Many of the people reading my blog are from the West– not the Western US, but the global West. Most of us then, approach life through a cultural lens of guilt and innocence. We see wrongs that need to be “righted.” If you are an American, think of how much our country is built around the idea of “Equal justice under law.” Our lens influences our perceptions about the world and the way we work across borders. This is the topic of The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guild, Shame, and Fear Cultures by Jayson Georges.
The premise of Georges’ book is that there are essentially three types of cultures, and they determine how we receive information, like the Gospel. He provides some great charts throughout the book showing how each of the cultures view grace, salvation, the sovereignty of God, and other aspects of the faith. One of the best examples is how each of the cultures is seeking to answer a particular existential question. For Guilt/Innocence the question is “How can my sins be forgiven to be assured of my salvation?” For Shame/Honor the question is “How can I be a part of the community to be respected?” And for the Fear/Power culture the question is “How can I access the power to control life?”
For the practitioner reading the book, which is less than 90 pages, they will begin to see why it is that some denominations have flourished in certain parts of the globe, while others have not. It also becomes clear that certain types of gospel presentations are better suited to particular audiences rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
I would highly recommend The 3D Gospel to anyone who plays a part in an international missions organization, missions committees, or lay people with a desire to have an impact across the globe. You can purchase the book here and read more by Jayson Georges here.
In the online marketing and advertising world, our process is what is commonly referred to as a “sales funnel.” At every point in the process, you can expect to lose some of your customers as you push them through to a conversion or sale. For GMO, we are striving to turn the process into a column. To have a greater kingdom impact, we work diligently to achieve our mission to “Share. Grow. Connect.” A greater kingdom impact would be a larger number of seekers engaged with all three pieces of our mission.
We’ve demonstrated a very successful model of sharing the gospel throughout the past 11 years. We have over 6,000 volunteer Online Missionaries serving as online disciplers for our seekers. We provide them the opportunity to download a bible, visit discipleship websites, share content with their social networks and become reproducing disciples themselves. Over the next couple of years we will be working to implement the third leg of the mission of connecting our seekers to local Christian community.
To do this, we are undertaking 3 strategies by asking the following questions: 1.) What languages do people use on the Internet? 2.)What is the most culturally relevant experience we can provide our seekers in order to shepherd them well? And 3.) How can we connect them to the local body? To achieve these strategies we are engaging with leading cultural experts and organizations “on the ground” throughout the world to serve our precious seekers God has entrusted to us.
We believe that with a proven model for sharing and growing our seekers, and a strategic focus on providing the most culturally relevant experience and connecting them to a local Christian community, GMO will remain one of the best kingdom investment opportunities that exists.
It’s important to establish Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) regardless of the type of your organization. A KPI is a metric you measure to ensure that your activities are leading you toward achieving your vision. In ministry, it’s even more important to do this as you are stewarding resources that people have entrusted to you to achieve a vision that aligns with their heart.
For most ministries, the goal is to see lives transformed by Jesus Christ. For GMO, we hope that seekers’ lives will be transformed by being presented the Gospel, indicating they’ve prayed to receive Christ, connecting with an online missionary to be discipled, interacting with discipleship content, and eventually connecting to local Christian community. This leads us to the natural KPI’s of Gospel Visits, Indicated Decisions, Discipleship Engagements, and On the Ground Connections.
Over the past eleven years, we’ve seen several shifts in technology and marketing. For instance, when we began most of our seekers were using a desktop computer and typing in a search query in Google as they sought to answer deep questions about themselves, the universe, and their place within it. As we fast-forward to the present day, people are accessing the Internet from any screen – their mobile device, tablets, laptops, televisions, and watches! In addition, we’ve learned that in order to reach the world, we have to interrupt a person’s day by using display advertising on websites as opposed to search queries only.
These changes in technology and marketing have affected how people use technology. Consider yourself and how you engage with content online – you probably are consuming massive amounts of information in short pieces, rather than taking in a lot at one time. Also, when you consider “the world,” there are major chasms between the technology available in the developing world and the developed world. To best serve all device types and capabilities, GMO utilizes the “lightest” websites possible. This is based on the premise that if a website cannot load on a device because it has too many graphics, etc, then we will have lost an opportunity to share the gospel with that seeker.
In 2013 GMO adopted a strategy of “opening the flood gates,” driving for the lowest cost per gospel visit while we work to reach everyone on Earth multiple times with the gospel. After following this approach for approximately 18 months, our leadership team conducted a review of the strategy and determined that we could make a bigger kingdom impact by adopting a more balanced approach.
During this time, we also began tightening the definition around some of our main metrics, such as “gospel visits,” “indicated decisions,” and “new contacts.” In order for GMO to confirm that we have shared the gospel, we have placed a code at the bottom of the web page, which tells us that the gospel has been presented only when it renders on a seeker’s device as opposed to when it starts to download. When a person indicates a decision for Christ, we are not assuming a salvation. What we are assuming is that the seeker has indicated they are beginning their journey with Christ. And finally, for an individual to count as a new contact, they must submit a legitimate form through one of our websites. Through technology, we have been able to eliminate “bad submissions” from our numbers, which has helped provide our 6,000 volunteer Online Missionaries with “warmer” leads for discipling.
If you were to review our metrics over the past three years, what would you see? At first, there would be a decline in overall gospel visits, indicated decisions, and discipleship numbers. But upon further review, you would see that with fewer dollars, GMO has been able to stretch those funds for a greater kingdom impact than before. The proof is that with spending fewer dollars, we are seeing a higher percentage of Indicated Decisions, Discipleship Engagements, and New Contacts. This means that each gospel visit is netting a higher amount of engagement downstream.
Since 2004 GMO has reached nearly 1.5 billion Gospel Presentations
Today is the beginning of Advent, which is the start of the new year for the church. The purpose of Advent is that we as Christians, are looking forward to the return of Christ. This was expressed in the passages in the Daily Officetoday where both New Testament passages (2 Peter 3:1-10 and Matthew 25:1-13) refer to Jesus’ return coming “like a thief” (2 Peter) and that we “neither know the day nor the hour” (Matthew).
When I walked into the sanctuary at church there was a noticeable difference. The church was absolutely beautiful as the colors have changed from green to a rich violet. Even the service began a little differently by the reading of a passage, confession and then procession. The readings from Jeremiah spoke to the fact that a “branch” (Jesus, the Root of Jesse) was going to be given to Judah and Israel. This was symbolic for the Jews as they were looking forward to the coming of the Messiah.
Next, the Collect of the Day read:
“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the deeds of darkness and to put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son came to us in great humility; that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”
During the Eucharist we joined together as a congregation in affirming: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”
And our closing prayer read:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying ‘Behold the dwelling place of God is with man, He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.'” (Rev 21:1-4, ESV)
When I was a child, I was always amazed at how all the old folks could hardly wait to leave this world to see Jesus. They were referring to heaven as their home and praying that God would either return or take them any day. — I didn’t get it then. But I do now. After living through some pretty difficult times in my life (nearly losing my wife and daughter in child birth, my wife’s thyroid cancer, job losses) it’s all starting to make sense. A new heaven and a new earth sound awesome!
After the recent attacks in Paris, I’ve seen much debate (like everyone else) on cable news and social media. The responses among the people I know have ranged anywhere from “don’t let another person from Syria enter the country” to “open the flood gates.” This entire ordeal opens up a plethora of subjects to discuss – How should our governments respond (force, tighter immigration policies, only let in Christians, roll out the welcome mat)? How should Christians respond?
Among Christians debating the topic, the most striking difference is between the approach of older evangelicals and the millennial evangelicals (especially those who travel internationally). What I am reading from the more seasoned crowd is that we should shut off the borders to the United States to Syrians because European national Muslims attacked Paris (there is yet to be any evidence that the attackers were Syrian). Much of this crowd have had their opinions formed during rise of the Moral Majority and other conservative Christian causes which tended to conflate Christianity and the United States Government. They often see attacks like this as an affront to the United States.
The millennials, on the other hand, have had their opinions informed by the end of the Clinton era (where we disputed the definition of “is” and other moral absolutes) and the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks. For their entire life our country has been at war. They tend to view the world through the lens of social justice, and are less concerned about security and national borders. They do not intertwine the United States and Christianity and often feel that the United States reacts in a very “un-christian” manner towards the powerless.
So, what should we do? I’m not going to advocate for opening the floodgates or shutting off the spigot. What I am going to argue for however, is a change in the tone. We do a disservice to our faith when we answer with smugness, anger, or heated rhetoric.
What should be uniting all of us is the Gospel of Jesus Christ – the fact that we no longer live our life condemned, but on the other side of the cross. It is only the Gospel that will allow us to open our hearts and minds up to those with whom we disagree. It is only the Gospel that will compel us to walk across the street to love our neighbor who may be a Muslim. And it is only the Gospel that will change the life of the radical jihadist. Our prayer should be not one of imprecation against those with whom we disagree; rather it should be one that he will open the hearts of those who stand at enmity with him to his saving Grace.
