A few weeks back, DJ Chuang of Social Media Church got in contact with us wanting for an interview for their weekly podcast on church and tech. That interview has gone live as of a few days ago. It goes about 30min, and you’ll hear a lot more about how MMM got started, what keeps it going, and some areas that this magazine will continue to push into.
Social Media Church, Episode 26 – Interview w/Antoine from Mobile Ministry Magazine
Am a bit late in getting this up here, but wanted to keep with the trend of the past few weeks of getting some kind of personal story on the site to close out the editioral week. In this instance, Antoine (the Founder and Primary Voice behind MMM) was interviewed by Charlotte Viewpoint Magazine’s Shannise Jackson-Ndiaye. Here’s a snippet of the interview:
SJN:Is it possible for believers to be authentic and convey a transparent message using digital technology?
ARJW: I went from a purely analog to a digital existence in the span of twenty years. Young People’s behavioral context today is different than someone born thirty years ago. So we have all these contexts that say I can move my faith from these digital means as long as I am transmitting something that the Apostles can smell, and say “yeah that looks like the faith Jesus taught us.”
SJN: What are some of the pitfalls?
ARJW: Boundaries! We teach don’t watch no more than one hour of television but we don’t teach boundaries for digital technology because it is still a fairly new behavior. We need to have boundaries for our digital lifestyle, like read the terms of service for the technology we use.
Creativity! Creation, creativity, and production; 10% of the people online are the only ones producing and 90% of us are consuming.
Accountability! That I am not tweeting just because I want to be heard but I am adding value to the lives of those people who are passing through my life through this media stream. So there are implications to us walking through those streams and as ministers we need to make sure that I am utilizing not just for my best use but for those who are plucking from my tree of life. For congregants, I am also in this space and I have just as much of a voice as my pastor does. Publishing says that everyone has the same voice. If it is a video, Instagram, or Youtube let it minister grace unto the listeners and viewers.
Read the rest of The 21st Century Church and the Digital Testimony at Charlotte Viewpoint
Other interviews have been noted here. For speaking or interview requests, please use this form to note your inquiry.
Airplanes are interesting places. Recently, I found myself sitting directly behind Brian Russell from YouVersion on a trip and had the chance to catch up with him regarding happenings at YouVersion and life. While the chat was informal, I was able to ask a few questions which he allowed to be shared here:
MMM: What has been your watershed/best moment to date with YouVersion?
BR: God continues to show us that the best is yet to come. As exciting as it is to see more than 65 million people using YouVersion to spend time in God’s Word, we believe that we could see half a billion or even a billion people someday engaging with Scripture. Instead of accepting predictions that Bible engagement will follow a downward trend, we believe our generation could become the most Bible-engaged generation in history.
MMM: Being that we are on an airplane, and YouVersion travels well (languages, etc); how do you see YouVersion being a part of brokering moments where people are in close proximity with mobile devices want to share the Bible with one another?
BR: People frequently let us know that they are able to share the Bible App with someone right when they need it or during the moment an opportunity presents itself. Here’s a recent example. But proximity is helpful not only in the sharing of the app, but in spending more time in God’s Word. When the Bible is on your mobile device, there are more opportunities for it to intersect your daily life. Many people tell us they read the Bible more than they ever have in the past for the simple reason that they always have it with them.
MMM: I see you have an a few Apple devices going. As a team, what device(s) is/are in your pocket?
BR: Our team uses a wide range of mobile devices to make sure we are well versed on multiple platforms. We’re committed to using today’s and tomorrow’s technology to help people engage in Scripture.
Brian is the Global Partnership & Community Pastor with YouVersion’s community (@brianjrussell). YouVersion is the leading Bible application for just about every mobile device platform available today. For more information about YouVersion, visit their blog or freely download the YouVersion app onto your mobile device/PC and be a part of the “most Bible-engaged generation in history.”
I know that the content lately has been leaning heavily on ICCM, as we were recently there. But, what can I say, ICCM seems to have caught the attention of several people from various perspectives of life, faith, and tech.
BBC Outriders Interview
One of those who connected with us because of this was Jamillah Knowles who is the UK editor for The Next Web, but also still contributes to the BBC Outriders podcast that takes a look at the long-tail of the things happening with web and tech. Jamillah asked if I could answer a few questions about the recent ICCM event, as well as get caught up a bit towards what’s happening in faith and technology since the last time MMM appeared on Outriders. Here’s a snippet of what was talked about:
Over the weekend there was a big conference in the US for those who work with technology for the Christian faith. The International Conference on Computing and Mission or ICCM is a way for people to get together and talk about advances and uses for their technical work. And to geek out a little bit. Our friend Antoine Wright was there, he runs the website Mobile Ministry Magazine. We had a chat about technology, religion and the cool things he saw at ICCM.
Check out the entire podcast (BBC Outriders | MMM) and check out the other subjects Outriders covers in other podcast episodes. MMM’s segment appears beginning at the 13:45 mark.
Quoted in Charlotte Viewpoint
In addition, MMM’s founder (Antoine RJ Wright) was quoted in an article at Charlotte Viewpoint which talked about this past Spring’s Ignite Charlotte talks. I was a presenter at the TED-like event and talked on the notion of using one’s digital devices for more than just the passive activity of reading and consuming.
Wright, who enjoys capturing life’s moments by drawing them on his iPad, talked about using technology as more than just a social networking tool. More specifically, he suggested using computers or internet applications like Instagram as a “catalyst to see our world differently.”
“If we can use the technology to see those things we may become a better participant in the world around us…It’s easy to see the black and white, right and wrong, death, life, somebody [is] born and somebody died. It’s really easy to see those black and white events. It’s another thing when you filter it through color,” Wright said.
Read the rest of Ignite Charlotte Inspires Individuals, Communities at Charlotte Viewpoint
Interview Requests
Are you interested in interviewing MMM for your program about faith and technology, or other matters that are appropriate for your audiences? Get in contact with us and we can make that happen.
Over at Mobile Advance continues their 10 Questions interview series of people involved in and around mobile ministry activities.
The latest of these interviews is with Antoine RJ Wright (wait, that’s the guy who runs this place). Here’s a snippet of that interview:
5. What are some of the biggest obstacles to implementing effective mobile ministry? For you/your ministry? For the Christian world in general?
Mobile is still very new for many ministries. Some have just figured out how to get on the Internet train consistently, and mobile adds a layer of knowledge and engagement that should be familiar, but has unique challenges many aren’t ready to answer. For MMM, our challenge is getting people to talk about their challenges and successes with mobile. We’d be just fine if there was an easier way to get folks to document what they are attempting. For the Christian world, mobile is just big. And its unique in every instance. Many don’t focus on discipleship as much as they do activity and teaching, and so they miss that personalized level of life that mobile and discipleship tend to sit on. Mobile requires that kind of on-the-ground relationship…
Over at Mobile Advance continues their 10 Questions interview series of people involved in and around mobile ministry activities. The last two interviews are with PBW (Kutsal Kitap, @KKorg) and Stephen Coates. Here’s a snippet of the interview with Stephen Coates:
8. What part of mobile ministry does the Church need to bring more effort and focus to?
The media arts and the music and poetry of the scriptures.
9. What aspect of mobile is overrated in your mind? Why?That you can reach anyone! It is not that simple, though much of the world has cell phones they don’t all have the bandwidth or data plan to access the video and audio we put out.
Check out both of these interviews at Mobile Advance: Interview with PBW | Interview with Stephen Coates.
Over at Mobile Advance continues their 10 Questions interview series of people involved in and around mobile ministry activities.
The latest of these interviews is with Tim Jore (Distant Shores Media, Door 43). Here’s a snippet of that interview:
7. What is one hard earned lesson in ministry you would want to pass on to others here?
“The future of the global church is Open.” We started to realize how severely copyright restrictions on discipleship resources hinder the spiritual growth of the global church shortly after getting into mobile ministry. We had to derail a key mobile ministry project because there would be no way to obtain the legal permission to use the copyrighted resources as needed, or manage the restrictions for thousands of languages with potentially hundreds of millions of content consumers and creators. This realization is the direct motivation for the launch of the Door43 project (http://door43.org/) and the vision of “unrestricted discipleship resources in every language, and on any mobile phone”…
Over at Mobile Advance a new interview series called 10 Questions. Here, Mobile Advance interviews people involved in and around mobile ministry activities.
The latest of these interviews is with Alex Kerr from the UK. Here’s a snippet of that interview:
5. What are some of the biggest obstacles to implementing effective mobile ministry? For you/your ministry? For the Christian world in general?
A couple of things I think need to be overcome in mobile ministry in general to see it being as effective as it can be. Firstly, a raising of awareness amongst churches globally that the mobile phone is a channel to reach people in general, and especially youth (though most certainly not limited to them). I know big, globally known churches, that don’t even have mobile on their radar. It does depend who your audience is for a particular outreach – maybe mobile really isn’t appropriate for something – but generally I think awareness needs to increase considerably, just so it’s at least on the table in people’s minds as an option (along with other routes to reach people)…
Over at Mobile Advance a new interview series called 10 Questions has started. Here, Mobile Advance will be interviewing several people involved in and around mobile ministry activities.
The first of these interviews is with James Thomas of Global Recording Networks (GRN). Here’s a snippet of that interview:
2. How and why did you become involved with mobile ministry?
Global Recordings Network sees mobile devices as being an important distribution medium for their audio and video content. Mobile phones (cell phones) are prolific in the developing world. Phones with media player capability provide a personal means for unreached oral communicators to hear the story about Jesus in their heart language. It is for these reasons and the fact that I recently joined GRN coming from a mobile engineering background that I became involved with mobile ministry.
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 
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.