This has to be one of the more honest videos that I’ve seen recently. For those who might not have looked at it yet, its the video of a 1 year old child as they are playing with an iPad and then a magazine. The interesting – and probably distressing to some – aspect of this video is how the child seems to have better control over their hands when using the iPad than with the magazine.
Of course, we are talking about a 1 year old, and so comments about motor control and understanding have to be understood. However, there’s something to be said about how familiar the iPad is for the child than the magazine in respect to the kind of feedback that the kid expects and what they receive. The video (and this accompanying article at CNet) implies the claim that digital natives are going to forget the physical control and contextulization of print magazines if activities with devices like the iPad continue.
There’s a good chance that this could be the case with many of our cultures within a generation. There’s a truth towards the face of learning, financial transactions, entertainment, and more leaning much more on the Interent and connected devices than in generations past. But, we don’t want to go so far as to saying that everyone will have this experience. The digital gap very much mirrors the economic class gap in terms of accessible and usable services across these connected devices. And yet, we also see moments like in this video, where some methods of interacting are more “natural” and lend to changing the relevance of learning, relearning, and unlearning some of our assumed behaviors.
So then the question becomes, “what are you teaching towards with your mobile ministry efforts?” John Dyer notes in From the Garden to the City how many of the aspects of our faith behaviors that we think are needed or required really only became so because of (a) available technologies and (b) changes in expectations towards literate populations (location 327, Kindle edition). Even the mentality of reading the Word everyday is new – people had been oral learners, and so in order to keep the Scriptures afresh for continual education, they had to meditate on what was preached every day (Joshua 1:8).
We’ve aimed so far with mobile ministry practices as facilitating behaviors and expectations based on what we understand from former media channels (speech, performance, radio, TV, Internet). What do you teach towards when those former media channels don’t have any contextual bearing on your disciples? How do you adjust to a reality where faith practices that your disciples will do start from the latest things you’ve learned, not from the same place you’ve started?
My God daughter and I spent a number of days together this past Christmas. Due to me having an iPad, she also got a chance to play with it. She played so much in fact that the lessons she was getting on colors was accelerated. The lessons she was getting in motor skills was turned into a different direction (learning drawing, pinch-zooming, and multi-touch when you can’t hold a pencil too well is a heck of a swing). For her, the iPad is much like the Etch-A-Sketch was for me. And while I did learn how to manipulate the knobs to create cityscapes and other imagined moments, I also started from a place that was unlike that of my parents who didn’t have one while growing up. My God daughter starts from where I am now with the iPad and has the opportunity to do things that I couldn’t even imagine.
But that won’t come to pass if I insist that her way of interacting with her world – even her faith – comes through the same behaviors, contexts, and viewpoints that mine is founded in. Yes, the Scripture doesn’t change, but practices and behaviors do. As leaders of disciples, can your methods change to enable mature faith lives of those who will be starting from this moment were you are amazed? Or, are you set at teaching people at the level of things now, leaving their tomorrow in the hands of older methods and concepts that might fail to engage anything but disappointment?
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Understanding and Differences Between Internet Ministry and Mobile Ministry
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011Am writing this a few hours after listening to Dr. Markus Pfeffier from Regent University give a talk on the implications of the Internet and virtual environments. Much of this talk I’d already known, but both the speaker and audience were more unfamiliar (association and generational differences). As I listened, I wrote a bit of notes on items covered and not covered and realized by the end that much of what has been, and will happen, when mobile is added to the list for many of you, is that you will draw mobile into the same body of work as you do Internet ministry activities. There is some overlap, but not quite the same.
Let me summarize by restating the tweets (@mobileminmag) that relate to this point published before the writing of this piece:
Yea, that was a lot of tweets. And if you saw that stream in the middle of it going up, things might not have made as much sense. But, now looking at the whole statement, we can start to draw some of those needed conclusions that lend towards understanding both Internet and Mobile Ministry efforts.
First, know that there is already a Body of discussion happening about Internet and mobile ministries. Web efforts such as Internet Evangelism Day, Jesus.net, eDot Geek, ministries such as Every Student, Cru, and LifeChurch are some of those voices, and associations such as GCIA, ICCM, the Center for Church Communication, and Catalyst do a great effort towards enabling and facilitating the discussion about Internet ministry (evangelism, marketing, discipleship, etc). On the Mobile Ministry side, there’s MMM, IE Day, Cybermissions, Mobile Advance, and the groups partnering within the Mobile Ministry Forum.
Second, Internet and mobile ministries are subject to cultural, contextual, and generational differences. I don’t subscribe to the terms digital native/digital immigrant (mainly because there is no validated research to prove it, and it’s an assumption based on 100% equal access and ability which is totally not the case). I do subscribe to the differences which can be and continue to be understood when we look at economic class, gender differences, cultural transformations, urbanization/environmentalism, commodities management, change management, and other social sciences which tend to do a decent job of describing the differences that lead to our different uses and applications of communications technologies (yes, that’s supposed to be communications with an ‘s’). You have to understand those pieces in respect to the unique qualities of Internet or mobile. Generally speaking, mobile builds on what you understand about Internet when viewing both as participatory/event communication mediums. Trends point to being able to understand this data, then creating the avenues for appropriate products and services to be developed/enhanced.
About Internet ministry being visual: I am being mean, but truthful. Curent Internet ministry efforts start with visuals. This is either the readability needed for engaging in text-driven Bible apps, social networks, or multimedia streams (ever wonder why audio ministries rely on you needing to read text to download an audio message), or the implementing of the structures which foster digital story creations. Unfortunately, this leaves out those who might have access, but cannot read. Or, leaves out those who don’t have access because they don’t have the terminal with which to engage Internet-first ministries. Mobile, being that it has built on the Internet as a participat-media channel, does much of the same. However it’s not, nor should it be limited to visual-first efforts. That’s worth another article to dive into. But it starts at a basic question, whom are you limiting access to the Gospel to because of what you know or don’t know about those who touch that channel? And if you are going to go visual, at least follow accessibility best practices for the web.
The global reach for mobile is currently almost 3x that of Internet. The purchasing power of mobile is collectively greater than that of Internet. The logistical savy of Internet-based efforts is more mature than that of mobile, as are the tools, services, practices, and standards that make those happen. This means that specific engagements on the Internet have a better chance of success towards some groups more than others. However, you are limited by being online. Unless the effort starts online and is able to get offline, it can only have an effect in that virtual space (the Kiosk Evangelism Project, Door 43, and Open Church projects actually seeks to address this specific limitation/opportunity of Internet efforts).
Therefore, how you (your culture, your generation, your bias) defines minstry will determine how Internet or mobile ministry can play a part in your efforts. It’s possible to do both, but not possible to pigeon-hole yourself so long into one that the other isn’t relevant.
Taking from Dr. Pfeffier and Tomi Ahonen, Internet is the first participatory mass media in the history of humanity (you can argue the performance stage was its precursor), mobile is the second. What Internet ministry cannot do in terms of personalized (not algorithmic) attention, mobile can. What mobile cannot do in terms of being standardized across every device, Internet evangelism efforts can. They aren’t the same. Yet, in order to see digital spaces here and beyond (augmented reality, virtual reality, and cybernetics for example) as opportunities for ministry efforts, knowing this is key to making the most of your time and resources.
Tags: 7Ms, Campus Crusade, Campus Crusade International, Catalyst, Center for Church Communication, Cru, Cybemissons, definition of mobile ministry, digital immigrant, digital native, Dr. Markus Pfeffier, eDot Geek, Every Student, GCIA, ICCM, IE Day, Jesus.net, Kiosk Evangelism, LifeChurch.tv, Mobile Advance, Mobile Ministry Forum, Regent University
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