I know that last month that we talked about doing a monthly podcast, but you wouldn’t believe how hard it can sometimes be to get schedules and technologies to work together. Nevertheless, there’s not a lot that’s impossible with mobile these days, and so I recorded a video cast while in between meetings using Qik and my Nokia N97. Lord willing, this looks good, because we don’t edit while on the go… at least not yet đ
View the MMM May Videocast via Qik.
Mobility. How often do we think about this word? What does it mean to us really? Oh sure, we want our phones to go with us, and to be ready to do what we tell them to do at all times. How often however, do we make ourselves mobile to God? How often do we move out of our comfort zone?
I was thinking about Jesus the other day and what it really would be like to be him. Compassionate, sure. Slow to anger, need to work on. On the mobility side, how mobile am I? Have I tucked myself safe into my church, where I know I am always plugged into the word of God? Have I surrounded myself only with people who know the word of God and will encourage me when I feel insecure?
Or? Am I willing to take a step outside of that? Am I willing to step away from the battery charger called the church? Am I willing to step outside of what I know and into the unknown? It is easy to have faith when the unknown is only a few steps away.
Paul went from Church to Church and I liken this as him recharging his batteries. He was refilling his emotional tank just as much as he was filling theirs. He would sometimes go months or years without talking to the same people, but he had faith, faith that they would remain the same character. He believed they would grow in Christ while holding to the same personalities he grew to know and love.
How long can our own batteries last? As a young believer, not long. As a more mature follower, hopefully much longer. I may just be talking to myself here (and that would not surprise me), but I saw a challenge of stepping out of the comfort of my church pews where I am encouraged when down. I saw a challenge of stepping away from the charger and not looking at the battery until it beeped.
Continuing the conversations and coverage from our attending of the GCIA 2011 Conference, here is the slide deck for our presentation – taking place right about now – titled Mobile Ministry Modeling.
To our regular readers, there might not be too much new that is in here, but there are some additional concepts and lines of thought taken here.
As with our previous presentation decks, this is created using the S5 Slide Show System (HTML, CSS, and JS-based). And following form to our most recent presentations, there is additional information encoded with QR Codes and in the “print view” of the presentation.
No video this time (sorry). But there’s most probably some conversation going on about it at Twitter (#GCIA2011).
View the presentation Mobile Ministry Modeling. Previous presentations are located on our Issues and Presentations page.
Here are my sketchnotes from Day 2 of the the 2011 GCIA Conference. These were also created on my iPad using Adobe Ideas. Commentary to come after this conference and the travel are over.
Am currently attending the 2011 GCIA Conference. Day 1’s activities (not necessarily the conversations) have come to a close. My notes for my time here are being sketched in Adobe Ideas. Commentary to come when travel time is done.
News Release: “You have an incredible gift at your fingertips – literally. Your keyboard,” says the team at Internet Evangelism Day. They claim there is growing potential to share the good news online in a variety of ways. Christians can investigate these options during May, which has been designated Digital Outreach Month. At its center is the worldwide annual focus Sunday, Internet Evangelism Day itself, on May 15.
“You do not need to be technical,” says Tony Whittaker, IE Day coordinator. “There are many simple yet fulfilling ways of being salt and light in cyberspace.”
On May 15, IE Day is partnering with several major publishers to offer free e-book downloads of Christian titles which are normally pay-for. These cover web evangelism, social networking and other areas of effective communication.
“This is a great opportunity to explore digital evangelism. I encourage Christians everywhere to take advantage of these free downloads to learn how to effectively share their faith in the digital world,” says Naomi Frizzell, Chief Communications Officer of The Lausanne Movement.
IE Day encourages churches and other groups to focus on digital evangelism during May, at any level they choose. As a minimum, IE Day can be featured in a church bulletin, so that members can investigate its resource website. Alternatively, focus spots can be created during meetings using IE Day’s free downloadable video clips or PowerPoint, or even perform a drama sketch that relates to online evangelism. Two new video-clip resource sites could be showcased live by projection, to demonstrate how to add an evangelistic video to Facebook with one click. These videos can also be downloaded to a mobile phone to share face-to-face.
IE Day’s site includes pages on using mobile phones for evangelism, creating ‘outsider-friendly’ church websites and introductory videos, social networking, how to blog or build a website, and much else. Explore www.IEDay.net to learn more.
This week, I was able to attend the Triangle Usability Professionals Association’s talk on Designing Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. Dr. James Lester headed up the talk and led us through some of the opportunities and challenges towards improving the capacity of educational environments to educate when AI and gaming elements are skillfully wedded to learning needs.
I took the time to do my first sketchnote of the event. I knew that of all the things that I wanted to take away from this event, I wanted to make sure that I listened more to this idea of crafting stories that allow for various points of entry into lessons. And while this is a common point that pastors will dive into, its also something that listeners should also consider.
For example, one of the points talked about this tension between engaged experiences feeling new but educational experiences feeling stale. And we definitely have these preconceptions. The problem with that is that we treat these preconceptions as reality, and therefore end up many times throwing away the experiences that might help better engage learners, or we setup bureaucratic roadblocks which imply a prominence to a type of learning that really doesn’t exist.
There was also the mention of the term narratology (horribly misspelled on my sketchnotes) that runs very similar to the visual stories meme that I’ve been hearing much about in the digital faith space since my VSN talk. Interesting to see that story-crafting, not just story-understanding is a part of literary and media creation fields.
I’ve got some more reflection and research to do in respect to this idea of crafting stories and enabling environments. And I do think that personal and communal approaches to mobile will highlight some other ways of thinking about learning and education from a tech-tools standpoint. I’m glad though to hear that schools and UX practices are looking at these issues as well. The solution to better educational outcomes is greater when there are more hands contributing to the solution.
I spend a good deal of time in coffeeshops watching how people interact with one another and their tools. One of the better scenes tends to come from those shops nearer to colleges. Unlike other coffeeshops, it is here that you see all manners of studying, configurations of environments, and even attempts to not be distracted.
I remember how it is for me, and therefore I put the question out there to think about for you: once the sermon or bible study lesson is over, the expectation is that people will go back and study/prove the material (Acts 17:11 in practice). How many of you don’t just expect for that space to be taken, but design your lessons in such a way that investigating the answer allows someone to find their personal space to get the answer?Â
We often make the assumption that the answer to life’s questions are as close as Scripture’s revelation. But, what are you doing as pastor-teacher to make sure that key principles stay that way?
Or, do you rather that there remains a layer between certain aspects of your teaching, and the abilities of your community to discover their ways towards its understanding?
How about we look at mobile in this respect:
You have already made the decision that you will use mobile as the first channel that you will broadcast and engage your community. You have not settled on applications, websites, or any kinds of marketing tools, but you are certain that you want to use the most that you can with mobile.
Sounds good to me. Here are the characteristics of mobile then you want to keep in mind:
Mobile is the first (and most prevalent) personal mass media
It’s not just that mobile is where markets are focusing, it is where people are focusing on individual levels. And they are actively filtering content and the context of their personal, professional, and spiritual lives thru several mobile devices and services.
Get over the fact that people will not make you their priority, or their authority. You will be one of several streams. But, you can (and should) play a significant role in helping them to manage those streams.
Mobile is permanently carried
A mobile device is seemingly carried by everyone. If it isn’t a phone, it’s a personal media player, game system, music player, and sometimes even a voice recorder. Whatever it is, the device is closer to them than your application or service is. Learn the moments when your mobile effort will best be used, and use the fact that something is carried as part of the reason to be present for that moment.
Mobile is always-on
Always on doesn’t necessarily mean always having a signal. It means that there is power flowing to a device that can garner secondary attention from a primary event. This means that your application or service doesn’t have to sit front and center to their attention, but it should be available in those moments where someone is defaulting to considering something outside of an event going on immediately around them.
And what about those people who aren’t on because a device has lost power. Considering being the point where they power the device back up, and draw a solution for broadcasting or engagement to that point (not necessarily to the mobile device).
Mobile has a built-in payment mechanism
First things that ring in the pocket here are tithes and offerings. Get over it. Unless you are making your online giving systems as efficient as Amazon and iTunes, this won’t gain much traction. Doesn’t mean that people won’t give, but that they will have expectations. Slow services, countless clicks, and an unoptimized experience will simply merit the same responses that giving kiosks have had.
You can, and should, partner with those organizations whom are doing mobile/online giving. Use this as a teaching point for money management and information security. Yes, you are qualified to do so, and this is relevant not only to mobile, but any terminal where payments can be collected.
Mobile is available at the point of creative inspiration
Just because you cannot draw or produce award winning videos on your mobile doesn’t mean that it is impossible. Encourage the creative members of your communities to create and upload to the shared church/organization website the products they create. To those of you already using drama and painting arts in worship services, extend that to those things created dynamically during the service as well. I am sure that sketchbooks and sketchnotes could be really interesting in this wise.
Don’t dismiss the written language. Yes, SMS is only worth about 140 characters, and that’s a good thing. Teach people to pray or write psalms in that space. Again, encourage sharing and broadcasting a specific points in community life. Then, let creative life happen.
Mobile has the most accurate audience measurement
Some of you have justified fears about people tweeting or texting during sermons. You also what that response just as soon as they have it. Consider setting up a Google Voice account where voice and text messages can be set during a service, and then as a leadership team, pray and vet thru the responses for a followup in the next meeting.
Mobile captures the social context of media consumption
If your members are on Facebook more than they are in the Word, consider using those social networks that connect to Facebook as a means to get their eyes in front of the text. And if they are on Facebook and other social networks, are you there with them? What are they talking about? What are the pictures most about? Does your conceptualization of the Gospel meet the, where they live, or where you would like them to live (implying that their lives are meaningless because they don’t follow your pattern of faith)?
Mobile allows augmented reality to be used in media
Augmented reality (and virtual reality) means that you are placing a layer of content, usually online, on top of the real world. Sometimes, this looks like making sure that you are listed in Google Maps so that people can find you using Street View. This can also be the using of QR Codes so that people are accessing their mobile device, and making a shorter step to keeping mind of important information that in just hearing it.
This can also be done in geo-games between churches/groups. This can be a photo mashup compiled from the mobile devices and cameras of several in your community, but layered into the existing web presence your church/org offers.
There are a lot of ways to take mobile and make it work for you. It’s not all about applications, mobile web, or text messaging either. Using the unique qualities of mobile, where you go with it becomes up to your community, not market trends.
There was just a small mention on Twitter some days ago. I honestly don’t know how to make this seem like a bigger moment. In some ways, its not. MMM has been very plain and simple from day one. And here, at year number 7, I’m looking back wondering if I’ve done well with the Master’s investment. To be honest, I’m not sure that I have.
That’s not to say that there hasn’t been moments. Creating a platform for “Chrsit in mobile” is intriguing enough to garner a small audience. That was not the focus of this initiative. Those who have supported and pushed because they agreed with the line of questioning have made it possible to get this far. And as far as I know, there are few people still arond from those early days. Psychologically, I’m grateful for people like LaRosa and Sammy – they’ve really been in my corner from the beginning, and I’d given up a number of times if it wasn’t for ears or surprise words from them.
Its been hard, I can tell you that much. What were you doing with mobile and ministry 7 years ago? Exactly. And its not like it didn’t make sense to some. But, it didn’t. And I didn’t fight hard enough to make it make sense. I was honestly just trying to get an answer for myself…
…and stay mindful of the door of escape that God provided for me too many times.
There have been moments. Moments where I was literally steps from giving this up because there was no comments for months on end. No contributions from people who said they would. Because I was tired, and I needed to make a living, not put time and energy into something that I could honestly say – it would be impossible for me to know the extent of its effect… mobile ministry is and always will be bigger than me.
And, man, there have been smiles and tears. That series by Pat, the rescued message from the spam folder that became the BBC interview, the requests to speak to classes and people who were/are well ahead of me professionally and vocationally. I can’t even try to playback all of that, and yet its in here – in every post, every tweet, every started (and failed) initiative. For seven years, this site, this “ministry” has been an anchor like no other for me. For mobile, I’m not really sure. There are moments, but I still don’t know that its understood.
Can you tell I’m a bit tired. I don’t know how you married folks do it. I’ve been wedded to MMM, and can’t see myself without it and can’t stand it all at the same time. I’ve seen other sites come and go. I’ve seen other ministry sites come and go – and each one that left took some life out of me. This site, for better and worse, has stood. I’m so grateful for Damond and Lance for the servers.
I imagine that everyone gets to this point. That moment in their life where they make a genuine assessment of whether it was worth it, whether it matters to keep going or not. I’m there often – definitley more often since trying to do this full-time. I can see the implications of not doing this so clearly, and the areas of my life that have suffered becasue I’ve been so adamant about keeping to this land I’ve been given. For seven years… over 2300 posts. That’s a lot of tilling.
I truly hope that MMM, in all of its tweaks, character flaws, initiatives started/failed/started-again has been able to alert you to the reality of mobile, and a Christian perspective on an opportunity to meet people where computer technology (more than ever) intersects with their life. That intersection can be simply accountability for a single parent whose in school, or for a religious leader who needs to know that the pulpit isn’t a sheid for his frailties. We’ve got to meet people where they are, bring the church/Body of Christ to them and minister justice, mercy, and grace. We can’t be ignorant of the abilities and responsibilities of this tech, nor should we elevate it to be bigger than it is.
I didn’t plan on going this far with MMM. I just wanted to know what the Body is doing with faith and mobile technology. Seven years later I’m still looking, still asking questions, still throwing things against the wall, hoping that something makes sense, something moves us towards serving Christ and one another.
Sending and receiving Christ in mobile. That’s where we stand 7 years in. From this point, maybe it sounds less like ‘a’ voice, and more like ‘the voice of an entire generation.’