Mobile Phone-Empowered Ministry

Having short videos on my cell phone to Bluetooth has been a fantastic addition to my witness.  So I was glad to see this recent article in IJFM: The Little Phone that Could: Mobile-Empowered Ministry (HT: TH). 

Here is a nice quote for those expatriates who are content with owning a lame mobile phone (aka my wife):

What a strange world we live in, a world where we highly literate, technologically savvy expatriates who live and work with “backwards” illiterate tribal peoples find ourselves lagging years behind those same people in our use of portable communications and media technology. My western co-worker, for instance, still purchases his mobile phone on the basis of whether or not it has a built-in flashlight with little concern for the fact that the phone has no camera, memory, or Bluetooth connectivity (that’s not to say I haven’t often wished my phone had a flashlight too!). Meanwhile, the local youth among our people are trading in their phones every few months for the latest model and spend hours each day using them to view and send one another songs, videos, and poetry. This is not something unique to the people I work with—the U.N.’s International Telecommunications Union estimates that there are now more than five billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide!

You need to get a phone that has Bluetooth capabilities- for Jesus!

How convenient would it be if the mobile phone you carried had a veritable toolbox of songs, poetry and/or videos that point to Christ and which you could share with people you came into contact with throughout the day?…  The great thing is that viewing and sharing photos, music, and videos on mobile phone is now so common among the people group I live among that whipping out my phone and sharing one of these video or audio files with them is completely natural!

Videos can make the gospel viral:

Missions strategists tell us that our outreach should be reproducible by those we are seeking to reach. The ubiquity of the mobile phone’s presence and Bluetooth phone-to-phone connectivity make mobile media ministry eminently reproducible. We simply send Bluetooth videos on to those interested in them and they can then replay them and show them to others. Those other people, in turn, can show them to their friends who in turn can send them on to their wider circle of friends. Rather than solely reaching our limited circle of acquaintances and friends, mobile phone media has the potential to reach thousands and even tens of thousands.

Bluetoothing is not a magic bullet that will start CPMs around the world- it’s just a tool that can be useful.  And by the way, the iPhone is only cool if you can Bluetooth from it.

From the conclusion:

Mobile phones are the most widely used media technology among the unreached today… Are we investigating the amazing new abilities that mobile phone technology brings to the table? Do we recognize that the mobile is the next generation of mass media subsequent to TV and internet, and that its abilities surpass those of the previous generations? Are we finding ways to use these new capabilities to spread the glory of God among the unreached? I challenge you to think strategically while acting quickly to harness the potential mobile phone outreach offers in bringing the gospel of Christ to the lost.

Here are a couple sites in Arabic that have good short videos:

• http://www.hikayaat.com/en/home (most universal files are “Other 3gp”)
• http://www.sabeelmedia.com

Here is a short English video for Muslims that is available for translation into any language.

Below is a Sabeel Media video on Jesus healing the man with a withered hand:

Stories of the Prophets Jesus اليد الذابلة والمسيح المنتظر from Sabeel Media on Vimeo.

Orality Strategies

Check out www.oralitystrategies.org:

Our passion is to provide you with resources that help you communicate God’s truth to those who learn best by oral means.

What is Orality?

"Orality" refers to reliance upon the spoken, rather than written, word for communication. Orality is an ancient phenomenon that continues to the present. Before writing was developed, cultures passed along their cultural traditions, including their history, identity, and religion, through their stories, proverbs, poems, songs, riddles, etc. These are all oral art forms; that is, they are spoken, sung or chanted. They were (and still are) often woven into ceremonies, dramas and rites of passage. Purely oral societies pass along everything that matters from one generation to another without putting anything into writing. They rely on the spoken word (including its sung and chanted forms).

That reliance on the spoken word is "orality." But the term means more than that to the experts who study this phenomenon. When people live by orality, it affects a great many things about their culture. If they do not write anything down, for instance, they have to work more on remembering things, so they tend to repeat well-known, treasured sayings and stories. Oral cultures prefer the familiar. It follows that oral cultures may be slow to accept new information, particularly if it does not come in a memorable format.

Oral cultures work at putting every important truth or piece of information into easily-remembered forms. Proverbs are pithy, memorable ways of storing truths. Poems and songs are often easier to remember than simple lists of truths or facts. Oral cultures develop standard ways of structuring proverbs, poems, and stories. Those patterns of organizing spoken language for ease in recall and presentation are also part of "orality."

These are just two facets of orality, but they illustrate that if we want an oral culture to understand a message, it would be helpful to present it in forms that are more familiar to them. By studying orality we get a better understanding of how oral cultures function. That understanding helps us find the best way to present the Bible's message so they can understand it, retain it, benefit from it and pass it to others.

The Prophets’ Story – Video Resource

Here is a great new 7 minute evangelistic video in English developed for a Muslim audience (originally done for SE Asians).  I hear they have plans to translate this into other languages. 

You can also download the youtube video above using www.keepvid.com and just save it in whatever format your mobile phone uses (most use 3gp).  Then you can bluetooth it easily.  Share these with your Muslim friends and comment below.

Larry Dinkins on Orality

Here is a thought provoking article on orality at http://conversation.lausanne.org by Dr. Larry Dinkins, “My Bumpy Road to Orality.”  The article references Simply the Story.

Here is a quote:

The truth hurt. Reverend Dinkins didn’t know how to follow seemingly simply directions for telling a Bible story. I also realized how tied I was to lecturing as my default communication tool. In the West we all use the lecture method because it delivers the largest amount of data in the least amount of time.  It also allows the teacher or preacher to exercise control by maintaining the flow of information in one direction. What I discovered in telling stories was the power of acknowledging the experience and insight of your listeners by using questions to help them unpack the lessons and principles that God has embedded in every Bible story. The contrast between my standard MO (lecturing) and the interactive nature of telling stories was yet another shock I encountered at STS.

I really need to become a better storyteller!