My friend Dana Byers wrote to ask “What’s your dream media collaboration?
A great question. I spend a lot of time thinking about the interplay between media, technology and the Church.
The whole world is watching and participating in a global media spectacle.
Digital technology is allowing us to do things and to communicate and collaborate in ways never dreamed of before.
Digital technology is also disruptive.
Traditional media is being challenged by new modes of information distribution. Entire markets and industries are being transformed, including church media outreach and religious broadcasting.
While we can’t stop the disruption caused by new technologies, we can meet them head on; develop new ministry and business models that harness their potential.
So we dream. We plan. And we ask the Lord to give us insight; to order our steps.
I believe when Christians work together, sacrifice together, and trust God for the sake of the gospel, we can do more to advance the kingdom in the next 5-10 years than we have seen from our collective efforts during the past 50 years.
My dream media collaboration is a team of leaders working in sync to build an online and mobile video platform that distributes Christian content in real-time from leading publishers across a global network of affiliate partners.
It is a dream that:
1. Recognizes the power of the Internet and takes advantages of its potential to be one of the greatest soul winning tools ever created.
2. Establishes positive cooperative relationships between churches, broadcasters, publishers, Internet and traditional media ministries, and businesses.
3. Accelerates growth in the number of unreached and unchurched people engaging online with the gospel in the U.S. and internationally.
4. Navigates the seemingly impossible tension of living fully in God’s kingdom while operating fully in the marketplace.
5. Excels in marketing and sales and results, and seeks profit for the sake of the mission and sustainability.
6. Powers economic growth and development for participants of every size.
7. Leverages and integrates traditional Christian media platforms with new digital technologies.
8. Deploys geo-location technology that will allow broadcast and content partners to create rich local and hyper-local ministry experiences tailored for their audiences.
9. Advances innovation to identify and solve future technological challenges, such as how will three screens (PC, wireless, TV) and the cloud that ties them all together, affect how people interact online with the Bible?
10. Removes technology and financial barriers for a new generation of churches and organizations to move from the sideline to the frontline of using new digital media for ministry.
11. Develops a “digital runway” for helping pastors, churches and ministries launch new video outreach platforms.
12. Distributes and delivers on-demand and live video content through multiple channels and hundreds of affiliates.
13. Provides media channels for artists, storytellers, filmmakers, poets and theologians to create what God has put in their hearts for this and future generations.
14. Distributes content at no cost to publisher partners and seeks to be a new stream of income for them.
15. Offers users free-access to interactive evangelistic environments.
16. Creates immersive media experiences for users that results in measurable spiritual growth, including local church involvement.
17. Taps into the power of social networks to exponentially increase exposure to the gospel.
18. Looks for digital trailblazers to join the mission and through whom God can do His work.
19. Opens up online broadcast channels for communicators to expertly guide conversations about the Savior and His word, leverage church resources into digital media projects, and lead training programs to equip armies of digital scribes to do online ministry.
20. Envisions a future of Christian digital media that is co-created through collaboration, is device agnostic, and “makes disciples of all the nations.”
Doing impossible feats
His servant said, “There’s not nearly enough!” Elisha said, “Just go ahead and do it. God says there’s plenty.”
2 Kings 4:43
God foreknew the imponderables of the globalization of media. I think one reason He is sovereignly orchestrating global media convergence is because of the role it can play in fulfilling the Great Commission. “God wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4)
Digital technology is giving the Church the opportunity to evangelize towns, nations, and the world quicker and easier than most of us could have imagined five years ago.
It will take less capital than we think. It will take more faith than we think.
I believe God favors media collaboration. Unified for His purpose and glory, seemingly impossible feats will be accomplished.
That is the dream.