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?
Understanding and Differences Between Internet Ministry and Mobile Ministry
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011Am 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:
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.
Tags: 7Ms, Campus Crusade, Campus Crusade International, Catalyst, Center for Church Communication, Cru, Cybemissons, definition of mobile ministry, digital immigrant, digital native, Dr. Markus Pfeffier, eDot Geek, Every Student, GCIA, ICCM, IE Day, Jesus.net, Kiosk Evangelism, LifeChurch.tv, Mobile Advance, Mobile Ministry Forum, Regent University
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