherwise.
Why You Wouldn’t Have a Mobile Website or App
There are a few reasons not to have a mobile website or application, and ironically, these actually tend to be sensible reasons. If you don’t have the resources to create and maintain your current website, then probably having a mobile website isn’t the right idea (yet). If you do have a solid plan for creating and/or maintaining your current website, then look at the logs (analytics) to see how many persons are coming to your site via a mobile device. Note where they are coming to. If you can create a mobile website that capitalizes on that, then go for it. If not. Don’t hurt yourself.
If your primary concern is just being findable in a search from a mobile device, then (first) make sure that your current website has the times, location, and main contact information in an easily seen place on your website. Mobile devices load slower, and have smaller screens, this info needs to therefore be one of the first items loaded. Second, you want to make sure that your entries in search engines such as Google Maps/Local are up to date.
If your primary means of engaging your community happens on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, spend your energies making sure that your profiles for social networking services are updated and clean. These services are already mobile friendly.
We talked about this from a mobile app standpoint in a previous article.
Context Matters for This Question
So, as you can see. Its not a simple “yes” or “no” kind of answer. These days, you need to balance the resources you have, versus the realities of the audiences you want to go for.
If you do decide that you need to go with a mobile website or application, look into services such as urmobile, Mobify, ShoutEm, or Ovi Publish to get up to speed faster using your existing web assets.
Remember also that mobile isn’t your laptop. Just because you have a library of sermons, and directories to every person who ever set foot in your church, doesn’t mean that this is what people want to see on their mobile’s much smaller screen. Give the information that’s most important, and then direct them quickly to the person, group, or resource that’s better able to help them fit their needs.
Mobile in Those Experience Spaces
Wednesday, June 15th, 2011
I have been thinking a bit more about the aspect of mobile having three layers: devices, services, and experiences. Specifically, I have been looking at experiences as this eventual goal, but kind of missing some of the key elements of experiences.
For example, Starbucks (McDonald’s, Panera, and luxury auto makers) define their existence as something fitting that space in life that is neither home nor work. There are areas of the USA where churches also define their existence within this 3rd space.
Now, what happens in this space can’t be like work (take for compensation) or home (rest and maturity). Something else happens in this space that fills something needed in our lives. One of the pitches for retail outlets is that they appeal to a space where you can get away and be refreshed without a vacation.
Now, there’s mobile. When we say that we want to use mobile in a ministry context, we are encroaching on this 3rd space to a degree. It could be intentional – the bible application developer ideally wants you to use their application in this 3rd space to refresh and retool. That doesn’t mean that the application isn’t viable in the other two spaces, but that it fits better in the 3rd.
But, what about other ministry engagements. Surely, if church is considered the 3rd space, then using a mobile for bible studies, events, and to create media can fit. But, when it does get placed there, is mobile encroaching on that personal moment? Can a mobile-friendly broadcast (for example) ever be well received when a person is not willing to be engaged?
I’ve got ways to go in this thinking. But, I want to leave with the same questions we posted on Twitter some days back for discussion and reflection:
[Thought] #mobmin (mobile ministry) challenges the Christian perception that the 3rd space (home, work are 1st two) is a church(-space)?
[Thought] If 3rd space is no longer a space but is an event, what/should the focus of #mobmin lie, how does it morph to other 3rd spaces?
The True Target of Mobile Ministry
Monday, June 13th, 2011
As I sat with a friend treating her to a birthday lunch, I watched around us as several people were engaged in conversation while fondling or even outright using a mobile device. I noticed children playing with mobiles and tablets, consumed to the world displayed within them, while navigating the social context of being at an eatery. And even the venue itself was situated for such living, wireless connectivity, comfortable chairs for solo persons, and conversational arrangements for multiple-person groups, with foods being accessible in a naturally lit room.
My friend picked up her mobile several times during the time we were there. She was going back and forth with family members and other friends who were passing her birthday greetings. I usually demote my mobile technology to a background place when with others, but soon found myself pulling out the iPad to begin thinking and sketching on the scenes around me. I caught a moment between chewing, talking, and thought when it hit me, these people aren’t the target of mobile ministry.
In a similar scene, I gathered with a group of pastors and community leaders for a luncheon. The conversation, brokered by a friend to us all, wanted to draw out attention to the needs and posturing of politics and faith in the Middle East. After a group introduction, we broke into smaller groups to eat and swap stories. It is usually in these moments that the peculiar nature of MMM gets to stand out a bit – one can make the argument that I’m neither pastor nor community leader, but have a voice towards both.
The conversations waver between the networking chatter, sports, technology, and even upcoming events to further connect. Though the mood here is a good bit different than others when topics around technology are brought up. In this group, any conversations around computer technology can quickly take a bent towards disdain towards its influence, to fear of its implications. It is in this group that there’s less “playful” use of computer technologies, and more “how does this fit within our contexts.”
With my friend, I left our lunch meeting full in stomach, mind, and spirit. We had a great time reconnecting, listing to one another’s lives, and even learning what each other are doing new with our passions. Her’s is taking her towards fashion design, and her recent mastery of her new mobile phone has allowed her to begin to draw up interest around her designs and abilities.
With the other group, the conversations usually leave me in a readied quiver. Mobiles that get pulled out of the pocket during that time are accompanied with the statement, “I’m still not even sure how this thing works.” The few techies that attend those events are usually just as swayed by certain platforms (development or otherwise) as much as they are the messages they help to deliver. There’s less of a blend between the technology and life, there are more distinct boundaries between the layers here.
As I write this, I’m reminded of the Mobile Ministry Forum (MMF) meeting this past December. We talked a lot about mobile, but there were very few of us who were using mobile so actively that it opened up life around us. We knew the layers, but for some, the boundaries of its context were quite defined. And therefore the technology (devices, services, and/or experiences), framed walls that were items to be overcome on the road towards enabling a movement.
Mobile ministry is probably not for the people like my friend I had lunch with.
An Answer As Close As…
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
I spend a good deal of time in coffeeshops watching how people interact with one another and their tools. One of the better scenes tends to come from those shops nearer to colleges. Unlike other coffeeshops, it is here that you see all manners of studying, configurations of environments, and even attempts to not be distracted.
I remember how it is for me, and therefore I put the question out there to think about for you: once the sermon or bible study lesson is over, the expectation is that people will go back and study/prove the material (Acts 17:11 in practice). How many of you don’t just expect for that space to be taken, but design your lessons in such a way that investigating the answer allows someone to find their personal space to get the answer?
- Does your sermon and it’s outline live on a website, or do you rely on people to know how to take notes?
- If they have questions, how do you (the lesson teacher, not a secretary) make yourself available to assist the search for answers?
- What kinds of resources do you point people to so that they can “check your sources?”
We often make the assumption that the answer to life’s questions are as close as Scripture’s revelation. But, what are you doing as pastor-teacher to make sure that key principles stay that way?
Or, do you rather that there remains a layer between certain aspects of your teaching, and the abilities of your community to discover their ways towards its understanding?
What Mobile Takes Away
Monday, April 11th, 2011
I am always intrigued about those aspects of life that mobile seems to take away. In some respects, adding mobile just seems like a stop and restart of some actions that we might have been very well used to. But, then also this challenge to see things and accept that we weren’t always acting in a way that was best for the world to see us live faith.
For example, where it used to be that the pastor read from the Bible, and then the congregation repeated the text as they heard, we then moved to Bibles in our pews. From those in the pews, we moved to Bibles on our dashboards. And then from there, we have Bibles in our pockets – first in a font size that we could barely manage reading with good eyes, and later through our mobiles – bigger font size, but definitely less on the screen.
Now, with that move to mobile, we don’t just have the Bible, but we have these connections to the text that were once the domain of our pastors. We can open up Logos on our mobile and be connected to the same depth of commentaries, maps, and multimedia that our pastors used when setting up the lessons. We can communicate notes in real-time with others who have read the passage before-hand, and gain insights that our pastors will have gotten to, and some that they would not.
We have “information-now” as the default, instead of as the privileged opportunity. And that is a bit concerning to some. Having that at our fingertips, whether we know how to use it or not, takes away some of the experience that we’ve been cultured to believe is a part of the worship experience. Depending on how we hold onto that culture, we might deem that this ability of mobile/web is too far, and therefore takes away from our culture something that we subconsciously cherish.
It reminds me of the story in Mark 4 when Jesus addressed the man who had a legion of demons inhabiting him. The people were used to their culture where he was pushed to the side and could not interact with their affairs. But, insert Jesus and not only does he become delivered from these, but their source of income – their very economic sustenance – in the pigs is challenged. Now, they not only have to deal with someone in their community that is an extra mouth to feed, but they also need to figure out as a community to live without the layer of wealth they they had before. It was a major shift, on where just this addition of Jesus, while wanted, produced results that meant they needed to grow more than they wanted.
I wonder if we think of our culture in the same way. That we want mobile, web, etc. to apply to now we address our communities, but really aren’t prepared for their impacts. And then when it does impact, are we bold enough to admit our cultural mentality and behaviors which might not have been the best, especially to those whom our former practices left behind?
Where Is Your Mobile Mission Field
Sunday, April 10th, 2011
I can admit that I’m very much influenced by those who are able to get out and about to meet and discuss matters of faith in various social contexts. Yes, there’s definitely a good time of doing so in church/bible study, but I also find some of the most interesting conversations in places such as coffeeshops, waiting rooms, and even the line in the grocery store.
Weirdly enough, it was my first few mobiles (Palm PDAs) which helped me grow in this respect. You see, having a (few) Bibles out in a library doesn’t necessarily say to others that you are open to talking about your faith. Yea, you’ll get some of the more contentious folks, but that’s not the kind of life that I wanted to have. When I started having my Bible, notes, and later a lot more, on a mobile device, it forced me to pick my head up and see what others were doing – and then be open to the life they are living alongside my own.
As I’ve moved towards different devices, my head has slowly gotten more up. I’ve been much more open to chatting not just about my faith, but asking others about theirs. Its to the point that now, one of the reasons that I enjoy trips to the coffeeshop (amongst other places) is that whenever I sit down to drink and draw, there’s always someone (many times a child) who comes over and asks about my motivations behind what I am doing. Art and faith have a very decent history, and how people want to open up about their faith is an artful expression that’s worth enjoying.
So what about you, do you have a moment, or a lifestyle behavior that mobile has opened up for you? Or, in a more serious sense, has what you learned about your faith made you think more about the how and where you use mobile and other technology?
The Congregation as *nix
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
Note: If you don’t know what *nix is, this post will utterly confuse you. Instead, let’s go get coffee and chat.
Being part of a Christian congregation is frequently frustrating for me. This not because I don’t love the people, nor is it because I look at the congregations I’ve been part of and think, “Who needs this?” Rather, the frustration comes because most of our congregations are set up with systems that work the world of the mid 20th Century. There are multiple boards, various levels of permission structures, and several territories which must not be touched, looked at, or mentioned. I’m not wired to work that way. If there’s a good idea out there, I don’t want the person to sit around wondering which board as the authority to “give permission.” If there’s a (typically dusty) button which says, “Do not push,” well… that thing’s getting activated! I tend to be a rooted individual, personally, but when it comes to group interaction I’m wired for a more dynamic reality. To me, a congregation should be POSIX compliant – it’s a *nix.
Operating systems that are POSIX compliant (such as Unix, Linux, and BSD) are wonderful things. Instead of creating a huge, tightly-woven, thread of processes which are mostly “all up” or “all down,” a *nix system has lots of little processes which do one thing, and can be tied together to performed larger tasks. If a process is not needed, it can be shut down and the system will keep running as normal. If you’ve ever had to re-boot a windows machine when you change the network name, installed a driver, or updated the network settings – you’ve see what the alternative to a *nix is like. Everything runs at the same time, and to restart (or alter) one aspect of the system requires the entire thing to be temporarily inaccessible. In a *nix, you simply turn the one process off and then back on.
The Church, over the last 60 years or so, has been more like Windows than *nix. Or, rather, it’s been more like several windows machines trying to collaborate on multiple tasks without networking. So, if an idea comes in that needs a new process to run – the Church (metaphorically) looks for the system that has the closest approximation to the idea and then “installs it there” (usually by a board appointment). The promise is, in a sense, “eventually we’ll get the software needed to do what you want – but until then you want to stay at this system because if you aren’t here when we get to it you might not get to use it.” By the time the one system (i.e. board) is ready to act on an idea the users figure out that they need resources on another machine – only to find that’s it been shut down, and all the people who know how to access it have gone home for the month. If the users of the first system remember to bring up the idea with the users of other needed system when they come back (a month later) it is usually found out that the data (the proposed idea) from the first system isn’t compatible with the data from the second system. Then the first users are sent back to reformat the idea into a language that works on the second system. By the time this is done, the users of the second system have shut it down and gone home – for another month.
It is in this way that congregations put new ideas to death. It’s what I refer to in another metaphor as, “The Bureaucratic Nightmare.”
Now, instead of having several systems (which constantly have to be rebooted every time you even a slight change) I like to think of the Church as one system with many processes going on – like a *nix. These different processes can be turned off and on at will, and are designed to work together in order to accomplish larger functions (that’s the beauty of POSIX). If there comes a time where a particular process is no longer needed, it can just be shut down completely – allocating the resources it used to other processes which are needed. This creates a dynamic reality that can flow with the current situation.
There are two things about this idea that I want to share.
First, while I am frustrated by the “Bureaucratic Nightmare” which exists in many congregations, I don’t want us to consider the people who came up with that type of system as unintelligent. The systems created by a Bureaucratic structure worked when they were developed. If they hadn’t, they would have never survived. In fact, at least in the context of Western Civilization, I’m certain that the structure I’m naturally wired for wouldn’t able to function at all prior to the advent of mobile technology. It’s mobile, and the arrival of “pushed” data, that creates a human-network where small specialized processes (the ideas people have) can be easily tied together to accomplish larger tasks. Before mobile, a *nix metaphor for a congregation would end up hanging while data waited for someone to get home to answer their voicemail and, if it wasn’t too late, call back. With mobile we can send out a request and expect to receive a reply in minutes, if not seconds.
Second, even a *nix has an underlying core, or kernel, which governs all the processes on the system. The kernel tells all the other processes what resources are available, and sets boundaries for the processes running on the system (among other things). In a Christian congregation, our kernel is the truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ – the Gospel. That kernel is what keeps us “running” – and without it we wouldn’t be a Christian congregation.
So, here are my musings. Enjoy, and may your reboots be few and far-between.
This item was previously posted at Painfully Hopeful
Does Digital Lend to Maturity
Thursday, March 17th, 2011This week’s topics have been about both the technological aspects of and the social responsibilities towards digital faith. In a very real sense, we are asking if believers (pastor-teachers, lay persons, ministries, developers, and everyone else) are thinking through their use of digital tools as it relates to their faith. And if so, what’s being produced?
What is being produced when you come into a fellowship, and their only means of wanting to connect with you is “on Facebook?”
What is being matured when the pastor-teacher opens the Scriptures, but you are left with dull ears because of constant quotes of modern social ills, Greek/Hebrew terms, or a literal disregard of the text that you just read for another point?
What’s being produced in your visiting of local watering-holes (whether they be coffeeshops, libraries, or your den) to get quiet time to read on your Kindle, Nook, iPad?
Are the digital tools that you have subscribed to contributing to your and your community’s pursuit of maturity? Or, are these just artifacts of our times, pushing us away from the life with Christ and one another we vowed and subscribed to?
Where is the Christian?
Sunday, May 22nd, 2011I had to think about this for a bit, but history agrees with me: media has contributied to (and oftentimes accelerated) the disembodiment of those things we consider “spiritual” and those things we consider “life.”
We look at the term Christian and some see it as a form of language, style of dress, political views, or even just the signifiers of people based on a common location and behaviors on a few days a week. Some see it as all of the above. When the phrase Christian was termed, its was first a slander for a sect within Judiasm who happended to also be persecuted physically, economicaly, and socially. Peter took this title and used it as a point of empowerment (1 Peter 4:16).
From then on, it would seem that the early church saw it as connection – a unity defined by love for one another, demonstrated as love for their world that effectively preached the hope of reconciled unity with God. Location was only part of it. Behaviors were a contentious part of it. They maintained an identity not because of location or behaviors though, they thrived because they werent limited by either. There were various contact points, the Scriptures, letters from disciples and other community/church leaders, meetings places, and events. These were Christians, ever being pushed, pursued, and transformed. Constantly finding their place within layers of life, defining themselves by a layer of a life that reaches beyond.
Last week’s article from CNN throws some fuel onto the discussion. The author postulates that while remembering the democracy and effective changing of the world by the printing of the King James Bible is good, we should also be calling to question whether we have been as present with the faith (as a Body) as the technology has allowed us to be. To borrow from several streams of discussion over the past weeks: are we Christians because of what we do, or because of whom we are connected to?
A person noted on Twitter (and several retweeted) that they disagree with the title and conclusion of that CNN piece. I can see how they might disagree with the title, it takes a strong and pecular-to-the-age kind of faith to agree with the point that a technology is stripping the leaves off of what we might have defined as Christian for several generations. However, the fact of the matter is that efforts like YouVersion, BeRemedy, Jesus.net, the Lausanne Global Conversatioins sites, and thousands of others are making the concluding statement of that article a point that has to be understood as an implication to those efforts:
You cannot give people personal access to the Bible (or any tome of knowledge) without it later redefining their relationship to it and to others. If we do not understand this, but hold onto models of Christianity which are imperial/behavioral, then we are the worst hypocrites – plunging digital behaviors into a box they don’t fit, constraining a faith that was never meant to fit in a box (Exodus 20, John 4:21-24).
Lives that are unified (John 17:20-26) and knit by love (Deut. 6:4-8) and identified by love for one another (John 13:34-35) preach the Gospel. The CNN article says as much in that conclusion, as we should all be saying with our endeavors in this digital faith space.
So then, where is the Body? Is it cloistered on this mountain or that mountain (John 4:19-24)? Or, is it knowable by a select few (Mark 6:1-3) and therefore found only in specific social contexts? Or, is it identified only by a certain association (Mark 9:38-40) that’s unable to be recognized unless it runs with the clique? Or, is it Body that speaks to the one who saves (John 17:1-10) that connects where-ever, influencing a world how-ever, espousing the same message (1 John 4:2) no matter the context?
To the discussion that the CNN piece raises, we’ve got to let go of elements of what we’ve used to define Christian in the past. They were layers then, and hindrances now. The technologies of our time can help push those things away, but we shouldn’t let those contact points define who or where Christians are. A life that connects, lives by love defines the Christian. Were in print and digital faith are those contact points?
Tags: BeRemedy, Bible, CNN, community, fellowship, Global Conversations, innovations, Jesus.net, lausanne, YouVersion
Posted in Commentary | No Comments »