Having recently spent some time at both the GCIA and ICCM conferences, I’ve gotten to take a look at some of the more techie aspects of ministering in the Body. And truly, there’s something different about IT folks – Christian or not – that these kinds of conferences are ideal for. That being said, I’ve also noticed that because there’s such a need for these conferences, this also points to a signifiant sense of disability (or even disunity in some cases) amongst Christians that goes unchecked.
A Clanging Cymbal…
Starting with the common parlance, “those geeks/nerds don’t speak our language.” And this is indeed true. The vernacular of IT professionals seems to totally qualify as “another tongue” and hence much of the wisdom your local IT nerd/geek can espouse would fall on deaf ears (that clanging cymbal of 1 Corinthians 12).
What’s not usually addressed is how to get over those communication barriers. I got this lesson in college. When my dreams of being an industrial designer were shredded, I was led by the Lord towards communications and public relations as a focus. It was there that I learned how to take my more technical leanings in some areas, and parse them toward more understandable terms. That’s not a common path, and hence we have many technologists whom have their weaknesses in speaking and writing relationally.
Transformations of the Mind…
Communication though isn’t the only struggle. There’s also the struggle of fit (psychologically). I noticed that there were an unusually high number of IT persons who they themselves, or those close to them, who suffered from some diagnosed mental disability. For some, that meant a series of medications to keep on track. For some, that meant counseling instead of, or in addition to, medications. And for others still, it meant that they had to transition from areas of work they loved, to areas that weren’t so lovable, because of the stress levels and effects of that stress on them. It is hard to have the position that IT is a ministry, when IT is perceived as something of a disease to be treated and brought into normacy.
Let’s be clear here. There are chemical/psychological leanings that are clear cases of disorder. However, some of those diagnoses come from a misunderstanding not of brain chemistry, but of the entirety of mental capacity ranges in any society. I wish that I could go back to my time teaching in Lancaster, PA and document the effects of the relationships that I had with kids who were diagnosed one way, but given a change in engaging them, their disabilities became a doorway to unlocked abilities.
Every Good and Perfect Gift…
Lastly, and this kind of follows along with language and psychology, is that IT isn’t seen as a “gift from God.” It doesn’t fall within the (often mistaught) five-fold (or four-fold if you actually read the Greek) ministry. Yes, its a service-oriented platform, but there was no such thing as information technology in the Bible (or so some would have you believe). And being that it wasn’t there, this is just a product of the times and those people with IT leanings need to be directed towards more traditional forms of ministry.
Unfortunately, this position is more common than we sometimes want to believe. We lose a lot of people not just in respect to ministry service, but also in terms of the entire population of this faith community when we demean talents and competencies such as those found in information technology. When these competencies are denied or taken advantage of without a clear teaching of their usefulness, fruitfulness, or historical perspectives, we actually rape from one another the clothing that God’s given us towards clothing the Bride of Christ.
Unlike the other two items I’ve mentioned, it takes a bit more than behavior changes and diagnosable terms. In this respect, we’ve got to do a better job of communicating the full scope of the gifts of service, organization, craftsmanship, etc. that go into the Body. In a very real sense, we need to figure out “why” we have a Gall Bladder, not just cut it out when it explodes. Groups such as Digital Disciples and Church Tech Matters have sought to shift the perspective here, but much work is yet to be done.
No One Is Exempt…
IT professionals and ministers need to also take heed here. You don’t get off free because you’ve gone the better part of the last 40 years not being understood. You’ve got to learn new skills – some of them people-relational skills, some of them journalistic – in order to make sure that what you are bringing to the table isn’t simply clanging off the ears of others. You know that you’ve been given that brain and those technical skills by God, step to the plate in learning how to better apply them in a relevant manner.
In All Thy Getting…
At the ICCM conference, I stopped to talk with a brother and his family whom accompanied him there. He had two tall sons (taller than me). One was beginning to look at colleges and the other was entering high school. For the one entering college, he responded when asked that he was looking into engineering. Always an impressive field, but wrought with people whom are technically sound, but lack relational skills. I admonished him to make sure that he takes some writing and communication classes. His technical skills would be enhanced by his ability to communicate in spoken and written words. The father had never heard of focusing on weaknesses in schooling like that before and was himself encouraged at the recommendation. I can speak from experience, writing and speaking classes made it a lot easier to get some points across – even when I do write longer articles like this.
I say all of that to encourage the body of believers to not neglect one another because one gift comes across more geeky than another. And don’t always subject yourself to stresses and pressures of only catering to what makes you unique. We all have value to one another. Its a disability to us all when we allow our IT-focused brothers and sisters to sit away from us, neglected in what is clearly a direct copy of God’s image-building of us (Genesis 1-2).
Cybermissions has 
Continuing the conversations and coverage from our attending of 
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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