The English philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon, said, “Knowledge is power,” and John Lennon, the British songwriter, sang, “Power to the People!” The department of Communications and Prayer has always sought to put knowledge in the hands of the people of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren, and we’ve been doing that for a long time now. On January 1, 1899, we published the first issue of our magazine, the Broderbaandet. In that issue K.O. Lundeberg wrote his goal for the paper. He wrote that the paper exists “…to provide good devotional reading…” and “…to further the cause of the free Church movement…” Out of that movement, twenty-three months later, our denomination was born.
Over the past one-hundred-seventeen years, modes of communication have changed. We have seen the birth of radio, the birth of television, the birth of the internet… but through it all, our primary vehicle for communicating the mission of our movement has always been print.
The reason for that is simple: we can send it to them. Our magazine, Faith & Fellowship, goes to them. It brings the joint ministries of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren into people’s homes—showing up on countertops and coffee tables around the world. We don’t intend to change that anytime soon, but we are excited to introduce to you a tool that we think has the potential, eventually, to surpass the magazine as our primary mode of communication.
In February of 2016, we began working with a company, called SubSplash, to develop a mobile app for the Church of the Lutheran Brethren. The magazine and the app both take information to people. The magazine finds them in their home. The app… will find them anywhere!
The app features separate pages for each of our joint ministries, an events calendar, the Bible (in both print and audio), a resource page containing Faith & Fellowship magazine, the CLB Constitution, CLB Position Papers, and our best-selling book, the Explanation of Luther’s Small Catechism. All of this is free… on our new CLB mobile app.
With the app’s push-notification feature we are able to send messages to our people, while they are on the go. In the setting section of their app, our people will be able to choose which notifications they would like to receive. For example, daily alerts for NAM’s Prayer Link, or LBIM’s Daily Prayer Notes (this feature will bring our denomination’s prayer requests before our constituents each and every day… and the benefit will be that we will be reminded to be a people of prayer).
The CLB app is compatible with the iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Android Tablet, Fire Phone, Fire Tablet, and Windows Phone. Visit the app store on your mobile device and download the CLB mobile app today (Search: CLB or CLBA).
Knowledge is power, and this app, literally, puts power in your hands.
Rev. Troy Tysdal is Director of Communications and Prayer for the CLB.