Get Involved
I’m continually amazed by the stories I hear about the volunteer Online Missionaries who help answer emails from seekers and new believers around the world. These volunteers range from college students to retirees, homemakers to businesspersons. Some have been using the internet for years, while others have bought their first computer just to be involved in this ministry. There’s even one volunteer who has cerebral palsy and can’t feed herself; yet she spends hours using a special computer to write emails and lead a group of other volunteers.
From their homes, offices, or internet cafes (especially in other countries), these volunteers are an indispensable resource for Global Media Outreach. In many cases, someone will simply contact us to request follow-up after making a decision to follow Christ. This is an opportunity for one of volunteers to personally pray for him or her, point to some of our online follow-up tools, and offer to answer any questions. Other times, though, someone may contact us with a specific spiritual need — personal tragedies, family difficulties, or other emotional or spiritual issues.
In the last year, the number of emails received by GMO has doubled, to over 200,000 each month. Yet the number of volunteers, currently about 3,700 worldwide, has not kept pace. This is why our ministry is urgently trusting God to help us expand to 10,000 online missionaries in the next several months. While we need many more English-speaking volunteers, other language groups — especially Spanish — have even more urgent needs.
Part of this need can be met by telling more and more individuals about our ministry. But the greater growth will likely come through our increasing number of partnerships with churches in the US and beyond. Many churches already offer short-term international mission trips. By partnering with GMO, churches can give their members an international ministry opportunity everyday — including those who would otherwise be unable to travel.
I’ve recorded video interviews with several of our online missionaries, including my recent trip to Brazil. It’s exciting to hear how a person’s faith and vision for global missions expands through their involvement in GMO. This is a great opportunity for any believer to be actively involved in helping to fulfill the Great Commission.
This post comes with a challenge (maybe you saw this coming): have you considered becoming an online missionary with GMO? In just a few minutes a day, you can help people you’ve never met — in places you may never visit — grow closer to God. What about your church? There are people all around you on Sunday morning who would be thrilled to become more involved in God’s work.
To get started as an online missionary, just go to www.GMOjoinus.com and click “volunteer.” Be prepared to provide one spiritual reference and briefly describe how you became a Christian. And if you do sign up, please let me know — I would be excited to know you are involved! I would also welcome the opportunity to talk to you, your pastor, or missions committee about partnering with GMO.
GMO Brazil
Brazil is the largest country in South America, the sixth-largest economy in the world, and home to the largest group of Global Media Outreach volunteers outside the United States. Last month I was privileged to spend eight days visiting our GMO co-laborers in Campinas, Brazil — about a two-hour bus ride from the airport in São Paulo.
My trip to Brazil had two purposes. The first was to produce GMO’s basic evangelism and discipleship web video content in Brazilian Portuguese. The other purpose was to record several interviews and gather other footage to create a video documenting the model that has emerged with GMO’s partnership in Brazil. We would like to launch similar partnership in other countries.
The GMO Brazil story began in 2006 when some former missionaries, Brad and Victoria Myers, learned about GMO through their church in California. They realized the potential for this ministry in Brazil, a country where internet access is increasingly common. They then asked our leadership if they could help facilitate training and recruiting volunteer online missionaries in Brazil.
Brad and Victoria went to Brazil and presented the GMO vision and strategy to their friend, Pastor Marcos, and others in Campinas. The pastor’s church, Igreja Baptista El Shaddai, provided a small office space and some funds to help get things started. One of the church’s members, Paulo, began the task of translating GMO’s email response system and training materials into Portuguese. Paulo is now one of our “super volunteers” and helping GMO recruit online missionaries in other Latin American countries.
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God’s supernatural blessing, working through the commitment of our partners, has transformed a handful of volunteers into a movement of over 500 online missionaries spread across Brazil. In addition to their own country, these believers are having a global impact by responding to Portuguese-speaking people around the world: Portugal, Angola, the United States, and many other places.
From the start, the GMO Brazil partnership has included several other pastors and churches. Today, over 100 churches from multiple denominations have joined the effort: Baptist, Nazarene, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God, Foursquare, and more. Besides involving their members in global ministry, this provides a natural and solid link for those being reached online in Brazil to connect with a local church — a key goal of our ministry.
Victoria Myers met up with me in Brazil and helped organize a celebration for GMO Brazil. (She also helped interpret both the language and culture for me.) On Saturday, September 26, one hundred twenty people gathered at a hotel in Campinas to celebrate what God had done through this ministry partnership. Some flew in from 1000 kilometers away, while others drove 5 or 6 hours to be there.
It’s impossible to put into words the great joy and blessing it was for me to be with them — to witness the spiritual kinship and unity of purpose they shared with other GMO partners in the US and around the world. With my friend Paulo as the interpreter, I had the privilege of telling the group about some of GMO’s future plans and announce some new web sites being launched in Portuguese.
Even though I had practiced with some with Spanish-speaking volunteers in Orlando, doing interviews in Portuguese was quite intense. I would ask a question, which was then interpreted, the interviewee would respond, and then I would get a quick interpretation of what he or she said. But I ended up with some great material from Pastor Marcos, Paulo, three other pastors involved with GMO, several of our online missionaries… and a couple who came to Christ through one of our web sites!
Since I also needed to capture some other footage of Brazil, I spent a day shooting in São Paulo — it’s the fourth largest city in the world and, of course, has some world-class traffic jams! I was accompanied by my interpreter and two men from Pastor Marco’s church as my guides and security guards. Even though I saw just a sliver, I was struck by the tremendous diversity of people in this city of 20 million — there’s even a “Japan-town.”
I was able to master a few basic words and phrases in Portuguese. And, of course, I had to sample some of the local cuisine… including a “Brazilian hot dog” which is hard to describe, and was kind of tasty (but later required several tablets of antacid). You can see a photo of this “delicacy” and other pictures on my web site.
I’m so thankful for the opportunity to spend time with our GMO partners in Brazil. I was blessed by Pastor Marcos’ heart for reaching his city and, through GMO, the world. The members of his church gave me a very warm welcome and it was a unique pleasure to fellowship with them. I’m humbled to be part of a ministry that is involving so many other committed believers around the world in fulfilling the Great Commission. And I’m all the more thankful for my own team of partners who make my ministry possible.
On my last night in Brazil, many of my new friends asked when I would be coming back. I simply replied, “When God allows” — which I truly hope will be sometime soon!
Summer Project
On June 19, three young men arrived at the airport in San Jose, California to take part in the Silicon Valley Summer Project. They came to spend six weeks this summer as interns with Global Media Outreach. The goal was to allow student interns to experience firsthand how God can use their gifts and abilities to reach people for Christ.
AJ (James Madison University) and Kenny (Penn State) worked with me on several different video projects — including a new, visually-orientated gospel presentation and the Arabic versions of one- to two-minute introductions to the books of the New Testament. Samuel (Ohio University) worked with our programming team on several different projects. Each of the guys also helped answer some of the email responses that come into GMO’s web sites.
Serving as the director of this project has been almost like a second full-time job — especially in the weeks and days leading up to the project. Once the guys arrived, I found myself in the role of project director, chauffeur, manager, teacher, financial manager, activity coordinator, discipler… and more.
Recruiting is one of our basic, not-so-subtle reasons for this summer project. By developing a vision for global online ministry within these students is something God might use to lead some of them into full-time work with Global Media Outreach. Like so many other things with faith, you plant the seed and wait to see what happens.
This is also the summer for Campus Crusade for Christ’s biennial staff conference in Fort Collins, Colorado. I’ve been helping our team plan a campaign to recruit new online missionaries and co-workers from among the 6,000 US staff members at the conference. My primary task was designing a booth for the ministry fair — a major undertaking that took us 8 hours to build, but turned out to be very effective in communicating GMO’s ministry and vision.
As I write this letter, I’m in the last week of a 46-day marathon that includes a month in California for the project, 10 days in Colorado for the conference, and another 3 days in California to wrap up the project before returning to Orlando. I honestly don’t know who has gotten more out of the summer project — me or the students. All this left me with a “good kind of tired” — the kind where you know it’s God who keeps you going, not your own strength. I also believe that God will bring some good things out of this summer, for both me and the ministry. And I’m as thankful as ever for your prayer support!
The Big Shoot
I’m a fan of the “kill two birds with one stone” philosophy, but I may have outdone myself this month. I spent 10 days in the San Diego, California area shooting video for three different projects. 
The initial plan was to create a set of videos for use in a forth-coming guide for new believers. Each 60- to 90-second video will be integrated in a web page covering core concepts of the Christian faith over the course of 30 days. This trial project is part of our growing efforts to effectively disciple those we’re reaching online.
Earlier this year, I began planning the Japanese translations of our “core content” videos — one gospel presentation and 16 follow-up video messages. Rev. Suzuki, a Japanese pastor in the Los Angeles area, agreed to be our presenter. Once the follow-up project began coming together, it made sense to arrange for him to come down to the San Diego area to do the recordings. This was also the first time I’ve managed the whole translation process, which was very much an “educational experience.”
The third project was one of those “while we’re at it” things — a 10-part video series on prayer that will be part of an upcoming evangelism and discipleship site designed for a youth audience.
For the follow-up and prayer videos, we decided to use outdoor environments to create the feeling of two friends talking in a park. We also used some new equipment to create a “film look” for the videos — most noticeably, a shallower “depth of field” that allows the background to be out of focus. While these tools and locations let us achieve a new level of production quality, it also added significant complexity to the effort.
Every spiritual advance happens in the face of spiritual opposition. I’m convinced that when you commit an endeavor, big or small, to God’s will and protection, that nothing happens by chance — whether, in this case, it’s an equipment breakdown, scheduling conflicts, or a pesky cold virus. Before leaving on this trip, I e-mailed my partners and friends a reminder to pray for this production trip. And I’m convinced this made all the difference. Thank you for your faithful prayer support!
