Seriously. It’s been over a year. And the United Methodist Church doesn’t have an iPhone app? Seriously?
The Brits have us beat with a Methodist App put out at least LAST MAY that has prayers and bible studies, news and tweets, and podcasts from Methodist Web Radio.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe the general UMC is yielding this development to the local churches. A quick web search yields the following iPhone apps made by local churches. Click these to get ideas (they might bring up iTunes however, sorry).
- Central UMC (Fayetteville, AR) has podcasts, giving, and videos as their main items.
- Mt. Bethel (Marietta, GA) has sermons, blog posts, media (videos) and a connect page as their main items.
- Pulaski Heights UMC (Little Rock, AR) has news, a church twitter feed, and videos as their main items.
So, consider this a call for ideas. What would you have on your UMC mobile app? What would you like it to do? Here’s my suggestions (serious and otherwise):
- Send reminder notifications every day of “Have you done all the good that you can today?” and “How is it with your soul?”
- Augmented reality of UMC churches, when you look thru your iPhone it colors them blue for liberal, red for conservative, and purple for fabulous.
- Newsfeed of all the Methoblog entries (woohoo!). Hey, why not a search function of the Methoblogs to read what everyone hip is musing about?
- Links to search MinistryMatters.com or Cokesbury.com for subjects (Shane better link to me for that shameless plug).
- Aggregated twitter feed with updates (culled, obviously) of everyone using the app on how they made disciples of Jesus Christ to transform the world that day (in 140 characters or less).
More ideas? Thoughts?
(Photo credit: samadjee on Flickr, Creative Commons Licensed)
Would live some lectionary tools. At the very least this weeks text, but a reverse search that allows you to see if/when a passage will be in the lectionary would be helpful too. It would also be nice to have links to church podcasts, like the NPR app does. I like the methoblog idea too.
I like the lectionary idea, Gary. Maybe it could link to the Common English Bible translation as the UMC seems to warm up to this new translation?
(there is a Lectionary app, but it is paid for and not as versatile).
If someone wants to make a difference at the 2012 general conference they need to put forward a resolution requiring the church to hire a chief information officer. Given the current umc.org website with its messy hyperlink address system and lack of organization, do you trust the church to put together an app?
That’s one of the best ideas i’ve heard yet. And then maybe they can help inform some of the marketing decisions so future websites don’t look like the vital congregations site.
Seriously, why hasn’t this happened yet? Cokesbury has a Daily Bible Study App., so you can utilize that. Run the news feed of umc.org, have a twitter feed with anything tagged #umc, and a few other things including find-a-church (especially with your categories), and we would be in business. If I had any skills designing these things, I would say we could even do an OKUMC one as well with some similar features.
I would love to have the Book of Worship as an app.
The UMC can’t do this. Some of us live in the country where there’s only dial-up powered by a hand-cranked butter churn. And if *I* can’t use something, then no one can – that’s what being “United” means.
But we’d love purple for fabulous churches. And a search function so we can find the nearest committee meeting and church supper, no matter where we are on the planet.
Perhaps more practical would be linking general info & giving data about Advance Specials with real-time news from the people & places impacted by those ministries.
It seems like an app would be a great place for sermon interaction, questions, comments, rants, etc.
If it were free I would try to figure it out, but, alas, I am a poor half-time student.
Stay blessed…john
The Find-A-Church function is a great idea. I would want it to be able to search Google Maps for the nearest UMC to my GPS location. Sometimes I’m on vacation and need to find a place to worship… or I need a rest stop. I trust a UMC bathroom more than a truck stop!
LMAO!!!!!!!!
“The UMC can’t do this. Some of us live in the country where there’s only dial-up powered by a hand-cranked butter churn. And if *I* can’t use something, then no one can – that’s what being “United” means.
“But we’d love purple for fabulous churches. And a search function so we can find the nearest committee meeting and church supper, no matter where we are on the planet.”
I like the find-a-church and lectionary ideas (which should also include global worship ideas), but what about links for online giving (to UMCOR, etc) and how one can volunteer.