Rich's Travels

I’m off to Buenos Aires, Argentina this week for a meeting with the Area of Affairs Campus directors for the worldwide campus ministry (did you catch all of that??).  Basically, those who do the job I used to do when we lived in France.  I will be addressing the issue of how do we use online strategies with tradtional ways of doing campus ministry.  We will be talking about how we can weave those two together.

I think this picture best expresses what I’m going to be talking about.  I took this picture while on my last trip to Jordan.  It is the traditional way of making a carpet in the Middle East.  If you think about a carpet it is a beautiful thing to look at…all those colors and shapes so cleverly and creatively arranged.  It is what we have always strived for in the student ministry world.  One beautiful picture…but how did that picture get there????  Varioius colors are weaved in and out to make one nice carpet.  You have vertical threads and horizontal threads being strategically woven together to make that carpet.  So it should be with the relationship between traditional face to face campus strategies and virtual strategies.  Those strategies need to be interwoven and not separated.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

Ps. Madonna is going to be playing the first night we get there, so that makes the title of this post even more appropriate.  I’ll let you know if I see her!

I leave for Jordan this Saturday and as I seek to improve my communication cross culturally, I need to remember to keep my message simple.  I am primarily talking to people whose 2nd or 3rd language is English so I need to use less complex words and speak clearly.  Pray for me beginning this Saturday (22nd of November) through Wednesday the 26th that I would be clear in my message and focus so I don’t sound like this guy:

Just saw this from Singapore and had to post it here.  OIC (Online Intentional Conversations) is a great way that Singapore is leading the world in doing online ministry for university students everywhere.  This is a great video.  Make sure you go to their website as well!

I just came across this article this morning from Fox News. No surprise here that someone has decided to place their faith in Christ or that this person was from another religion, but some of the things that this person said in his interview of how he came to Christ is important. Check out these excerpts from the article:

“JONATHAN HUNT: Why, after 25 years, did you change?

MOSAB HASSAN YOUSEF: I believe that all those walls that Islam built for the last 1,400 years are not existing (sic) anymore. They don’t recognize this. They built those walls and made people ignorant because they’re afraid. They didn’t want people to discuss anything about the reality of Islam, about the big questions of Islam and they asked their followers, the Muslims, ‘Don’t ask about those certain questions.’

But now, people have media. If the father closes the door for his daughter not to leave the house, she’s going to go behind her computer and travel the world. So people easily can get information, knowledge, searching (sic) engines, so it’s very, very available for everybody to study about Islam, about other religions. Not from the Islam point of view, but from other points of view.

So for the next 25 years this is for sure going to make huge change in the Muslim and the Arab world.”

So, for the next 25 years lots of students in the Middle East will be logging on to their computers searching for the truth. The question is.. who will be there to answer their questions when they ask? I sure hope it will be someone who loves Jesus.

My kids are big fans of the Discovery Channel show “Mythbusters.” The guys on the show tackle common myths that we all might think are true putting them to the scientific test to determine if they are true or just a myth. Every time I go out of town I make sure to download a new episode for the kids and myself. I watch it while I’m on the plane so that I have am ready when I am bombarded by their questions from the show.

My favorite Mythbusters myth is called “Penny Drop”. Basically, the myth is that if you drop a penny from a tall building, such as the Empire State building, the penny would be going so fast that if it were to hit someone it could and would kill them. Result??? Not true. The myth was “busted”! It might hurt, but it certainly won’t kill you. In light of this show, I thought I might do a set of myths about the internet and campus ministry and why I think they are busted myths.

“The Terminator Myth.”

One of the greatest films of all time (at least if you are a guy) is “Terminator”. The basic plot of the movie is that our society is too dependent on computers as they are entrusted to run everything so that humans don’t have to do anything. My point is that computers don’t do ministry, people do. Computers are just a tool to help humans get things done better. So why don’t we apply the same thing to ministry? After all, if computers could do ministry all by themselves, we could just build robots to share the Jesus film and pass out Bibles in extremely closed countries. They could get arrested and even beaten, but we could still program them to continue to share the Gospel with people and provide information to others. Computers don’t build movements, people empowered by the Holy Spirit do.

“Geeks Rule”

This myth is that as a leader I delegate trying to do campus ministry on the internet to the IT (Information Technology) Department. After all, it is dealing with computers and who better to run our internet ministry than the IT department? However, this myth gets its origins from myth #1. Ministry is still ministry and you should put your best ministry leaders to lead. IT guys certainly do ministry and their help in getting the systems and structures in place to help your internet ministry is invaluable, it’s not wise to delegate the entirety of internet ministry to the IT Department.