Our team of ministry partners are the best!

We are always trying to think of ways to improve the communication between the members of that team. For a tech guy, it’s been a pretty low tech endeavor up to this point. Hopefully that is going to be changing. Here are some of the avenues that will be available to keep up with what God is doing with us and to let us know what is going on in your life.

You can always call us, write us, or email us. All the necessary contact info. can be found here at the blog. Those have been in place all along and wont go away. I’ll be working hard to use email more this year to give quicker updates than our monthly newsletters.

We’ll be doing more videos like those in the last few posts and those will be showing up here. You can also see them over at our youtube channel.

You can follow us as well as @jringrid at twitter.

Finally, if you are on Facebook, we would encourage you to be a part of the group In Mission with JR & Ingrid. This will be an easy place for anyone who uses Facebook to keep up with our blog and twitter feed. Both will automatically show up in the group. It isn’t necessary to be our “Facebook Friend” to be in the group, and we’ll try to invite anyone we know might be interested, but if we miss you just ask to be a member and we’ll get you in ASAP.

As Red Green says, we are all in this together. It’s my hope and prayer that these tools will help us all to have a closer sense of team and mission.

Ingrid was able to grab a few moments and allow Miheret to share a bit about himself and the things he is trusting God to do in the next year. There is a lot of background noise so I’ll put a transcript ( made by me so it’s close but not perfect) to help if you can’t hear him all that well. We filmed all these on a rather old little point and click camera.

Ingrid: Ok, this is Miheret and Miheret why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?

Miheret: Ok, thank you for this. My name is Miheret Tilahun and I work in Ethiopian Campus Crusade ministry. I grew up in Ethopia and I hold a degree in Computer Science. I have been doing Global Media Outreach internet in ministry concentrating on Ethiopia and Africa. Now I am planning to establish a communications center for the Southeast Africa Campus Crusade area office. Here in Thailand I am really happy meeting Ingrid.

Ingrid: Ok, why don’t you tell us what you are trusting God for this next year.

Miheret: Oh, this next year our communications center will be established, I hope. And I believe that we will train more on-line missionaries in Ethopia and in Southeast Africa. As well we will try to use technology in a more integrated way with our ongoing ministries.

Ingrid: Ok, thank you so much!

Miherete: You are welcome. Bye.

His vision is

“Building spiritual movements so that everyone who has a TV, radio, internet access or cellphone in AFRICAME knows someone who truly follows Christ.”

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Chris has put together an impressive amount of information about the penetration of various types of media across Africa and the Middle East. He also compares the way each media can fit into our strategic goals and plans. It’s pretty fascinating reading if you are interested in that kind of information on a nation by nation basis. Then Christ gets down to brass tacks. There is a lot of budgetary information next, which would probably be quite an eye opener for many. But I want to leave you with something that drives home my excitement about what cell and internet coverage world wide means.

Chris summarizes our field experience as this: In our Paris communications center 85% of the messages coming in are from internet based evangelism. TV and radio together generate the other 15%. Setting up a web site costs less than 1/10th as much as the studio and equipment required for TV and radio. Almost 600% higher response rate for 10% the cost.

Do we ditch radio and tv? No, we want to use every tool available. But we are working hard to be in the front end of what is happening with phones for the very simple reason that it is going to provide unparalleled access and impact to the people of the world. The internet and mobile phone tools we are developing will help us get going quickly, in a cost effective way so that we can build up movements that can benefit even more from radio and tv. I’ve got more to share on this, but we have a good start here.

Next month I’ll be in Singapore, talking about mobile phones among other things, with technology leaders from all over the world. There are some amazing things happening that are, I believe, truly game changing.

We are busy and blessed to have so much great work to do.

“God’s strategy for making the church bold: imprison her leaders. (Philippians 1:14)”

Philippians 1:14 reads, “And because of my imprisonment, most of the believers here have gained confidence and boldly speak God’s message without fear.” (NLT)

It’s completely counter-intuitive, yet it is true. What will come of the not only imprisonment but death of the three pastors in Nigeria? I don’t know. What I do know is that this life is not about the fulfillment of my wants and desires, in fact it seems to be about the exact opposite. At our national staff conference Rev. Keith Battle exhorted us to get out there and “run the play”, after likening the conference to a huddle. Nobody pays to watch the huddle and if it goes on too long the team gets a penalty. Everyone wants to see the play – and for the players that means effort and pain. I need to stop focusing on comfort and safe options and focus on running the play.

I’ve seen different numbers showing mobile penetration world wide at something like 3 -4 billion people. That’s half, to two-thirds of the worlds population. And the trend is that this number is growing rapidly. This is of course going on in the developed world, but mobile growth is happening at a blistering pace in the developing world. Folks who are out on the front end of technology and social change see what is happening and the opportunities that exist. That is why things are happening like Google sending MIT students to Africa to teach mobile development to university students.

Seeing as we are in the communication business, these are extremely exciting developments. I’ll be talking more about this, but just wanted to set the table for what I think are some amazing developments and potential in the mobile world.

So while there is a subjective component to ministry, we seek to capture what we can that is objective so that we can lead with information. A tool to aid in this is the Global Measurement Application. It is a piece of software that has been written so that staff can enter in results from their work that fit into 7 key measurements. The data they enter is rolled on up through our organization and ultimately collected here at World Headquarters. All along that path, leaders can use the information to get a more accurate picture of what is going on in their ministry.

The software is extremely flexible. Local leaders can add in criteria they would like to track for themselves. There is a module that allows staff to share stories and relate events that show how God is working. This allows for sharing those moments and miracles that happen every day and are so much more than just measurements of activity.

My recent trip to Mexico was so that we could set up an instance of GMA for Central America and Mexico. I’ll be posting more on the trip but I’m hoping this will help those who are curious have a better understanding of just what I was doing.

“What are some of Campus Crusade for Christ’s biggest organizational and administrative needs in the US and abroad?”

As an organization, we are constantly in need of people who have skills and talents in the areas of administration, technology, communication and human resources.

The one thing that is usually lacking is our capacity in the administrative area.

There are some specific ares and positions where we have significant personnel needs.

• Accounting
• Computer Programming
• Web Design
• Writing/Communication
• Or if you like working with people in a Human Resources role

I know a lot of people want to do field ministry and want to work directly with people. Yet, what keeps us from growing and being effective as an organization these kinds of administrative and organizational needs.

That is true across the world and in every ministry.