Paper might beat rock, but rocks can be fashioned into scissors.

Often, arguments against the move to digital texts starts with the emotional attachments that we have to paper. Indeed, these attachments aren’t just emotional, they are literally interwoven into our everyday lives. From money exchanges, to recipts, to taxes, to just “jotting things down,” paper has done a marvelous job of covering up our abilities to not be able to move around information.

And yet, in this discourse, we don’t really pay attention to the fact that paper wasn’t all that great of a cover. Sure, it allows us to take oral learnings and place them into a time/listener-independent form with language and medium. But, it never really allows for the freedom of expression outside of its canvas. In a sense, you are limited by paper to expressing something that only can be interpreted by another person in one specific fashion (aka written language).

Given time and ingenuity, we’ve developed forms of media that are a step (or many) beyond paper. Each of these has their own edge, their own simplicity to the original message, and even their own capacity to become portable. There was radio, which took the canvas from wood pulp to radio waves. TV which enhanced the radio’s canvas with pictures. And so on.

And you know, we’ve not done too bad having our box full of these different tools – yet, there’s always this fear that a media format will come along that will make paper not so valuable. And heaven forbid that it would be something made out a rock.

What are mobile phones? Seriously, what makes up the mobile device? We all understand that there are radio transmitters, batteries, screens, and some means of input. Some might have speakers, cameras, and additional wireless transmitters/receivers which can push and prod more data around than we know what to do with. These are the final functions, the canvas that is a mobile device is a combination of all of the canvases of previous media (created from earth-found materials, stitched with electrons) with that paper-like element of containing an individual’s language – their personal brand if you will.

Mobiles have this unique capacity to take existing data and push it into other canvases (people, meters, web, etc.). In a respect, mobiles are like scissors. Really sharp, personal, contextual, and paradigm-shifting scissors.

If a mobile is being used like a pair of scissors, then there’s this capacity to understand that there’s come content that can be cut through and put into more size-relevant samples (mobile applications and mobile websites do this). There’s an ability to poke someone’s eye out (texting to destroy relationships, vote, or gain medical care). There are even different kinds of scissors that work better in some contexts than others (smartphones and feature phones).

In a sense, we’ve gotten to the point of creating something that can be better than paper. We’ve gone from the immobile rock, to the personal and mobile paper, to a more delicately fashioned rock, that also happens to be mobile and personal – the mobile. And if the game holds true, scissors does beat paper. Does then the argument against going mobile instead of paper (for most contexts) also fall to the same rules?

Originally posted at Blog.AntoineRJWright

How have you gone about growing in faith and application using the digital tools and services offered to you? Clearly, the amount of bibles, reading plans, prayer assistants, music, and video items available are beneficial to growth. But, they also present a challenge to some in respect to being a layer in-between what should be a direct relationship we have with God.

Think Christian took a look at the (controversial) Confessions app which was recently certified for use for Roman Catholic adherents (with conditions). Here’s a snippet of that piece, and probably the most important point posed by it:

…It’s hard to object to the idea behind the Confession app. It combines elements of religious education and personal journaling, neither of which is especially controversial. So why did an innocuous iPhone app generate such a nervous reaction?

I don’t believe anybody really thinks that an app on your mobile device can take the place of God. I think it makes us nervous because it reminds us how much of what we consider the “Christian life” could, in theory, be carried out through technology, with almost no face-to-face fellowship at all.

There’s a very delicate line between using technology in the service of your Christian life and letting it become a buffer between you and the people you’re engaging…

Read the rest at Think Christian.

A brother that i fellowship with recently opened up to the fact that he has isolated himself from the world around him to remain holy, but it has had the unintended effect of shutting himself off from interacting more with those around him. I’d argue that mobile and web technology have allowed for this a bit more than other technologies have because of the perceived connectivity to “something” that we do expend some energy towards.

The book Alone Together also considers this happening, and asks if we’ve really thought through the implications of certain concepts and activities online and offline. Can the Confessions app point to an acceptance of this kind of reality, but also point to ropes out of it? Or, is it yet another sign that the idol of technology is more powerful than the maturity of love and fellowship that we prescribe to it?

I went there looking for another moment of quiet. It was my second trip to Starbucks, and I needed this one. I needed to get away from the project, from the pressures of the week – just a bit earlier than normal. It was to be a few moments even away from the social streams and sports. I needed to open up a bit.

I sat with my iPad, the environment was louder than at other times I’d visited this Starbucks. There were more people than usual, and an much higher amount of high school kids. You could see that many of them were just beginning to enjoy moments away from their pressures, structures. And you could also see the challenges, the pressures of a different kind to be different and fit in at the same time. You could see the trends, they were open to parts of the world they’d not seen yet.

Then he came in. Accompanyed by his mother and grandmother. ‘C’ made a b-line from whatever his mother was directing him to towards my table. He looked at what I was doing and asked “what is that?”

You see, some minutes before then (don’t ask me how many), I got the point that God needed my attention elsewhere. So I opened Adobe Ideas on my iPad and looked for subjects. Finding none, I started drawing what was on the table in front of me – my empty Starbucks cup, Nokia N97, and iPad.

‘C’ caught me off guard a bit – I don’t think that I heard him the first time clearly. But he was interested, and so I sat back and told him that I was drawing what was on my table. He had a Nintendo DS in his hand and was clearly very into the game, but this distracted him just enough. So I turned the iPad towards him and asked if he wanted to draw. He looked at me perplexed and so I opened a new canvas and showed him the colors, and how to select a new color. He was engrossed in a new environment.

His grandmother came over first. She cast me a strange eye – I am a bit of a stranger in Danivlle, VA. She watched her grandson like a hawk over her young. And I understood, and so kept myself open and away from the table some. I proceeded to explain to her what he was experiencing and how it just makes sense for him to be on a computer that responds to his touch, rather than a keyboard and mouse. She understood, but was perplexed. Computers (keyboard and mouse toting ones) were still a bit ahead of where she could grasp she admitted.

‘C’s mother came over and apologized a few times thinking that he was distractng me. He wasn’t. I was actually enjoying watching him learn and try his hand (finger) at drawing on my iPad what he had on his DS’s screen. She mentioned that she would like for the iPad to get to the place where she could purchase one for him. He’d seen one, but this was his first time playing with it. I used the word “magic” as that was closest to what he experiences on his DS with the game he was playing. He looked up with those bright eyes that a kid could only have when you say something that hits and they understand that you understand them.

I was there to be open for that moment.

We talked for a few more minutes before they had to leave. The mother was appreciative of giving ‘C’ a chance to play with the iPad. She wanted one too, but was working on making sure she could get to that place of giving her son one first. She knows that it is more his future (and her’s – medical field) and she wants him to be open for it. At least in this moment, he was opened to what life could be like.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Openness.

It is considered standard fare when meeting someone in my travels to be asked for a business card. And most times, I’ve taken that request with such disdain. I mean really, we’ve got mobile phones – just ask me for my mobile number and SMS me your contact information because you’ve got that saved (and spelled right, with a photo) on your mobile. But, I had to go the route of business cards when pushing to do MMM as a full-time endeavor. And wouldn’t you know, it is the QR code on my business card that instigates the most conversation.

For those that aren’t aware, a QR code is a 2-dimensional bar code that contains embedded information. This can be as simple as a line of text, or more complex like a URL, an SMS command, or even a virtual business card (vCard). So, when I give someone my card, I’m asked about it, what does it do, how do they “activate it,” etc. I end up getting into this conversation about MMM and the implications of technology, and people usually leave with my information, a new app, and an awareness of how close we are to a world that merges print and digital nearly perfectly.

Now, I can do that with a business card, is there any reason my bulletin announcements, welcome packet, or even missional tracts couldn’t be done in a similar manner? It isn’t like the technology is untested – Google has even gone as far as doing NFC and QR stickers for business on Google Local.

If I were looking to engage someone in a conversation towards what my ministry does, or how my church has impressed the Gospel on their community, a business card-sized paper (or even Moo card), plus an image of my community and a QR code which points to our site, calendar, contact person, etc. could be pretty powerful. And I’d not even feel bad about people just leaving the paper laying around – QR codes are like bar codes that shop for an audience. Who wouldn’t want that obvious conversation?

Additional Readings on Mobile Barcodes
Here are a few other reports and resources about QR codes/mobile barcodes and their use.

• Digital Evangelism Blog: Why Churches and Social Groups Should Use QR Codes
• MSearchGroove: Mobile Barcode Growth Opportunities
• PSFK: Report on the Future of Mobile Tagging
• Create your own QR Code with Kaywa, Google, AppSpot, Mobile Barcodes, and several other services
• Read QR Codes with apps from Kaywa, Nokia, inigma, and several others – search the app store on your device and try them out – you don’t need a smartphone to read a QR code.

For previous articles we’ve done on the subject of QR Codes see our archived section and the ‘QR Code’ tag category.

Disclaimer: This article was submitted to the Center for Church Communication to be possibly included in a potential piece on upcoming mobile tech trends in late 2010. It was also submitted to MSearchGroove in response to a call for insights and case studies looking at current uses of QR Codes in Jan 2011.

We sat down for what was scheduled to be an hour-long overview of how to use his iPad. He received it as a gift from his children for Christmas, but as his son and wife would explain to me, he had little want to turn it on. There in his hands was indeed one of the technological tools of our day that has been making waves, but for this man – this man who had worked many years and was intent on enjoying his retirement – this device got in the way. It wasn’t something that he could see that would push him forward. I was tasked with helping to illuminate this device, and also to learn what it means to move forward.

We sat down in an empty computer room. His wife was there as well as this seasoned couple looked the part of a great family story in the making. They enjoyed one another, played off one another, and in due course, we got to talking about his iPad. But, only after we got into what really motivated this man to “work” when he was well into enjoying his retirement.

He explained to me about how he got to the point of looking for, and later documenting into two books, his family tree. For many people, we think of the family tree when it comes time for weddings, funerals, and family reunions. To this man (and his wife) this was something more. Here was a man who has been living his life and stumbled into learning about where he came from, learning about some of those stories. What he learned started as small scraps of information, and as it grew, it became a scrapbook, and then two published books. Clearly, while we were there to talk about the iPad, *I* was there to learn about the importance of the narrative of our families.

Our time together lasted about two hours. That was certainly enough time to talk about features within his iPad, learn more about the family members he found (including a recent cousin), and talk some about my family and the depth of knowledge that I come into from time to time about mine. An aside: I recently attended the funeral of a great, great aunt – I learned that I had cousins as old as 80 on the same line as I am; I learned about the church my family’s ancestors started where we had the service; and, I walked on the family grave where my great, great aunt was buried beside the other brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and parents that make the foundation that became me and the family that I know today.

That time was short, and his eyes opened up at what really is possible on the iPad. Yes, it felt like a TV that he could carry around, but things such as not needing to pull out a credit card to make purchases, trying to remember passwords for AppleID and iTunes accounts, and how to go about looking for applications and downloading them were valuable. You should have seen his eyes even when we did a search for genealogy applications and he saw Ancestry.com’s application there. To know that he wasn’t limited to just working on his family tree on his laptop was freeing – it pushed him forward just a bit. The ease at which he could do it showed him just how far things have come since what he is familiar with on his laptop. The time we spent together was short.

We parted with the intention of getting together again to refresh on some points, and continue to swap stories about our families. He gave me a task to find (one of) the family record books that I know exists so that he could see how my family has gone about documenting our foundations.

I realized when we finished that Apple had just announced version 2 of the iPad. Even though were were on version 1, there was a world before us that this device, as well as mobile phones, Internet, TV, and radio, have allowed us to discover and learn from. I came out of that short time realizing that technology might indeed move forward, but its advances are nothing compared to how we’ve moved forward. For this man and his wife, that iPad became relevant because it could play a part in helping him keep the story of his family in the mouth of his family to come. If new devices and services can manage to help us keep that perspective, then there’s a good chance that our short time on this earth will indeed be well spent advancing the lives of others.

Image from: Irish Quality Gifts

Over at my personal website, I threw open a thought about how I forgot about the experience aspect of Bible applications because of changes in how I engaged the content. Here’s a snippet:

It used to be the case with Bible apps that I was very tied to the user experience within the application. But, I that changed a bit as I got involved with the Katana project. Yes, there is/was a need for getting a solid and usable experience for Bibles on the Maemo platform, but it wasn’t a pressing need for me. In fact, I wanted that project more because of the needs a visitor to MMM had more than my own. By the time the application got to a testing state, I was already steering away from the collection of Bibles that I owned, the application(s) that accessed them, and spent more time in-between the text pasting snippets of Scripture to notes and linking comments to pages and commentary online.

Read the rest of Failing to Remember the Bible App Experience.

Many of you have talked about the juggling of Bible software platforms because of different content offerings. Because of that juggling (of applications or libraries), does the software platform matter more or less than the content and what you can do with it?

Having finished reading You Are Not A Gadget, I am sitting in this space between imagination and reality. In a lot of respects, I am back near that place I was when MMM started, I am thinking about this question of mobile and whether the religious community is ready or equipped to answer it.

What is that question? It is a simple but profound: what happens when our tools become appendages then become doorways of experiencing faith in ways that are virtually real, but altogether a different lens than anything before it?

Dangerous question isn’t it? I am literally asking if we understand mobile and all other digital contexts not as they can become a part of our faith language, but that they develop interpretations and experiences of faith that have no grounding in what is understood now as “faith practices.”

Am I proposing that mobile, and later personalized virtual computing (augmented and virtual reality), will derive experiences that will be considered “living out/by faith” even as they have nothing in common with current faith practices outside of a shared history and end-expression*? Yup. And this scares the mess out of folks.

Take mobile. In every interview that I have done for mobile ministry, the question has come up if I can see there being a time when some aspect of mobile tech will take away the treasured face-to-face interactions. I always am careful to ground the answer in context – it depends on the environment and the faith practice/behavior that needs to be exercised. The answer isn’t will it, but rather in what contexts will it. Looking at it that way is exciting and scary… and it is this that we have to address.

Is your faith so grounded to a specific context that you can’t live outside of it? Or, is the way you would like to live out your faith so undefinable by the dominant digital faith contexts that you know that you feel and act out of a limited and unfulfilling spirit? Or, maybe this tweet better fits, “A friend calls mobile the “appendage,” does your church/ministry have a gym for that appendage or is it relegated to a diff zoning ordinance?”

For many people, there is little to no difference between online and offline expressions of faith. Does the description of your faith end where virtual reality begins, or can you confidently walk through the door of mobile/augmented reality/virtual reality and translate the beauty and immense glory of God into something unique yet altogether familiar? Expressions change, faith keeps a consistent and definable fingerprint.

*One can, and many do argue that if the apostles were to be ported to today’s time period that they would have a very hard time identifying a Christian inside the context of a church service, but would more readily see Christ-following in “secular” functions such as the United Way, Red Cross, etc.?

This has been sitting on our server (and in Dropbox) since the end of the Mobile Ministry Forum (MMF). Might as well let it out a bit and see if we can actually move forward with that podcast idea 😉

Link to interview (MP3)

This is an interview with Jerry Hertzler, one of the attendees to the Mobile Ministry Forum. He agreed to do this interview (about 12min), as did a few other attendees, as part of fulfilling one of our initiatives to increase the voices of those individuals and organizations whom are working in mobile ministry (#mobmin) related endeavors.

Production provided by Brad Rhodes (MAF Learning Technologies). Brad and I will be collaborating on future podcasts, this was totally a shot-in-the-dark moment, and MMM is quite grateful for Jerry for extending his time for this (and being gracious towards our delay in getting it up). We are using podPress alongside WordPress to manage this content.

Lord willing, this works and there can be a monthly (?) podcast that start here soonish. Please do give your feedback towards the delivery method, content, and what topics/people you’d like to see in the future. There’s a good bit of future to be spoken and written in this space, and we’ll its time to work that beta tag off of something else.

Note: we are quite aware of the sound artifacts present in this recording, it was something we didn’t find out until after the recording. Suffice to say, we’d be using different software (which has already been tested for the first official podcast).

For more information about the project that Jerry is referring to in the interview, see the mLearning Project by Campus Crusade for Christ International.

One of the common memes heard around subrban churches/church plants that I’ve been around has been this idea of creating intentional communities. If you will, designing aspects of the Christian experience – worship, fellowship, needs-addressing, social justice – as parts of the community that you live in. In some respects, this can look like a small (cell) group which meets for prayer/study, or it can look like a gathering to clean up/clean with the neighborhood to which the church meets.

In whatever case, the idea is that religion – or the behavior of faith – can be so ingrained into what we do that we miss that we actually live with one another. We’ve heard it said in several different ways, but its where this idea of intentional communities comes from – your faith is not what you do for 90 minutes on Sunday but what you do throughout the rest of your life in between those moments.

For some, this is not a problem. Many have been able to design their lifestyles around various religious and faith activities. In a sense, these folks are already intentional whether they realize it or not. Depending on where you live, the culture might also lean towards making a life of religion or faith one that crosses your path. I can recall how on Wednesday evenings how traffic seems much worse than normal between 5pm and 7pm (can it really be true that the entire city is making their way to a Bible study).

Intentional communities also have a prescription of people coming together for more than just their faith association. There’s also the meeting and sharing of ideas and concepts that are colored with various life experiences. Examples of this include the groups that may get together to bowl, watch a movie, conduct play-dates for their kids, talk shop about the latest motorcycles, etc. These communities aren’t just wedded by faith, but life experiences that allow the means for a community to develop in some manner.

Digital Disciples can also be looked at as an intentional community of sorts. The hook withing Digital Disciples is to come together because of faith, but have digital technology as one of the threads around which people can connect. And yes, digital is a very wide and encompassing word – for example, in one of the Digital Disciple meetings that met in Charlotte, we had myself (Antoine), a social media person, a developer, and a person who was geeky, but had none of those other contexts to their use of tech. And so, the conversations and fellowship had to fight a bit harder than some in order to find those digital ties that bind.

That’s no reason to not pursue such a fellowship. If anything that example with Digital Disciples should show how easy it is to assume that your context is the same, or will be received as gladly, as another’s. One of the lessons that I’ve learned with Digital Disciples so far is that you can’t come into it with your context as the primary filter that others will be able to grasp. You have to be able to live with others and it has to be an intentional dropping of your perceptions and expectations in order to do so.

So, if you are one of those techie-types looking for a community of geeks, you are definitely on the right road. Digital Disciples might even be a place to connect and get some of that connection in. But, I’d also caution you to keep your heart open for perspectives and contexts that are digital, but not yours. Intentions have a way of being turned towards unexpected blessings when that happens.

For more information about Digital Disciples, check out the website. If you are looking to connect with a Digital Disciples group in your area, there’s a list of places at Meetup. Either connect with an existing city/group, or propose a city/group/time.

Here are our Retweets of the Week for the past week (Feb 20-26). Several new voices this week, and all with some common themes of culture and context.

• janchip – Download my newly published mobile money research in Afghanistan: http://bit.ly/fp_safeashouses
• kiwanja – Sparxoo’s “Top 5 Mobile Innovations for Social Cause” featuring @Movirtu and @FrontlineSMS. http://is.gd/Fo0MNg #mobile
• futuresagency – RT @martinstrickman: The future of books http://j.mp/fOUPZO@radar on distribution, inventory, pricing, audience ownership, engagement
• bobbychandler – Girl Scouts Using iPhones to Process Cookie Transactions http://t.co/b
• Mobile_Advance – Exhaustive list of off-grid ways to produce your own grid http://bit.ly/eEukvp #mobmin
• Liberationtech – Tech creates global celebrity culture & feelings of insignificance but also creates new global consciousness & movements http://ow.ly/41BcM

Using social media outlets such as Twitter can be an effective means of getting the word out about various endeavors. If you’ve got something related to our goals with mobile ministry, be sure to point it out to us directly (@mobileminmag on Twitter) or via the #mobmin hashtag if its directly related to mobile ministry efforts.

Image via Technorati