I’m often asked, “does that make enough to live on,” when the topic of MMM comes up. “Depends on the time of the month,” is my response. It really has been a slice of life that I’ve never seen before and am constantly running between being faithful and faith-little. In the a tough more than one year of doing MMM as a full-time effort, I can totally attest to there being miles, smiles, and a good bit of tiredness as I’m pushing out on this intersection of faith and mobile technology.

Miles Upon Miles

In May of 2010, MMM became the primary occupation of me (Antoine, the Primary Voice in these parts). It started well enough with about three months worth of finances and plenty of roads to travel by car and bike to potential clients. But, right around the time those funds dried up, the faith had to hit the road in a very real way. That’s been… different.

First, there was a miracle of finances that happened two months in a row. There was the project that caused my moving (in part) from Charlotte – that itself is now under some change. There were trips to Atlanta, Philadelphia, Indiana, and a part of Virginia so west that you could stand on a point and point to two mountains 15 min away, one in Tennessee and the other in Kentucky. Then there were trips to San Diego, Las Vegas, San Jose and places around those parts where I was one part around like-minded folks, but in another respect quite lonely. This has been… different.

I’ve had many a reflection on Paul, Peter, Elijah, and several others who’ve walked this out. Can say that I’ve got an inkling of what they went through – minus the price for gas (!!!).

Smiles Begat Smiles

The one thing that I didn’t see, but was always appreciated was the amount of support received from friends, partners, and people whom I’ve plum forgotten about unless I took a picture. The encouragement from those whom are well older than I, and doing similar after they’ve “lived their lives” has probably been the most interesting. The common sentiment there being, “I wish that I had your faith at your age.”

There’s been the smiles and support beams of friends who’ve been in my corner for a long time (long time is variable of course). Many of these people just seemed to call, SMS, email, or even just have a room available when I was traveling and didn’t have lodging secured (more about that in the “Tiredness” section). There’s really been the kind of support that says that anything is possible – especially when the circle of friends and supporters you have cover the same lengthy distances you traverse.

The kids/babies are probably the best part. But, I’ve been blessed to have my travels interspersed with visiting friends or just randomly seeing babies/kids along the way. Kids have a way of making you stop and take inventory, and there were a number of nights where I wept, only to wake to the day ahead and a kid of some kind would cross my path and remind me just how much God really does have our best in mind.

Tiredness Deserves Its Own Rewards

What kind of challenges does doing MMM bear on you? Well, there’s the mental stuff, the spiritual stuff, the social stuff, and the mental stuff.

There’s nothing like the tiredness that comes from having to check all of the boxes mentally each day as you do what you do. I didn’t take it for granted when working in companies, but I do have a much healthier respect than I did before. There’s taxes, mileage, sales, business development, research, writing, analysis, and communications. And that’s just talking about this on a high level, I totally have struggled with keeping all of those items balanced as many of them are just first-time moments for me.

Then there’s the mental tiredness that comes with travel. Those persons involved in missions and travel a ton seem to have the most association with what I mean. When away from “home” and just moving in what God’s called you to, its easy to get distracted or discouraged. I’ve spent a ton of time in my car over the past year (draw a triangle on a map between Philly, Atlanta, and Indiana to get an idea of where I’ve driven) and its hard to keep sane. Beach trips were a necessity, one-stop plane flights also.

Spiritually, I’ve not been attached to a formal church (and this was true many months before doing MMM full-time). I’ve been much more adamant towards plugging into brothers/pastors whom are able to meet with me face-to-face or virtually/voice at various points in my travels. That small group of brothers/sisters have been amazing towards challenging and calling me out. A slightly wider group of co-laborers and mentees have also helped to keep ego and tiredness at the door. As one brother often tells me, “don’t get weary in well doing. You’re not done here yet.” I need that more often than not.

Socially, I’ve been purposeful towards making sure that every trip has something social included. Whether that’s my Saturday away from everyone, biking in various cities, or connecting for spoken word/worship sessions, its a behavior to keep non-tech/mobile ministry aspects as a part of life. I’d rather not be stuck in the bubble.

Overall Assessment of Sorts

Its taken me the better part of the past two months to sit down and write this. When I wanted to in May, the schedule got thick with conferences, conversations, and clients. I’m not entirely happy with that, but I had to attend to those matters as it truly meant keeping food in my belly or some ability to travel.

I would like to improve over this next year in terms of the administrative organization. That’s something that I was just getting the hang of personally, but as a near-business entity, it needs some more help. I’ve got some leads there, but am always open to wisdom there. I’d also like to increase the number of paid clients/client work. Not because I’m looking for more funds, but because I’m having to foot the bill for travel and some conferences, and if that’s the case, I don’t want a situation like BibleTech where I have to pull out of a speaking engagement because I ran numbers too low to make a trip.

In terms of a settled destination, sorry. I don’t see it anytime soon. I’ve been invited to take a look at several areas around the USA and Europe. And I plan to. I just don’t see things stopping in terms of this travel schedule anytime soon. I own just a little bit more than what fits into my 4-door Honda Civic. I’m not exactly trying to add to that, but it would be nice to have my own place again – its was refreshingly quiet.

As for MMM, I honestly think that its doing well. Being able to devote all of my time to it has brought forth the writing and attention that its needed since its inception. There are more voices needed here on a consistent basis. And probably someone to hack a better design for this site. But really, I’m good with our approach, our focus, and the in-roads we have with both faith-based and secular audiences (we’re quite rare in that respect).

Better can be done. It will be. It might take a few more miles, a dozen more smiles per mile, and more moments of tiredness. Better will happen, and the goals of this initiative will be met to benefit a whole slew of folks. Can’t complain about that, but I can take a nap now that this much is finally written :p

Over at Mobile Advance, a weekly list of links to news and happenings in and around mobile is posted.Here’s a snippet of what’s in Weekly Web Watch #29:

Mobile for Good (Health, Education, Activism, Etc.)

• Mobile Technologies for Social Transformation: A concept paper
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation fund mobile services to aid farmers in developing countries
• More Africans Learn by Mobile Phone
• mLearning Road Map
• How Mobile Phones are Saving Lives in the Developing World
• mHealth: New Horizons for Health Through Mobile Technologies (World Health Organization report, 112 pgs)
• U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors
• A Human Rights Approach to the Mobile Internet

Read these notes and others of Weekly Web Watch #29 at Mobile Advance.

While we weren’t able to be at The Muther of All Hackathons due to a client commitment, we definitely supported the effort by WIP Connector and the many companies and developers who participated. Thankfully, WapReview was there and wrote up a report able to fill us in towards what happened at this 24 hour marathon. Here’s a snippet from their report:

At noon on Friday the main event kicked off with the hackathon participants spreading themselves out over the spacious second floor of the Computer History Museum. Developers could work alone or in teams of up to four. The organizers and sponsors kept everyone fueled with frequent  and plentiful drops of food and beverages. Expert tables manned by sponsors provided one on one help for thoese who were coding while master classes continued though out the afternoon for non-hacking attendees.

Read the rest of the report at WapReview.

Some innovative and interesting applications came out of The Muther. The overall winner, Colin Karpfinger and Ronald Mannak, created an application/game called Air Guitar Move which turns your iPhone into a working electric guitar. Other impressive winners/entrants included a seventh grader who created which tracks your energy use and then reports the savings in terms of the number of Starbuck’s Lattes or X-Box 360s you could buy with the energy you saved (called Electrify!). Another, Yosun Chang’s Tap Shake Messenger, created an application which enables the sending and receiving/reading of SMS using haptic Braille.

A hearty congrats to those who competed in The Muther and looking forward to more from all of those who participated.

Disclaimer: Mobile Ministry Magazine (MMM) served as a marketing partner to WIP for this event; we received some passes to give away towards this event.

This should probably be a really long post. I mean, if you just take a look at the sketchnote (gallery) alone, then you’d figure that a lot went on. But that’s just snippets of basically four days of connecting, reconnecting, and being refreshed on the campus of Taylor University. The following recap of ICCM is just a small part of the entire experience – every one of the 100+ attendees could give you their own unique takeaways of the time shared.

In a very real sense, ICCM is both retreat and workshop for those involved with IT/computing and mission. This much was very clear as I pulled into Taylor University after driving 9.5hrs from PA to Indiana. I got there pretty early in terms of registrants, and noticed immediately that things would be different in the foyer as just about everyone had a laptop, iPad, or smartphone out and in front of their faces. It wasn’t before long that more people were coming in (shuttles from the airport) and there was the bustling of conversations, hugs, and new introductions. At this point, I’d just been sitting back watching things. I’d be in the mix soon enough.

I spent that first afternoon riding my bicycle around Taylor University and its surrounding areas (its really flat out there). And in the evening, I made my way to the dining areas and auditorium where the festivities would take place. 

Each day of the conference opened with a devotional, prayer, and a keynote by David Housholder (@DocDEH). His initial keynote on predictive mapping got the juices flowing early – though also left me in a bit of a daze since many of the technologies and behaviors that he mentioned throughout are items that I’ve been doing in whole or in part.

There were three tracks during ICCM: technology, basics, mobility, and leadership. I spent much of my time hovering around the mobility tracks, with a bit of fun intermingling with the technology tracks when they talked on the subject of SharePoint. Following the keynote, I found it quite refreshing that the first sessions that I attended (Risk Assessment for Mobile Device Computing) was chock full of information and behaviors that are easy to put into practice. For example, I’ve finally gotten around to putting a passcode on my iPad – I know, bad me. Just cause I’m in IT though I can’t think those “I’m invincible” thoughts.

The second session that I attended, also in mobility, was titled Mobile Ministry Strategy, and this presentation came from the good folks at GRN. In this session, we learned about how GRN has been putting forth their mobile strategy and some of the challenges and lessons they’ve learned. Much of what they’ve put to practice we’ve talked about here – and some more of it we’re co-laboring with them on the Kiosk Evangelism Project to figure out.

After that was our presentation (Definition and Applicable Contexts of Mobile (in) Ministry) and a panel with GRN and Cybermissions on questions and topics related to mobiles, mobile trends, and issues relating to maximizing resources and investments in this fast-moving technology/media channel.

Now, everything wasn’t all workshops and sessions. Sunday was more of a rest day (if you weren’t like myself and a few others who stayed up a bit late just about every night). A tour of Taylor University’s in-construction science facility, as well as a competitive game of ultimate frisbee allowed for us to not just get our minds exercised, but our social and physical selves as well. There was also a pretty neat rocket demonstration that happened beside the field we were playing ultimate frisbee. It still clicks that rockets and boys go together.

There was a panel session with Taylor staff, a session on using mobiles to train pastors, BOF groups (like this one on cloud computing), and a session where those with an interesting and missions-relevant technology/service could present and votes would determine the best one (this year’s winner was ArabBible, seriously, best Bible app I’ve seen for any computing environment in years). And of course, more expositions of the keynote.

And yes, if you weren’t following #ICCM via Twitter, then you also missed out on some of the chatter that was happening in between the sessions. It was definitely a techie conference, but also one where you could see that many people were simply refreshed by the fellowship and activity.

Tuesday was the last day of ICCM, and a devotional and announcements closed our time together. A few items of note: if you are in Australia or Europe, ICCM will be meeting in your spaces. Australia’s ICCM Conference is in Novemeber of this year, while Europe gets things going in February of next year. We’ve been asked to come to ICCM Europe and talk on mobile there, so we’ll be working pretty hard the coming months to secure the finances needed for that trip – and possibly an extended visit to other areas of Europe. Next year, ICCM Americas moves to Colorado Springs, CO. There’s certain to be some additional energies (and maybe a rally run up the mountain or two) with the crowd there.

If you made it this far through the recap, you can probably tell that ICCM Americas 2011 was quite packed. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and have to be honest in saying that I was very nearly discouraged in the early going when I saw the “usual tech conference hue.” But as I broke out of myself, and got into the flow of things, I could see clearly how ICCM is needed, not just for a means of understanding what’s happening in terms of missional computing around the world, but also what’s happening in the hearts and minds of those involved with IT at every level. We had college students to retirees attending and fellowshipping with one another. We had women, internationals, and a few minority (USA) groups represented. Certainly, there’s a lot that the Body can learn from this group, and more than this group is doing to make sure that ICCM maintains a focus of serving the entire Body of Christ.

I’m looking forward to attending future conferences. And maybe I won’t let folks get off so easy with having a panel during the same time I’m chatting 😉 That said, I do encourage you (and your ministries) to check out Taylor University if you have an interest in computing and mission. They are one of the more impressive educational settings that I’ve seen for this activity, and don’t see them slowing down any time soon.

For more information about ICCM, including seeing the presenter profiles and other information about the conference, visit the ICCM website. 

I was asked this question last week and while I had a quick answer off the cuff, I wanted to sit on it a bit and consider whether that was the right answer or not. Certainly, having a web presence makes sense, but does that necessarly mean a mobile website for your church, or to just be easily found if someone is using their mobile device?

Why You Would Have A Mobile Website

Clearly, having a mobile website makes sense if you are (a) a missions organization and you want the widest exposure to your vision and resources, or (b) a faith community that locally serves a significant population of those persons who are likely to be using mobile devices to find you, or find out more about you. These are just two examples, but clearly reasons for being available in a format on a mobile device, with your message specifically geared to the means and attention span of that context.

Why You Would Have a Mobile Application

Another prevailing opinion is that it might serve your ministry better to have a mobile application. Discovery is usually the reason for doing this, but I’d like to propose that you would think better. Applications should not just be reformatted websites, they should utilize the capacities of the mobile device, and offer something that a mobile website, or even your full website and marketing strategies, cannot offer.

A good case for having a mobile application for a ministry is when you produce several types of content which are better served locally instead of being streamed. Youth, sports, and even elderly organizations could also look at creating a suite of games or puzzles which better articulate their lessons and engagement strategies. An application, in a sense, is a place to experiment with the kinds of engagement that can’t happen otherwise.

Why You Wouldn’t Have a Mobile Website or App

There are a few reasons not to have a mobile website or application, and ironically, these actually tend to be sensible reasons. If you don’t have the resources to create and maintain your current website, then probably having a mobile website isn’t the right idea (yet). If you do have a solid plan for creating and/or maintaining your current website, then look at the logs (analytics) to see how many persons are coming to your site via a mobile device. Note where they are coming to. If you can create a mobile website that capitalizes on that, then go for it. If not. Don’t hurt yourself.

If your primary concern is just being findable in a search from a mobile device, then (first) make sure that your current website has the times, location, and main contact information in an easily seen place on your website. Mobile devices load slower, and have smaller screens, this info needs to therefore be one of the first items loaded. Second, you want to make sure that your entries in search engines such as Google Maps/Local are up to date.

If your primary means of engaging your community happens on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, spend your energies making sure that your profiles for social networking services are updated and clean. These services are already mobile friendly.

We talked about this from a mobile app standpoint in a previous article.

Context Matters for This Question

So, as you can see. Its not a simple “yes” or “no” kind of answer. These days, you need to balance the resources you have, versus the realities of the audiences you want to go for.

If you do decide that you need to go with a mobile website or application, look into services such as urmobile, Mobify, ShoutEm, or Ovi Publish to get up to speed faster using your existing web assets.

Remember also that mobile isn’t your laptop. Just because you have a library of sermons, and directories to every person who ever set foot in your church, doesn’t mean that this is what people want to see on their mobile’s much smaller screen. Give the information that’s most important, and then direct them quickly to the person, group, or resource that’s better able to help them fit their needs.

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).

As stated a few days ago, MMM is attending the 2011 ICCM Conference. This conference is a collection of IT-oriented individuals who use or would like to use their talents in information tech to serve missional needs.

To contribute to the effort, we were there to speak on mobile ministry. Specifically, our presentation Definition and Contexts of Mobile (in) Ministry was aimed to help set some more perspective towards the opportunities and challenges of using mobile technology in ministry efforts.

Compared to previous presentations, this was a good bit shorter as we also participated in a panel discussion immediately after on issues related to mobile ministry with representatives from GRN and CyberMissions. Topics covered in the panel included exciting/feared new tech, how to select a smartphone platform, and how cloud services impact mobile.

Check out the presentation and also follow the discussion on Twitter (#ICCM). Stay tuned for a full recap and sketchnote graphics a few days after ICCM concludes.

This was unintentionally posted as a page previously; this post fixes that. ~ AW

Cybermissions has recently posted two of the presentation segments from this year’s GCIA Conference.

The first is titled Mobile Training and Discipleship. This goes about 10 minutes and talks about biblical and theological training as it can be done on mobile platforms.

The second, Mobile Technology: Issues With Implementation, goes about 11.5 minutes and talks through some of the technical issues that influence the effectiveness of applying mobile in ministry contexts. It also includes some tips to getting started with mobile, audio, and video.

The presentations can be heard/seen/downloaded in AVI, Windows Media Player (small and large screen sizes), QuickTime, and MP4 (MPEG 4) formats. Visit the Cybermissions website to view these and other presentations.

For the next few days, we’ll be attending the 2001 ICCM Conference. 

ICCM is a pretty major event and we’re glad to be invited to take part in this years conversations and workshops. I’ll be presenting on the definition and contexts of mobile ministry – if you will, going a bit into the mindmap/sketchnote that we posted some weeks ago. It should be a good time, and I’m looking forward to both the drive there, and the renewed/new relationships.

And yes, stay tuned for sketchnotes of the sessions that I’ll be in.

Over at Mobile Advance, a weekly list of links to news and happenings in and around mobile is posted.Here’s a snippet of what’s in Weekly Web Watch #28:

SMS/Texting

• SMS Will Dominate Mobile Messaging for Years to Come
• India’s SMS Gupshup Wants to Be the World’s Biggest Mobile Social Network
• Apple Has Finally Stuck a Dagger into SMS. I Love It
• 5 Words: Solving Procrastination with Group SMS (you could do this with any learning opportunity!)
• Ban on SMS pushing J&K users towards internet enabled mobiles: Report (J&K = Jammu & Kashmir states in India)
• In Tanzania Media, Speak Up and Be Heard

Read the rest of Weekly Web Watch #28 at Mobile Advance.