It is always good to be reminded of what mobile can do, but also of what current technologies, especially paper, offer to those who cannot or make a choice not to be as technological:

…It is sometimes difficult for me to truly articulate my reaction to people saying that print is dead. I don’t want to be labeled a luddite, or anti-ebook; I love my computer, I love my smartphone, and I love the fact that I have the internet in my pocket. The existence of ebooks means that people who can’t store physical books can have more to read. It means that hard-to-find and out of print material is becoming accessible again. I means that people who have arthritis, or weak wrists, or other physical disabilities that make reading physical books difficult, can read again, without worrying about physical pain. I love that ebooks exist.

This doesn’t change the part where, every time a discussion of ebooks turns, seemingly inevitably, to “Print is dead, traditional publishing is dead, all smart authors should be bailing to the brave new electronic frontier,” what I hear, however unintentionally, is “Poor people don’t deserve to read.”…

Read the rest of this passionate and needed piece by Seanan McGuire.

What I appreciate about many of the people whom I’ve talked to over the years is that question of “why?” Why is this tech relevant in a world where people are struggling to have their basic needs met? I simply can respond that it’s an opportunity to those who have it to enable or empower themselves and the lives of others. Any tech should elevate the entire community, not just the privileged.

I am challenged after reading this to not forget that divides don’t speak towards unity of the faith (“men shall know you are Mine by the love you have for one another…”).

Over at Mobile Advance, a pretty wide/deep collection of articles from around the Internet have been pulled together into a spreadsheet and made available for review and analysis for those interested in those topics related to mobile ministry. If you’ve been a long-time reader of MMM (either the site or social networking) you’ll recognize many of the references in here. Here’s a snippet from the post at Mobile Advance:

…In order to try and help to prevent that I have collected the resources identified in my research in the past year put together a “database” of 1400 articles/webpages/ videos/guides/etc. that I or others have identified as being pertinent and helpful for mobile ministry. These resources come from fields like information technology, international development, social/political activism, health, journalism, entertainment media and others that are working to confront the shift and harness the power of the mobile revolution. Their learning can help empower our innovation in mobile ministry and prevent countless hours trying to come up with solutions for problems that have already been addressed elsewhere…

Access this dataset via Google Docs.

See Also Our Curated Resources:

• Case Studies and Research Reports
• Listing of Mobile Application and Web Services
• Bibles and Other Religious Mobile Apps for Various Computer Platforms

While we’ve talked in the past about the considerations you should taken when looking to build a mobile application or mobile website, we’ve not had for sometime a post that leads you down a few simple steps to having an app (ignoring website for the moment) for your ministry. The below items are strictly high level and may not apply to all ministries in the same manner – however, this should at least give you a starting point from which to build and market a mobile application experience for your ministry.

Step 1: Collect and Organize Your Content

Figure out what it is that should be in your mobile app. Whether its sermons, announcements, videos, music, or all of the able, you need to know what’s going in the app (and why it deserves to be there).

Create a small organizational chart that lists where these will be in relationship to how someone will use it. For example:

• Home
• Latest Sermons
• Latest Videos
• Calendar and Networking
• Pastor’s Blog
• Help/Support

Your outline might be a touch more in-depth than this, which is fine. The key is making sure that you at least know what’s going into your application and at a high level what you will be building.

One of the things that I like to do at this step is to use either a physical whiteboard or my iPad to create a general wireframe of what it is that the app should look and function like – sometimes including points to other systems that feed into the application.

You may decide that you want something other than a Bible/sermon/brochure app – that’s a good thing. Outline your expectations and what should be in there as well.

Step 2: Figure Out Your Mobile Platforms

There are several mobile platforms out there, and its very hard for any ministry to support them all. I recommend that you do some kind of survey (informal is just fine) toward figuring out the kinds of mobile devices that people have to which you will be creating this application for.

This doesn’t mean that you will only target one platform (such as Apple, Google, BlackBerry, etc.), but it does mean that you have an idea of what your potential use base will be.

You may also need to do additional research on mobile applications and many other parts of the mobile industry. We’ve got a list of resources that can help you get started (warning, its a lot of reading).

Now, here’s the important point, if you/your ministry is making the statement they want to support every platform *no questions asked,* then you need to stop thinking about an application at this point and point your energies towards making your website work best for mobile devices.

Step 3: Build or Buy

For the next step, you need to figure out if you are going to build the application from scratch, or purchase a application service-platform with which you’ll use to build your application.

Our list of mobile website and mobile application services

If you have decided that you will build your application from scratch, and your outline for what you want to offer looks like our example above, this is the type of team that you want to have in place for the least amount of fuss:

• 1-3 mobile application developers who know the ministry’s current content management system
• 1 software tester
• 1 person who understands all of the current produced content within your ministry
• 1 person who understands all of the current and near-future marketing messages within your ministry
• 3+ people who will simply support the effort by prayer alone
• 5-10 people who have the target devices and are ok with being a closed beta testing group
• 1 person to document the application, frame/organize training if needed

This is optimal. This isn’t always what happens, and in many cases one person carries many of the hats mentioned here. The bigger the expanse of the application however, the more these specific points need to be taken into account.

If you’ve decided that you will build your application from a template (application-creation service), these are some of the items and people that you’d need:

• 1 person who is responsible for creating and/or collecting all of the graphic assets that will be used in the application (ideally, this is the same person already responsible for this for web and other marketing materials)
• 1-5 people who would be available to create or edit text content that will be used within the application
• 1 person who understands the technical requirements and capabilities of various mobile application development platforms
• 1-3 people to build the application on the mobile application development platform
• 1 person who understands all of the current produced content within your ministry
• 1 person who understands all of the current and near-future marketing messages within your ministry
• 3+ people who will simply support the effort by prayer alone
• 5-10 people who have the target devices and are ok with being a closed beta testing group
• 1 person do document the project, application, frame/training, and manages the relationship with the application-creation service provider

Step 4: Build the Application
At this point, its just a matter of getting the code, graphics, and media together into something that nearly-works.

Its in this step that you are testing the application. The developer(s) should be testing as they go along, your test grip should have some kind of structured testing script that they are using. Don’t over-do the testing, but also don’t be afraid to take the medicine either. If something isn’t working, this is the time to figure that out.

If you are working with an application-creation service, they might also offer consulting services to help you through this part of creating your application.

Step 5: Promote Your Application

No matter if you have built the application from scratch, or used an application-creation service, you need to now let people know that there’s an application available from your ministry.

First, use the communication channels that you always use for announcements (during service, in the bulletin, on social networking services, etc.). That’s the easiest and least expensive way to get some attention for your application. If you do this quietly (“going viral”), then you might also catch som issues that might have been missed in the formal testing rounds.

Second, connect with media outlets that cover ministry and technology applications and ask if they would be open to reviewing or republishing the press release about your new application. In many cases, this opens new audiences for your ministry, while also allowing you a glimpse into what other people might think of your ministry offering (feedback is always good).

Third, use your application in public. Outside of contemplative or video applications, there are very few reasons not to fire up your ministry app when waiting in the line at the bank or at the doctor. Bonus points if your ministry’s senior leadership doesn’t just use the application to posture the project, but genuinely enjoys engaging your ministry resources in this manner.

Step 6: Update and Enhance

Things don’t end when you have released the application. Back in your testing queue, you most likely found things that were “better left to version 2.” Taken advantage of that information and get to work on version 2 of your application. You don’t need as large a team as you had the first time around to add those iterations, but it does help if you can keep your testing team(s) engaged.

Help! This is too much!

It is totally understandable that these steps are a bit more involved than simply opening the app store and saying “create me an app.” If you want it done right, you’ll do these, and similar steps in order to make sure that not only you create a great application, but that the experience of using it follows the expectations that you have.

If you find that you are having trouble in getting through these steps, MMM offers consulting services to help you and your ministry get through these moments. Contact us to set up a free, initial consultation (our rates afterward are reasonable for both the knowledge and niche that is mobile ministry software). If you are a developer or development company looking to get connected to ministries who need an app or mobile service, we can get you connected, drop us a line.

And now you can move forward making your ministry and your mobile application to being the best experience that it should be, and a solid representation of Christ to your community and the world.

Over at Mobile Advance continues their 10 Questions interview series of people involved in and around mobile ministry activities.

The latest of these interviews is with Tim Jore (Distant Shores Media, Door 43). Here’s a snippet of that interview:

7.    What is one hard earned lesson in ministry you would want to pass on to others here?
 
“The future of the global church is Open.” We started to realize how severely copyright restrictions on discipleship resources hinder the spiritual growth of the global church shortly after getting into mobile ministry. We had to derail a key mobile ministry project because there would be no way to obtain the legal permission to use the copyrighted resources as needed, or manage the restrictions for thousands of languages with potentially hundreds of millions of content consumers and creators. This realization is the direct motivation for the launch of the Door43 project (http://door43.org/) and the vision of “unrestricted discipleship resources in every language, and on any mobile phone”…

Read the rest of this interview at Mobile Advance.

I received this via email last week, and as I meditated on it, I saw so many parallels between the rods spoken here and the mobiles that we have. For some, mobiles simply are tools, but in the hands of those who peruse the will of God, a simple tool becomes so much more.

Light from the Book: Wed., Sept. 7

You shall take this rod in your hand, with which you shall do the signs. — Exodus 4:17
 
Conventional wisdom questions how much can be accomplished with little. We tend to believe that a lot more can be done if we have large financial resources, talented man power, and innovative ideas. But these things don’t matter to God. Consider just a couple of examples:
 
In Judges 3:31, a relatively unknown man named Shamgar delivered Israel from the Philistines single-handedly. How? He won a great victory by killing 600 Philistines with nothing more than an oxgoad (a stick sharpened on one end to drive slow-moving animals).
 
In Exodus, when God asked Moses to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, Moses was afraid the people wouldn’t listen to him or follow him. So God said, “What is that in your hand?” (4:2). Moses replied, “A rod.” God went on to use that rod in Moses’ hand to convince the people to follow him, to turn the Nile River into blood, to bring great plagues on Egypt, to part the Red Sea, and to perform miracles in the wilderness.
 
Moses’ rod and Shamgar’s oxgoad, when dedicated to God, became mighty tools. This helps us see that God can use what little we have, when surrendered to Him, to do great things. God is not looking for people with great abilities, but for those who are dedicated to following and obeying Him.

Attributed to Albert Lee (Our Daily Bread)
 
Wisdom for the Journey: Little is much when God is in it.

Image via The Brick Testament

These two innovative approaches to mobile learning have come across the screens lately. Both would be useful for increasing your skills and abilities to peruse mobile ministry endeavors:

MIT Center for Mobile Learning

The Center, housed at the Media Lab, will focus on the design and study of new mobile technologies and applications, enabling people to learn anywhere anytime with anyone. Research projects will explore location-aware learning applications, mobile sensing and data collection, augmented reality gaming, and other educational uses of mobile technologies.

Three MIT professors will serve as co-directors of the Center: Hal Abelson, Class of 1922 Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Eric Klopfer, Associate Professor of Science Education; and Mitchel Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research.

The Center’s first activity will focus on App Inventor for Android, a programming system that makes it easy for learners to create mobile apps for Android smart phones by visually fitting together puzzle piece-shaped “programming blocks” in a web browser. Abelson proposed an idea that prompted the development of App Inventor during his sabbatical at Google in 2008.

For more information, read the press release.

Cybermissions’ Mobile Ministry Training Courses

The Mobile Ministry Training Course is a 4-week introduction to the uses of mobile technology platforms for Christian ministry. It is expected to involve 4-6 hrs of study time each week.

For more information and to enroll, visit the Mobile Ministry Training Course website.

Bonus: Upcoming MMM-led Workshop

We still plan on having a few MMM-led workshops this fall. The first will be an iPad for Pastor’s Workshop. Stay tuned for more information about this.

It isn’t often that we can cite the many miracles Jesus and the Apostles did in respect to their efforts to those whom their communities considered disabled or access-restricted. We find it as some of the more sincere and humbling acts of Scrpture when those persons are met and not simply healed, but addressed and considered as part of the greater community, not a layer to be ignored until public relations or peer pressure dictates they need attention (Matthew 5:1-15).

So, how do your mobile ministry practices address those who might be disabled or have restricted access due to physical, psychological, or political disabilities? For example, you built that mobile app for your church’s content, but are you relying on Apple/Google/RIM/Nokia/MS to have accessibility controls so they can navigate to your content, or have you designed high contrast, voice-powered interfaces that are independent of whatever the platform may or may not do?

Regard these words from technokitten in a recent post:

It’s not that big a deal, right? I can still do everything I used to be able to do. I only need glasses for a smidgeon of my time. And it can’t be that big a deal when we’re talking technology? Or so you’d think. My experience with mobile devices and my not-quite-as-good-as-it-used-to-be eyesight is pretty appalling:

• Going to a website on my phone and being forced to view the mobile version where the font is fixed and is too small (only by 1 or 2pts) to read without my glasses. Why can’t I zoom in or increase the font size?
• Going to a mobile site where having squinted at the article I’m reading, only to find that I can adjust the font size right at the bottom. That should be at the top, no? There’s little point in struggling to read the page only to find at the bottom, I could have made it a whole lot easier for myself.
• But neither of those are as bad as the app situation. Oh my word. That is simply horrid and a frustration. And I’m speaking having used apps regularly on Android, Windows Phone 7, Nokia N95 and N8, Android and Palm Pre II. Why can’t I increase a font size in an app? Why does the font have to be so small in the first place?

And this is from a person who is simply speaking of her accessibility needs which tend to happen to us all as we simply age. I know from close relationships just how much even mild disabilities are ignored in computing – and more so when it comes to religious applications and connected services.

Now, you can take the approach that this isn’t your fight. But, you’d have a hard time finding your efforts ministering to much of anyone if you do. Sure, you meet the goals of building something via mobile, but you miss the point of “a love that serves” over simply having a talent (1 Corinithians 12-14).

Or, you can take the approach of getting up to speed on what you can do, even going as far as entering contests such as the Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessabiliy Awards. Its really up to you. The testimony of what you address though will be clear in time (Matthew 25:31-45).

Today, it seems a foregone conclusion that mobile (and what mobile connects you to) disrupts life. But, before mobile became something easy to see, you can imagine the fun we had in talking about its disruption. If only we had Naked Pastor’s list back then:

1. de-stabilize
2. de-nationalize
3. de-centralize
4. de-culturize
5. de-colonize
6. de-religiousize
7. de-textualize
8. de-intellectualize
9. de-theologize
10. de-spiritualize

Check out Naked Pastor’s post for the definition of these ideas. And then consider this:

every change in communications technologies has also reset the actualities and expectations of the relationships we have towards one another and the industries that broker our relationships

Mobile is more than just a channel. It a reseting of the description(s) of realities that are relevant.

Image from Naked Pastor

I’m pretty open when it comes to letting people see my mobile devices. I’m a bit less so when it comes to others using theM. One of the things that I have opened up a bit with has been with letting kids use my iPad when we adults are having our conversational moments. And this is good – I usually leave them with simple rules: (a) don’t do anything but use one of the two drawing apps; (b) don’t touch any of the existing artwork; (c) don’t drop it.

Until last weekend, that wasn’t much of an issue. One of the kids got inquisitive and went into one of my art pieces and wrote on it, went into another and actually erased it. Can you say pissed? Now, the kid that did it didn’t ask my permission to use the device, and the 5 year old who was given permission was overrun when it came to using it. I’ve got that part to work out (and the artwork was exported and backed-up). But, that did get me thinking again about accountability, access, and control of our devices.

Now, we’ve got a small section on our Bibles page regarding accountabiltiy apps – even adding a few parental control apps in there. But, as my situation from the weekend before demonstrates, there needs to be more than just software in place to keep shared device usage accountable – outside of enterprise settings where an IT department and governance policy is in place.

Before we go forth offering our thoughts for some simple policies to have in place before sharing devices with others, what are some ways that you might already define accountability and control when others access your mobile devices?

In Genesis 1, we read that God created man and woman out of the dust of the ground. He formed them in His image, shaping the dust that had been wet with mist, and then breathed into the shapes His Spirit. Not exactly a weekend project, but something that should make us smile when we watch children manipulate their environment to look like things they are familiar with or even vestiges of their perceptions of themselves.

Its sometimes harder to take the time to do such creativity as adults. I don’t just mean fine arts, music, dance and such. I mean even taking a project like painting a bedroom and making it soothing more than just “colorful enough to be tolerable in a few years time.” I’ve found though that if I’m intentional enough, I can make a creative event out of nearly anything – especially when my mobile is involved.

So here’s a question or direction for your weekend: take your mobile and express some of that creative breath that was given to you by God. Go somewhere and use your ears, eyes, mouth, nose, or touch and realize something that you’d not seen before – and then let your mobile become the canvas for it. You’ve seen the art we’vve put on posts here – go there and futher.

Embrace that ability God gave you to create something – be the mist of life in the midst of something new this weekend.