The iPhone Church – Is This the Year?
Apparently a few think that 2009 is the year of the Church going Mobile. I’m not so sure.
But I’d have to be clear. Certainly everyone and their mother has a cell-phone these days, but not everyone has signed up for a “text” plan and even more do not have an “internet” plan.
As a result, the potential “audience” is subject to technological constraints. In other words, only those that have (and use/manage) the technology can be the audience that we reach.
Isn’t this “limiting”? Is this the best “use” of our time, money, and resources if our audience is intrinsically small?
I’m certainly in agreement that we should do everything to reach those that in the connected world, and I appreciate Bobby’s clarification on the matter:
I’m saying the (C)hurch needs to start to leverage this technology because of the significant opportunity to reach this connected world. Collectively we are dropping the ball or missing the scope of the opportunity.
To that I say “amen”.
And at the end of the day, how this all plays out is completely dependent upon the ministries that ultimately decide to dedicate their time, energy, and resources to the medium. And someone’s got to to it, right? And I’ll be the last to judge the ministry that does.
I think that 2009 will be an year of “awakening” for (C)hurch as a whole in the technological arena. Ministries and organizations will be forced to highly consider it or deal with the consequences of losing potential audience and staying relevant.
The mobile-sector will be one of them. The (C)hurch may not necessarily “need to get mobile” but they must be certainly aware of it.
And if you do decide to do it this year, my iPhone will be happy. Please let me know so I can try it out. =)
What are your thoughts?
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11 Responses to “The iPhone Church – Is This the Year?”
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In 2009 I would like to see LifeChurch.tv stream their experiences to the iPhone and other mobile devices. Bring it to the masses!
Man, that'd be reallyyyyyyyyyyyyyy sick if they managed to do that. Then NOBODY would have any excuse to not attend Church at every Experience tim! =P
hehe. mass adoption.
that would be rad…
So if we were to do a brainstorm, what sort of resources should we start building now? I.e. social networking, online libraries in multiple languages, real-time chat with live translation, shared multi-lingual services….whats needed and what should be tossed by the wayside? These resources will take time to build, but if all we are waiting for is the cell-phone data plans to catch up, what are we actually waiting for?
great point here. best use of our time? maybe… maybe not yet…
Blip.tv has an embedable video player that is iPhone compatible. The player detects the iPhone and serves a M4V version of the video instead of the normal flash version. I use it for my church's sermons at FirstHattiesburg.com
Also iWebKit (iwebkit.net) has easy tools to make an iPhone website.
SWEET! thanks for sharing this! ustream.tv is also looking into it… wouldn't that be rad…!
good post. i see the church as people and as church people use phones, more of church life happens on phones.
Andrew,
thanks for jumping in. love what you're doing over at your blog…! keep up the good work!