How do you keep up with the topic of mobile ministry? Some people have asked this and there’s no real science to it, we basically just keep our ear to the ground and spend sufficient time reading what’s there, reaching for what isn’t, and relating to what makes sense.
Of course, we’ll also get the statement, “who has time to do that?” And so, here’s one tip towards keeping track of the conversation: follow what’s being talked about in the following Twitter searches:
So now you have the searches, what can you do with them?
First, if you have a Twitter account, these are searches that you will want to save and just make a part of your daily/weekly timeline. Simply seeing the discussions and bringing those items to the forefront in your organizations (meetings, conversations, etc.) will help enable conversation and activity in mobile ministry.
Second, you might not have a Twitter account, so here you can take advantage of RSS to keep you informed on these conversations. RSS is a format used online for syndicated data. In reference to these searches, they have an RSS (news)feed available in which you can use your browser (like Firefox, Opera, etc.) or a web service (like Google Reader, Netvibes, etc.) to save each of these searches and you’d have them for reference.
Third, you can save the links into the favorites/bookmarks area of your browser. This way you can just peek in on the conversations as they happen to have interest for you.
Now, the aspect of interpreting that data and turning it into actionable items is something that you will have to discern against your organization’s goals, issues, and available resources. You can’t expect all of your questions to be answered at this juncture – mobile ministry is a wide, not deep, conversation. But, there are elements of understanding what’s possible, what has happened, and what you can do if you engage some of the conversations taking place.
If you have other ways in which you keep up with conversations about mobile ministry, feel free to drop those in the comments as others will want to glean from your methods and share some of their own.