www.MissionaryFromHome.com is a web site developed to help Campus Crusade for Christ Australia in building a team of volunteers who can assist in the online mentoring of spiritual seekers. This is one of the most rewarding and life transforming ministries you can get involved in. This is the story of how the message of this web site came about.
One day I was chatting to an old friend who was about to visit many churches across North Queensland in Australia. Merv is a ventriloquist who travels far and wide with his wife Marie working with Youth for Christ visiting schools, nursing homes and churches. I asked Merv if he might spread the word about the opportunities for Christians to help in online mentoring and follow up. He said he’d love to and did I have a brochure? ”Hmm … a brochure … ah … No Merve … I don’t have a brochure … but that would be a great idea! I’ll see if I can make one before you leave next week” I replied.
For several years I’ve presented elective seminars on Internet outreach and online follow up at local missions events. I found that most people stalled when I mentioned the word “Internet”. “I’m not technical” they’d say .. “so that can’t be for me”. This was exacerbated by the fact that I am a computer technologist. I prayed for a new way to get the message across and realised that it must not start with technology. The real business we’re in is about helping people to find loving and caring spiritual advice and help – technology just being the door; not the objective. There are many thousands of people who are now asking for help every day and we don’t have anywhere near enough volunteers to do the job. So getting past this communication barrier was critical.
One day as I was preparing to speak on this topic at a missions event I that sensed God had answered my prayers. As I stood up to speak this time I showed a picture of people lining up in a queue … ”If we were to visit people in our area we might perhaps ask at least 10 or more before we had a chance to listen to their spiritual needs and then finally speak to someone about God’d love for them. But imagine if there was a queue of people from all nations outside your front door just waiting for you to invite them in … to sit them down beside you on the couch … and to explain the message of Christ”. Someone from the audience immediately interjected “Well that would be great … but it would never happen” He said. “Ah … just wait and see” I responded. ”It really could happen to you! ” Now they were paying attention. And most importantly they understood that this was about connecting with people – not technology. Several people that day indicated that they would like to get involved. Praise be to God for His wisdom.
As I wrote the brochure for Merv, I now knew what it needed to say. I used the core message from the presentation and finally printed 50 copies for Merv’s trip. I then realised that this brochure might be useful for others like Bob to use (Bob heads up our Australian follow up team that assist Global Media Outreach (GMO) who run the 90+ web sites that we follow up). Bob was soon to travel overseas to visit churches so this brochure was very timely for his trip. I sent a copy to our Australian communication director and he contributed some gentle and wise editing corrections that it badly needed (Thanks Tez). I also sent a copy to GMO’s communications director in the USA for some more proofing and editing. Finally it dawned on me that we could fairly quickly turn this brochure into a web site. I run a small not for profit web hosting service so we could easily do the web hosting for no cost … and thus was born www.MissionaryFromHome.com . So as you visit this site don’t forget that you can download and print the brochures and give them to your church friends (see links on the right hand side) to help spread the word like my friend Merv did. Of course Bob has since updated the site with new content and many people have contributed to the translations.
This year Jenny and I have been approved to join Campus Crusade for Christ Australia (CCCA) as full-time staff. We have many more ideas to significantly improve this web site that we’d love to implement. We also hope to assist Bob in recruiting and training volunteers from churches in Queensland who can join us in this vital Internet ministry. God has called us to use the Internet to reach the spiritually thirsty Australian people in partnership with Australian churches and university campus teams and potentially other CCCA ministries. We have several Internet projects in the planning phase just waiting to be done. For example, we own the domain name www.WhatAmIHereFor.com that we dream of using to reach people around the world.
Right now however, we must urgently build a support team who will pray us for and invest financially in our future Internet ministry. We need about 100 – 150 families to help us. Only once we have our financial support covered can we be assigned to our ministry role. Do you know of people who might be interested in learning about our ministry and how the Internet can be used to reach out the lost? Perhaps you’d like us to visit you or your home group or church? We can even visit you or your group via Skype if you’re not close to Brisbane, Australia. You can call Tony today on 0421 230 767 (mobile) or email tony@InternetMissions.org . If you’re interested in Internet ministries we’d love to make contact anyway.
Feel free to explore the rest of our ministry site to learn more about us and our vision and calling. We hope to update it regularly with news. Soon you’ll also be able to join us on Facebook.