Can VOIP Transform the World Today?

This week as I was thinking about the blog I posted on the sub-$100 laptop last week. I was thinking with that technology which would be available in few years what software or programs would be good for it. What could transform or influence the powers around us or push them back to induce transformation? I looked back at one of the features that this laptop would have and it would have internet capability both through via network, modem or WIFI. This is a powerful tool for communication. What programs and technology could enhance communication both locally and globally?

I asked what forms of communication I use on my laptop. I use email, instant messaging and VOIP. “VOIP”, that is it. Voice Over Internet Protocol is the newest form of technology. Email is great but too slow. You have written a letter and still are waiting for a response. That response could be thirty seconds to weeks. Instant messaging is fast, but not in real time and the conversations could be mixed up because of shorthand instant messaging. You do not know the emotion behind the text anyway. But there is VOIP, a phone over the internet. It is fast, clear, and in real time. You can hear the emotion and feelings from the other side and vice versa.

In one of the articles posted earlier explains how one can use such program to teach English to Taiwanese students. Someone from an English speaking country could teach in real time English in another part of the world. It does not even have to be English it could be Cebuano, Chinese, Japanese, Urdu, Arabic, and any language you can think of. If a language could be taught using VOIP, what other things could be taught or learned?

Jesus-Followers could use this to speak to a house church in China or a remote village in India or Thailand. One might say well radio reaches those places too. Yes, it does but it is only one way. With VOIP, an individual or group of people can communicate back to the communicator. They can ask questions or ask for clarification for something one said.

You might ask, “VOIP sounds like it cost a lot of money for this type of technology?” On the contrary, services like SKYPE.com offer the program free. I have used this and told others about it. Jesus-followers ministering in other countries other than their own could benefit from such a free program as Skype.

Let me paint you a picture of how a program like Skype can help transform cultures. Let us say you are a professor and there are ten local pastors from villages in Thailand. They are going to get some leadership training to help them both in their spiritual growth as leaders and to be able to take what they are going to learn and teach their own people. You are not in Thailand. You are at home with your laptop. You run Skype and connect with all the other pastors who are also on Skype as well. They all have their sub-$100 laptops with headsets and wait for you to train them. You begin to teach them. You tell them to open a file you sent them via email earlier that week and you work through the notes with them. One of the local pastors has a question but does not want to interrupt you so she opens the chat program built in Skype and sends you an instant message. You receive that message and can continue to teach and answer via chatting her message at the same time. After about an hour, you tell everyone to have a short break and then come back for the rest of the training.

After the short break, they all come back ready for more training. Before you go on with your leadership training, you want to know if these local pastors understood the material and training. You open up a time for dialogue. You can hear and respond to their questions, insights, comments, and the like. You discover that some of them missed the key points and so you go over them again. This time they understood them. Before you end the training, you pray for all the pastors as they go back to their villages to take what they just learned and apply it in their context to their people.

This is just one example of how the technology of VOIP could be used to help transform and expand the Kingdom of God.