Bright Lights Huddle Executive Summary

Core members of the Mobile Ministry Forum (MMF) recently met for a three-day “Bright Lights Huddle” strategic planning retreat. The MMF leadership, recognizing the movement’s rapid growth, thought it important to come together to seek the Lord as to how our momentum could best be translated into Kingdom impact. Our vision is to see every unreached person given the opportunity to connect with Christ and His Church through their mobile device by the end of 2020.

The “Bright Lights Huddle” took place March 25-27 outside of Chicago at the home of Ed and Ginny Elliott who graciously and splendidly hosted the 11 participants who represented 11 different ministries. We were blessed to have Dave Hackett, an expert partnership facilitator with VisionSynergy and mobile ministry strategist, moderating our discussions (see agenda and meeting notes). A slide show is available here.

Outcomes from “Bright Lights Huddle” include:

1. Placing more emphasis on the “Equip” segment of our four core objectives with “Advocacy/Catalyzing” and “Anticipate” taking second place.
   1. Particular “Equip” thrusts include:
      1. Finalizing and implementing the Mobile Ministry Training Course v2.0.
      2. Producing a series of 5-8 videos introducing various mobile ministry opportunities and sharing means of implementing them.
      3. Taking a lead role in mobile training at the 2014 Eurasia Media and Distribution Conference.
      4. Hosting a virtual or in-person hackathon/buildathon to produce needed mobile ministry tools.
      5. Developing an instrument that will enable ministries to evaluate their status in integrating mobile ministry and provide them with pointers to how they can better integrate mobile ministry.
      6. Putting together an apps development toolkit and appointing Johnathan Pulos as the MMF Apps Consultant for those needing help with apps development.
      7. Developing and codifying best practices in Bluetooth Broadcasting.
   2. Particular “Advocacy/Catalyzing” thrusts include:
      1. Developing a mobile success story resource and highlighting various stories of mobile ministry in practice. Story ideas can be posted here.
      2. Producing a 2-3 minute mobile ministry introduction video that would be more story-based and appropriate for use both in church meetings as well as on mobile screens.
      3. Produce a mobile ministry success story spot for broadcast and mobile/web use (potentially one and the same with the previous).
      4. Producing content for the International Orality Network Journal and potentially other missions publications like Mission Frontiers, etc.
2. The introduction of a mobile ministry webinar series in the coming year.
3. A commitment to enable greater open and interactive communications and knowledge sharing among MMF participants.
4. A commitment to host another Mobile Ministry Forum Consultation this November/December.
5. A commitment to make mobile ministry resources more easily available/discoverable to practitioners.

Mobile Ministry Forum Steering Team

Brad

Jay Clark

Johnathan Pulos

Clyde Taber

Keith Williams