Mobile phones, the Internet and the advance of the Kingdom

Within the last few years, the growth of the Internet and the increase in the number of mobile phones in use worldwide has significantly changed many aspects of life for billions of people all over the world. As more people in every nation, tribe, language and people become connected using these technologies, the potential for the advance of the Kingdom of God is significant, especially as we work together to make the most of the opportunity.

The digital divide is being bridged

Even in parts of the world that do not yet have electricity, use of mobile phones is becoming increasingly common. People in rural parts of Asia and Africa that have never owned a computer are bypassing the "personal computer" phase of technology use and jumping straight to the "mobile phone" phase, and often the "mobile phone + mobile Internet" phase. This growth in number of mobile phones and use of mobile Internet creates a context for new ministry opportunities worldwide.

Increasing numbers of mobile phones

Recent reports state that the number of mobile phone users worldwide has surpassed 4.6 billion1. In some parts of the world, mobile phones are already more prevalent than radios and will soon surpass the number of televisions.2

Much of the growth in the mobile phone market is taking place in parts of the world that have had only minimal technological opportunities until recently. Some companies are bringing mobile phone technology to these new markets and are making mobile phones available inexpensively to people that could not otherwise afford them.3 Other technology, such as solar powered mobile phones4 makes it possible for mobile phones to be used in even the most remote parts of the world.

Mobile Internet

The number of people worldwide accessing the Internet on their mobile phones is predicted to surpass 1.7 billion people by 2013. Given current growth rates of traditional broadband access (predicted to reach 2 billion people by 2014), 50% of people accessing the Internet will be doing so from a mobile phone within 3-4 years.5 Not surprisingly, the growth of Internet access on mobile phones is concurrent with the increased use of more capable smartphones.6 Some predictions suggesting that within 3-4 years, half of mobile devices will be smartphones and within 6-7 years the number of smartphones worldwide may increase to 90%.7 Part of the reason for this growth, especially in developing markets, is because smartphones provide more access to more information than traditional mobile phones and have significant advantages over a traditional computer, including lower cost, portability, lower power consumption and ease of use. Simple services (e.g. text messages) are still important, but use of mobile Internet will continue to grow.

"...simple services based on text messages are likely to predominate for some time to come, for several reasons. All mobile phones, however cheap, can send text messages. Mobile-web access requires more sophisticated handsets and is not always supported by operators. And users know what it costs to send a text message.

As countries work their way up the development ladder, however, the situation changes in favour of full mobile-web access. Jim Lee, a manager at Nokia’s Beijing office, says he was surprised to find that university students in remote regions of China were buying Nokia Nseries smart-phones, costing several months of their disposable income. Such handsets are status symbols, but there are also pragmatic reasons to buy them. With up to eight students in each dorm room, phones are often the only practical way for students to access the web for their studies."8

The gap between those connected to the Internet and those not yet connected continues to close. Increasing numbers of people around the world are using mobile phones that are increasingly becoming Internet-connected. While this connectedness creates opportunities for education and business, it also creates unprecedented opportunities for the advance of the Kingdom of God.

Making the most of the opportunity

There is no replacing the importance of personal interaction in ministry, especially cross-culturally. The command to "Go and make disciples" is not invalidated by technology in any way. That said, technology and media can be used effectively to compliment and extend discipleship ministry. As more people around the world become connected over the Internet, it creates an opportunity for the creation and delivery of discipleship content (text, audio & video) to people that otherwise might not get the discipleship teaching they need to grow as disciples of Christ.

Distant Shores Media has started the Door43 project (http://door43.org) to provide an Internet-based platform for the creation and distribution of discipleship resources in any language. Door43 content is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License (see "Free + Freedom" below) and content will be available in open formats that are accessible to anyone, on any Internet-connected device. The content is intended to be used and re-mixed in any way for any ministry purpose.

One of the distribution mechanisms planned for Door43 content is multi-format podcasts that include audio, video and text content, optimized for mobile phones. Standard podcasts use MP3 audio files which can be very effective but require more bandwidth to download. We recently tested a multi-format podcast in Thailand over an EDGE mobile phone connection with encouraging results. The podcast contained over 30 minutes of audio in the AMR mobile-optimized audio format9, a ~5 minute video in the 3GP mobile-optimized video format, a couple of HTML rich-text web page documents and a standard JPG photo. The entire podcast was a little over 5MB in size and downloaded in just a few minutes on the data connection we were using. Given the affordable pay-as-you-go data rates in countries like Thailand and many others, this approach to distributing discipleship multimedia content has a lot of potential.

Free + Freedom

Giving away discipleship content free of charge is a good thing, as many who need the resources most are not able to pay for them. Giving discipleship content away with the freedom for others to "own" it and use it in any way for any ministry purpose exponentially expands the usefulness of the content because other believers are legally able to translate it into other languages and adapt it for effective use in further ministry. Instead of being just consumers of discipleship content, they are given the freedom to use the content as a foundation to create discipleship resources that are unique to their own languages, cultures and context.

Conclusion

The growth in numbers of mobile phone users connecting to the Internet provides a great opportunity for the advance of the Kingdom. We can make the most of this opportunity by working together to create discipleship content that is both free of charge and given away with the freedom for other believers to take and use it for any ministry purpose. The mobile networks to distribute this new generation of discipleship content to mobile phone users all over the world are already in place, or will be very soon.

• 1. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/15/business/main6209772.shtml
• 2. http://blog.taragana.com/n/phones-outnumber-radios-among-poor-in-south-asia-99765/
• 3. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0811/072.html
• 4. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/21/solar.cellphone/
• 5. http://www.cellular-news.com/story/32026.php
• 6. http://www.cellular-news.com/story/43139.php
• 7. http://in.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idINIndia-39711520090518
• 8. http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?STORY_ID=11999307
• 9. Depending on the compression settings used, AMR files are only 1/10th the file size of the same file in MP3 format, making them ideal for distribution of audio over low-bandwidth mobile networks.