The Peck Family

This is the web site of JR and Ingrid Peck. We would love to hear from you, we can always be reached at jr.peck@ccci.org.

I’m still a little groggy and trying to get my sleep schedule back to normal, but the meetings I attended in Singapore went great and it was worth it. We were able to chart the future of our Global Measurements Application. This means a lot of work in the months to come, but I believe God is going to use that work to greatly impact the ministry world wide.

We had a group of global IT leaders that met together, and a few that joined in virtually. Our new video conferencing system is going to be fantastic once we can ensure bandwidth at each location that is sufficient to handle the signal. (Unfortunately we aren’t totally there yet, but we are getting closer.)

I’ll have more to report on the trip and Singapore itself very soon.

Chris Sleath is a Brit, that lives in Texas and is the Director Of Virtual Movements for Africa and the Middle East. One of the things I love about working for CCCI is that this isn’t all that odd ball a mix around here. Virtual movements or virtually led in CCCI speak are movements that involve remote interaction. Chris has some information that is going to help me connect the dots with some of the stuff about the proliferation of mobile devices. I was in a meeting with Chris a bit back and he had a presentation he shared with us about Virtually Led Movements. You can download it from his blog and look at it yourself if you have software that can open pptx files. I’ll give you a few highlights.

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.

The Economist ran a special report last month, “Telecoms in emerging markets”. As the name of the magazine would indicate, the focus of the report is on trends and their economic impact. I’m not so concerned with economics, though in very poor places I do like to see people gain the tools to improve their situation. But what really hit me as I read the report are the implications for anyone with a message they want to get out. I’m one of those people :) I’m in the information business, the Good News business to be exact.

Here are some key quotes.

In 2000 the developing countries accounted for around one-quarter of the world’s 700m or so mobile phones. By the beginning of 2009 their share had grown to three-quarters of a total which by then had risen to over 4 billion.

These are estimates because the growth rate makes it tough to get decent numbers. Here’s information on the first 3 months of 2009,

…an additional 128m signed up in India, 89m in China and 96m across Africa… India is adding the biggest number each month: 15.6m in March alone.

Those numbers are so huge it’s tough to get my head around them. On top of that consider this,

A study by the World Resources Institute found that as developing-world incomes rise, household spending on mobile phones grows faster than spending on energy, water or indeed anything else.

People in the developed world may see this as foolish since a phone could be viewed as a luxury item or something trivial. In a world lacking in other infrastructure a mobile phone represent unprecedented access to information, increased communication and a new ability to make decisions based on knowledge. The second section of the report quotes nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus,

When you get a mobile phone it is almost like having a card to get out of poverty in a couple years.

Let’s hop to the last section of the report, “Finishing the job”. It begins like this,

How long will it be before everone on Earth has a mobile phone? ‘It looks highly likely that global mobile cellular teledensity will surpass 100% within the next decade, and probably earlier,’ says Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union…

The world has been getting smaller for some time and this is that process becoming even more rapid. They estimate that “…within 5 years and certainly within 10 – every person that wants a cell phone will probably have one.”

With that outlook, how important is it that we are able to engage people via mobile devices? Following right behind it will be broadband over those service; the Internet everywhere. The entire world will literally be connected in a type of two way conversation that has never existed before in the history of mankind. We are seeing God connect people and resources to put us right at the front of this revolution in communication. I’ll have more specifics on that next post.

I’ve been a slacker on keeping this site up to date. Once the kids got back into school things got a lot busier. September slipped right on by and October is going too fast. God has been good and everyone is doing well. A lot of my time has been spent thinking about mobile phones, I’ll be writing more about that soon, maybe tomorrow.

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.

In June, Ingrid and I had the privilege of working as volunteers at the Family Life Weekend to Remember conference in Orlando. It was a really great time. Family Life is a CCCI ministry that focuses on the family oddly enough. The Weekend to Remember conferences focus on marriage and are a time for couples to come together, learn more about how to build up their relationship and they also have time to start the process of doing so.

There were 740 in attendance and the conference was a great time. Though Ingrid and I were working, we got to sit in on all the sessions and take advantage of the great speakers and materials, just like all the other attendees. We recommend the conference to anyone who is married (or about to be) and we found it to be incredibly helpful.

At the end of the week-end people had an opportunity to share their thoughts in an open mic type forum. Ingrid tried to jot down a few of the comments that she heard, and here they are:

“After 8 years of separation and this conference, God has worked on us and is now restoring our marriage.”

“We have been married 4 years and have 3 children. The one question I had for God before coming here was, ‘Why God do you make men so different?’ They (the differences) allow us to build each other and become holier to God. I’m excited for the first time to be that daughter of God.”

The conferences are held all over the country, throughout the year. If you might be interested, check out the links above or let us know.

The Bible says that God’s wisdom is at odds with what humans consider wise. I don’t think many Christians really believe that is true. We are often after a God that is after what we want for ourselves. I know I fall into that line of thought on a regular basis. Yet scripture doesn’t seem to teach this at all. I started thinking about it today after reading the following posted on twitter by John Piper;

“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.

Boko Haram is a group trying to impose Sharia Law in Nigeria. Last week, as they ordered prisoners to convert to Islam, three Pastors resisted and were beheaded. The Daily Sun has published an eyewitness account of the murders.

John 16:2 “For you will be expelled from the synagogues, and the time is coming when those who kill you will think they are doing a holy service for God.”

I was just having a conversation yesterday with a good friend about the potential Americans can have globally just by reaching out to international students that come to study in the USA. Today I bumped into Reaching Internationals a web site that provides guidance and resources to assist anyone interested in reaching international students for Christ. The web site is put together by staff from Bridges International

Sometimes family members walk away from the Lord. Many of us have experienced this and there is a Campus Crusade community built just for people in that situation to gather on-line and pray for those people. It is the “Prayer for Prodigals” community. Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, membership is by invitation only. If you’d like to participate, contact Ingrid or I and we can email you an invitation. If you would like to know more about the community, there are two videos below.

I think it ended up being about 740 in attendance at the marriage conference. It was a great week-end and an extremely good investment of our time and effort. I’ll post more details when we get them from the folks at Family Life that ran the conference.