Developers and designers serving God with their gifts

“Whatever you do, whether in word or code, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17, sort of)

When I was working on my Bible-teaching computer game, this was the verse I used to put at the top of all of my source code files. Obviously I’m playing a bit fast and loose with the translation, but I think the intent is valid. All of us as Christians have been entrusted with certain gifts that God calls us to use in his service. For some of us that’s making a really good cup of tea to encourage the congregation on a Sunday morning and to make fellowship possible. For others it’s the remarkable gift of administration – that incredible ability to make things happen, that sounds really boring on paper but which those of us who lack it are immensely thankful for. For yet others its a deep understanding of electrical hardware like amplifiers and microphones and the ability to make sure that the speaker is loud enough but that the band is not too loud. Whatever our gifts, God calls us to use them to the glory of Christ. And not just in church – we can serve God with those gifts by enthusiastically serving others in the workplace too, or in our communities. The important thing is that we use those gifts, with the glory of God in mind.

For some gifts it’s easier than others to see how they can be used for explicitly Christian ends. Software development is one which sometimes seems harder. In our culture, software developers are like wizards. They have an incredible ability to make magic happen – to conjure up reality from mere ideas with the power of language. They have a “secret knowledge” beyond the understanding of outsiders that has a tendency to inspire awe. To a fault, many software developers know that they have the power to change the world – sometimes more so that is actually the case (sorry Facebook – you’re not going to bring about world peace, however many billion users you manage to sign up). But yet we often lack confidence that this is true when it comes to the growth of God’s kingdom and the spread of the gospel.

For many many organisations, which includes Christian ones such as charities and church plants just as much as for dot com startups and internet delivery businesses, the single most limiting factor is the technology resource – having the right person or people in place to design and develop something that can make a spark of an idea into a living and breathing product (or even just to support admin staff struggling with a too-simplistic database). If only Christians with gifts as developers and designers appreciated how precious their gifts could be in God’s service, I think we’d see some pretty incredible things happen. Last autumn I had the privilege of meeting Gerald Hinson who gave up a successful job at Microsoft to follow God’s call and build David vs Goliath, an incredibly fun and engaging retelling of the classic Bible story for iOS and Android. I found his story really inspiring – he’d never done anything like it before, but he saw a need, saw how God had given him the talents and the connections and the passion to make it possible, and he made it happen, despite all the challenges and an awful lot of hard work along the way.

From the 2nd-4th October this year, I’ll be participating in a “Christian hackathon” in London organised as part of a global Code for the Kingdom weekend. The big prayer is to get together a hundred or so developers, designers and tech entrepreneurs to dream big dreams, meet like-minded people and hopefully give birth to a diverse bunch of projects geared at meeting various needs of the church and the world for the glory of God. It’s a pretty big risk that the organising team and the sponsors are taking on – they’ve hired an incredible venue (the Impact Hub Westminster) and there’s no guarantees – but they trust in a big God and they know that he loves it when people desire to serve him with their gifts. So will you join us? And will you help spread the word and tell people and cajole people and pester people until they sign up? Early bird prices are only available for another few days until 31st August – but even then they’re not expensive for what you get.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” (Luke 12:48)
How will you use your gifts?

PrayerMate Video Project

prayermate_helps_me
Considering it started as a simple Easter holiday project for somebody who had never made an app before, it blows my mind that by God’s grace PrayerMate is very soon to celebrate its 100,000th download! I’m always so thankful to hear of people’s testimonies of how God has used the app to help them in their prayer life, and so I thought it might be a fitting way to celebrate this milestone by trying to get as many people as possible to record a super-short video finishing the sentence “PrayerMate helps me…”

Are you in?

Guidelines

  • The shorter the better – absolute maximum is 20 seconds I think
  • Landscape is preferable to portrait
  • Your video must begin “PrayerMate helps me…” – though you can try to be as creative as you like with the rest!
  • Please keep it family friendly!
  • You can have as many or as few people in the video as you like
  • Submissions can be made however you like – upload it to YouTube and Tweet the link to @PrayerMateApp, email me a link to something in your Google Drive to info@prayermate.net, or any other means you can think of!
  • If you’re willing, I’ll be adding a subtitle “Firstname, City/Country”, so it would help if you could tell me that information when you submit your video
  • The deadline for submissions is 1st September

Update: Here’s the finished product!