If we put aside preferences for Apple or Google for a couple of minutes, we can get a great perspective of not only two companies’ strategies in the mobile market, but we can learn about how we build our ministries.
A close observation of iOS devices such as the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad and Android devices (too numerous to list), reveals distinctly different strategies. The two companies, Apple and Google, have similar target audiences, yet very different approaches to how to get their Operating System into users’ hands and in turn get the users’ money into their pockets. What is even more telling is that the strategies not only reflect the way things have happened in the past (the way Windows spread to many machines), but they also reflect some strategies prevalent in the modern Christian church.
What’s Your Focus?
The Android OS is built to run anywhere, with any user, on any device. As more devices are built, the variety of experiences that Android users have will widen. The focus and scope of what needs to be accommodated will increase as the number of devices increase. And the more energy that’s spent trying to appease everyone, the less energy that is spent on simply creating great software.
Have you ever experienced this in your churches? Somebody isn’t happy so we spend more energy adding more programs, all the while diminishing the experience and quality of everything else we do. Or even worse we try to take program ________ and implement it into our ministry because of the success it has generated for others.
I predict that Android will struggle because it wants to take a good OS and make it work on hundreds of devices, while Apple will have the iOS run on a few similar devices. While Android wants it’s OS to work in a variety of contexts, Apple knows that it’s OS works best on the context that Apple creates. Many of our churches would benefit by understanding what Apple understands, the programs (software) that we run need to be done in light of the context (device) in which they exist.
Do What You Do Best
The iOS, on the other hand, has always had a clear focus and that is to be an easy-to-use, beautiful interface for users. From the beginning each version of the device has interacted the same way and had the same look and feel. You might even say that using an iPod Touch prepares young kids to someday graduate to an iPhone. Surely this is not incidental.
What Apple knows, and is evident in the way they approach mobile devices, is that they have to do what they can do better than anyone else. And until that point, they do not do it. Android beat Apple to multi-tasking. Android has devices with front-facing cameras and have apps that can do video chatting. But what’s important to note is the iOS is not about having more features, it’s about implementing the features it has better. The iOS is brilliant in choosing to only do the things that it can do better than anyone else.
Perhaps our ministry’s would be more successful if we didn’t focus on copying features of another church’s operating system and instead focused on that one thing that our church can offer that no other organization can.
Ken Guie says
I really loved this post. This is so true. I liken the catholic church to the android os to take that idea further. You make great points! Thanks for the insights!
Chris Ames says
Yeah RJ gave a ton of great insight!
peace | dewde
Adam Lehman says
Great post. I’ve always wondered what it’d be like if our churches were such an expression of the local culture that they couldn’t be replicated. What if someone came into our church service and said, “wow, this is a very COLUMBUS OH church service.”
Just a thought.
RJ Grunewald says
Exactly! I often wonder about situations where churches become “partner churches” (ie: lifechurch.tv, northpoint, etc); what does that look like for them? Are they just trying to be Northpoint Detroit? Because I have a feeling you can have the same vision but it’d need to be carried out differently in different places.
dewde says
RJ:
I’ve been on staff at North Point since February, and I’m please to say that the leadership here keeps that in focus. We have 3 campuses now: Buckhead is urban, North Point is Suburban, and Browns Bridge is closer to rural.
As I understand it, Andy Stanley has a fixed number of Sundays a year the he preaches. I want to think its in the high 20s or low 30s. So while on an typical Sunday he will be live at one of the campuses and live video at the other two, that leaves a whole heap of Sundays without him. Sometimes we bring in guest speakers and multicast them (Dave Ramsey comes to mind) but usually these Sundays are available for the local campus pastor to speak into issues specific to their attenders.
Since the partner churches don’t rely on live video, but instead used pre-recorded (historical) messages, they have even more flexibility in this area.
I’ve never bee in occupational ministry before, and I didn’t grow up in church, so I can’t really give a fair comparison of this model over others, but I can say that I routinely hear and see evidence that North Point Ministries as a whole is aware of this dynamic and that we do what we do to support local churches, not pretend they don’t exist.
Although, now that I type all that out, I sorta feel like Wal Mart trying to convince a local community that they will be better with us than without us. Hrmmm….
peace | dewde
Graham says
I think you are right on though Chris. The point is that as long as this thought is on everyone’s mind as they are creating for ministries and actually doing something about it… it can work very well. NP is a great example of that. But sometimes churches say one thing and do another… that’s where it gets muddy.
Graham says
Wow… this is the kind of post I really enjoy. I am with you on this. After having my Droid for almost a month… I really love it, BUT, I know that the iPhone does everything my Droid does a little better. When we compare the two device OS’s to the church and how we approach ministry… I also agree with you.
When you said, “Somebody isn’t happy so we spend more energy adding more programs, all the while diminishing the experience and quality of everything else we do.” You hit it right on the head. Many people have blogged about and even written books on the whole ‘less is more’ approach. Instead of worrying about making everyone happy. The church should take it’s limited creative resources and focus on a few things… and do them with excellence.
All too often the church tries to be everything to everybody. That shows when staff is stretched… it shows when budgets are stretched… and it shows when the multiple ministries the church has committed to are under-developed. Heading in too many directions at once may seem like a noble thing to do. But when we aren’t able to give each direction the attention it would really require in order to make it succeed… are we really doing anyone any favors?
Brian says
This is a great post. The last sentence reminds me of Jim Collins’s point in his book Good to Great: find out what makes you unique, and be the best in the world at it. Successful businesses (and I think this can certainly apply to churches) become so by allowing razor-sharp focus to drive them to excellence.
Of course, we have to really analyze this OS analogy before we draw conclusions from it. If we really dig into it, there’s more here than the surface question of “do one thing well, or many things mediocre?” question. In the phone market, you have the question of whether the Direct-To-Consumer model (Apple) is superior to the One-OS, Many-Manufacturers model (Android). In the latter, Android itself is sharing the workload with manufacturers. “We’ll make an OS you can use in a bunch of different ways; you target the consumer however you’d like.” Does the church have that choice? I’d say yes.
The church can use volunteers/servants to carry out the work of the ministry. In fact, that’s the model of the NT church. So before we decide that “we can’t do Twitter AND Facebook; we can’t do both well” (I’m not suggesting you were directly advocating that approach), we might need to consider just writing up some guidelines for how, say, the children’s ministry teachers should create and maintain their Facebook groups. So the communications/web department can focus on doing the fan pages well (Apple), while also letting the members carry out the “customization” needed to meet the various needs of the smaller groups and ministries.
That’s just a tiny example. The point is that perhaps we can manage to do both: take the Apple approach for the big stuff to make the experience fantastic and polished for our guests and members. Then–by equipping serving members–take the Android approach for smaller things. And who knows–like you mentioned about Android getting some things to market faster than Apple, we may find that our serving members come up with an innovation that we can learn from, polish, and make part of our “Apple” presentation for the entire congregation.
RJ Grunewald says
I meant for this comment to actually be a reply here.
“In the phone market, you have the question of whether the Direct-To-Consumer model (Apple) is superior to the One-OS, Many-Manufacturers model (Android). In the latter, Android itself is sharing the workload with manufacturers. “We’ll make an OS you can use in a bunch of different ways; you target the consumer however you’d like.” Does the church have that choice? I’d say yes.”
I think your absolutely right when you say the church has the choice and ability to empower it’s volunteers to lead and customize what the church is doing…but I don’t know if your analogy matches the initial direction I took with my analogy.
In the main post – the church members/attenders are the consumers and the companies Apple or Google are the church organization. So in your statement I don’t think it really fits to say empowering another manufacturer to make changes to how the OS works for the consumer really fits, unless we get into much different church organizational structures like denominations and such.
With what you’re saying, with the analogy presented in the main post, I would liken church members that lead within the congregation as empowered by being able to be app developers and create their own ministry opportunities and use their own gifts to try and build something that fits within the vision of the church.
JayCaruso says
This is good, but as an Android user, I could argue that running your ministry like iOS could be counter-productive.
iOS is only available on the iPhone and iPad and the only carrier they have is AT&T. iOS has stringent rules for getting apps approved and many developers are never given a decent explanation as to why their app is rejected by the App Store. They had a problem with their handset and at first blamed their customer base, then in lamely attempted to claim the same issue occurred with the Droid X which proved to be nonsense.
What if a church or ministry was run like that? Innovative people have their ideas shot down with no explanation. Only a select group of people are consulted about programs, vision casting, direction, etc. People raise an issue about something they see that is not right in the church or ministry and the leadership throws it back at the people they serve or says the same thing happens at other churches when it doesn’t.
Just showing how it could be looked at from another angle.
RJ Grunewald says
Those are great points you make, Jay. You should submit a post about the benefits of modeling a ministry after Android.
I’m tempted to try and fearlessly defend Apple, since I am quite the fan boy and buy everything they sell. But I think you bring up some great points…I think it would be difficult to draw out the analogy as far as to figure out how the carrier gets involved.
The App Store rejection thing can get either way though; we obviously don’t want to hinder innovative people from getting ideas shot down with no reason, but we don’t want people doing things that will harm our ministry either (which a android trojan was just found this past week I believe). Most rejections are bugs or use of private APIs…obviously there are horror stories of people who don’t hear anything and don’t know why it got rejected, which is dumb.
I could see a benefit to looking at what Google does right though – they are incredibly open in letting people submit things, they are not nearly as secretive as apple about things, and they have no problem trying things out (somethings almost always in beta at google).
Thanks for the pushback!
Chris Ames says
“I think it would be difficult to draw out the analogy as far as to figure out how the carrier gets involved.”
I think it’s clear the carrier is God and Jay’s advocating a religion that is “carrier neutral”…?
hrm. That doesn’t sound right.
:-O
peace | dewde
RJ Grunewald says
“In the phone market, you have the question of whether the Direct-To-Consumer model (Apple) is superior to the One-OS, Many-Manufacturers model (Android). In the latter, Android itself is sharing the workload with manufacturers. “We’ll make an OS you can use in a bunch of different ways; you target the consumer however you’d like.” Does the church have that choice? I’d say yes.”
I think your absolutely right when you say the church has the choice and ability to empower it’s volunteers to lead and customize what the church is doing…but I don’t know if your analogy matches the initial direction I took with my analogy.
In the main post – the church members/attenders are the consumers and the companies Apple or Google are the church organization. So in your statement I don’t think it really fits to say empowering another manufacturer to make changes to how the OS works for the consumer really fits, unless we get into much different church organizational structures like denominations and such.
With what you’re saying, with the analogy presented in the main post, I would liken church members that lead within the congregation as empowered by being able to be app developers and create their own ministry opportunities and use their own gifts to try and build something that fits within the vision of the church.
Doug says
So, I’m new here and I’m not sure how you guys take dissenting opinions, so I hope you don’t get upset and think I’m just trying to rock the boat. My opinion is greatly influenced by 2 things: my love of God and his ability to adapt to different cultures, and my love of Google’s Android OS. 🙂
First let me say that I totally agree with the basic premise of the article (as I see it) that we need to focus (individually and corporately) on what we’re good at and not spread ourselves too thin worrying about things we’re not good at, at the expense of the things we are good at.
As a former owner of an Apple iPhone, I have grown to seriously dislike them. I jailbroke my phone within my first week of owning my iPhone. My main argument against them is basically the same main argument I’d give as to why I didn’t become a follower of Jesus until later in life. I feel that Apple is too restrictive. They don’t allow any creativity outside of the lines that they have drawn, and while some of those lines are drawn clearly, many are vague rules that you don’t find out you violated until someone informs you that you broke them. I feel that many churches are like that. They will accept you as long as you are willing to follow “their” rules, many of which are commonly accepted, unspoken, social principles.
Anyways, the thing with Android. The Android folks do not adapt Android OS to each phone. They create a basic OS and then the phone companies modify the basic OS to fit the phones that they developed. This is much more in line with how I see God and the Gospel operating. There is this basic, pure Gospel that is true no matter what culture or context you are in. But, in order for people to understand it, the Gospel needs to be lived out in the culture that you are in.
And so, with this definition, I feel that Android is a better OS to model your ministry after… you get the basic, raw, Gospel (OS) from God. You then figure out how to live that Gospel out in your life, with your particular set of gifts, with your particular set of community, with your particular set of mission field.
RJ Grunewald says
When you make the analogy of the Gospel being the OS and the context for which we present is like the manufacturers and users that can adapt the user experience to how they want to present they same basic OS, I totally agree.