Tag Archives: mobile ministry

ICCM USA 2013 (3x the MMM)

In the coming weeks, MMM will be heading to the ICCM USA Conference in Taylor, Indiana. And as with the last two conferences, the focus on mobile makes for a decent opportunity to share insights and forward areas of discussion. For example, a conversation at ICCM last year led to the acquisition of a Nokia N950 and a few conversations on open source technologies used on the mission field.

At this coming ICCM event, MMM will be in the mix for at least three of the mobile sessions happening, and given their topics, it should make for some interesting pathways forward.

The first talk MMM will be in on is called The Theology of Mobile Ministry. Here’s its abstract:

The speed of acquisition and use of mobile devices presents a sociological argument for understanding mobile ministry. The emphasis on services and applications presents the technological arguments we are already well familiar with. This presentation will present some of the theological points for understanding and engaging mobile ministry.

A theology-first discussion on mobile tech? Yup. And I’m hoping that it will lead towards an opening of tech and faith discussions on this wise outside of the academic community. This is a topic designed to fit alongside our goals for 2013, so this conference probably won’t be the only one that this information is shared.

After that session, MMM will be leading a panel discussion on the subject of BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices) and what that means for your ministry. This isn’t totally a new topic (think: laptops), but it has caught all kinds of positive and negative press because what it has meant towards IT teams supporting efforts, folks on the field making evangelistic efforts, and ministry leaders who want to stay on top of keeping all of this activity cohesive.

The third and final topic that MMM will be facilitating is a mobile workshop titled Sharing Content FROM Your Mobile.

The challenge for many ministries who want to go about using mobiles in ministry is that the practice of sharing info when on the field doesn’t match what’s done at home. This will be a workshop demonstrating methods of how to share content from mobile devices using several conventional and unconventional methods. Attendees will be active participants and all will be required to use some kind of mobile device during this session.

Now, this seems like it would be one of those easy topics, but the audience attending ICCM works in places where doing something like attaching a file to email, sending a Dropbox link, or even throwing up a server, just doesn’t make sense. Where the wrench happens here is for those groups who are ministering in communities which already have a significant mobile base who is sharing content, but they don’t know how or what’s going on. This workshop will have folks learning how to share content from their devices right in the session, with some notes about what’s happening in the ministry space around them.

At this point, I do have to apologize if you’ve not heard of ICCM before and this is a conference that you want to attend (were you not subscribed to the #mobmin Calendar). Registration is closed. We’ll do our best to make sure the presentation decks to hit the site right around the time the presentations happen on our end. You will want to stay tuned to the ICCM website and its social media hubs for other presenters’ decks.

About ICCM

The International Conference on Computing and Mission (ICCM) is an annual informal (NOties allowed) gathering of women and men who have
a common interest in computers and mission. We share a vision of cooperation for effective use of technology, bringing the Gospel to every nation.

This conference has been going on for almost 25 years, and from what I understand from those who have been there many times, its always a point of not just hearing something new, but being refreshed towards ministry efforts personally, in family, socially, and in organizations. Yea, there’s a helping of geeks whom are there, but its always quite friendly no matter where you are technologically.

One thing that I will note, just in case you miss this one and want to come to another. ICCM is a family-friendly conference. Meaning that there are several attendees who bring their kids along (a couple on the planning team brought their new addition to the conference last year). I’ve noticed that there are women-only sessions, there was a psychologist there last year to help with personal/internal items, and there’s always a section of the time devoted to prayer in small groups and community worship. Its indeed not a normal conference, and at the same time, its how the Body connects with itself.

For more information, including conference information about the Europe and Australia editions of ICCM, visit their website. And if you will be there in June, I look forward to connecting with you there.

Ministry in the Digital Age, IE Day Contest

Ministry in the Digital Age

Was good to see this note of Dave Bourgeois’s book Ministry in the Digital Age now being available.

…What are the best evidence-based practices to implement? How do you best truly integrate digital, rather than just bolting on a few social networking options to an unchanged structure?

For these things are no longer optional luxuries. Any ministry or non-profit without an effective digital and social media policy, owned and understood by the whole team, is doomed to near invisibility and likely failure.

Dr Bourgeois takes you through both the strategic planning and the practical steps for implementation. On his book page, he explains the background to the book, with an online preview of the introduction and appendices…

That news was found via our friends at Internet Evangelism Day, who also highlighted that post with a contest to win a copy of Ministry in the Digital Age. Here are the details:

Do any of these things before the end of May, then email me to say where I can find it along with your postal address, and the winner, chosen at random, will receive get the book:

  • Tweet about this page using this ready-made link, or include the #ieway hashtag
  • Share this review on a Facebook group or personal page
  • Link to or republish this review (an edited summary is fine) in a blog
  • Syndicate our blog posts to your Facebook personal or group page using Networked Blogs
  • Embed our daily Paper.li news roundup into the margin of any webpage or blog – just copy the code from the ‘Share > embed this newspaper’ link at top-right of Digital Evangelism Resources.

Makes for a solid investment, and once my summer swing gets done, I’m sure we’ll have a copy of this in hand to get reading on as well.

For more information about Dave Bourgeois and his work in digital ministry, check out his website and see the fruits of that work with the Biola Digital Ministry Conference.

Renew Outreach’s Mobile Media Conversion Training Center

The folks at Renew Outreach have been kicking out the activity in mobile ministry lately. From our literal witness, they’ve gone from having a passing impression of mobile for ministry in their space, to becoming an on-the-ground leader towards enabling their ministry activities forward with the aid of mobile ministry techniques. One of the features they’ve introduced that really impresses me is a Media Conversion Training Center. The Media Conversion Training Center is a “step-by-step guides to convert Gospel media (whether that’s the Jesus Film, the audio Bible, GRN, other media or your own creations) into formats that will play on various different platforms.”

What’s really neat about this training center is that its not only for the content that Renew has for their devices, they’ve essentially given some depth to standards for mobile media distribution for anyone. See the below images for what they are doing:

     

The fruit of that work can be seen in this video produced by Renew from work in Inquitos, Peru:

Really neat work and something that many ministries have been looking to do for sometime. Renew has been working on a series called Mobile Ministry in Action which gets into more specifics about these activities and what they are doing as an organization to move forward.

For more information and to engage Renew Outreach for mobile ministry efforts, visit their website.

May Videocast

In this month’s video, Mobile Ministry Magazine’s Antoine RJ Wright tackles a user submitted question on mobile phone research, talks about some upcoming events, and expresses a bit of sadness at a broken tablet.

Creating a Mobile & Online Classroom

I’m in the midst of creating an online class, and specifically doing some edits for the content that’s already been created. The instructional designer for the school I’m working with has gotten back to me with several notes, and much of it are items that probably wouldn’t have been as hard to manage if I weren’t in the position of juggling several computing platforms at once in order to produce this. Now, let me note, this isn’t a knock to that school, or online classes in general, but it is an observation of some of the hurdles that tend to happen when governance doesn’t keep pace with the instructor, or the lesson.

The context of the class is that of creating a mobile ministry. In five sessions, I go through a summary of much of the work that’s been done here at MMM for the past 8 years (yes, its really been since April 2005 that the online aspect of this magazine has been in existence). For this class, I’ve got to handle working through a learning management system (a content management applications specifically made for online education) called Moodle. I’ve also got to create content inside of the enterprise-favorite, Microsoft PowerPoint. Inside of these containers I’ve got the requirements to create engaging and interactive content – and pretty much assume that all of it will be consumed session-by-session and while folks have little to nothing else on their plate. I’m not a fan of that methodology if you couldn’t tell.

At this point, I’ve got to redo a lot of content, and all of it is happening through the use of several mobile/connected tools:

  • my Nokia N8: serves as the audio and video recorder (excellent in both of these capacities)
  • my Kindle Fire HD and 1st gen Apple iPad tablets point towards Evernote and Microsoft Office Online to create the text-based components of this class – the latter doesn’t do so well on tablets
  • Dropbox for sharing files between my devices and with the school I’m working with
  • a personal wiki (using TiddlyWiki) on my Nokia N9 (different device) where much of the content generation, resource collection, and management of all these parts has happened
  • And if that’s not fun enough, a borrowed PC to do the parts with Office Online that are just flat out unusable on these mobile devices

One could read all of that and get the impression that creating a mobile and online course is a lot of work and takes a ton. But, I don’t think so. In fact, I’ve done my best not to push back against the school that I’m working with in order to get a better idea of how to take my mobile-mainly approach and fit it within these constraints. That said, this could be done in a much easier way. For example:

  • There would be one and only one document, Fargo.io an online outlining web app that connects to Dropbox accounts -created by the inventor of RSS (and oldest blogger) Dave Winer
  • Audio and video components would be linked using the Dropbox “share link” feature but these would be created on a single mobile device
  • Group discussions occur via Twitter (only) with access to the tweet stream restricted to the in-class participants only (also helps that Twitter is accessible via SMS, web, and email digests)

That doesn’t sound like much, but once you have your outline (as a professor), then there really isn’t much more to a class other than sparking the discussion(s) that lead to knowledge development/transfer.

I’m not done the edits that I have in place here, but I’m thinking that I might be up for doing something like this for the next presentation or course that I’m asked to lead. Seems like too much of a hassle to be using this tech the way that I do, but then have to take several large steps backward in order to teach people the lessons I’ve learned – content shouldn’t be locked, should be accessible to the greatest number of people, and should be tailored to their unique experiences with its application. I don’t know that content management systems, or governance really enable that right now. But I think that we can get there if we have these kinds of examples that simplify what can be done, then get out there and do it.

[Video] April Mobile Minsitry Notes

As we’ve done the past months, here’s a video(cast) about those things related to mobile ministry. We talk a bit about the Mobile Ministry Forum, as well as some newly acquired tech and how that’s being used here at MMM. Take a peek and let us know what you think of these videos.

Watch previous months videocasts:

Also, you can check out other videos about mobile ministry.

OneHundredFold

Video Image placeholder

Having gotten the chance to hear directly from OneHundredFold on several occasions now, can do nothing but recommend them (along with many others) towards those looking for people specifically tasked with not just doing mobile ministry, but leading the understanding of it.

Updating the Mobile Ministry Event Calendar for 2013 Events

As part of one of the resolutions that we’ve set forth this year, it was to be involved with and keep an eye towards events that would be relevant to mobile ministry (#mobmin) activities. Whether or not we attended them wasn’t the concern. We wanted to make sure that there was some kind of public listing of events, that you could easily subscribe to (RSS, email updates, mobile, etc.) and be informed as to what is going on. So we created and released the Mobile Ministry Event calendar, and its been one of the more popular links on the site for just getting heads wrapped around what’s happening in this space.

Well, 2013 is almost here and there are a ton of events that have not yet made it to the calendar. Part of that is on our end of getting lots of emails towards items and not sitting down to add them here. The other part of that is that there are just a lot of events we don’t know about and so what might be relevant isn’t heard about until the last minute, or even after the event has happened. So to help things along, I’m asking for your help towards getting this listing updated before the year turns. And in part, if you’ve got an event, this is a great way to get some additional visibility to those events.

All you need to do is send us a note about the event including as much detail that can be copy/pasted into the Google Calendar listing and we’ll get it added. That’s it.

Subscribing to Updates from the Calendar

For those of you who don’t have an event to add, but definitely want to follow along, here are some instructions on how to do so (bullet point per method of keeping up with the listing):

  • For those of you with Android devices, you should simply need to go into your Google Calendar account (use a desktop web browser), and then add this calendar to have it appear alongside your calendar
  • For those of you not using an Android device, but do have a Google Calendar account, you need to copy each event (individually) into your main calendar, and those events will appear there. However, they will not update when the calendar updates.
  • You can subscribe to this calendar via RSS (link here); items will show in your RSS reader when they are added to the calendar, not when they occur
  • You can also add to your Apple devices calendar using iCal (link here). If you add this link into iTunes, it should transfer to another (layer) calendar in your iOS devices; this link does update when the main calendar is updated.
  • Depending on the mobile device you are using, the RSS/iCal item should show an individual item download, so that (for example) from a mobile device, you can download a specific event into your calendar. From your calendar, sharing is as simple as hitting the “share” button on your device and it sends as a vCal item in an MMS message
  • I have a workflow running using ifttt which automatically tweets out newly added events using the #mobmin hashtag – so if you are looking for an easy way to have your audiences keep up with events, that hashtag just got more valuable.

Did You Miss Monday’s Webinar

Great opportunity to talk about the #mobilechurch w/@symbiota... on Twitpic

Mobile Ministry Magazine was a special guest on one of the latest Symbiota webinars. This past Monday, we talked about mobile ministry (#mobmin); specifically, how churches can leverage SMS, mobile web, and mobile apps in order to grow those deeper and wider connections inside and outside of faith communities.

Good this is that if you missed this one, that you can still make another. This webinar will be held again on Dec 3rd and Dec 17th. All you have to do is sign up and show up. Just showing up gives you a chance to win some great prizes, so its totally recommended. Here’s an overview of what will be talked about in the webinar:

Visitors are increasingly using mobile devices to search for churches information, listen to sermons, and pay tithes and offerings. Your church members are mobile, how about your church? On this webinar we will be helping churches understand how to get their message through, on the most important method of communication today: Mobile Phones.

What you will learn on this webinar:

  • 3 Major myths about cell phone usage that are not true.
  • Dissecting the noise about mobile websites and mobile apps.
  • Tips on using mobile to increase donations & giving.
  • Why your church cannot afford to not be ready for mobile.
  • How to not to miss up to 50% of people searching for your church.
  • Connecting members to small groups using text messages
  • Keys to integrating Twitter and Facebook with mobile.

You’ve got two more times before the year is out. Sign up for this webinar and learn more about the services Symbiiota offers at their website.

Why Its Not About Mobile

Apple Criticism

Found an excellent article in the education space the other week that really broke through the rhetoric that we often hear in this space when it comes to tools and traditions – that its the tools and traditions, not the products of these that need the people to utilize (or not use) them that makes change happen. I found this article about as life-giving as any others we’ve linked to here, and I think that when we get out of our lenses of preferred devices, services, or even behaviors, that we really can start to see that its not about mobile, but about the kind of life that mobile and other media technologies can enable when led by the Spirit and a good dose of innovation:

…This week, I’m helping host EdTechTeacher’s iPad Summit, what we believe is the first national gathering of educators pioneering the use of iPads and tablets in schools and classrooms. As I think about facilitating the event, I keep coming back to the idea that this event for iPad users can’t be about iPads. My own koan for the week is this:

If you meet an iPad on the way, smash it.

If this event becomes a meeting about how we got rid of power cords or extended battery life or solved workflow challenges or found some neat apps, then we fail. The iPad summit is not about the iPad.

The way we are seeking is one where we prepare young people for a life of civic commitment, of self-reflection, and of meaningful work and contributions to community. The way is about unlocking student talent, compassion, and humanity. If the iPad distracts us from defining the way, then we have to smash it…

Read the rest of Why Its Not About the iPad at Edudemic