A Mobile Strategy for Life, not Just A Season

Earlier this month, I was reading over at the Wapple Blog and a title from one of their posts from the end of last year caught my attention: Mobile Strategy is for Life, not just Christmas. As I pondered how that title rocked me (the content of the article fills in the blanks), its struck me at how with many mobile (Internet, radio, TV) ministry efforts, the tool’s use starts and ends with evangelism. Once the person recieves Christ, essentially both the tech and the people associated with the tech go away.

In conversations about similar observations with some others, I’ve heard things like “yea, those are just tools to get them in the door, the local church needs to take over,” or, “we don’t see [mobile/web/media] technology able to facilitate the things we’d like to do in ministry relationally.” Don’t get me wrong, I get it. But, I wonder if such viewpoints constrain our ability to not just innovate with evangelistic efforts, but we end up missing the other demonstrations of life after the Gospel is preached. And not just after, we actually end up missing the places and opportunities for evangelism in what should be the most obvious of circumstances.

In what ways can mobile minsitry stick around for the lifetime of an evangelistic endeavor? I’ve heard of educational engagements where the Bible was used to teach people how to read/write/trade with other economic groups. Couldn’t the use of mobile in minsitry track along the same lines (instead of a book, we are using a mobile, and taking different steps towards language learning and interaction due to the unique characteristics of mobile)? Some groups talk about going into areas and starting their approach to evangelism with health and wellness. So why wouldn’t you take advantage of the access that some might have to a mobile device to provoke behavioral changes which keep them healthy long after the funding of your endeavors have you leave their presence?

I’m not saying that you have to skip preaching the Gospel, or even propose that you water-down the message. No. What I’m saying is that if you are bold enough to say that the tech is good enough for the season of getting someone aware of the nearness of the Kingdom of God, that you also need to be bold enough to stick around longer than the season – with that tech channel as part of your teaching/discipleship efforts. I like how the Wapple piece put it:

Those who didn’t implement a mobile strategy in time for the festive season not only missed their share of these sales but may also miss out on future sales as consumers offer their loyalty to brands who delivered them a merry mobile Christmas.

Its not just about mkaing best use of the evangelizing season. Its about preparing and being presented as ready for the implications of evangelism.

Mobile Beyond Missional Evangelism

I was recently exposed to some information that has me looking a bit more circumspectly around the aims and demonstrations of mobile ministry. That information, though confidental in orgin and application, does open a point that is a bit more openly talked about – the need for something beyond missional evangelism as methods of engaging and maintaining faith communities.

Beyond missional evangelism? Yes. Beyond simply reaching outward with messages of salvation. Where are those efforts that reach into the fabric of lifestyles, usually lifestyles which leave little room or consideration for finishing the thought, “what are the ethical and spiritual implications of this course of life I’ve chosen?”

Some of us have heard of efforts such as Business as Mission (BAM), where the aims are to transform the economic fortunes of a community by using the Gospel as a foundational method for training, apprentiseship, and business sustainability. What happens when mobile ministry applies some of the same constructs towards its efforts? I think that we get something that looks like an extension of the experience layers that compose Mobile in Education/Discipleship, Mobile in Media, Mobile in Analytics/Development/Marketing, and Mobile in Missions/Evangelism (read our previous discussion on these areas of mobile ministry).

If you will, instead of starting with “let me give you this religious application,” we go the route of “let me train you will this skill that will enable you to share your life, while displaying a lifestyle that mimics Christ’s.” This can look like creating software developers, but I think that it also looks like multi-linugal teachers. It looks like the person who build the nets for fishing who is learning on the side how to create classes on how to manage issues with his family as a community counselor. It looks like the oral story teller who is learning how to record themselves on video for younger age groups. Or… well, what does it look like?

That document that was shared with me asks that missions takes out of its head this idea that there’s a funded group of persons for short and long term engagements and exchanges that for persons capable of starting and maintining businesses which speak to the need for economic and spiritual enablement in those areas. Given what I’ve seen from rural, urban, and international missional engagements, I think there’s a good chance for spiritually-driven entreprenurs to pull this off. For mobile ministry, this might be the best course of sustainability.

Your thoughts?

A Church Based on Movement not Preaching

We hear it in sermons often, “the church isn’t what happens in the pews on Sunday, but what you do in your communities throughout the week.” And yet we continue to place the event of sitting for singing and the preached word as central to the sustainability of faith. What if we could be the kind of roving fellowship to which a static location wasn’t key to spiritual sustainability, and the types of interactions as well as our travel in between them, became the mode of living? What if fellowship was determined to be most effective when it was a series of smaller, sometimes more random, meetings, and then the weekly gathering was a look at the stories that happened in those moments – a weekly YouTube channel of your social connections around your city and places of life/work/entertainment? Would it look something like the Mo Mobility System?

I hear it often from pastors that they’d want more members that think and act like this? But, without incentives for organic fellowship, or being able to model such mobility to people who aren’t single, entrepreneurs, or upwardly affluent to gather like this, how could you pull this off? Is reinventing our cities the answer where our churches aren’t able to move out of that behavioral caste?

From Tech Evangelism to Standing on One’s Own

I was reading some information recently about some evangelistic engagements happening in various parts of the world, and lots of these are being started with the mindset of using the Gospel as the leg to stand on that will improve the social conditions of various areas. Many times, missional or evangelical engagements start with this idea, but end up succeeding or failing because of the immediate next domino – how does the group being evangelized then stand on its own?

For example, you (or your organization) starts an effort to educate a social group because it has been identified that the location is well trafficked and that there are several people in that area who have shown a hunger for learning. Your methods involve establishing a school, and you account for the people, the building, and even much of the startup expenses related to at least getting 6 months to a full year to see it through. What’s left to do but to go there right?

Well, not exactly. You are developing a school, so what is the curriculum that you will be using? What will be your measures of success? Because you are effectively building a well in an oasis, how you you going to navigate the other areas of society that will be effected by the introduction of a place of education? You’ll need laborers to help with cleaning, and you might need to have a backup plan towards how you’ll acquire and support teachers? What kinds of other activities will that building employ? And how does the establishment of an educated class of people prepare for life after that education if there are no jobs befitting what they’ve just learned in that region yet?

The last question tends to be the one that should make us all pause a bit when it comes to our engagement of others with the Gospel by computer-based methods. We’ll gladly educate them on the things of the Word. Equipping them to skillfully speak and handle the Word of God to address moral and psychological wounds that might be present. But, what’s next? How did we help them to also create opportunities for those infrastructure or technical needs that might be present?

I wonder, if when establishing our technology-driven evangelistic methods, if we could also have a focus on the other skills (lately, that’s been sounding a lot like Exodus 25-27 like skills)? Which not only will allow those groups to demonstrate the Gospel, but to also provide a means of supporting themselves beyond the initial generations taught.

May is Digital Outreach Month

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.

Age and Languages Poke Questions Before Mobile Media

A few recent conversations have me thinking a good bit about age and multiple languages, and how mobile addresses but also adds questions.

The first is that of the iPad and learning. I was approached by an older woman who wanted to ask and observe me on my iPad for a bit. This has been happening more recently as I’ve been drawing in public spaces. Nevertheless, she asked me about the iPad, what I use it for, and then wanted to see me in use with it. One of the things that caught me off guard was when she remarked that in going to the Apple Store, that there was too much noise and activity there for her to concentrate on the product(s) she wanted to know more about.

That leads me to this question: while we are used to a stadium-sermon approach for many aspects of teaching, would it be better to offer bite-sized aspects of content from church/ministry websites instead of entire sermons. Giving folks something more personalized, and maybe even having some kind of small group around that content that allows people to ask questions of that “shortened” content?

The second situation has to do with a friend of a friend who is an evangelist specifically to Spanish-speaking and Latin/South American nations. We were being introduced to one another and he wanted to throw against my mind something that he has been thinking about in respect to making certain types of content available to the thousands of pastors that he’s connected with. Amongst the many questions that I had, I again came back to this thought of concentrating on what people wanted – if you will, not filling the channel with the junk that people go for because its there, but with what they need.

Which led me to thinking about the way that we consume and approach media from different backgrounds. With the first situation, I could reference my context and speak to that woman basked on what I could assume (from a few factors). With the second, I had to ask more questions, many of them which he could not answer because he’s more or less designed to go to where he’s sent, not really to know the specific demographics of whom he effects.

With these, I am usually asked around the technical side of things: “what can we build to get this audience to do ‘something’?” And yet, the question isn’t really a technical one, its really a sociological one – and one where I am balancing what I know and what questions it is that can be answered. Believe it or not, its much easier for me to ask these questions than to solve the technical issues – however its always harder to get answers to those questions which speak to what exactly needs to be addressed.

Framing this into mobile…

Many media engagements are at the point now where they are saying with little to no hesitation, “if we are going to do this, then we need to go mobile.” Which is good. You are making an effort to think about and address the personal nature of some kind of content production. However, in “going mobile” are you asking – and therefore answering – the right questions as it relates to what needs to be addressed? Or, are you merely looking at mobile as the technical answer to your channel-filling needs? Because there’s a lot more to the channel than the type of pipe and faucet. There’s someone on the other end that has a reference and a need to be touched with some aspect of the Gospel. Are you answering that?

Mobile Activity: Observation and Investigation

Time for another mobile activity. In our last one, we took a big step – you were asked to try becoming a publishing point for Gospel content that you created yourself. In that activity, you essentially were able to do similar to what Bible societies and publishers have done for a few thousand year,

This time, we are going the investigative-conversational route of a journalist. With the end result of having the elements of a story that can be created in one of several modes.

For the following activity you will need:

Any mobile phone (preferably yours)
The ability to record video or audio
Courage

Step One:

Get associated with your mobile device. Take some time to figure out whether you can record audio or video.

Usually, there’s an application called Voice Recorder or Recorder on your device to do this. On some devices, this functionality is built into the Notes application. For videos, you should find this feature within the camera settings for your mobile.

Step Two:

Make a trip to a place where there’s a steady, but not necessarily high amount of people traffic (coffeeshops are great, libraries, waiting rooms, and food courts are great).

Your first goal here is to observe and note how people are using their mobile devices. Either by recording your voice, or the people themselves (get permission before you do this), note things such as how they maintain eye contact within conversations, whether or not they “play” with the device while in conversation, etc. Are there some people taking pictures of various items? Or, do you hear conversations about applications, ease (or dis-ease) of use, etc. Note these items in your “journal.”

Step Three:

This is where courage comes in. When opportunity presents itself, approach a person (or a small group) and ask them simply if they like their mobile device? Ask this question openly, giving them room to expand on reasons why they might like or not like the device.

You’ll be asked “why do you ask” and your response can be that you “are doing a mobile activity for Mobile Ministry Magazine. Its an activity designed to help me better understand how people are using mobile devices, and how I can better understand them in the context of my faith.”

After that, allow the conversation to take its course.

Here’s Your Opportunity: Open the Door

As you can tell, this kind of activity can easily get into evangelizing about your faith. It can also dive into a conversation about devices, apps, games, or challenges with mobile. The goal though is to simply open the door of conversation, and before you converse, you’ve already investigated the environment and gotten a base understanding of the context. In a sense, your time in observation will allow you to not ask the wrong questions.

We talked about being like a journalist in this activity. And that’s definitely the case – observing, recording, and questioning your environment. Your story elements are there, and now you can begin to put together a picture of the social fabric of that area. When you asked the question about liking one’s mobile, you shed some light on one aspect of social life, and as you dug into faith or other topics, you added color, layers to the story. What you ended up with is a picture of that environment, and all the information you’d need to respond by faith to the needs there. Imagine doing this exercise with youth or singles’ groups – what kinds of different stories could come from this investigation of life and faith?

Once you’ve had this conversation, note it and mark what you did right or wrong. Come back to this post also and share your experiences. What could have made broaching the conversations easier? Or, how could your mobile been better able to help you during that observational period?

Personal Testimony/Caution:

I commonly do this behavior – and usually over the course of weeks am I doing the observations. In many cases, I’ve got to take a little longer in explaining and demonstrating MMM as the question, “do you like your mobile,” I’ve been told can come off like a pick up line. To that end, I’ll simply say be mindful of whom you are asking, and the context in which you approach anyone – depending on your heart/walk and their’s, this could be interpreted differently. Be respectful above all things.

Previous Mobile Activities/Experiments:

For more information on activities similar to this, read our MMM Mobile Web Server Experiment Report (available in PDF, Google Doc, and blog post (pt1, pt2, pt3) formats) and the last mobile activity – Creating an Opportunity for Gospel Interactions.

Retweets of the Week (Jan 30 – Feb 5)

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.

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Mobile Ministry Magazine

Asking questions, presenting approaches, and experiments at the intersection of faith and mobile

Tag Archives: evangelism

A Mobile Strategy for Life, not Just A Season