As you know, I am now on a “half-sabbatical” for the next two semesters here at Biola, with one of the outcomes being a book on using the Internet and social media for ministry. As part of this process, I am spending some time reviewing some different materials for possible inclusion in the book and/or my online course this summer.  As I complete my review of these materials, I will post a summary to this blog. To see all my reviews, click here.

Last month I posted a review of Persuasive Technology by BJ Fogg. This book, which I highly recommend for those who are interested in understanding how to make their web presence more credible, details just how technology can be used to persuade people to your point of view.   While I was on my trip to Turkey earlier this month, I finished the follow-up book: Mobile Persuasion.

Unlike its predecessor, Mobile Persuasion is a compilation of essays written by leaders in the field of mobile technologies and captology (the study of computers as persuasive technology). Each essay focuses on a different aspect of how mobile devices can be used to persuade. While I did not find this book as compelling overall as the first, there are several nuggets of insight that are valuable to ministries and churches looking to understand and utilize the power of mobile devices.

I firmly believe (as does Google, by the way), that we are now moving quickly to the point where mobile devices will be the primary way people interact with the Internet and with each other.  With this in mind, here are some of my key takeaways from this book:

• the mobile-human relationship is one of the most personal, intensive, and lasting of all relationships. Just think of how you feel about your iPhone…
• because mobile devices are always with us and always on, they are positioned perfectly to provide persuasive prompts at the right place and the right time.
• a mobile service must be integrated into a user’s behavior pattern in order to succeed. I can see a church mobile “app” which reminds users of upcoming services, study suggestions, and registers their attendance each Sunday morning.
• developing a mobile “experience” is fundamentally different from a web experience. The experience is not only “smaller”, but  should also be “smarter”.
• users who know their activities are being monitored (voluntarily) are more likely to repeat the behaviors that we want them to.
• mobile devices can be treated as extensions of the way the user sees the world.
• mobile applications should be dependable, consistently solve user’s problems, and do so effortlessly.
• mobile devices are personal, so the programs run on them should be able to be personalized.
• if the mobile app is social, it can better persuade – we use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves.
• being mobile is much less about technology, and much more about culture, connectedness, and fundamental human needs.

The book ends with a look at the future of persuasion through mobile devices. One interesting conclusion from this chapter (written by Dean Eckles, who is part of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford) is that individual messages will become less useful as a way to persuade. Instead, “it will be replaced by contextual information that comes to people based on their goals, their location, their activity, and – possibly- their state of mind.” This is then summed up by Dr. BJ Fogg, director of the lab, as follows:

By knowing a user’s goals, routine, current location, and current task, mobile systems of the future will be able to determine when the user would be most open to persuasion in the form of a reminder, suggestion, or simulated experience.

I have said before, the future is mobile and social, and we need to understand how to become a part of it.

Overall, I recommend Mobile Persuasion, though I would highly recommend reading Persuasive Technology first. The only real criticism I have about this book is that it was written too early. Specifically, it was written before the advent of the iPhone, which changed the mobile game completely. I would love to see an update to this book, taking all the latest technologies into account. However, the principles still apply and are worth reviewing.

The goal of this book is to provide a lens through which we can look to better understand how the changes in communications technologies have affected our culture in general and the Church specifically. Published in 2005, this book gives clear insights into why we do things a certain way and why those things are beginning to fail. In many ways, this book discusses the same issues that books like UnChristian and, even more so, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture do. And, like those books, it offers a plan for moving forward to address those issues. But I would have to say that, of the three, this book is the most comprehensive and detailed.

According to Miller, we have gone through four different eras in communications technologies, each era changing not only how we communicate but also how we relate to the world. The four eras are: oral (pre-history to 1500 AD), print (1500 – 1950), broadcast (1950 – 2010) and digital (2010 and beyond).  Miller sums up the four eras this way:

The oral world trusted in God’s hidden wonders: the coterminous reality of heaven and earth lay just beneath its ancient languages. The print world was confident in its ability to know, through reason, the what and why of the world. The broadcast world is interested in what we don’t know, as a flood of fresh images blurs our once fixed and stable thought boundaries. The work of the coming digital world – whose birth we are now witnessing – will be in synthesizing our past into our desired fuure, shaped and influenced by the integrated character of digital media.

The centerpiece of the book is an actual matrix that specifies the effects that each of these communications eras has had on five distinct facets of our culture: how we believe, how we know, how we live together, how we see beauty, and how we work and trade. The matrix breaks each of these five areas down and gives details on how they have changed as communications technologies change.  This matrix is quite detailed and really requires that you read the full book to get a good understanding of how these eras affected our world.

Once the matrix is laid out, the remainder of the book is Miller’s prescription for how the Church should respond in this new digital era, or as he calls it: this new convergent culture.  Of his many recommendations, I found these to be the most thoughtful:

I would like to point you to more web resources for this book, but frankly couldn’t find much. Miller’s web site (millenniummatrix.com) is down, though Google seems to still be sending people to it. I did find this Slideshare presentation that may help you understand more of what was in the book.

You can buy Millennium Matrix by M. Rex Miller from my Amazon store. Support my research!

As part of my preparation for my book on strategic online ministry, I am working my way through some of the latest books and other materials on the topic. As I review these for myself, I will also share my thoughts about them on this blog.

When I first started reading The Church of Facebook by Jesse Rice, I was a bit cynical. The title seemed a bit corny and so many people have said so many things about Facebook already that there couldn’t be anything new to say. Besides, any book written about a specific technology is going to be outdated a year after it was published, and since this was published in 2009, I figured it was already going to be out of date. But, as I began working my way through the book, I was pleasantly surprised in many ways by this book and would recommended for reasons having nothing to do with finding out about Facebook or online ministry.

The book begins with a quick history on the rise of Facebook, in which the author compares the impact that Facebook has had to other technological breakthroughs in modern history. I did find it a bit hard to buy the comparison of Facebook’s impact to that of air conditioning or London’s Millennium Bridge. The discussions of how quickly Facebook’s popularity rose and the founder’s plans for the future can be found in many places. But for the uninitiated, it provides a good background on the popular social networking tool.

The book then continues with a discussion of the human need that sites like Facebook are filling. Facebook, according to Rice, provides us with an environment much like home: it provides us with a sense of control, it gives us a sort of “family”, and it is place to put our “stuff” (at least our digital stuff).  We are drawn to Facebook because it surrounds us with the things we are the most comfortable with.  It also provides us the ability to stay connected with more people, introducing us to the concept of “hyperconnectedness”. How many of us are “friends” on Facebook with people we would never have kept in touch with otherwise?

There are disadvantages to all this connectedness as well, and this is where Rice begins to set the stage for the main message of this book.  Facebook is designed to appeal to our “naturally adolescent assumption that the world is watching, and offers us a spotlight, a microphone, and a stage as vast as cyberspace from which to act out our assumption.” When we update our Facebook account, we are assuming we have an audience, and therefore each update is made in order to get a reaction. This turns our friends into an audience and turns us into performers. In fact, if we thought no one would ever read our updates, would we post them in the first place?

Rice’s prescription for all this is to remind us of the life of Christ. Specifically, he recalls the story of the woman at the well, and brings those lessons into his ideas for how we can utilize Facebook in a new way:

Rice then goes on to lay out a plan for how we can use Facebook to imitate Christ by being intentional, humble, and authentic.

This brings me to my biggest criticism, and perhaps also my biggest praise: This book is really about something much bigger than just Facebook. This book is about how we live our lives online. We must be intentional about our online lives. And this starts by being intentional about our “offline” lives as well! We must understand that everything we do online is recorded and kept…forever. We can use our online selves as a way to demonstrate Christ to a lost world.  My biggest issue with the book, then, is that it seems to only focus on Facebook! The suggestions it makes for how to live our online lives apply equally as well to any other social technologies as well.

For those of you interested in how you can be intentional, humble, and authentic online, I recommend The Church of Facebook. If you like, you can buy it from my Amazon bookstore and support my work! You can find out more about the book and read the first chapter at Jesse’s site here.

Yesterday, I finished working my way through Persuasive Technology by B.J. Fogg. Dr. Fogg is the founder and leading researcher in the field of “captology”, which is defined as the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products created for the purpose of changing people’s attitudes or behaviors. Though not written specifically to help churches and ministries with their online efforts, this book has a myriad of insights that are extremely applicable to those us interested in understanding how our ministries can have a more effective online presence.

There may be some who would ask: should a Christian ministry be learning about how to use technology to persuade people? Shouldn’t we just present our message and then let people make up their own minds about their faith without any technological convincing?  Isn’t the use of “persuasive technology” one step short of tricking someone into believing our message? This simple answer is: no. Persuasion is not coercion. In fact, I feel that anyone who wants to effectively share the gospel must understand how to persuade someone.  I would argue that anyone who puts up a web site, writes a blog, or even posts in Facebook is actually attempting to persuade: “go to my site!” “read my blog!” “like me more!”  It is incumbent upon us to use technology to its best effect for the cause of Christ; understanding how to make it more persuasive and credible is an important step in this.

Technology can be persuasive

The book begins by defining how computing technology can be persuasive.  Several categories of technology use are defined, along with the methods of persuasion that are associated with them. You can tell that Dr. Fogg is a researcher  and an academic by how he methodically moves through the definitions and categories, with each chapter building on the last.

In these first few chapters, there are several insights that those of us doing online ministry can learn from :

• One form of persuasion is the use of suggestions at “opportune” moments. These moments include: when one is in a good mood; when one finds their current world view no longer makes sense; when one can act on the suggestion immediately; and when one feels indebted because of a favor done for them, a mistake they have made, or a request they recently denied.
• The gentler the intervention to achieve behavior change, the better the long-term outcome.
• Simulations can be used for persuasion because they provide a safe environment to explore new roles or perspectives.
• Just as one can be more effectively persuaded by an attractive person, an attractive technology is more persuasive.
• Computers can motivate and persuade people more effectively when they share personality traits, opinions and attitudes, lifestyle, background with them.

Technology can be credible

It is the chapters beyond these opening, defining chapters, however, where this book becomes invaluable for online ministry.  Here Fogg begins describing the idea that a technology must be perceived as credible if it is going to be persuasive.  Perceived credibility is defined here as a combination of “perceived trustworthiness” and “perceived expertise”. You must be viewed strongly in at least one of these two components; being perceived poorly in either one will lose you credibility.    Dr. Fogg then takes these ideas of credibility and applies them to a research project on the credibility of web sites.  The results are a laundry list of web site characteristics and how they relate to credibility. In the book over fifty different characteristics are ranked by the positive or negative effect they have on credibility.

Here are several characteristics of interest to online ministries that have a positive effect on credibility:

• The site represents an organization you respect.
• The site lists the organization’s physical address.
• The site gives a contact phone number.
• The site has articles containing citations and references.
• The site looks professionally designed.
• The site gives a contact email address.
• The site links to outside sources and material.
• The site has been updated since your last visit.

Here are several characteristics of interest to online ministries that have a negative effect on credibility:

• The site makes it hard to distinguish ads from content.
• The site links to a site you think is not credible.
• The site is rarely updated with new content.
• The site has a link that doesn’t work.
• The site has a typographical error.
• The site is difficult to navigate.

The chapters on credibility end with the description of what Fogg calls the “web credibility framework”. This framework is designed to help us understand the many different variables and facets related to credibility in the online world. It brings together many of the concepts developed in the book and is a helpful tool for those of us who want our web sites to be effective and persuasive.

Final Thoughts

If I had any criticisms of this book, it would simply be that it is already getting out of date (it is copyright 2003). While many of the concepts presented are lasting, the examples used in the book could use a refresh. The good news it that Dr. Fogg and his team at Stanford continue to research and write on this topic and many new works are in progress or available. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to understand how to make their site more credible. If you want more information about web site credibility specifically, here is a slide presentation created by BJ Fogg on web credibility.

I was first made aware of Dr. Fogg’s work by Tony Whitaker at Internet Evangelism Day – I would highly recommend you take a look at their site and blog if you are not aware of all the great resources and insights they provide.

Feel free to provide me feedback on this review or your thoughts on this subject. You can look forward to more reviews as I prepare to develop my book on Internet ministry and put together the summer online course.

You can buy this book and many others at my Amazon bookstore.

If you have read this blog before, you know that I have been a critic of online church. However, as a lover of technology and the Internet, I am always open to thinking in new ways about things and want to see how technology can be used to share the message of Christ.  But I am also a realist: I know that just because we can do church online does not mean that we should. So I read this book with an open mind and heart – looking for new ways of thinking about online church.

Some highlights of SimChurch for me included:

• a definition of virtual church as “a virtually localized assembly of the people of God dwelling in meaningful community with the task of building the kingdom.”
• the author taking on those who would use the church as described in Acts 2 as a way to discredit the virtual church.  The early church existed at a special time in history and we will never fully be able to recapture it.  Churches today cannot expect to do everything that the Acts 2 church did.
• the discussion of how our Western worldview clouds our understanding of “presence”.  Defining presence as the location of our bodies is not a God-given or Biblical idea.
• a challenge to Christians to be ever vigilant on how we conduct ourselves. Since everything we do virtually is recorded in some way, we should be completely transparent about our online lives. Identity and authenticity will be key issues in the virtual church.
• to be seen as real churches, virtual churches must begin to offer communion. The exact methods as to how to do it must be worked out by each individual church within their traditions and understanding.  Baptisms should also be offered.
• The online church will need to leverage their strengths to do things that physical-world church cannot do (or at least cannot do well).

Douglas Estes is a supporter of online church and in this book he makes a very good case that it is important that these churches continue to move forward and meet the challenges they will face head on. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and was encouraged to think deeper about online church.

Unfortunately, I am still not convinced that the participation in a church service accessed over the Internet and mediated via a computer is the same as actually attending a church physically.  In my experience, the types of worship, fellowship, and community experienced online is anemic compared to what one can get by fully participating in a physical-world church (not to mention the issues with communion and baptism). Now this would not be a big issue to me if it were not for the fact that these online churches never encourage those participating online to find to a physical-world church. I was hoping that SimChurch would address this question, but it did not.

Now let me reiterate, I believe it is imperative that Christians take to the Internet as a mission field and learn to understand it well. I wouldn’t spend so much of time helping churches do this if I did not feel it was important. Using the Internet should be an integral part of a church’s ministry. And being there to meet with and minister to those in the virtual world should be part of what they do. And yes, even providing the ability for someone to experience a church service online can be part of the ministry – but it should be made clear that every believer needs to find a physical community to be a part of as well.

Overall I think that SimChurch does a great job of exploring online church and its implications. If you are looking for a deeper understanding of this phenomenon, then I recommend this book.  And if you never have participated in an online church service, I encourage you to do so at the now over forty different Internet campuses available.  Just remember to also attend church in “real life” as well.

The book’s full title is The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ. It is an edited compilation, with chapters by no less than fifteen different leaders in various new media fields. Edited by John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton, the book starts off with a section entitled “The Landscape of New Media”.   It is really the first three chapters here that sold me on the book for my course. In these three chapters, the authors (John Mark Reynolds the first two, Matt Anderson the third) lay out a philosophy of using new media (chapter 1), discuss its future (chapter 2), and caution us on using it uncritically (chapter 3). From the third chapter, Matt Anderson echoes one of the themes I have discussed before on this blog:

We do not control how technology shapes our lives as much as we might think. The notion that technology is neutral  is not quite accurate. It may open up new opportunities, but its development and implementation almost always comes with hidden costs.

Later in the chapter, he gives an example:

…the inundation of “events” happening around us prevents us from reflecting appropriately upon them, which ultimately stifles our ability to understand and express them in language that is distinctly ours. For the creator of new media who wants to be a relevant voice, all analysis is time-sensitive. This premium upon speed threatens to short-circuit the creative process of fitting the right words to our thoughts and reflections.

Sort of sounds like another post here, huh? I knew I liked these guys.

The second part of the book, entitled “Engaging New Media”, is written by experts who are already engaged in using new media for the cause of Christ. Each of these authors writes a chapter on how they are utilizing the Internet in their own particular field: theology, community building, youth ministry, pastoring, apologetics, academia, politics, bioethics, and social justice.  Several of these chapters I found useful from a general research perspective on Internet ministry, while others may only be interesting to those who are in that particular field.

This book has something for everyone. At the very least, it will open your eyes to new possibilites of using the Internet to reach the world using new media. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in expanding their perspective on using the Internet for ministry.

You can buy this book via our genesys11 store on Amazon.com. Support our research by buying from this store.

The author, Mark Stephen Meadows, defines an avatar as “an interactive, social representation of a user”.  And here is where it gets interesting: while we may think of an avatar as something that only exists in a virtual world such as WoW or Second Life, he also points out that anytime we create an interactive, social representation of ourselves we are, in effect, creating an avatar. So that Facebook account you keep where you present the most interesting side of yourself to your “friends”: avatar. That blog you write where you put all of those highly intelligent posts: avatar.  Even that car you drive that tells everyone something about you: avatar.  The way I see it, all of us have multiple avatars, whether we use them in interactive online games or not.

So what does this have to do with Internet ministry?  It’s all about relationships. From the book:

When someone slips into an avatar, they slip into the ability to be competent, to be who they want, and to spend time with a community that they choose. Being able to do all three things at once is a rare experience for many people – perhaps because of appearance, gender, race, sexuality, age, or simply the fact that they want more friends of different sorts…

Second Life Avatar

Each avatar we encounter online, whether it be the more two-dimensional kind in Facebook or three-dimensional in WoW or Second Life, represent a real live human being with a soul. A person that is just as important to the Creator as we are.  This person has created their avatar as a way to connect with others in a new way. They are looking to connect!  And how do you connect with an avatar? While not addressed directly in his book, it seems that the author would caution against trying to get past the avatar to the person – he counsels that the important thing is the avatar and that the first step in the relationship is the avatar. Connecting with the “driver” behind the avatar may or may not happen.

This is a beautiful book that is both engaging and disturbing.  It includes some mature content describing activities that go on in some of these virtual worlds – if discussions of the acting out of alternative lifestyles bother you, you may not want to read it. If you are interested in the study of how to use virtual worlds and online gaming as a method for reaching others, then it is a book that will further your understanding.

You can buy this book via our new genesys11 bookstore at Amazon.com. Support our research and buy books through our bookstore!

I have finally settled on three primary books for my course (though I still have a couple I am thinking about adding). Over the next few weeks, I will share my selections here on this blog.  The first book I have selected is Dr. Aubrey Malphurs’ Church Next.  Written with his son, Michael, I found this book to give a good overview of the current state of the Church and makes a great case for why the move to the Internet is the right one.  For those who do not know who Aubrey Malphurs is, he is Senior Professor of Pastoral Ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is also the head of the Malphurs Group.

The book opens with two chapters on the decline of the Church in the US and the world and presents some reasons for just why that has happened.  Their conclusion: the Church has failed to change as society and culture changed and is becoming less and less relevant.

The second part of the book makes the case for change, with a full chapter devoted to the development of a “theology of change”. Frankly, it is this chapter that convinced me that this is one of the books I need in my course.  This chapter focuses on the idea that while it is allowable for the forms of the Church to change, it is not acceptable for the functions of the Church to change.  Using good examples and scripture, a case for change is well-made. This is followed up by a chapter on the effects of postmodernism on our culture.

The last part of the book is on how the Internet can be the tool for this change.  Because the book was written in 2003, most of what is here is old news. I will probably have my students scan this part, but we will not focus on it. We will have other sources in our class for ideas on technology.

Overall, this is a great book for those working to understand how something as timeless as Christ’s body (the Church) can change. If you are working with a church or organization who doesn’t see the need to move to the Internet, this book presents a compelling case.

The author of this book, Shane Hipps, takes a look at how the church has tried to see technologies such as radio, TV, and now the Internet, as just another tool and that as long as the “message stays the same” then the medium used to transmit it does not matter. This line of thinking has led the Church to embrace all technologies and not consider how the use of the technologies themselves send a message. Hipps does not say that technology is bad, only that we need to be informed about how the use of a technology can change our message.

One recurring example that he uses in the book is the differences between the writings of Paul and the gospel narratives of Christ’s life. When the medium used is print, the logical and complex thinking of Paul is best conveyed, allowing us to study and understand it. However, as the medium moves back towards images (television, Internet), the stories of the gospel are more easily conveyed.  Think about it: can an image be used to convey some of the complex theology of Romans? No, but an image can easily help us understand part of the story of Christ (think about a picture of the Last Supper or of the parable of the Good Samaritan).

As I plan on teaching a course in Internet ministry at Biola this spring, I am strongly consdering using this book as a resource. For more on the book, check out the web site and also this interview that Cynthia Ware of the Digital Sanctuary did with the author a few months back.

Getting Things Done is a methodology for managing all of your daily activities in such a way that you always know what you should be doing at any time and in any place. Here is a flowchart of the overall process. If done correctly, this can then free your mind from worrying about what you “should” be doing and let you be more productive. It also allows you to find time to relax and not worry that you are forgetting something. I have begun using this methodology and it does seem to help. What has been really helpful, however, is the gmail add-in that is available to support using this methodology. Using my email, I can track everything I have to do and instantly bring up a list of all my outstanding tasks at any time. The tasks can be grouped by location (things to do at the office) or by project. I think it will take a while for me to master both the methodology and the use of gmail to support it, but I am excited by the prospects of managing my tasks this way.

As part of my research into task management, I also came upon the Timothy Ferris’ book The 4-Hour Workweek. The point of the book is to teach us how to get out of the daily grind, reduce the time commitments we have to work, create income streams, and allow us to spend our time pursuing the things that excite us. This book had some very interesting ideas about how to streamline your life, but I had a problem with its overarching premise: that the goal of life is to fulfill yourself by pursuing that which is exciting. As a Christian, I see our goal in life as glorifying God, seeking out His will for our lives, loving Him and loving others. But it did make me think about how we Americans fall into a pattern about how we live our lives and never dream big. Why wait for retirement to do things we could be doing right now?

After I read both of the above books, I realized something: they both are about the same thing. Both books are about how to make our busy lives easier to live. I can take lessons from both authors and make them my own. From GTD, I can learn how to organize my life so that I can focus on the tasks that I should be doing and serve the Lord more effectively. From The Four Hour Work Week I can learn how to ask some bigger questions about life. It made me think about the possibility of doing the unconventional, such as taking a year off to travel the world with my family. I will take principles from each to help me understand how I can serve the Lord in the best way possible.

Pretty good for someone who was just trying to switch to a Mac…