My little girl, Charlotte, was born last Wednesday, so I was out of the office for a week. I’ve really enjoyed reading Eric’s series on church mobile sites.
Upon my return, on Wednesday, I heard the news about TinyChat.com re-inventing itself into sheer video and IM chat goodness.
Through a series of quick browsing, testing, and joining tinychat.com sessions already set up by Tony Morgan and John Saddington, the “big ideas” guy inside of me is ready to dive in and think of ways this can impact The Church and be an element of life change.
Let’s talk about four ways your church can experiment with TinyChat.com.
1. New Mommies Small Group
What if a group of new moms met after they put their little ones to bed for the night?
You don’t have to stop with new moms. Take this a step further, and provide several chat rooms for folks who have not-so-friendly-to-small-group schedules.
Finally, try sending out a church-wide invite to anyone who’s interested in testing a new platform for small groups. Based on the number of signups, you can split folks up into groups of six. Schedule one night of beta testing, and get feedback.
2. Care support groups — beyond your church walls
This is a great way to reach out and meet the needs of your community before they even step through the doors of your church.
Lead folks on a journey from pain into healing, through Christ, via face to face chat. They’re not limited to just video chat. Audio-only and instant messaging are other options.
3. Bridge campuses and the globe
Multisite churches can definitely benefit from this technology. Not all multi-sites have the luxury of being within 20 minutes of each campus. Connect campus pastors and leadership from the comfort of their own campus.
You can even connect with missionaries, and other churches and ministries across the globe. This is an awesome way to learn from each other, and stay in tune with the needs of the Kingdom efforts you support.
File and desktop sharing are more options TinyChat offers that could compliment these meetings.
There’s power in Kingdom collaboration. It’s how The Body should work.
4. Compliment your online campus
A lot of churches are launching online campuses. Why not compliment it with a real-time video discussion?
Even if your church doesn’t provide a live simulcast online campus, you can still attach a chat to your pre-recorded message archives.
Remember, you can have up to 12 folks on video chat, and an extra 100 watching and chatting through IM.
By the way, I jumped right on in with these ideas, and didn’t give much of an overview of the product. The folks over at Read Write Web have a great article that gives a concise overview of TinyChat.com.
What other “big ideas” come to mind when you think about this technology?
I could see it being extremely useful for meetings! We are a multisite church and have creative team volunteers from many campuses. It would be great to pull together without having to travel in for big meetings… hmm… Remote monitoring of services… idea sharing sessions with other churches… and on and on and on!! It could make my job as a central producer for weekend services easier!!
Very cool, Cleve! I’m a big fan of this website!!
great post, really cool where technology is taking us and linking. our challenge in middle america is increasing blue collar to gravitate toward technology…. sort of like cave men at times. im def going to look into it… thx and congrats on the baby.
Love the idea about the new moms group. Being over small groups as a pastor I am always keen to think on new ways to adopt small group models.