Some time ago on Twitter, I opined:

Just got an email asking about Electronic bibles in multi-languages and for offline use; we can’t forget that is a big need still…

The tweet was answered by John Dyer who said:

@mobileminmag That’s what Digital Bible Society is doing: www.dbsbible.org/ (they are about to explode with languages)

It caused these follow-up tweets:

@johndyer – forgot about these folks; thanks for the poke (challenge to keep abreast of all doings; even in the longer running efforts)…I do wonder, how many groups are doing the same things, and can’t or won’t talk to one another (is the Body one of siloed actions only)

The trek for an answer to this (often to myself) asked question took me to Scripture first. Hearing verses before context, I started looking at a few items:

• “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand… he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand (Matthew 12:22-36)
• The parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21)
• “Master,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.” “Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.” (Luke 9:44-50)

And while there are verses in those that soften my heart, they don’t address the matter that sits at the core. Another person in a twitter conversation put it nicely:

I can’t think of a theologian who is engaging in the technology space in a meaningful way, yet folks like Lanier & Sterling are asking about the human spirit as it interacts with technology.

Lanier is the author of a book that I’m reading now (You Are Not A Gadget). So far in my reading, I’m impressed on the same line of questioning: where is the Body speaking and engaging the conversation around computer technologies in a way more meaningful than numbers, revenues, and tools? After reading this quote from Lainer’s book, I had to put it down (iPad running Kindle) and reflect, where are our conversations:

…we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”

Where do we speak and live into lives? There’s the education of kids, as well as adults who still have much to pass down. There’s an economic system built on secrets and misunderstood histories. Yes, there’s censorship, and there’s also exploitation of the very resources that build communities (people, fresh water, safety). If Christ is the bread that binds, it doesn’t matter if we are on a social network “doing church” if the greater parts of our community can’t even use a computer (mobile or otherwise) to get a job because our computer labs are closed to non-members, understaffed, and/or fronted by leaders who resist the approaches others have done in their own neighborhoods.

Dr. Philip Jenkins (The Lost History of Christianity, The Next Christendom,etc.) recently came to Charlotte to speak. I was able to make the last half of his second (and final talk). One of the points that was intimately clear was that we have no choice about the changing faces and patterns of the Christian faith on the global stage. USAmerican mainstream deonminations either need to adapt to the changed/changing demographics of their communities, or be marganalized into small and mostly echoing relics of a faith that was once relevant. There’s value in what every faith community offers, but none of that can be communicated through solo or siloed efforts, there’s a larger narrative to the implications of faith in these merged communities, and (as I discussed with him afterward) a similar discussion being played out with mobile/web.

Efforts like Digital Disciples and the Digital Bible Society are great, and these are the kinds of efforts that more of the Body should be taking part in. But, we also should be noticably involved projects such as OLPC’s One Laptop Per Child, discussions such as the implications of WikiLeaks on media and content, and working out the theological answers to the social implications of mobile across generations.

So Body, what are you doing? And does the rest of the Body know anything about what you are doing? Is an injection of Jesus into tech culture just something one group does at a time, or is it isolated to certain conversations only? I’m of the persuasion that IT won’t exist much longer (am not alone in this thought) – what will you do when digital isn’t an appended layer to faith, but is an active and integral part of how communities will engage the validity and experience of their faith? Will the conversation about what we do in tech be meaningful or just noise?

Back with our Retweets of the Week feature. A number of tweets this week about education, innovation, and access. Here’s this week’s batch.

• hrheingold – My bookmarks on using information/communication technologies for economic development http://delicious.com/hrheingold/ict
• bdrhoa – What if you have a mobile phone but you can’t read?http://bit.ly/guKblu #mobmin
• futuresagency – RT @rossdawson: [Infographic:] iPad Media Strategy framework http://bit.ly/fB1wIY
• judybreck – Digital natives have a greater understanding of Wikipedia: There is good reason students trust how Wikipedia is … http://bit.ly/hOgJ95
• msearchgroove – RT @matthewdawes: spoke to someone this morning who said that according to their research only 5% of people li… (cont)http://deck.ly/~HZKIk
• Mobl_21 – Math and M-Learning: http://dld.bz/Mfzd #mlearning, #mobl21
• rossdawson – 6 Web Pioneers on What the Internet of the Future Will Look Like http://on.mash.to/fO6DFp
• LaRosaJohnson – Advanced Bible Study video part 8 (grand finale) is up on the TM site. Check it out & learn how to use WS9 4 study –http://bit.ly/dOA1Kc
• di_mobile – Another reason mobile is becoming so important. “The number of consumers accessing their email via mobile devices…http://fb.me/KDELby7r
• mob4hire – RT @russellbuckley Good summary of The Singularity in Time magazine. http://bit.ly/f9TYvp 2045 is the year man becomes immortal. Honestly
• EricssonLabs – MILLEE uses mobile phone games to improve literacy skills in emerging countries. #WRAD (by @AshokaTECH)http://icio.us/0UVx9Y
• wezlo – At chapel this morning I took out my phone,opened the calendar,and prayed for the Church listed in the @ABCNJ prayer calendar #fb
• GordonMarcy – The Church is Behind on Technology (Maybe Not!)http://bit.ly/dQLa3Q (via @ChanceMason)
• psalm971 – Seen this? http://ow.ly/3SqQF – minimalist, text-only, page-based, dial-in, self-contained Internet-like info system for dumbphones#mobmin
• mobileactive – Let’s not forget that the whole world isn’t yet connected. Huge gender gap in mobile phone access for ex. http://ht.ly/3SrAd#mwomen #openun
• kiwanja – Comprehensive, 350-page free eBook on #mobile telecoms/smartphone business opportunities. Great resource.http://is.gd/oIDhm3
• MobileBehavior – Location Labs Launches T-Mobile FamilyWhere™, a “mobile safety net” http://bit.ly/h64OUk
• anthonycoppedge – “Every believer is called to full-time ministry, even if you’re not called to vocational ministry.” – @PsRobertMorris #GatewayPeople

If you’ve got something you deem worth sharing, be sure to point it out to us (@mobileminmag) or use the #mobmin hashtag if its directly related to mobile ministry efforts.

There is a certain catharsis that hits our soul when we allow forgiveness in. An unforgiven  heart holds us hostage, held in the stage where the grievance happened. For some it can take a day, for others it can take years to offer forgiveness. There is not set recipe for how we are to forgive, we are just told to do it. Matthew 6:14 says “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you”. It is hard. We want justice, we want vengeance. Doesn’t someone see what they did? Yes, someone does.  He will take care of it. We loose our sense of mobility when we get caught up in the when’s and the why’s. We do not move forward.

There is a flip side of this coin. We are humans and so often need to be forgiven of something. I am not a person who does anything half way. When I do something, I either do it big or I fail big. I haven’t learned a middle ground yet. When I burn a bridge (or person who is on the bridge) I do it in massive portions. I wondered why I could not move forward.  I kept trying but was pulled back several times. I had to turn back and apologize. There is no where in the Bible that states God’s forgiveness is dependent on the recipient reaction. They could shut the door on you and that be the end of the conversation. They are in control because after all, they are the ones who were hurt. The release in us comes when we say those words “will you forgive me”. Four words that humble us, bring us to our knees and acknowledge that we are not as infallible as we like to think.

I offered those words this week. The outcome was so much greater than I ever could have asked for. I am now able to move forward where God wants me. I am now able to re-create bridges that I thought were long gone. The person who received an apology can heal, knowing that their pain was acknowledged and avenged. There is no loosing in this situation.

I was encouraged this week by God’s mercy and grace. If they could forgive me, how much more has the Father forgiven me?

In a recent meeting with some people about the kiosk project, a perspective came to light that could probably be best addressed with the statement, “yea, and.”

We were talking about the method of delivering content by way of removable memory cards, but in the midst of the people whom I was speaking, only two of us had devices that had such a feature. While explaining that the kiosk also had a wireless hotspot aspect to it helped things move forward, it hit there that many opportunities for mobile engagement are at best left behind because its difficult for people to take it from a piece of technology to a relevant tool.

Finding relevancy for mobile (or anything) can be as simple as asking questions around what are needs and opportunities. Statistics help here, as do understanding the lay of the land within and without religious contexts. Unfortunately, not too many projects lend to doing all of this kind of work. Many times, we dive into a project without a clear-enough understanding of all of the points of relevancy, and therefore end up posturing mobile (or anything) as a savior, when to the people we are pitching it to, it just doesn’t fit.

In another project from the same week, I received some excellent feedback about the class that I led, “offers great content but would like to have seen the training more targeted towards our immediate needs.” The subject matter was needed, but overall relevancy was lost because I didn’t have key information about the class participants which would have better driven the content application. I put the blame of this one on me, despite working with another company on this one. As a trainer, if the technology that I’m teaching is relevant, then where engage it must be in a place that’s personal to the persons listening.

So here’s the lesson. We can go mobile. And in fact, we’d tell you without thinking about it twice that going mobile(-firs) is probably the best thing you could do. But, if you are looking for the best use of your time and resources, and would rather not want mobile or anything else to fade faster than it started – pick the key relevant points for mobile and the effort you are engaging in. You will not only be relevant, but have a better chance of doing something that sticks.

Tomi Ahonen has been quoted several times on this site as many of his insights have contributed to the understanding and application of mobile technology in the digital faith arena. Suffice to say, when he puts an idea down, it’s worth reading, rereading, and making steps to adjust.

Such is how I feel after having read his latest 20K+ word article about the mega-opportunity in mobile. Thankfully, Ahonen speaks in more than monetary terms. And given the insights he and several others in mobile share, the opportunity in mobile for great gains is just a matter of capitalizing on the opportunity. Here’s a snippet of the article:

MOBILE IS BIGGEST ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY (EVER)

Now, that is a massive statement, isn’t it? I mean, biggest? Ever? But before you jump to your next task on your to-do list, please consider just this fact. One industry on the planet has to be it. All others pretend, but factually, one of the thounsands of industries does truly have to be the biggest economic opportunity of any one time. Earlier on in the past century it was oil. Created the oil barons and billionaire oil sheikhs. Late in the century it was personal computers. Made Bill Gates the wealthiest man on the planet. At any one point in time there is one industry which is the best to be in. (and yes, even if biggest at one point in time, is not guaranteed to be ‘of all time’)

Today that is mobile. Mobile has become a Trillion dollar industry. Not the biggest industry on the planet, but one in a very rare category to pass the Big T of a Trillion. Television is not that big (has never passed half a Trillion dollars in annual revenues). Computers are not that big. Radio is not that big. The internet is not that big. Cinema is not that big. Newspapers is not a Trillion-dollar industry. Neither is air travel, credit cards, advertising, music, pharmaceuticals, hotels, videogames, the coffee industry, etc. Imagine if you were there to be one of the big ‘barons’ of one of those industries when they were in ‘hypergrowth’ stage, you’d have retired rich today with probably universities, airports or even cities named after you…

Read the rest of How You Became Next Mogul in Mobile (and a Millionaire) at Communities Dominate Brands. Also, you might want to add a cup of coffee or tea and a sandwich for this one (the reply from Martin Geddes, then Tomi’s reply).

For something a bit shorter, but packing a similar punch, check out this interview of Tomi Ahonen over at Mobile Zeigeist.

Some weeks back, Church Tech Today posted a summary of five mobile ministry techniques from pastors. This was insightful for several reasons, but called to mind the 12 apostles and how each of them was specifically equipped for the task at hand.

That got me thinking, given the persons that responded to the forum question, I wondered who might be their mobile evangelists? Meaning, who sparks their imaginations and enables them to continue to preach-teach the Word?

Whom might be that person for you? Or, do you serve as the resident evangelist (we should explore that one later)?

While working on some admin needs for MMM, I came across a question that has had me on a bit of a rabbit trail and a genuine assessment of mobile ministry. The question simply asked, “what is the addressable market?” Included in this answer is understanding who and how many of that “who” can be met by your solution(s).

As with most things involving Christianity, we speak in terms of biggness – the entire world (all 6-7 billion of us is always the addressable market). The problem is that such a target isn’t just impossible, but its unrealistic. There are very few endeavors which can have an impact across such a large swath of people and regions. Yes, its possible to be a solution that hits a large segment of these (own a cellular carrier or popular social network for example), but that’s far more the exception than the norm. So, the question then becomes, what is the realistic impact (the who and how many of that who) of mobile ministry?

There are roughly 6.9 billion people in the world (at the time of this writing). In respect to the technolgies which fall under the term mobile that 6.9 billion number looks more like 4.2-4.4 billion reachable people. In respect to religious populations, the four major religions have an estimated 4.65-6.17 billion adherants. If you will, just from looking at the numbers, there are more people of faith in four major world religious groups than there are who use mobile. This immediately casts the “entire world is the addressable market” argument out of the range of realism, but does show at a cursory glance that there’s some overlap that should be explored, and some unaddressed persons that might never merit consideration.

How should that be explored is a good question. The good thing about data these days is that its all out there, you’ve just got to do the work towards putting it together. For example, the ITU gives us regional information in reference to mobile subscriptions (estimated, 2007 Report on International Religious Freedom. And that’s truly a large amount of work. Given the task that took me down this rabbit hole, I can truly say that you’ve got to be a bit crazy to push this information together and make some general sense of it. But, its possible to come up with some nuggets that point towards the initial question of “whom the addressable market” actually is.

For example, let’s take a country that we’ve recently posted a few news notes about: Tanzania. According to that 2007 report, there are roughly 30-40 of the people there whom are Christians out of a total population of 37 million. Their current population is abuot 43.2 million, which means that they’ve increased at a rate of roughly 8%. Let’s say that the number of Christians in that country have held at 40% and that would give us 17.3 million Christians and 25.9 million people of other faith traditions. About 1.6% of the population (roughly 670,000) use the Internet. We know from the 2009 East and Southern Africa Telecommunications Report that Tanzania is one of several countries whom are expected to see a mobile penetration rate of 100% by 2013 (most probably sooner). However, that current use of mobile is still below 50% of the total population. Mapping the religious population on top of this mobile enabled population could mean that no more than 20% of the population would be addressible for mobile ministry (doing very bad and extrapolated guesimation for the sake of the discussion). And that ignores that we’ve not yet looked at the economic, literacy, or other factors which may influence the use, impact, further mobile and the potential addressable population just in that area.

That 4.2-4.4 billion number for mobile only speaks in terms of the fact that there is some measurable unit of use. It doesn’t (and cannot) speak towards consistent nor a specific type of use. It doesn’t even identify what the best targets are. All of this needs to be broken down into reachable gains. Its as we’ve said at many points, contextulization and cross-functional knowledge plays a bigger part in understanding the role of mobile and the impacts to digitial faith behaviors than just casting a net out and hoping to catch an entire world of people.

Some have prescribed taking your addressable market in the filter of what technology window is best to meet them. Is it Facebook, a mobile application, an SMS service? You’ve got to do the math and figure out if your realistic addressable market is attainable. And if so, then that’s the part of the global body of faith that you run towards. Whatever it is that is realistic for you to run for, that’s where you become one of many voices in mobile speaking to the need for digital faith endeavors to direct direct people whose lives have intersected at faith and mobile/web technologies. No, this doesn’t get all 6.9 billion people, but it does keep over-zealousness from making you discouraged, or worse, misdirected to the conditions of spiritual and technological needs to those in your immediate, and not so immediate, vicinity.

Once again our Retweets of the Week feature highlighting some of the items we’ve retweeted in the past week.

• anthonycoppedge – “Every believer is called to full-time ministry, even if you’re not called to vocational ministry.” – @PsRobertMorris #GatewayPeople
• Mobile_Advance – New at Mobile Advance- Digital Directions in the Least Reached Counties http://bit.ly/guZFh2 #mobmin #ieway
• bobbygwald – RT @youversion: 5 Billion Minutes: http://bit.ly/f9JjE0
• StreetsblogNet – Computers, not cars, are the new means of self-expression for young Americans http://bit.ly/ieFv6r via @ShareableDesign
• kiwanja – Interesting report on the growing use of the web in #Kenya. “Kenya Digital Life 2010” [PDF] http://is.gd/KJm3JQ #mobile #africa
• door43 – How Door43 works: Unrestricted discipleship resources are imported, translated, used by anyone, anywherehttp://bit.ly/eBDLwO #missions
• GordonMarcy – New post: “Seven lessons for Christian communicators from launch of News Corp’s iPad newspaper” http://bit.ly/eNQfAz
• davehackett – 45% of all Middle East & North Africa Internet users use their mobile phones to access the Internet http://bit.ly/fGHDcK #mobmin #ieway
• edstetzer – Evangelism and discipleship should bias the internal scorecard more than many other factors. http://ow.ly/3P1SX
• scottshuford – 1,000,000 Bible App Downloads for Bible.is! http://bit.ly/fwzTWW
• MobileBehavior – When & Where Are People Using Mobile Devices?http://bit.ly/geROXG /via @lukew
• djchuang – RT @jasonpowell: Blurb from our senior pastor’s blog: “…Stop eating in places where women don’t wear enough clothes.”http://bit.ly/egAk7Q
• textually – Cell Phones that work without towers http://bit.ly/fwIJoh
• Spiritualnsight – Bible Organisational System | Open Scriptures: Most people I know think of the Bible as 66 books broken into the… http://bit.ly/gNexIu
• hrheingold – “Mobile Media & Political Collective Action” 2008 http://bit.ly/ypdjk

If you’ve got something you deem worth sharing, be sure to point it out to us (@mobileminmag) or use the #mobminhashtag if its directly related to mobile ministry efforts.

Time to catch up on some of the latest thought and opinion around the mobile industry with the Carnival of the Mobilists. As of last month, the Carnival of the Mobilists has moved to a once-per-month format. That means higher quality articles, but definitely some things that might get lost in the queue (if you aren’t also following these analysts, bloggers, companies on Twitter).

This month’s Carnival (#245) is being hosted at Tego Interactive. Grab a warm drink and lay back with your mobile/tablet/PC device of choice to enjoy.

If you are writing in mobile, and have a blog to which you are posting these items to, submit your article for inclusion into the Carnival. Even if its not selected for the monthly roundup, you will get some additional eyes for your content. For information on how to go about submitting, visit the Carnival of the Mobilists website, or follow @cotmobilists on Twitter and follow the instructions as they are posted.

LJ from Trailblazin Ministries has put together a nice overview of the new Logos 4 software and Microsoft OneNote 2010 software. Pretty neat stuff.

logos 4 via Trailblazin Ministries