Andy Geers & James Doc on Kingdom Code
Developing technology within Christian community
In an earlier interview about theology and technology, theologian Michael Burdett wrote about the importance of “getting the makers of technology to realise their vocations have ‘kingdom relevance’”.
One community which make this explicit are Kingdom Code, a network of Christian technology professionals and enthusiasts who meet to discuss technology and faith, and develop products relevant to church mission.
James Doc and Andy Geers, two of the organisers of Kingdom Code, kindly agreed to be interviewed in January 2018 about the community they facilitate and their own views on technology from a position of Christian faith.
To hear about future interviews or other blog posts, follow Subtle Engine on Twitter or sign up for emails using the form at the bottom of this page.
About Kingdom Code
QHello! Could you introduce yourselves and tell the story of how you came to be involved with (and organise) Kingdom Code?
Andy:
I’m Andy Geers, I studied computer science at university, and at the same time my Christian faith significantly developed. Ever since I’ve been wrestling with how to use my gifts and the person God has made me to be: does that mean teaching the Bible or being a software developer — or could it mean both?
I spent ten years or so trying to make a Bible-teaching computer game, but despite many hours invested it never really went anywhere! All that time I was working as a web developer, but I also studied the Cornhill Training Course which was a fantastic opportunity to explore how faith and technology relate.
I ultimately decided to get back into software and worked for a food delivery start-up, but while on the course created the PrayerMate app — very much a throwaway thought at the time — but in God’s providence my computer game idea has rather fallen by the wayside and PrayerMate has really flourished.
Kingdom Code for me was born out of that experience and thinking that there are so few people trying to combine software and Christianity. I felt ill-equipped to think it through and was desperately seeking for collaborators and help in figuring out what to do with my skills.
James:
I’ve also got a computing background. After graduating I worked for IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) in their communication department, exploring how to do digital communication well. Then I ended up in London, working as a web developer for the Victoria & Albert Museum.
During that time Kingdom Code was kicking off with Andy and Rupert Edwards. Realising there were other Christians thinking about the intersection of faith and technology was significant for me. To have a group of people exploring how faith relates to technology in their daily practice and who sharpen each other’s thinking has been really helpful — and fun.
I now work for a church as a Digital Ministry Developer: I’m looking at how church ministry could use digital tools well. And where those digital tools don’t exist and where there is a need, what can we make to fill the gap?
One project I’m working on explores how members of a congregation could reflect well on a sermon throughout the rest of the week. How can we use smartphones (which are in our hands all the time) to do that? And how can we do that together — because being in relationship is important.
QCould you tell me more about Kingdom Code? How did it start, what does it do, and what are its aims?
Andy:
It started with Rupert Edwards and me — we had met to chat about prayer apps after he came across PrayerMate. Rupert had also been to a Code for the Kingdom hackathon in Seattle (a weekend event for Christian entrepreneurs, developers and designers to rapidly prototype ideas which address a challenge) and wanted to bring that to the UK.
To run such an event you need a community of people to give critical mass, so we started a meetup in London. We posted an event on Eventbrite, somehow the Wall Street Journal ended up covering it and at the first event we had 160 people turn up — with someone travelling from Northern Ireland!
It’s continued from there. We’ve stumbled into a pattern of three kinds of events: we alternate between ‘Think’, ‘Drink’ and ‘Build’. ‘Think’ is our more formal meetup: we might have a speaker to talk about a topic and lead a discussion. ‘Drink’ is a more relaxed meet and chat with no particular agenda.
Once a year we have ‘Build’, our flagship hackathon event. We’ve now run this three times and it has been really exciting to see the projects that have emerged. But the most exciting ‘product’ is the community and the relationships that have formed.
James:
I’d add that Kingdom Code exists to equip a generation of Christians who are working in or enthusiastic about the world of technology: how do we equip all these people — the makers, builders and thinkers of technology — and prepare them to apply their Christian worldview in the workplace?
For example, how do we apply our worldview in the ethical quandaries raised by topics such as artificial intelligence? Or more immediately, what about when you’re building e-commerce sites? What about social media when the developers, designers and UX strategists are being asked to design systems?
How might a Christian worldview influence the shape of new technology: what would the products of a Christian startup look like; how might a social media company with a Christian ethos work; what would it look like if there was a digital marketing agency using new technologies for God’s glory?
First and foremost we want to get a group of people together who want to love and help each other. Relationships are a core part of Kingdom Code. It’s why we have these meetups and try to keep them informal and relaxed, because we want to give people the opportunity to build deep friendships.
As a community we also want to sharpen one another’s thinking. That’s why our Think events provide a direction. Meeting up in the pub is great, but what about the work we’re doing? We use Think events to start exploring some of those issues together, and we run six or seven of those a year.
In February for example we’re exploring the Bible’s high priority on relationships. Technology can result in isolation and individualism, so as a community we want to look at what the Bible says and think about how we might build with relational goals in mind.
So we want to equip the Christian in their place of work, and we also want to equip the Christian technologist to see their skill set in the world of church mission. Their skills that can be used to fulfil the great commission. At our Think and Build sessions, we also invite church mission agencies along.
These organisations can say “here are some of our problems, this is what we’re trying to achieve, we think that technology could help us, but we’re not quite sure how…”. And then 100 developers, designers, UX specialists and database analysts can start exploring ideas and see that their skill sets are useful to Wycliffe Bible Translators, or OMF, or Home for Good (helping find children homes) or Christians Against Poverty (enabling the release of people from poverty). Technical skills can actually be used for real kingdom aims.
QYou mentioned that the community is the main outcome or ‘product’ of Kingdom Code, but apart from that, what sort of products or technologies do people work on at your Build events?
Andy:
There is a real mix. The majority are brand-new ideas, but you also get people like myself who will bring an existing project along to invest a bit of extra time. I used the first hackathon to revamp PrayerMate’s interface with a designer and this year I had a bigger team building a new feature.
James:
At recent events, we hosted Home for Good and Christians Against Poverty (CAP). One participant works in virtual reality, brought along a Virtual Reality (VR) headset and developed a VR experience which helps people understand what it’s like to live in crippling debt. By the end of the weekend they had a solid demo which CAP is hoping to use to improve awareness and recruit supporters. That was a very complete product from nothing to almost finished in the weekend.
Some are more of a “let’s test this concept”. One of the ideas developed for Home for Good was an iPad app which guides prospective foster or adoptive parents from the first stages of starting think about fostering right through the journey. You couldn’t possibly fit all of that into weekend, but it allowed them to take it back to the office as the beginning of something with potential.
Others include an app which allows musicians leading sung worship to have more control of projection of lyrics, allowing them to move between songs in a more flexible way — without having to telepathically communicate with a projectionist if they want to change the set list.
About Technology and Christianity
Q As part of your Think events, have you developed a way in which you think about technology from a Christian perspective? For example do you see it as: an activity which reflects God’s creativity; or something which has great potential but also great risk; or some other way? Is there a ‘theology of technology’ which you’ve found helpful when organising Kingdom Code?
James:
If you read any three books about technology read these three:
— From the Garden to the City, John Dyer
— 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, Tony Reinke
— Virtually Human, Ed Brooks & Pete Nicholas
Andy:
I think John Dyer’s book is particularly helpful. He addresses the question of whether technology is just a tool: usually we think of a tool as something which is completely neutral and amoral and all that matters is how we use it.
John uses the metaphor of a shovel which you can use for good — for example to dig a well in an isolated village — but equally you could hit someone over the head with it, bury the body and hide the evidence. His point is that whether you use the shovel for good or bad it will have an effect on you. If you use a shovel enough you’ll start to get blisters. Keep using it and those blisters will turn into callouses — whatever the shovel is used for.
Products like Twitter and Facebook have similar characteristics. Their own distinct cultures and the way in which they encode and structure understandings of ‘friendship’, and the way each community pushes you into using it in a certain way — all this has an effect on you.
So I think as creators of technology we definitely have to consciously create tools that enshrine the values we care about and try to mitigate the unintended consequences.
I see this in prayer apps. Many clearly have certain values baked-in from the start in terms of their approach. Something like a prayer app might seem quite simple until see this massive range of approaches that have various different outworking in terms of the tendencies they encourage and so on.
James:
This is why I care so much about developing a Christian worldview right from the start. We can’t and shouldn’t be prescriptive and say ‘this is how you build your product’, but we can encourage and equip people to consider a broad Christian worldview and apply that to products they are working on.
Q How do you foster that worldview and those values during your hackathon events (e.g. how do prayer, sung worship and bible teaching flow into researching problems, writing code and testing prototypes)?
James:
Kingdom Code isn’t something we built — it is something that God has developed and grown. It feels very much that God is leading and we are running just to keep up and see where it goes. Build ‘17 really highlighted to me the distinctiveness of getting Christians together in a room.
Everyone is welcome to a Kingdom Code event regardless of religion, which means we do get non-Christians coming. One participant who had no faith in God (but who had attended out of curiosity) reflected at the end of the event that: “It was like there was an invisible thread between you guys”.
Andy:
We do get push-back from some developers (in particular) who seem offended at the very concept of a Christian hackathon and say: “You don’t have to be a Christian to develop these projects” or “Why don’t you join a normal hackathon?”. To some extent that’s true but I think there is something unique when the whole weekend is steeped in this desire to serve God.
It was wonderful at the start of Build ‘17 to be singing a song based on the Apostles’ Creed and declaring our convictions together. It set the tone of the whole weekend: this isn’t a normal hackathon — we are not just here for the fun of it, we here primarily as Christians so we try to keep God at the centre.
You still have those moments when it is one o’clock in the morning and you’re stuck on some stupid bug and banging your head against a brick wall, but it’s so great to be able to turn into your neighbour and say: “I’m really stuck — can we pray about it?”.
QThe secular ‘tech for good’ movement has emerged over the last ten years or so in the UK, with investors like Nominet Trust, Bethnal Green Ventures and others focused on incubating products and technologies which create social good as well as (or instead of) financial return. Would you describe Kingdom Code as part of that trend or something distinct?
James:
I don’t think I’m clear enough in my head about what people mean when they say ‘tech for good’, it seems to be quite broadly defined.
I would love to see Kingdom Code being an environment where individuals from all walks of life — whether they work in ‘tech for good’, or as a software developer for a bank, or do server admin in a big data warehouse — are equipped to bring good, in the Christian sense of the word ‘good’.
What does it look like for Christian values to play out, what does it look like for me as a Christian to be transformational in my work, in shaping the product roadmap to promote Christian value but also in a way which is distinctive among my colleagues and speaks for Christ in those relationships.
Perhaps there is some overlap though: solving real-world problems at the hackathon is really important and valuable. I’m in the process of mentoring three teams towards shippable products. One team is tackling the problem of looking after the safeguarding policies required from churches and other environments which involve vulnerable people. This team are working on a tool to help churches and charities manage that material and data well. I could see that fitting under the ‘tech for good’ banner in some respects.
Q Do you think Kingdom Code is unusual within the church for its recognition that developing technology can be part of Christian mission? Should the church (or churches) take a more proactive approach to technology, like — for example — when cathedral construction drove technological development in the Middle Ages?
Andy:
I think it’s right that the church is focused primarily on its mission. I think technology (which is shiny and exciting) can easily become a distraction.
But it’s great to see (for example) James’s church freeing him to investigate how technology can be used to serve the church. It’s also important that Christians are equipped to deal with this technological world. I think the church doesn’t tend to spend much time training us to be Christians on social media, and dealing with the effects of technology and so on.
James:
Kingdom Code has this element where is a profession-based group. So when you say it is a little bit odd in a church context — so is Christians in Sport or Christians in Politics. Sportsmen and women are taught to use their gifts and skills for God’s glory, and Kingdom Code is running on the same path.
I don’t think the church is necessarily behind on technology. It’s always used the technology of the day to achieve its purposes. Paul, Peter and John used tools to write letters to Christians and sent them on newly developed Roman-built road systems. The printing press enabled the Bible to be more widely-read. The Samaritans came out of a church in London which installed a telephone in the vicarage so that people in desperate need could secure help.
Could the church use technology better and more effectively? Maybe. I think one challenge at the moment is that technology is growing so fast that it is really hard — even for technologists — to keep track of it, let alone how to apply to a church context.
I’m really delighted the Church of England are hosting a Digital Lab event at the end of February, and inviting a load of people to start brainstorming ideas.
There is also a wisdom call you’ve got to make because technology is an investment and we want to invest the resources that God has given us well. At some point it is right to sit back and say “let’s watch this mature a bit more”. I want my church to invest in the right tools, rather than be an early adopter.
Andy:
I think ultimately we have to recognise that technology isn’t the answer. Salvation doesn’t lie in technology! The message of the gospel is the power of God’s salvation.
But it is thrilling to have had contact with various mission organisations that use technology in such exciting ways to get the gospel to people who never could have heard it before. There are all these people transmitting the gospel across borders using radio waves, or using the internet to provide secure ways for people to ask questions about their faith and explore the bible.
Those are examples of where Christians and the church are using technology in innovative ways. But it is the gospel message they are sharing and the gospel is where the power lies. I think it’s important that the church keeps focused on the gospel rather than the technology itself.
Many thanks, James and Andy.
To hear about future interviews or other blog posts, follow Subtle Engine on Twitter or sign up for occasional email updates below:
