Mobile Ministry Magazine (MMM)

Again with one of those moments where perspective and expectations are clearly much different than cultural norms… its ok, there’s a point to this (too).

One of the tasks that’s taken about within MMM is to visit with other churches to connect and get a better sense of how they deal with communications in light of mobile, web, and other channels. To this end, visiting with a community is one part enjoying the time connecting, and another part looking at behaviors. For example, the welcoming of visitors is a pretty common function within church services, but, its also one that’s continually stayed low-tech.

Example (based on past many churches visited):

Break in the singing period for announcements (and a chance to catch one’s breath). At the end of announcements is a time to welcome those visiting. Visitors are asked to somehow identify themselves (raised hand, standing, or being sought out by regular visitors), and then handed by ushers a card with which would be filled out and placed into the offering basket.

After filling out the card and placing it into an offering basket, an administrator/secretary is tasked with entering the visitor’s information into some contacts system (anything from church database, to Outlook Contact Manager, to filed in a manilla folder). The visitor is then contacted by email and/or snail (postal) mail, thanking them for their visit, offering them to come back again, and given some sense of community activities with which to connect to that community again with.

The only acknowledgement of that message being received is them appearing again to some fellowship activity, usually at this point engaging in some face-to-face communication with someone a bit higher in authority than a layperson. Communications failures are (sometimes) logged – that is, the email is no good, or the address given comes back as undeliverable. Very rarely is there a feedback channel connected to that outreach communication. Therefore we end up with the appearance of welcoming persons, but really only more concerned that we broadcast a welcome, rather than actually meaning to connect with the visitor, or them with us in a manner that doesn’t look like consistent attendance or membership.

Could this be done better? Yup. Here’s what came to mind the last times I was given a visitor card:

• I wonder why they didn’t put a text message code (shortcode) on the screen for me to submit my visitor status, questions about the sermon, or receive updates about *that* event that I was interested in that they briefly mentioned (in voice and paper announcement)
• Is there a Twitter handle or Facebook page URL where I could respond more directly to the general community?

The text messaging piece poked me more than anything else. You see, I’m already sitting in that community seeing more than half of the attendees pulling out a mobile device when its time for reading/sermon-speak. I’m not even caring about the Bible version – I’m assuming that YouVersion and/or Olive Tree are already firmly entrenched. I’m actually willing to learn more about your community, just not by re-transcribing information that’s in your announcements document into my notes/calendar/contacts. Therefore, I’m looking for that community to take advantage of those characteristics of mobile – especially: personal, audience measurement, and point of creative inspiration – as a means of literally making me want to know more about them.

What Could It Look Like
I’d honestly prefer to hear a church say something like “here’s the shortcode to sign up for updates from our community. Or, if you are giving electronically, text “TITHE” and the whole number amount of your gift to the same shortcode. Remember, type “STOP” anytime you want to discontinue these updates. Or, “EMAIL” if you’d like these alerts to also come to the  email address that we have on file for you. For those preferring paper, that can be found in our foyer.”

Yes, that’s thinking (a) digital first, and (b) mobile first. And its about time that many of you who have $40K sound systems, multiple-access point WLANs, multiple campuses, and a means to pay for streaming your sermon in real time to do something like this a good bit closer to the immediate and traceable activities of the moments that are nearest to people.

Organizational Communications Bias
If you look again at the example, its not simply just a matter of the communication method, but the impression that it gives off. I’m biased having dealings with organizational communications on a continual basis professionally. Input mechanisms always point to workflow behaviors which may or may not be optimized for that input point. These organizational communications insights also bend into those things that happen after the message is received (how long between the end of service and receiving an email/snail mail communicaton thanking me for a visit for example). As a visitor, I look at the surrounding investments into media, infrastructure, and even clothing of leadership and ask if in that paper solution that the same investments are being made. It is indeed a bias, I won’t shy from that. Hence the article and question.

Potential, Possibilities, and Present Services
For those without those extravagent systems, and see this as a decent idea, take a look at some of the SMS types of services out there and experiment. The immediacy of mobile, and its nature to be very accurate as a means of audience measurement, means that you can much faster get your finger on the pulse of events and moments like visitors.

No, its not normal. And I’m not making concessions to those who don’t have those mobile tools that could use this. That’s not the point here. You should – especially if you already see some mass of people using mobile in the midst of services – have some idea of the penetration rates of mobile/social web in your communities. If you don’t, that’s another matter entirely. Because if you are anything near the example given above, you’ve got to get a handle on that before you can even think to go this route.