One of the goals of our weekend ministry was to use both “old” (traditional) and “new” media to evangelise and, in particular, reach out to the youths of today. Since both my wife and I love music, we thought it would be fun to evangelise through using ringtone tunes. If one can pick a rock, techno or pop tune as a ringtone, why not a hymn?

So we set out to experiment with this novel idea at our church parish with a library of 100 ringtone hymns, confident that we could easily get the teenagers to switch their ringtones for ringtone hymns. Ironically, none of the teenagers or students were interested. Many of them shook their heads politely and one of them even remarked that it was “uncool” to have a hymn played back on his mobile phone. Naturally, we were disappointed. We decided then to give the ringtones free to any teenagers who showed the slightest interest, in the hope that it would make a spiritual impact on them.

The “Uncool” Apostles

But the Lord works in mysterious ways. Another irony happened. We had a pleasant surprise when our senior parishioners started to approach us, curiously asking about how their favourite hymns could be downloaded into their mobile phones. Strangely, they were the ones who became our main customers. We had mistakenly believed that in today’s hi-tech world, only the young would be interested in a digital lifestyle. In fact, when downloading the ringtone hymns to their mobile phones, we were astonished to find all kinds of custom ringtones and logos that were personalized to their preferences. Apparently, their children (and for some, their grandchildren) had purchased ringtone content on their behalf.

The point we are trying to make is that technology empowers us today to evangelise even in the smallest way. Using ringtones to evangelise became so popular among our parishioners that we were prompted to launch a Web site called www.CatholicRingtones.com. Many of our parishioners had wanted to send ringtone hymns to their friends who belong to other parishes. Visiting parishioners also asked how they could purchase it without having to come to our bookshop.

Even after setting up this web site, we continue to see that the age of our customers are between 30 and 50 years old. Teenagers—our original target audience—have yet to make a purchase.