November 2021

From its earliest beginnings, Ligonier has been a leader in using technology in achieving its mission of “proclaiming, teaching, and defending the holiness of God in all its fullness to as many people as possible.” Before the digital revolution, the ministry was early in adopting audio cassettes, video cassettes, and radio to extend its reach beyond those within driving range of the Ligonier Valley Study Center.

As the digital revolution began, those early media forms transformed to their digital equivalents of CDs and DVDs and, with the growth of the Internet they became digital streams and podcasts. The mobile revolution brought mobile apps, and in the social and connected intelligence revolutions Ligonier has established platforms for connecting students and teachers, those with questions and those with answers.

From the early years when founder R.C. Sproul just had a lectern and a chalkboard and reached the dozens of students gathered in his classroom, Ligonier has grown to reach millions each month with rich teaching leveraging the latest technologies. 

Sproul was constantly seeking ways to help more and more people more deeply understand who God is. He championed big projects. It’s reported that whenever a major initiative was completed, he would celebrate what God had accomplished, but then ask “What’s next?” The leadership of Ligonier is continuing to ask that question and to seek good and godly ways to advance their mission. 

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The concept of “value proposition” has long felt very squishy to me. If I would ask someone about the value proposition for their product or business, I would often get an answer that felt “warm and fuzzy”. The answers sounded good and probably were based on discussions they’d had with their customers, but I never felt a great deal of confidence that they were a solid foundation for strategic decisions.

So, I was excited when Alexander Osterwalder and team released Value Proposition Design and introduced the Value Proposition Canvas. Finally, it felt like there was a repeatable analytical process for developing a value proposition. Still, there were times when the tool didn’t seem as easy to use as I expected. Something still seemed to be missing.

And then I read The Digital Transformation Playbook. One of David Rogers’ strategic themes is “adapt your value proposition”, and that is the topic of a very rich chapter that greatly clarified my view of value propositions. Most of the chapter introduces the Value Proposition Roadmap and a detailed step-by-step explanation of how to use it. In the article linked below I focus on combining the process that Rogers describes with that used by Osterwalder et al in the Value Proposition Canvas. I actually think a combination of the two is a powerful approach that overcomes the weaknesses of each.

Read the full article here.

For over 50 years, Samaritan’s Purse has helped meet the needs of people who are victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine with the purpose of sharing God’s love through His Son, Jesus Christ. When Bob Pierce founded the ministry in 1970, he wasn’t motivated by any vision of the coming digital revolution, or how western technology could save people in struggling economies. He was a man with a heart broken “by the things that break God’s heart” and convicted by Jesus’ words at the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan: “Go and do likewise.”

So, how has the digital revolution played a part in how God is using Samaritan’s Purse, and how do the ministry’s leaders approach capturing the power and managing the danger of new technologies? I asked Ross Stonecipher, senior director of IT for the ministry to walk me through the four waves of the digital revolution at Samaritan’s Purse. Click the link below to read his answers.

Technology has clearly been an important part of how God is using Samaritan’s Purse to love and serve many around the world. In addition to it’s U.S. headquarters, the ministry has affiliate offices in Canada, Australia, the U.K., Germany and South Korea, field offices in 19 countries, and works in more than 100 countries to provide aid to victims of war, disease, disaster, poverty, famine and persecution. The ministry literally has touched hundreds of millions of people at their point of need.  It is hard to imagine Samaritan’s Purse being able to operate at that scale without the technologies that have become core to the ministry’s operations.

Read the full article here.

The Digital Transformation Playbook, by David L. Rogers, provides a comprehensive framework for working through the potentially disruptive process of redesigning a company for the new business operating models introduced throughout the digital revolution. As the author explains, digital transformation is not about technology— it is about strategy and new ways of thinking. He specifically calls out five domains of business strategy requiring reevaluation: customers, competition, data, innovation, and value.

The book is structured as seven chapters: one introducing the five domains, one for each of the five domains, and a closing chapter on disruptive business models. Within each chapter, the author introduces at least one tool or framework to provide practical help to readers in changing their strategic perspective on that domain. Throughout he also provides extensive and helpful case studies to demonstrate how the transformations happen in real business situations, and identifies the organizational challenges in achieving transformation.

In my opinion, The Digital Transformation Playbook is an essential primer and reference for anyone involved in business leadership. Each chapter is a goldmine, containing as much helpful information as many standalone books. The case studies, tools, and frameworks make it as easy as possible for leaders to implement the concepts contained within and the author’s website provides additional coaching on how to use the most powerful tools. While not being a quick read (because of the richness of concepts presented), the book is very readable and engaging. I strongly recommend it to any business leader.

Click here to read the full review.

While pastor Craig Groeschel started Life.Church modestly in 1996 in a two-car garage in Oklahoma City, that small congregation has grown into one of the largest multi-campus churches in America and serves hundreds of millions through it’s digital outreach.

The church’s website says that Life.Church’s mission is “to lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ,” and that their mission is “the driving force behind everything we do.” Over the past 25 years, probably no church has more extensively leveraged digital technology to increase the reach and richness of its ministries, all driven by that mission.

Bobby Gruenewald, a two-time web entrepreneur joined the Life.Church staff in 2001. He began exploring ways to leverage technology to help people build online relationships with Christ at the center. Five years ago I interviewed Gruenewald when Life.Church’s YouVersion Bible App downloads had reached 200 million, which was amazing — that number represented 60% of the U.S. population. 

This past week, YouVersion marked the download and install of its Bible App on the 500 millionth unique device.

Now, we can no longer use our national population as the measuring stick. Life.Church is clearly thinking and acting on a global scale. I look forward to seeing how God will use Life.Church’s digital ministry over the next five years and beyond!

Click here to read the full article.

Ever since learning about Lean Startup, I’ve greatly appreciated the concept of the Minimal Viable Product (MVP). Before the Lean methodology was introduced, startups traditionally invested lots of time and money to bring their concept to market. Too often, after making that big investment, founders then realized that people didn’t really want their product, at least not the way they had envisioned it. The MVP approach says that, instead of working long and hard to launch the perfect product, you instead quickly launch the least costly version of the concept that can prove out the assumptions behind the value proposition. Get it into customers’ hands and learn from them what they like and what they don’t. Make adjustments and try again. Continue to iterate until your product meets the needs of a specific market.

But, over the years, I’ve encountered startups where taking the MVP approach is really hard. In his book “The Digital Transformation Playbook”, David L. Rogers provides a simple framework, “Four Paths to Scaling Up”, which not only brings clarity to why an MVP approach works well sometimes and not others, but can also help in making decisions as you are innovating to maximize your opportunity to learn and iterate.

At the core of the framework is a 2×2 matrix defined by two key questions. In the article linked below, I explain these two questions, each of the four paths, and how innovators can effectively use the two questions to reverse engineer an approach to innovation where an MVP approach is most likely to succeed.

Click here to read the full article.  

Local churches come in all shapes and sizes. Most have been touched, in some way, by the digital revolution. Each church has chosen its own path through these potentially disruptive changes to match its own focus and realities. The underlying technologies may be neutral, but churches must be intentional in their reasons for adopting technology and must be diligent in evaluating the dangers in each technology’s use. As Christ told his disciples “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16)

In the article linked below, I walk through the four waves of the digital revolution, examining how churches have sought to capture the power and manage the danger of each.

I conclude the article with this: I’m confident that the Digital Revolution isn’t over. We haven’t seen the last technological innovation that will impact the church. We haven’t fully discovered the power that is available, nor do we fully understand the dangers inherent in adopting these technologies. As church leaders venture forward into this technological unknown, they can rest in God’s sovereignty and use the most powerful tools that He has provided to them: His Word, prayer, and fellowship with other believers. Most importantly, they can keep their eyes focused on Christ, on God’s glory, and on the mission Christ has given to His church.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. (Matthew 28:19–20)

Please click here to read the full article.

Founded in 1949, Grand Canyon University, a private Christian school, flourished for five decades. The early years of this century were not kind to the university, with enrollment falling below 1,000 by 2008. The school brought in Brian Mueller as president. Mueller had helped establish the University of Phoenix as an online education powerhouse and brought some of his technical team and his love for Christian education to GCU. They invested $100 million to establish the technology infrastructure for online growth, which provided the financial momentum to invest over $1 billion in the campus. Today Grand Canyon University has 90,000 online students and nearly 24,000 students in-person on their Phoenix campus.

As a Christian university, Grand Canyon is intentionally committed to living out Christian faith within the context of a missional community, “strategically united in carrying out a mission that centers on following Jesus Christ in word and in deed, and in sharing the love of Christ generously to all who participate in the life of the community.” This works itself out in at least two important ways. One, is their “Integration of Faith, Learning and Work” initiative. The second is a five-point plan to deliver both help and hope to the neighborhoods around their campus. You can read more about each in the article linked below.

Technology has been at the core of the university’s growth and living out their mission. The university’s Christian mission not only shapes how the technology is used but also in how technology decisions are made. The technology exists to support people, made in the image of God and worthy of dignity and respect. The concepts of love and service are inherent in any technology decisions. 

Click here to read the full article.