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!