Bobby Gruenewald and Terry Storch apparently had a great session at South by Southwest sharing their thoughts on how their organization, LifeChurch.tv, has concentrated on using technology for results primarily and not for profit.
Of course, this is very counter to what most businesses are hoping to achieve.
Check out a 2 minute clip of them speaking after the jump. Note that the original version was almost impossible to hear so I got some help from Brett who did some quick audio editing.
Thanks!
One thing I can almost certainly imagine that happened was having to clarify what “results” means in the context of their organization and model because “results” could mean “profits” for most people.
Great stuff. Anyone have some notes from the session?
Yeah, your version on here is better
*thumbs up*
Bobby used three statistics during the session to illustrate the results technology is delivering at LifeChurch:
1. 4.4 million – the number of YouVersion Bible mobile app users on the iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Java, and Palm, over a 19 month period
2. 500,000+ – the number of new users installing YouVersion on their phone or mobile in an average month
3. 1.4 billion – the number of total minutes people have spent reading the Bible on a mobile device with YouVersion
Remarkably, YouVersion is free. It generates no revenue.
The result Bobby and Terry seemed most proud of during the presentation was the time people were spending in God’s word. How do you measure the value of people spending time in the book that will help them with their lives and help them have a great relationship with God?
By the way, for those that don’t know, the cost of the technology is built into the church’s annual budget.
Technology for results, not profit, indeed!
LOVE IT! thanks so much!
Wow. That is amazing.
Thanks for that info! Amazing.
They get it.
Open source should be what the Church is all about.
here’s to that day.
http://bit.ly/cS3JRb
my notes via a google doc
That was good for sure, and the stats are incredible, i love what Lifechurch does.
Only thing was…why did he call churches competitors??
RE: calling churches competitors
SXSW is a secular conference. The audience in the room was mixed. There was both church/ministry and general market nonprofit present.
Bobby was talking about the challenges of for profit entities collaborating with competitors but for nonprofits, mission alignment made working together more feasible.
The example he used (in the video above) was the 12 churches LifeChurch brought together to work on developing a scalable platform for church online. He said their shared view of using technology (and NOT competing) in kingdom work made the collaboration possible.
At least that’s how I understood it.
LifeChurch.tv is the real deal. I got to hear Craig Groeschel (lead pastor) last week. He was fantastic.