“Faith,” wrote the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
That describes the story of an Amarillo man who, in less than two years, has become a specialist in designing mobile-device applications for churches and other religious organizations.
“Honestly, it just kind of happened,” said Tyler Brassfield, 27, a youth and family minister at Bell Avenue Church of Christ in Amarillo. Brassfield has an enterprise, 3:16 apps, which, as one might guess, brings Christian content to iPhones and iPads.
Brassfield’s entry into the world of mobile applications began in April 2010, when a news article presented a challenge to his ambition.
“I read about a 10-year-old kid who made half a million dollars off of app design,” he said. “I decided I wanted to program for iPhone.”
An app is a program that works on Internet-enabled cellphones, known as smartphones. Apps access content online, but in a way different from the built-in Web browsers on such phones. Each app is its own customized corner of the cyber-universe, crafted specifically for hand-held devices.
“A lot of websites are not optimized for mobile viewing,” Brassfield said. “They can be hard to read, hard to navigate. It can be difficult to use the browser on your cellphone unless you know exactly what you’re looking for.”
Brassfield may not have amassed the financial wealth of the precocious tween who inspired him, but he’s reaped personal satisfaction by doing business with people whose cause is close to his heart.
3:16 Apps has accumulated 20 clients, including Bell Avenue Church of Christ and nine other Church of Christ congregations in Texas and other Southern states. The Bell Avenue app provides both recorded audio and written outlines of sermons, updated news about the church and an option for submitting prayer requests. The app is also synchronized to share content on the social networking websites Facebook and Twitter.
Bell Avenue Church of Christ member Travis Gilliland said the app not only serves local churchgoers, it also provides information for the many people who pass through Amarillo on Interstate 40.
“We figured, with our location so close to I-40, this would help people coming into town on I-40 on a Wednesday or a Sunday who are looking for a place to worship,” Gilliland said. The sermon audio served as a valuable link to home when he was on a long work assignment out of state, he said.
Brassfield’s most popular application, iDevotions, is managed by Steve Higginbotham, a pulpit minister at Karnes Church of Christ in Knoxville, Tenn. That app features devotional texts or audio clips, designed to provide inspiration on the go.
“I try to keep it short, brief, relevant,” Higginbotham said. “Enough to give you a thought for the day and get out.”
Higginbotham said he’s enjoyed corresponding with the people from far beyond Tennessee who found iDevotions through Apple’s App Store.
“I get emails from all over the world,” Higginbotham said.
Brassfield is currently learning to program applications for Androids, the rival devices comparable to iPhones. He described his journey into the intricacies of programming as in its beginning stages.
“It’s an ongoing, never-ending process,” Brassfield said.