It's only been eleven days since I heard about Periscope from one of Auxano's newest navigators, Chris Rivers. We were doing a leadership training event at Elmbrook Church with 500 leaders discussing their new mission and values. In seconds, Chris started live streaming the event and over 40 people joined in. Since then, I have broadcast 11 live events, averaging one per day. Yesterday, anyone could have watched 15 minutes of Auxano's virtual team training. Last night anyone could have chatted with me about book writing, while I hosted a 15 minutes Q&A at 11 o'clock at night trying to stay awake for another few hours. (I have 14 days left to finish God Dreams, my fourth book.)
What is Periscope? It'a an insanely simple, live streaming tool that connects with your twitter account. (Twitter bought it for $100 million.) Whatever you live stream, people can comment on, and "heart" showing realtime interaction and engagement. Best of all, it archives your live streaming event for 24 hours so that you followers can watch later if they weren't available. Read more at Wired or TechCrunch.
So why should every church leader jump on the band wagon?
Let me say up front that I am not a tech guy and I don't really pay close attention to all of the new stuff that comes out. I am an opportunistic guy, who sees patterns fast and far. What periscope will become is actually mind numbing when you consider the possibilities. I won't unpack it in this post.
But I do want to urge you to get on this tool and start experimenting. Here are at least seven reason why every church leader should consider periscope, the new social media tool.
GENERAL LEADERSHIP REASONS
#1 Every new social tool is a new opportunity to learn as a leader.
I know you are busy and you can't get distracted by everything. But the benefits of this opportunity are huge. If you keep the perspective of periscope as a leadership tool and a learning tool it will help. Think of is this way— It's more efficient and probably more fun than reading another leadership book.
#2 Your influence may dramatically increase if you are an early adopter with a tool that will be widespread.
You want to be in the know when the odometer turns and everyone is reset to zero. That's right, everyone is at the starting line. And the first ones to use it will begin to have differentiated influence. And every day you wait, you get further behind.
#3 Periscope doesn’t start from scratch, but leverages your current twitter following.
Fortunately you are not turning a giant flywheel with no momentum, unless of course you are not on twitter. For many of you, jumping into periscope will enable you to connect with dozens of people due to its integration with twitter. Yup, more stuff to retweet!
MINISTRY SPECIFIC REASONS
The most important factors, of course, have to do with the gospel and your ministry calling.
#4 Periscope removes the greatest barrier to discipleship—opportunities for life modeling that don’t require physical presence.
You can teach what you know, but you reproduce what you are. Periscope is an amazing tool for life modeling. Think about it. You might teach or preach to a crowd once a week. But who gets to see you do family devotions? Who might want to peek in for 5 minutes to see where you have your God times? What's better than seeing the mission trip live from a handful of people on the ground?
What did Jesus due when he came to earth? He modeled his life so that he could start a life-modeling chain reaction. When he left he provided his personal presence through the Holy Spirit. He distributed his presence through the incredible nature of the Trinity himself. In some ways that is the same multipliable opportunity with Periscope. Periscope has been called "consensual voyeurism." I would encourage you to think about it as "ever-present modeling multiplication"
#5 Periscope expands how a mobile society can stay connected to your ministry events.
My first post in 2015 became popular as I discussed why you most committed people will attend church less frequently. Here is a tool to address that challenge. Why wouldn't you want to have a distributed workforce of people showing your ministry events, shared experiences and God moments as a church? I can't wait to see the applications for church communicators!
#6 Periscope creates a new horizon of innovation opportunity for the almost 8 billion in the world.
The mind blowing begins when you think of the modeling, teaching and training opportunities leveraged across a growing global population of digitally connected people. If you want some fuel to throw on your imagination, consider reading this post on 8 Predictions for the world in 2025.
Do you ever get tired of the church lagging far behind the innovation curve? Again, here is an new opportunity to leap ahead.
#7 There will be tons of distracting and even evil stuff on Periscope, so let's saturate it with the gospel!
Enough said.
Are you on Periscope yet? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Oh and be sure to connect with me @willmancini. Periscope up!
