Posts Tagged ‘definition of mobile ministry’

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2011 Mobile Ministry Consultation Executive Summary

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

2011 Mobile Ministry Forum Consultation - Share on Ovi

50 mission strategists representing 40 organizations* participated in the second Mobile Ministry Consultation sponsored by the Mobile Ministry Forum (MMF). Presentations and discussions addressed a wide variety of issues critical to the use of mobile devices in ministry (see the topic list below). Collaborative outcomes of the consultation include plans to develop training resources to equip ministries and local believers to implement mobile ministry, publish online courses in “feature phone” formats, develop a taxonomy for mobile ministry, develop a Smartphone app for SMS crowd-sourced broadcasting, and a hold “hack-a-thon” competition to develop an evangelistic app for mobile devices.

View the entire executive summary, including links to presentations (slides, media, and audio), and contact information to the Mobile Ministry Forum at Mobile Advance.

 

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2012 Resolution #1: An App is Not A Strategy

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

Welcome to 2012 and Mobile Ministry Magazine (MMM). Since 2004, we’ve talked a lot about this intersection of faith and mobile technology and how this has often looked like applications. We’ve talked about the good and bad about these applications, what has improved, and what still isn’t being touched. And yet there’s there is a pervasive resolution that I think you should endear to any mobile ministry efforts for 2012: an application is not a strategy.

We’ll summarize how we come to such a conclusion in this article. Some of these concepts have been covered before, other parts not yet in enough depth to give you a means to continue. But don’t worry, as we encourage you to step into 2012 with your mobile ministry efforts, the goal of this article is that you address mobile ministry as a spoke in a larger wheel of your efforts, no matter where you are in the chain.

This article focuses specifically on these points:

  • What is Mobile Ministry?
  • What are the specific areas in which mobile has addressed a ministry context?
  • Is there anything consistently applicable across those areas of mobile ministry?
  • If applications are part of the solution, what else is there?
  • What are some resources for applying these points?

What is Mobile Ministry

Mobile ministry is the application of mobile devices, services, and/or experiences for the purposes of forwarding ideals and characteristics of a faith movement.

Mobile computing has a market-led definition (portable, cellular and/or WiFi-enabled computing devices which have screen sizes between 2.2 and 5in, and have some form of primary input that is not mediated by accessory-attached mice/keyboards). We take the stance that mobile computing devices can include any portable computer that is not designed specifically as a clothing accessory.

Mobile services include, but are not limited singular applications of cellular (voice, data, SMS, multimedia), Internet (browsing, email, IM, VoIP, Wi-Fi, GPS), and applications (including the tools to create and distribute, API structures/protocols, development standards/practices, etc.). 

Ministry is defined as any activity which forwards the ideals and characteristics of a faith movement, that may be personally motivated, community organized, and/or governmentally implemented.

This definiton is intentionally not grounded on any one religion/faith, and has been [slightly] refined from its more academic-correct beginnings. Discussions towards refining this further should be a part of any conversations brokering mobile as useful in ministry contexts.

Specific Areas of Ministry Applied in Mobile
Over the course of seven years, MMM has observed six specific applications of mobile technology within ministry contexts. This doesn’t mean that there are not, or could not be others. Within these six areas, we have identified unique approaches combining devices, services, and/or experiences which create avenues for personal, media, and cultural transformation through faith-binding activities.

These six areas are as follows:

We will further define and illustrate these areas throughout 2012. Please refer to former articles and presentations on this subject in order to see some of the progression of these ideas. We will endeavor to link to articles tagged with these topics in order to best consolidate the discussion on this site towards these points.

Layers of Mobile
We are careful not to simply define mobile in the context of devices or development. There are three components which encompass the mobile environment which all need to be considered and included within the context that is mobile computing:

  • Devices
  • Services
  • Experiences

We will further define these areas beyond our initial exploration of these throughout 2012. Please refer this article/document for a direct linking to that discussion.

Applications and Beyond
It should be clear within what we’ve explained so far that defining mobile ministry strictly or specifically in the context of downloadable applications is incomplete. Applications are only a part of the usable toolkit for mobile within ministry endeavors. Streams in which mobile can be developed/sold/applied within ministry contexts include:

  • Software Applications
  • Hardware Applications
  • Voice Services
  • Video/Audio (Streaming, Downloads, Sharing, etc.)
  • Text (SMS, language transcription, etc.)
  • Downloadable/Streaming Media (APIs, content libraries, etc.)
  • Mixed Media (creation, distribution, specifications, etc.)
  • Security
  • Reporting
  • Personalization

We will further define these areas throughout 2012. 

Resources for Moving Forward

Conclusions: An App is not a Strategy, But…
We will not debate the point that for many endeavors, the first door that mobile will open is that through an application store. However, the first door seen is not the only door available. Depending on what it is you are developing, offering, or enabling, an application might not be the best point of entry. 

For 2012, consider your opportunities and challenges within ministry, and whether mobile is the best route. If it is, then you will want to start looking at where you sit in terms of those areas of mobile, and then whether you are targeting devices, building a service, or managing an experience. After that point, it becomes clear how you should approach mobile. It may very well be that you do need an application – but now it will have a specific target, you can begin planning and setting up your team and content appropriately. If it means you need to outsource the development of your mobile solution, you do so with knowledge of more than simply “make it work on this device.” 

At the intersection of faith and mobile technology, what are you pointing towards? In 2010, don’t let your strategy (or lack of one) turn mobile into a dead-end for your effort.

 

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Being Acquainted with the Challenges of Mobile as Ministry

Monday, December 12th, 2011

Screenshot of PocketBible from ChurchMagIt probably doesn’t need to be stated because its often felt. But, I do think that in the race to use this technology for casues that forward faith, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that there are very few specalisists, fewer folks implementing, and even fewer folks that can communicate their story as they walk through this. In fact, its a common refrain in many calls/meetings about mobile ministry that you just won’t find best practices and case studies. There just aren’t enough people doing it that are able to compose best practices and cases studies. And that’s a shame. The current state of affairs invalidates the approach of mobile in ministry (or mobile as a ministry tool) in the minds of some because of the lack of this information; even though context dictates a different perspective should be adopted until those experiences and materials are grounded.

Having said such, when you are able to hear the successes and challenges present, its best to hightlight them. As community of technologists and believers see these stories, then we can start talking about solutions and making things more eficient for all. For example, in this snippet, we hear very clearly the challenges presented to one of the veterans in this space, Craig Raridian of Laridian Bible Software:

…Mobile software development is a challenge for small shops like ours. There are no good solutions. Consider the fact that when we started Laridian there were two dominant platforms: Windows CE and Palm OS. Both were programmed using the C++ programming language that we already knew from our prior experience programming for Windows PCs. Today the two dominant platforms are iPhone and Android. iPhone uses Objective-C and supports non-user-interface objects created in C++. Its operating system is based on the familiar Mac OS X. Android uses the Java programming language and has a proprietary operating system that is still evolving. And if we throw Windows Phone into the mix, it uses C# as its programming language. The result is that we can’t be like diplomats who have to learn the language of their host country, but rather we have to be like a representative to the United Nations whose headset is broken so he has to understand every language being spoken by all the other delegates…

Read the rest of this article (which talks about the progress of Android development of PocketBible).

These challenges aren’t unfamiliar, nor isolated. In the history of craft and creative fields. Having a capacity across several simlar or disparate fields is normal. It is very common for people engaged within these fields to be going at it alone, or in resource constrained fields. I’ve certainly felt this in full since branching out to do MMM full-time. There’s essentially this challenge of not just producing what you are gifted to do, but making sure that you can relate that creation/creative event to the social, financial, and spiritual needs that are also present.

This is one of the reasons why in our recommendations for building a mobile website or application, we specifically state that there should be a small team of people dedicated to prayer (and emotional/mental) support for the effort. You just can’t take on an effort that has technological and spiritual components and expect it to go on passion alone (speaking from experience here, have been totally burnt out from doing MMM, often).

You have that resources challenge. Are there enough people, finances, skills, or even just materials, around you to create/sustain what you are working towards? Many times, you might start with sufficient resources, but unforeseen circumstances push those reserves to an empty point. That’s a tough place to be – especially when you’ve not made a shipping product yet. I won’t even go into the resource challenges when you are marketing/selling skills and experience. So let’s be a bit more realistic, and discerning of the pressures we are putting on technologists and ministers when ascribing our energies and attention towards this very new field called mobile ministry. There are challenges that just can’t be swept away, or waited for others to do. The folks out here doing this are cutting the ground. Their challenges are as real as the opportunities.

 

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No Longer the Age of Bible Apps, Now the Age of Bible As Applied

Monday, November 21st, 2011

A friend and I were talking about a project he and his company were working on and while it was great that they were working on it, I had to be direct and ask him, “why are you building another Bible applicaiton?” According to he and his team, having a Bible application would put them on equal footing with other companies in this space who have applications and have (apparently) made the successful transition from a PC-based product model to a mobile/web-based one.

I shook my head at his flawed logic. “You don’t run to where the puck is, you run to where it would be,” I told him (quoting Wayne Gretzky). The problem with their approach, and many within this mobile ministry (#mobmin) space who are looking for their innovative solution to take the religious world/church/tech world by storm, is that they keep looking to copying current products in order to make a dent or shift in perception. That’s just not how this works.

For this group, I asked why didn’t they go the route that other Bible applicaiton companies haven’t gone, but that very few secular companies would dare go: the Boston Globe/Boston responsive web, subscription web approach (several articles talked about this)? He looked at me with disdain, as he heard some about that project, but didn’t know how far reaching that it went. You see, their team is savy enough to build something like that, but their company isn’t visionary enough to figure out why that works.

Hence the title of this article: the age of bible applications is over; it is now the age of bible as applied in digital spaces.

Am I saying that there is no need for any company to create, recreate, or innovate on top of the paradigm of reading, searching, bookmarking, and collections with Bible apps? No. But, I am saying that if you are a content publisher who bases your content on any of those Bible app paradigms, then you are better off pushing your energies towards developing a product somewhere else besides “let start with a Bible app.”

Antoine: you aren’t even a developer, how can you say such things?

Easy actually. Go have a conversation with someone. Tell me, did you start in the Bible or was the conversation dipping in and out of the Bible at various points with other contexts as the backbone to the conversation? I’ll address a recent conversation from a coffeeshop. The pastor/missionary and I started talking because I asked about his wide-margin NASB that he was carrying. The conversation went into church history quickly from that, then into cultural perspectives of various regions of the USA. Would a Bible app have helped there, or an application that was able to search on topics related to church history which also referenced Bible verses, noted authors, theological paradigms, and denominational statements of faith that added context to the situation. Of course, innovation here would be turning on said app while in the conversation and as it “listened” it would pull a Google/Britiannica/Wikipedia/Wolfgram Alpha and search then display all of the relevant content streams, statistics, and opinions available online or in accessible scholarly collections. If you will a Shazamm for Biblical conversations.

It prbably makes sense why I can say that you can bend beyond Bible applications when I phrase the context like that right? But that’s called research and analysis, specifically, anlaysis of cultural behaviors of communication that rarely go into the development of these kinds of applications (this is how reports like Mobile Lens 2011 were framed). And that’s why we end up with a situation such as what I described with my friend at the start of this article. If you want your product(s) to be of earthly good, then you have to move beyond the age of simply offering just the text. Develop an app that engages the application of Biblical (religious) knowledge first, and then grounds the user in a growing (maturing) understanding of Scripture, church history, and culture as they grow in faith and knowledge.

Anyone want to bet on “Bible as Applied” being the space in which faith-based/religious apps show the most potential for growth in the coming years against simply offering the text in increasingly siloed services?

 

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Understanding and Differences Between Internet Ministry and Mobile Ministry

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

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.

 

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