Mobile is changing the way we buy, sign up and do most everything online. It’s the fastest growing game-changer/disruptor technology since the internet itself. Here’s a great slidershare on the 50 things you should know about mobile commerce. How have you seen your own purchasing habits change after you adopted a smart phone?

Text giving is an important tool for the growing church. This post is part 1 in a new series, The Mobile Church. In this series, we explore the way the mobile phone is changing the way people connect and the way churches minister. What was once seen as a potential threat to community is now the great connector of people, creating new opportunities for churches and ministries to reach audiences, minister, and raise funds. Follow this series to learn about the trends in technology that can no longer be ignored. Jennifer is a 26-year-old loyal churchgoer. Each Sunday as she leaves the house, she checks to make sure she’s not forgetting one thing – her phone. She doesn’t bring her Bible and notebook. She certainly doesn’t bring her checkbook. She follows along with the sermon on her Bible app, tweets a verse that stood out to her, then texts her…

Many of my current conversations start with “we need our own app.” I usually answer this question with one of my own, “why do you think you need an app?” The usual answer is something similar to what junior high boys give their parents when they want a new game console: “All the cool kids have one.” But before you try to keep up with the cool, rich kids of technology, I would suggest you take a step back and think about creating a mobile strategy first. Much like creating marketing pieces without an integrated marketing campaign is not a smart idea, creating apps without first designing a mobile strategy is not a good move. Sometimes your best app is not an app at all, but a killer mobile version of your site. Recently, Google put out some good thinking on mobile strategies. Following are 4 questions you should consider…

We just launched our first iPhone/iPad app a couple of weeks ago. This is a media-rich app that allows the user to watch videos, listen to audio, read notes, share information as well as bookmark favorites for access later. The Met Church in Houston, TX was our pilot church– you can find it in the app store under “The Met Church.” This app works together with our online “Media Machine” which The Met uses. They upload media files only once and the Media Machine takes care of their website media, Podcasts as well as the iPhone/iPad apps. While it’s an easy process for our clients, it’s quite of feat of programming prowess for our team. Our challenge was not only creating the app, but making it interface with our existing platform and making it seamless for our clients using our back end we call TAG Tools. We’re a learning organization…