Collide Magazine

The Mobile Friendly Church

Daniel Darnell - Originally posted Monday, February 23, 2009 -

Whether you’re an iPhone hater or an avid user, you must admit it is one of the most revolutionary devices of our time. With its innovative multi-touch screen, simple user interface, App Store, and Internet capabilities, the iPhone has forever changed the mobile phone market.

With this change comes a whole new way of communicating and accessing information on the go. It’s never been easier to check the weather, contact a friend, or find a cup of coffee near you. The question, then, is how the Church will respond to this easy accessibility of information?

A few churches, including LifeChurch.tv and New Hope Christian Fellowship, are leading the way by creating iPhone-friendly applications and websites. Though the idea may sound simple, the current popularity of the iPhone (and smart phones in general), along with the exponentially growing market, make the mobile Web an important tool to help reach and inform the people of your church and beyond. Apple reports that more than 10 million iPhones have been sold worldwide (not including this holiday season’s sales), while their App Store has facilitated more than 300 million downloads. The new mobile frontier holds great potential and must be utilized by the Church.

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The first and most notable church to take full advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities was LifeChurch.tv with their free “Bible” application, a mobile version of their online Bible reader, YouVersion. The application lets you search and access all of the popular Bible translations, contribute your own thoughts and notes, and even offers a daily reading plan. From the very first day of the App Store’s launch, LifeChurch.tv was there. As Terry Storch, LifeChurch’s Digerati leader, shares, “When we heard Apple announce the iPhone and the App Store, instantly we said, ‘We need to be there.’ We believe that mobile is the future, and the future is now.” It looks like they were on to something.

Since its release, LifeChurch.tv’s “Bible” app for the iPhone has reached over 540,000 unique users in 121 countries. For you non-iPhone users, LifeChurch even recently released a Blackberry version of their “Bible” application as well as a basic mobile website for other web-enabled phones. Never has the Bible been so readily available anytime, anywhere (not to mention so easy to fit into your pocket).

Following in LifeChurch’s footsteps is New Hope Christian Church in Hawaii (the Church Spotlight in our previous issue). New Hope recognized the potential mobile market of their church members and created a mobile version of their website. Mike Sharpe, New Hope’s Innovation and Technology Director, shares their reasoning behind the move: “We quickly realized that the iPhone was very popular at our church and many of our members were carrying them. Since daily devotions are the cornerstone of New Hope, we thought it would be great to give a web-friendly application that would allow iPhone users to either read or listen to the daily Bible reading right on their iPhone, no matter where they were. This was a great hit from the moment we released it.”

In addition to their daily devotions, New Hope’s mobile website also provides full sermon videos, directions, and news snippets that are updated weekly. Sadly, their mobile site has more functionality than many churches’ regular websites.

Not only is a mobile website helpful for church members and visitors, Sharpe also sees its potential as a useful tool for leaders. As he shares, “We are also currently looking at ways to use the iPhone as a tool for leaders in our church to have quick access into our church database. That way they can help our members quickly.”

However a church ends up utilizing the mobile Web is up to them, but Sharpe strongly believes that “all churches could benefit from creating an iPhone-friendly version of their church’s website or information. More and more webpages and applications are being created for the iPhone every day, and the Church should have a prominent presence on [the mobile Web].”

The mobile Web is still a largely untapped resource, partly because creating a mobile-friendly website or iPhone app isn’t a walk in the park. In fact, it takes skilled personnel, money, and time; things most churches don’t have a lot of. Luckily, that doesn’t mean churches lacking in extra resources have to be left out of the mobile revolution.

A few developers have created practical and free solutions to help make creating a mobile-friendly website a possibility for everyone. Sites such as Intersquash.com and Mofuse.com can transform your church blog into a mobile-friendly site in a matter of minutes. Simply enter in your blog’s URL or RSS feed and, voila! You’ve got a mobile-friendly website. Mofuse.com not only adapts your blog for the mobile Web, but also allows you to create other mobile pages of your own using basic HTML. However, the most promising free solution appears to be Apploop.com (though it is still in its private beta). For you web- and computer-savvy folk who would like to take a crack at the actual code, both Phonegap.com and iwebkit.net give you the option of doing so.

The growing mobile market contains great potential for advancing the gospel, and LifeChurch.tv and New Hope have given us only a small picture of what that can look like in the years to come. How will you and your church contribute to this mobile movement?

Check out COLLIDE’s Mofuse site: collide.mofuse.mobi. For more information about LifeChurch.tv’s YouVersion, visit www.youversion.com or m.youversion.com from your web-enabled mobile device.

Mobile Church Websites:

• New Hope: m.enewhope.org
• LifeChurch.tv: m.lifechurch.tv
• Seacoast Church: m.seacoast.org
• Sandals Church: www.sandalschurch.com/iphone
• Henderson Hills: m.hhbc.com
• National Community Church: m.theaterchurch.com
• Northside Christian Church: www.mynorthside.com