How CPaaS can help churches – and everyone else – keep working where Zoom can’t.
Fighting COVID-19 with lockdowns has obviously changed social life in many ways. Some once-routine activities are now temporarily out of reach. Others have moved online. Like church services. My sister in Amsterdam attends church by Zoom. Here in Nigeria, congregations like The Baptizing Church have fully embraced online services, with one of its pastors, Gbenro Ogundipe, even giving tutorials on Twitter for other churches wanting to catch the wave, and not deprive their flock of a move online.
But this only works where there is an “online” to move to.
Most Nigerians don’t have smart phones. Many who do, like my aunt in Port Harcourt, can’t afford the mobile data to handle weekly streaming of a weekly mass that runs an hour or two. So, just like Work From Home, Worship From Home isn’t as obvious in Nigeria as it is in the Netherlands.
But what if it could be? How much closer can we get Life From Home to resemble Life Before The Virus?
I think the pandemic and lockdown are challenging organizations to find new temporary ways to do what they usually do. Every organization’s mission statement just changed from “Doing X” to “Doing X without making people risk their lives by leaving the house”, or, in Nigeria, “Doing X without making people risk their lives by leaving the house, even though they don’t have internet.”
So how does my aunt’s church get the Word Of God to her twice a week, without her going anywhere, or anyone coming to her, and with her internet off?
Phone call.
What stops her church setting up A2P1 voice calls?
Picture this. Her church already has membership lists. Her local pastor or Home Cell leader has the phone numbers of the entire flock. The church puts it all in a database. They set up an A2P voice service, like InfoBip’s Audio Stream. Then, every week, the pastor uploads a sermon. Audio Stream places a phone call to every number in the database. My aunt sees a call from her church, and answers. She gets 30 minutes of the Gospel2.
If her church wants to get fancy with it, they could set up a USSD service or a phone number that lets new people opt in for the service, or existing worshippers schedule a preferred sermon time. And of course, analytics on the calls will let the church know which members of the flock may need some personal call time with the pastoral team.
The possibilities don’t end there. Let’s say my aunt is worried about how I’m doing in Lagos, where there are far more infections. She wants special prayers. Well, she can make the request over the USSD service. The church can set up a Virtual Call Center solution, (like InfoBip’s Conversations). That allows other church members to volunteer as intercessors from their homes. The Call Center will connect my aunt to them, and they can pray together.
Who Pays For All This?
The church, directly or indirectly. It could, for example, ask more affluent members to sponsor phone sermons for those who need them. I’ve found that lots of people want to help in whatever way they can during this pandemic, but don’t know how. I’m sure many church folk who feel blessed to attend service by Zoom would gladly pay for someone else to hear the Word by phone. Payment processors like Orobo could very easily set up platforms that make this process seamless and transparent.
This isn’t a flight of fancy. All the tech to do this is already live. It just needs some putting together, and some interest by the right people to make it happen. And as with the Church, so with many other organizations. There are so many ways that Communications Platform As A Service (CPaaS) can help bridge the Digital Divide that is making Life From Home so tough in Nigeria.