Bobby Gruenewald and his team at LifeChurch.tv are leaders in the development of best practices for the use of technology in ministry.

Catching up with a man who travels 200,000 miles a year was not easy, so it was my pleasure to speak with him.

We started our conversation discussing the church’s growth.

Bobby, LifeChurch.tv just celebrated its 15th anniversary. You must be in awe and humbled by all the success and growth God has brought.

We are. We’re very ordinary, in many ways underserving leaders to be able to see and witness all this, but we feel privileged to be a part of what God is doing. Quite frankly, the simple approach that we’ve taken here is just see where God’s moving and what He’s doing and try to do more of it. We’re always reminded, there’s no way this is the result of our efforts. God makes it real clear to us that it’s His doing.

You just returned from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. What was your purpose for being there?

Over the last few years, we’ve done a lot to explore how we can leverage mobile technology, in particular apps, to reach people with the gospel. The main focus of that energy has been on YouVersion, our free Bible app. This year, we plan to fully support eight new languages. That means modern Bibles available in those languages, the apps, the website.

So being there had a twofold purpose. First, to learn about where technology is going so that we can make good decisions as we extend out globally. And second, to develop relationships with the technology companies, to help them understand what we’re doing and explore opportunities for working with them to get the Bible out to millions of people.

Will Church Online continue to be a strategic part of your mission?

It’s very much a high priority.

We believe the platform and the format provides opportunity to engage a global population of people that would not step foot inside of a church building, whatever their reasons.

We’ve seen strong growth every year and think it has almost limitless potential for reaching people.

What’s neat for me is that it’s a self-sufficient community, meaning everything we put into it, including staff, is funded from the people that are participating. It’s not just a bunch of people watching a webstream. It’s a community very much engaged in the experience even though they are geographically separated.

Do you have plans for extending the platform?

Right now, we’re working on making the Church Online platform available for others to use. The things that enable us to do ministry in that way – the interactive, community, volunteer management, everything except the video stream – will be made available to churches and ministries. They will be able to put their own branding, logo, skin, look and appearance on it and do their own implementation.

We will host the technology. As we move it forward and venture into new places and innovations, everyone using it will be able to benefit.

I’ve heard that like all the other resources you provide to churches and ministries, the platform will be made available at no cost. That’s a huge undertaking.

We would like to make the platform available for free, but want to make sure we can deliver and create a world-class product and service. That’s why we’re going through a limited beta test period now with several churches and ministries. We want to fully understand what’s involved in properly supporting it. That may mean we have to release it in stages and have a certain number of ministries that we could add at any given time.

We also may look to a model where it’s free, but churches have the opportunity to contribute financially to help sustain it. Many churches and ministries are in the process of paying a lot of money to try to recreate the platform, so this would be a way to help fund something that everybody benefits from.

We hope to make some announcements on it soon.

What do you see in the future for how pastors use Christian media?

In any type of media, the number of people reached is really what’s going to attract pastors. Some pastors may only embrace new media because it’s what they’re familiar with. Limited resources force you to focus on what you know best. But as long as there’s an audience for radio and television, I’m pretty confident there will be pastors who want to get their message out through those channels.

If the audience is declining then the answer probably lies in how do you change that trend?

Broadcasters and churches have always worked together. Should we be looking for even more ways to cooperate to solve technological change issues?

Absolutely. My background is business, so my language still tends to rest heavily in that world. From an economic perspective, there’s billions, if not trillions of dollars of resources and assets that are collectively controlled or influenced by the Christian community as a whole. The unfortunate thing is, those resources are too often corralled into tribes or sections, sometimes creating competitive situations.

I recognize there will always be a certain degree of separation and sometimes there are valid reasons why people approach things differently. But if broadcasters and churches could find ways to bring synergy, break some of those barriers down, there’s probably an enormous amount of resource that could begin to move in step together to reach the world.

I know that’s the core of what ministry groups and broadcasters have as their mission.

With so much disruption, teams and organizations can lose their focus.

To stay focused on our mission, we will all need to be able to embrace change.

The Church as a whole needs to work hard at uniting around a common purpose and realize that our practices and methodologies will have to change to reach this next generation.

That has exciting opportunities associated with it because there are so many things we can do today that we could never do before.

A small example. One of the things we do at Church Online is run ads on Google for people that are searching for pornography. So in the privacy of their home, when they’re thinking about looking for a naked lady, they’re intersected with an advertisement inviting them to choose to be part of a church experience instead.

Being able to get into the thought process of somebody in the middle of sin is something that we could never do before.

I would encourage broadcasters to be postured toward embracing change, as a verb not a noun, especially in the world of communication. Not because we’re trying to save an organization or keep a ministry alive, but because it’s what’s required for all of us to collectively reach the world we live in for Christ.

That’s a great challenge Bobby. Thank you for talking with us.