If you are in or near mobile, then chances are you are around a lot of voices. All of these voices vie for your attention – whether its a call, text message, music and multimedia, and even the vibration of something happening towards the former three items. Its because of this personal and very immediate stimuli that mobile has been a disruptive technology for so many people. Its introduction to life has literally changed every culture that it had touched.

Though mobile changes a lot of facets of life; there will be some areas where the technology enables the change that was already simmering, and others where people will find innovative uses of tech that more or less works along with the technology.

What I like though is the understanding that tech isn’t the answer. It requires a response, and that response will change our lives. If you will, the tech points the very need that individual and communities would have. I like how this article puts it:

…The mistake both the utopians and neo-Luddites make is by giving too much credence to the idea that technology can fundamentally change human nature. For every article about how Twitter will save the world, a cyber-fatalist will argue that smartphones have turned us all into zombies. Both are wrong. It is not technology per se that has the power to change the world (for good or bad), but rather the innovation and creativity of the people enabling and using it.

Of course, technology isn’t the answer – its just a tool, and one that ends up being more or less another manner of bringing the reality of our human-ness (or brokenness) closer to one another. We have to be adept with these tools, but really understand that for that it is,its just another part in that story of how technology has threaded our lives.

Hence why I like mobile (as a tool, media, and movement). It causes us to think about the personal application of technology, and how life ensues afterward.

Hence, why I really like what could happen in the Body. It doesn’t take much to see that mobile has and will continue to not just foster new communication activities. It will also add a bit of spice towards how the Body adapts to and molds culture around it. I see mobile merely pointing a way to innovation – so that the voice of the Christ remains not just something people are going to hear, but be able to hear to the point of wanting to do life on different – God’s – terms. How the Body uses mobile to tell and share its story will show this voice of innovation, and life around the Body will then be threaded in His effectual graces.

Mobile Trends 2020

Via IntoMobile

Here are my five (as posted on Twitter a few days ago). Items are posted with a link to the associated tweet so that you could either respond here or there.

1. Mobile will be the primary avenue for telling the church’s story over the next 10yrs (tweet)
2. Mobile increases the church’s need to have cross-functional knowledge of culture and context (tweet)
3. Censorship and copyright will drive mobile sharing of religious texts to innovative solutions (tweet)
4. Mobile will be vilified by a significant generation of traditionally-minded church and lay leaders (tweet)
5. Education + genuine faith + mobile = education and community redefined (L. Amer India, & Africa)(tweet)

Ok folks, given the several trends spoken, as well as the MMM-5, do you have any thoughts on these – especially in terms of what you are seeing in the places you are in. Remember, one of the characteristics of mobile is that its personal and hyper-local. Where is this media going, and how do we steer it within the context of it intersection with faith? Because what we experience as tech in the Body, will not be the same experience of those considered youth now.

*The hashtag in the title is deliberate as I’d like to see this link automatically when this posts to Twitter.

I know that MMM harps a lot about ebooks, electronic Bibles and such, but there’s really a good reason for doing so – there’s no innovation there. At the intersection of faith and mobile tech, at the very least, a Bible reader should be enabling the story and history of Christianity to be better engaged. But, we just haven’t seen too many folks push enough. So, here’s a little bump called Mag+:

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Forget what is or isn’t possible, watch it and think about how you read – and interact – with the Bible on a contextual basis. Does your Bible reader offer this level of engagement? And if not, shouldn’t we help them get to this level of simplicity?

Here’s a press release about a new product called Twext from the folks at Church Community Builder (CCB). Seems like a solid product for those organizations who’d like to add the additional broadcast layers of Twitter and texting to their church/organizational communications.

Colorado Springs, CO, JANUARY 4, 2010—Church Community Builder (CCB) (http://www.churchcommunitybuilder.com), the pioneer of socially-based church management (ChMS), has released an innovative new communications tool that combines Text Messaging and Twitter – called CCB Twext – that will provide church and small group leaders with leading edge communications capabilities.

“Effective communication tools are critical for all churches. Because CCB highly values the interactive social nature of church communities, adding Text Messaging as a communication option was a no-brainer for us,” states Steve Caton, VP of Sales and Marketing. “However, we really wanted to take the next step by providing a way to seamlessly integrate texting with Twitter, thereby adding yet another communications vehicle to the mix where appropriate.”

CCB Twext™ Offers the Following Benefits:

Group Texting: In addition to email and mail merge, every Group Leader has the option to communicate with their Group participants via Text Messaging.

Twitter Integration: If a group within the church has its own Twitter account, the Group Leader can add that account to their CCB Group. When utilized, a Text Message sent to the group will also immediately post as a Tweet on the group Twitter™ feed. This further extends the reach of the Text Message to those who may not receive text messages but are a member of the Twitter group.

Member Controlled: Group members have full control over their ability to receive text messages. They must proactively edit their CCB profile before receiving them. This ensures people don’t end up paying for text messages they do not wish to receive.

CCB Twext represents another major milestone and differentiator for CCB’s innovative church management solution. In addition to providing benefits to the entire congregation, CCB also offers the most robust communication tools to your leadership so they can remain connected to those they serve in the most relevant manner possible. For more information or to speak with someone at Church Community Builder about this and other valuable functionality, email sales@churchcommunitybuilder.com or call 1-866-242-1199.

Via The Digital Sanctuary:

Dallas Theological Seminary’s Center for Christian Leadership is hosting Shane Hipps, author of Flickering Pixels (my review), for a one day conference in Dallas called The Electronic Gospel: How Technology Shapes Our Faith on February 8th, 2010… John Dyer will lead one on controlling technology in our daily lives, Scott McClellan of Collide Magazine will lead a session on social media, and Bill Buchanan of Irving Bible Church will lead one on technology in the worship service.

This looks like a great conference. Don’t see MMM going as there’s a scheduling conflict (and poor planning on my part), but we will try and get some coverage of it from various vantage points.

For more information and to register, visit the The Electronic Gospel: How Technology Shapes Our Faith website.

Let’s start off this year on the right foot with a simple question (reposted from MMM’s Twitter actually)

How does mobile change the behavior of living out the message in between the Sundays?

Since Time Online is calling 2010 the year of the mobile – maybe I was two years early in my prediction – this would be an apt question with which to frame our thoughts behind mobile/web use and how our faith is shaped with/by it.

Am writimg this on the Nokia N900 with MaStory (formerly WordPy) and in many ways this device represents a point that some have realized, mobile computing is here to stay. Sure, everyone won’t do everything from their mobile, but the capabilities are there to do more than most had imagined. And along with some mobile interations which are specific to this media, life changes.

Thing is, mobile is a personal movement too. It changes according to the user’s context and at the same time submits to it. After a good bit of reading and reflecting, it seems the Body is changing likewise. Changing to fit the contexts of tech, new minorities/majorities, and a call to be organic and orthodox-like ridgid. Kind of fun of fun if you ask me.

For this site it means we too will change and adapt. But starting things on a mobile happens to be good enough for now. From here, its all about people and engaging them in their context while giving them Christ’s context. For how we do mobile, this is the way forward.

This is so beyond just a website that its cool. mGive is a very cool serivce that allows non-profits and charities to receive donations via contributors mobile devices. And this is mostly an SMS-based service. From their website:

mGive allows your organization to raise money through text message donations. Supporters of your cause send a text message to your keyword & short code and their $5 or $10 donation is applied to their cell phone bill. Once you create a campaign, you can drive awareness via print, radio, television, online and social network adverts.

mGive provides a campaign-specific keyword, a shared shortcode (for use across several mobile carriers), online reporting and marketing tools, widgets for many blogs and social networks, a volunteer management tool, SMS scheduler, and donor collection reports.

The serivce is limited to US mobile carriers at this time (seems as if carrier billing is enabled). But for the most part can allow many organizations to get started with mobile giving pretty quickly. Check out the mGive website, Facebook, or Twitter for more information.

Ever since doing the MMM Mobile Experiment Report (PDF), I’ve had this uneasy feeling about continuing a website here. Don’t get me wrong, in terms of a place for people to see MMM in its most unfiltered manner, a website is probably one of the best tools for this. As a person though, I’m mobile – very mobile – therefore the idea of a website being tied to a person, and therfore becoming more than a website has been something that has just kind of sat on the edge of those things I experiment with, its something that I’m just personally trying to pull off. I do wonder often because of this experience though if I really need a website.

Now, for most ministries, the question isn’t so much do they need a website, but ratherwhat’s the best use for their website? If you will, how does the website accurately and easily point the way to connecting and understanding the purpose of your organization. And I think that’s where the question about MMM’s website really comes from.

Sure, there’s editorial-like content here; and, this is good for a website to have. But what about those other, connecting. aspects of that interesection of mobile and minsitry. A website doesn’t serve as solid a purpose as IM, SMS, picture galleries, and voice. How a ministry/organization is able to use all of these social connecting components to be whom they are – along with the website – is that key point of strategy that I think is missing, or not well executed.

Many of the changes that have happened here lately have been in the idea that MMM might not be a website as much as part of one’s social graph to which the website is one of many spokes that can be connected to. And then in this social graph, MMM becomes whatever is needed to those persons and groups that would benefit from the knowledge and connections here.

In light of where we are, and where we want to go, this is one of those questions that sit pretty high. Because MMM is not necessarly trying to go where the trends are, but where they will be in mobile/web/context/etc. Does your ministry/org have the same views towards their website and other outreaches, and if not, maybe that’s something of a question to carry throughout the new year.

Original Comments

There’s a lot of data consumed between the pages/posts of MMM. Much of this data is read, questioned, and then makes its way here as posts or tweets. Some of it takes longer than others. Here are some links to some pieces of research and reading that has contributed to MMM content this year:

• Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media (Tomi Ahonen)
• Mobile Almanac 2009 (Tomi Ahonen)
• Open Mobile (Ajit Jaokar, Anna Gatti)
• Don’t Make Me Think (Steve Krug)
• Launching into Cyberspace: Internet Development and Politics in Five World Regions(Marcus Franda)
• Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work (Tamara Erickson)
• The Blogging Church (Brian Bailey)
• Smart Mobs (Howard Rheingold)

If you have any research or reading material that you’d think would be great content to contribute to the growing body of knowledge of those things mobile, web, culture, etc., feel free to drop a line – I only ask that it would be electronically available on more than one mobile platform 😉