Skype. Podcasting. Video streaming. Blogging. Touch screens. Voice recognition.
We live in an age that almost deifies technology, but even the most impressive examples are just tools. But ingeniously wired to a sound strategic vision, these virtual wonders are helping ministries tell stories, build internal morale, raise money, and expand an organization’s influence. And the ones on the cutting edge are carefully exploring how to exploit other technological options.
Evangelicals are nothing if not media-savvy. In 1951, Charles Fuller’s Old Fashioned Revival Hour radio broadcast was spreading gospel songs around the world on 650 ABC network stations. Less than a decade later, Pat Robertson established the first Christian television network and launched 24-hour Christian programming via satellite. Today, the Jesus Film has become the most-watched movie in history, with an estimated 5.6 billion viewings.
And that’s just the beginning, as several key Christian ministries are discovering. With big dreams, due diligence, and careful execution, groups are leveraging technology’s potential for kingdom results.
Global Communications Challenge
With a presence on five continents, Crown Financial Ministries recently faced a communications challenge of global proportion. “We wanted to look beyond the dizzying forest of e-mail update, and static website messages,” says Ben LeVan, Vice President for Human Resources, “and find a better, more engaging way to bring the organization’s message to staff, volunteers, constituents and a staff and external audiences.”
Founded in 1976, the interdenominational ministry equips people to learn, apply, and teach biblical financial principles. Headquarted outside Atlanta, Crown has offices in more than 40 countries and plans to open several more during the next five years.
Last fall, two realities converged, and a highly personable high-tech solution emerged. Crown’s new ceo, Chuck Bentley, wanted to connect, person-to-person, with everyone in the organization. Internet video streaming offered the perfect vehicle for a weekly five-minute video update, which Bentley began last September. The messages, which Bentley and other staff leaders deliver, have hit home with Crown’s people. Crown is investing in live video conferencing technology to allow interactive meetings across the globe and further enhance the organization’s ability to communicate.
“For an organization that’s so spread out, geographically, it’s difficult to keep the community current and aligned,” says Bentley. “The video update transcends borders and miles so that anyone with point-and-click capability can feel part of the nucleus.” LeVan adds that Crown’s employees have developed a habit of spreading Bentley’s anecdotes and jokes to family and friends.
Yet Bentley remains focused on clear outcomes. “I view our measure of effectiveness through three distinct lenses,” he says. The foci are:
Transformation: Relevant, biblically based content delivered via a variety of media, changing lives.
Expansion: Crown’s distinctively global view.
Sustainable: Kingdom impact, as accountable stewards of God’s resources.
Crown’s most ambitious media undertaking to date is a series of short films designed to teach biblical financial principles to illiterate audiences around the globe. A beta test film entitled Widow and Oil, based on the 2 Kings 4 passage, grew out of what Bentley and other Crown representatives learned on a listening tour of African nations in January 2007. Bentley and his team asked pastors and other leaders, “What do you need?” They asked for a high-impact, high-quality dvd that allows teaching to be contextualized and yields meaningful, transformational learning.
Tracey Fries, Bentley’s executive assistant, says people who have seen the beta version have confirmed that a DVD can deliver a transformational message to a global audience. The ministry is developing additional films prior to the series release this fall.
Wise Stewardship
Today’s 18- to 25-year-olds were not even born when a 1967 diving accident left Joni Erickson paralyzed from the neck down. Yet these men and women, known by demographers as the Mosaics, are the ones most likely to benefit from a new media venture that’s poised to reinvent the international ministry of Joni and Friends. Joni Erickson Tada founded the ministry in 1979 to communicate the gospel and equip Christ-honoring churches worldwide to evangelize and disciple people affected by disabilities.
President and CEO Doug Mazza says the Mosaics are increasingly important to the Agoura Hills, California-based ministry. “Typically, our supporters have been 40 to 45 years and up,” Mazza says. “Though increasingly, younger adults, the Mosaics, have been drawn to volunteer for and get behind our work.”
His observation confirms a 2006 analysis by Steve Appel, the organization’s Director of Communications. Appel concluded that for the ministrywhich includes a radio broadcast, field ministries, a wheelchair donation outreach, and moreto grow, it had to reach all four age groups: Builders (age 55 and up), Boomers, (45-54), Generation X (25-34), and the Mosaics (also known as Generation Y or the iGeneration, 18-25).
He says the health of the ministry depends upon cable television, video streaming, and podcasting: “This is how Mosaics and increasing numbers of older audiences are receiving the information that matters to themtheir music, entertainment, and news.” Appel is a Boomer who is adapting to new technologies, as well. He now “opens” his morning newspaper on the Web.
Joni and Friends has combined Erickson Tada’s compelling faith and capacity to convey God’s heart through suffering, Mazza’s strategic vision to encourage constituent involvement throughout each of the organization’s individual ministries, and Appel’s story-centric approach to create a half-hour magazine show, launched in early February on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
“The show’s real-life stories,” says Appel, “which Joni hosts, give people the freedom to ask the tough questions of pain and suffering, topics that may not necessarily come up regularly in a Sunday sermon. Through high-quality television, we’re carrying out our mission to reach the least, the last, and the lost. It’s based on the first-person imperative of the homeowner who, in Luke 14, told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in so that my house will be full.’ “
He says that a lack of television production skills and experience didn’t keep Joni and Friends from embarking on the project. The organization sought out the best production people available, whom Joni personally interviewed and helped select. A cadre of generous donors has funded the first series of broadcasts.
Mazza, mindful of television’s innate power to communicate, says the medium is not bigger than the message. “We didn’t launch this new show because we wanted to be TV producers,” Mazza says. “In all we do, we’ve got to be strategic and align our message of hope, encouragement, and practical education throughout each of our ministries. Before the show came along, we were already developing university curricula for a biblically grounded disabilities studies program and adapting it for church Bible studies.
“Along comes the TV show,” Mazza notes, “and now we have the opportunity to tell life stories that can inform and bolster this content-rich curriculum.” He realizes, however, that only a fraction of today’s Christian ministries will even consider television. He says ministry leaders should consider this approach “if you have a good strategic plan that’s Christ-centered and biblically based and you can draw powerful direct lines to be accountable to your mission statement.” Why? “That’s wise stewardship.”
To wit: Every new television broadcast, Mazza believes, is a way for people of all agesespecially the Mosaicsto connect with Joni’s ministry. “They’re the kinetic generation,” he says. “They may not have the means to give financially, but they want to give of themselves. They don’t want to hear about opportunities, they want to experience [them]. And now, with new technologies, they’ve found a way to stay connected through a virtual community. That’s good news for every evangelical ministry.”
Other Technological Opportunities
Will every ministry see it that way, however? Can Christian not-for-profits whofor reasons of habit or costtypically eschew new technologies afford to ignore the latest connectivity-of-choice for 80 million Mosaics? This technology is called social networking and is experienced in sites such as MySpace.com and FaceBook.com.
Those who say “yes” might want to instant message their rationale to Stephen Shields. In an article for Leadership Network, “Online Social Networking Tools for the Church,” Shields notes that the Internet, hypertext, and a user-friendly Web browser (called, ironically, Mosaic) have helped lay the foundation for today’s communication revolution. Instead of simply allowing people to read content, the technology helps them connect in virtual communities.
Welcome to the world of social networking. Shields again:
The variety of interactive online experiences now widely available to the developed world has resulted in a phenomenon where people can have a rich online life, with conversations, explorations, and the ability to discover and nurture friendships. In a way older generations might have difficulty imagining or even believing, new generations today engage in relationships and community mediated by digital technologies. In fact, they become so used to these technologies that even the awareness of them can fall away as they focus on the individuals with whom they are communicating.
Steve Maegdlin, Senior Vice President for Focus on the Family, agrees that people are going online to find community. “To the extent Christian ministries help people create such community, social networking on the Internet is a tool ministry organizations have to pay attention to,” Maegdlin says. “It doesn’t surprise me that GenX and GenY are at the center of online social networking. What has surprised me is that people in their 30s and 40s are entering this environment. The Internet was once this mysterious thing that people were afraid of. Today, ministries are seeing that if they don’t get on board, they’re gong to get left behind.”
The same admonition could apply to a second potent technological phenomenoncontent on demand.
The concept is simple. Cables services such as Comcast are making a car trip to Blockbuster less and less appealing. Responding to the reality of the social phenomenon known as cocooning, content on demand provides the convenience of both choosing and viewing a movie from the comfort of your home.
Ministry opportunity: Focus on the Family has launched a new on-demand initiative called My Family. In addition to providing on-demand tools for streaming, downloading, and podcasting content,My Familyenables constituentsbased on their lifestyles, interests and family needsto receive tailored content.
Certainly not every ministry possesses the know-how and resources to harness social networking and on-demand content. Technology’s true worth may rest on a bottom-line commitment to combining wise stewardship and a simple, workable concept. Technology can be a wonderful servant for a ministry. But it is a useless master.
“Technology,” says Christian leadership consultant and coach John Savage, “is a tool that can increase efficiency with information and relationships. That’s helpful, but the essence of ministry is caring for people and drawing them closer to God. Regardless of what time and effort you’re saving, you’ve still got to be doing something relevant and doing it with integrity. The people on your team, as well as the people you’re trying to reach, need to share your interests, vision, and values. These core things don’t change.”
Technology changed Savage for good in 1980, when he used a one-touch broadcast fax to deliver thousands of simultaneous appeals, hastening a rescue mission’s successful $30 million capital campaign. He continues to use technological progress to serve the kingdom. Last week, while driving to a client’s office, Savage said out loud, “What time is it?”
An electronic voice replied, “The time is 6:14 p.m.”
It’s past time to realize that the newest technology is ready and able to enhance your journey as long as you know where you are headed.
