Digital Mobilization

Digital Mission Mobilization

We've become quite comfortable with digital technologies and are even dependent on many of them. We like the speed, efficiency, and connectivity they offer. We have come to depend on a quick text message, an informative email, or an entertaining meme on Facebook. As the number of so-called digital natives continues to swell—those individuals born after 1980 who have always had access to computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and whatever is next—rapid adoption of new digital technologies will continue to be the norm rather than the exception.

Yet despite the number of technologies we use, there seems to be large-scale naïveté about technology's effects, especially the impact of digital technologies. Even otherwise helpful theologians and social analysts sometimes make the unsophisticated claim that technologies are morally neutral; that in and of themselves they are neither good nor bad, but it is the use of the technology that may be right or wrong. If it were that simple, answers to our questions would be much simpler. Unfortunately, the morality of technology is more complicated than we have imagined.

Even though we make certain choices about technology, as the founding editor of WIRED magazine, Kevin Kelly, has put it, there seems to be an inevitability about it. Some people even speak of a kind of technological determinism; if the technology exists we must use it. Although technological determinism may overstate the case, Kelly's point is that there is a certain momentum to technological developments, including digital innovation that continues to propel them. "The strong tides that shaped digital technologies for the past 30 years," he predicts, "will continue to expand and harden in the next 30 years." If he's right, and I suspect he is, where is technology going and what will our techno culture look like in 30 years? These are profound questions, especially for Christians who, as the apostle has said, are not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). Let's begin with where we are today. The accumulated data are breathtaking. According to the World Economic Forum's report, Digital Media and Society: Implications in a Hyperconnected Era, 4 in 2015 there were approximately 3 billion internet users, 2 billion active social media users, and more than 1.6 billion mobile social accounts.

These are stunning numbers that give some people vertigo and others a mild adrenaline rush. What might all of this mean for the future? Where are we going? Are we being led by market forces and insatiable human desire, or are we making carefully informed choices about digital media? And how are Christians to think about these things? With all this we need to outline some of the opportunities digital media offer to individuals, society, Christians, and their churches.

Digital Mobilization Program

Research shows that 58% of the Ethiopian population are between the ages of 13 and 54, which is believed to be the age range that is actively accessing the Internet. The number of active internet users in Ethiopia is estimated to be 30 million. This is a huge opportunity for the church to reach the unreached and to mobilize the church for mission.

Our Digital Mobilization Program aims to use digital platforms to mobilize the church for mission and to reach the unreached with the gospel.