EMQ » October–December 2021 » Volume 57 Issue 4
[memberonly folder=”Members, EMQ2YearFolder, EMQ1YearFolder, EMQLibraryInstitution”]By Julie Ma
A few years ago, a shy, young woman in her twenties took the stage at our church. She looked and sounded like a new graduate at her first job interview – nervous, uncomfortably dressed, and trying desperately to sound knowledgeable. In my many years of hearing mission spots (monthly 5-minute segments in our church service when visiting missionaries share their news and requests), this one stands out for all the wrong reasons. Her mission, should we choose to give her $50,000 per year, would be to stay home in her pajamas and promote the campus ministry she belonged to on social media. She explained that it was a new thing to do mission through Facebook, and that part of her role would be raising awareness of what it meant. I came away having no idea what it meant, and pretty sure she had no idea either. Needless to say, I politely took her card and did not follow up.
Contrast that with the next media missionary I met. He was a computer programmer who worked nine to five at a dedicated media ministry office. He raised his support based on project proposals with detailed budgets. He frequently updated everyone in his contact list with links to his team’s newest website, book translation, or foreign language audio Bible. He gave engaging statistical presentations of his websites’ analytics, which he used to recruit new partners.
Now years later, more people understand media ministry or at least have a vague mental category for what it is. Unfortunately, some of these categories make us think we can’t do it. It’s great, praise the Lord, but it’s a job for someone else. That’s how I felt when I read “Chatbots and missions” (EMQ Vol. 57, Issue 1, January 2021). In my head, I heard the voices of dozens of my missionary friends saying, “I thank God for this article, but I have no idea how to make or use a chatbot.”
I’m not an expert on IT, or social media, or any other media, and that is precisely why I’m writing about it. I want to tell you how you can use media to work from home, even if you are virtually techno-illiterate.
What Is Media Outreach?
First, what I’m not talking about: running the soundboard and PowerPoint at church, building a church website, and uploading sermons. These belong to “church-based Media Ministry.”[1] Neither will I talk about how church leaders can use electronic media to pastor their congregations remotely.
Rather, I want to discuss media outreach. Also known as internet evangelism or digital evangelism, it means using electronic media to share the gospel. As described in the EMQ “Chatbots and missions” article, this is what a team did with their chatbot. The 2020 trend to move discipleship meetings for believers, training, and mentoring online can also be part of media ministry. These are all roles that belong to missionaries. IMB calls their members who work remotely with specific Unreached People Groups, whether in evangelism, discipleship, or training, non-residential missionaries (NRMs).[2]
Who Is Doing It?
Specialized media missions have existed for decades but gone are the days when we must leave it to the experts. I asked a few friends who belong to traditional mission agencies (Pioneers, IMB, and OMF) how they are able to work from home.
As of January 2021, “Pioneers is coaching seventy-three missionary teams around the world to start new online outreach projects.”[3] One of their teams, called Z-Media, share exciting stats about their evangelistic outreach work in their 2020 Year-End Report.[4] They also share the invitation they received to become mentors for national missionaries on the ground in their focus areas. Z-Media is a growing team. They have IT workers, but they’re seeking more help from experienced missionaries who can share the gospel, answer questions from spiritual seekers, and lead other Christians who are doing the same.
OMF says, “While digital evangelism is not a new concept, it is still widely underappreciated and underemployed.”[5] It’s not only for closed countries either. Walking into a church is scarier than typing a question about Jesus into Google. We need to have people ready to answer those online questions. Ray from OMF says, “Mass media has been used over the last one hundred years to effectively share the gospel. Now we can do it cheaper with better focus and more interaction. It should be part of every team’s strategy to engage their people far and wide.”[6]
On July 28, 2020, IMB posted: “As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, many workers have become involved in media outreach to South Asian Muslims. As these initiatives gain momentum, pray for the workers to know how best to navigate the media world and connect with sincere seekers of truth and Jesus Christ. Pray for their conversations to be clear and for the fruit of the gospel to come forth by these efforts. Pray for these workers to learn valuable tools that will be useful as they train local believers in this method of outreach. Please also pray for churches to be started during this time as new believers come together as the body.”[7]
Who Should Be Doing It?
Foreign Language Speakers
A big part of the job is chatting online. If you know a language – any language – you can join a team where someone else takes care of the tech, and you just start typing or speaking to spiritual seekers.
On-Field Missionaries and Local Christians
If you live amongst unreached people, maybe you can become the in-person contact who follows up after online connections. Why not connect with a team doing media outreach to your area? The teams I’ve spoken with desperately need more boots on the ground in their target locations.
Creatives
Beautiful presentation draws attention to our beautiful message. Graphic designers, writers, photographers, musicians, and all kinds of artists get messages heard. We need creative people to communicate in both directions: to and from the church; and to and from the field.
Long before the pandemic, in 2017 Samantha Connors of IMB wrote, “I have never written a sermon in a foreign language, but I write social media posts that I pray will inspire others to make missions part of their everyday lives. [My husband] Brandon has never located unreached peoples, but he’s created graphics and prayer cards to garner prayer for people who have never heard of Jesus.”[8]
Gamers and Social Media Users
A spokesperson from the Z-Media team at Pioneers told me, “If you play video games, we need you. If you like watching Tiktok, we need you.”[9] What if you only have a cursory knowledge of a foreign language? What if you don’t have a Bible degree? Their team members are all about simply pointing people to the Bible. “We spread the Word of God, not our opinions. We use some apologetics, but our main strategy is to let the living Word, the Bible, speak for itself.”[10] When I Googled “OMF Media Outreach,” I found this ad: “Calling Instagrammers – we need your media skills!” Then it goes on to say, “Are you good at taking photos and enjoy posting them on social media? Come and help produce material for an Instagram account to help people pray. Come to Asia or do this from anywhere in the world.”[11]
Teachers and Trainers
Courses like Perspectives on the World Christian Movement and Encountering the World of Islam have gone online in some places because of the pandemic. Trainers I have spoken to were surprised at how much larger their class sizes are since they’ve gone online. They still long for the kinds of personal interaction that only in-person training can provide, but they are excited to be reaching more Christians with the why-and-how of sharing the gospel cross-culturally.
Fundraisers
Pioneers’ promotional video gives an example of an Arabic website about Jesus that comes up at the top of Google searches.[12] Top search results are usually sponsored links. It takes money to be at the top. Likewise, OMF spends money on Facebook ads.[13] Are you a networker? Do you have a platform that reaches multiple churches or Christian businesspeople? We need you!
(And of Course,) IT Professionals
Many of the missionaries thrust into media outreach due to the pandemic are feeling their way in the dark. They need experts to train them and be on call to help with ongoing improvements. IMB asks us, “Pray for the workers to know how best to navigate the media world.” Can you give some practical help as well?
Is Work-from-Home Mission Better?
My friend at Z-Media served overseas as a missionary in a creative access nation for many years. Now in the United States, he says,
Now we have all this freedom and the ability and the platform. It’s like an explosion of pent-up missionaries who can finally do this stuff … I mean, it’s different. Obviously, we’re not face-to-face; we’re not sharing meals and sharing life with people, but we’re getting the Word of God out there. And people are reading it. So, it’s exciting.
Being remote we’re actually more … success is a tough word in missions but, … we all spent ten years or more [overseas] and struggled to have any meaningful numbers. Even having a good conversation would have been a noteworthy Year-End Report. Whereas now, we have meaningful conversations every day.
And it turns out that it’s not just me who thinks statistics can be riveting. The numbers are exciting for churches and other supporting groups. They’re like, “oh, you’re successful!” It’s kind of refreshing for a lot of people.[14]
The benefits are clear, but advocates at OMF want to make sure we know it is not “A panacea for all that ails global missions.”[15] Digital evangelism is a new tool, but it does not replace all our old tools. It’s not a silver bullet.
Not for Everyone
So far, I’ve said that whoever you are, as long as you have an internet-connected device, you can do mission from home. But the truth is there’s a big caveat: It’s not for everybody.
One reason is financial. Z-Media says the United States is more strategic but may be harder to raise support. “Most supporters have stayed on because they caught the vision of our team,” but finding new support has been difficult for some members.
“There’s a problem when you’re in your hometown doing missions because they don’t really see you as a missionary anymore. There is a little bit of confusion. I think, if our team was … in KL [Kuala Lumpur] or somewhere, maybe that would be okay because nobody here knows where KL is. It’s all the same place. It’s like, whatever. If you’re twelve hours away, you’re sent out.”[16]
Sadly, the costs of living mean some previously fully supported missionaries cannot keep it up full time when they transition to working from home.
A second reason is personality. While everyone is saying, quarantine is an introvert’s paradise, the extroverts among us are struggling to charge our social batteries through screens. How much worse for the extroverted foodies, reduced to sharing pictures of meals we can’t eat together. Then there are some of us who are great followers or who are not self-motivated. My friend at Z-Media says his team leader saved us by setting office hours, even for remote workers, keeping them accountable, and continually casting a vision. Without strong time management, accountability structures, and external motivation, some personality types will not thrive in remote work.
Thirdly, and most important for my friend Karen,[17] is calling. When the borders closed due to COVID-19, she was locked out of her mission field. A few months later, her mission agency withdrew all their missionaries from that creative access nation due to the deteriorating political situation. Her field leader invited her to join a dedicated remote team serving the region she had just left. She was very tempted but had to say no. She loved the unreached people of that region, knew their language, and was keen to serve alongside that particular leader. But God has called her to be physically among the lost. “I want to sit on those little plastic stools with them and drink their tea,” she said, “I can’t do that remotely.” So, she applied to join a new field where she will learn a new language and is waiting until travel restrictions ease so she can enter. While she’s waiting, though, Karen keeps chatting with her Muslim friends from the region she left on social media.
Conclusion
I sometimes wonder what happened to that young woman, who must be in her thirties now. Did she fail to connect online just as she failed to connect when she visited my church? Or did her work behind a screen enable her to overcome her in-person shyness? Did she flounder from lack of support and accountability? Or did she become a changemaker and advocate for remote missions? Whatever the case, I am sure that her success or failure as a working-from-home missionary had very little to do with whether or not she knew how to code a chatbot.
Julie Ma (pseudonym) serves as a missionary to a creative access community in Asia. She is a graduate of Sydney Missionary and Bible College and a member of the Angelina Noble Centre for women in cross-cultural missions research.
[1] Dawn Trautman, “Job Description of a Media Ministry,” Career Trend, accessed January 15, 2021, https://careertrend.com/job-description-of-a-media-ministry-13661223.html.
[2] When it was launched in 1987, their Non-Residential Missionary Program mostly involved short visits to countries where missionaries could not live long-term (see https://www.imb.org/175/imb-milestones/). Since then, it has developed to include more technology, and some missionaries who may never visit their focus areas in person. From personal communication with an IMB NRM team leader, November 2020.
[3] “Pioneers Media Outreach,” Pioneers, accessed January 15, 2021, https://pioneers.org/projects/pioneers-media-outreach-digital-media.
[4] Z-Media, a ministry of Pioneers, 2020 Year End Report. Visit https://pioneers.org/contact to request a copy. Note: Z-Media is not the team’s official name.
[5] Galina Hitching, “Creative Evangelism in a Digital Age,” OMF, July 2, 2020, https://omf.org/us/creative-evangelism-in-a-digital-age/.
[6] Ray, OMF Missionary, quoted in Hitching, 2020.
[7] https://www.imb.org/prayer/south-asian-muslim-media-outreach-13/.
[8] Samantha Connors, “Creatives Are Vital in Missions—Are You One of Them?” IMB, October 19, 2017, https://www.imb.org/2017/10/19/creatives-vital-missions/.
[9] Interview conducted with a Z-Media team member, who wishes to remain anonymous. Via videoconferencing, December 2020.
[10] Z-Media team member, 2020.
[11] “Media and Technology,” Roles, OMF, accessed January 15, 2021, https://opportunities.omf.org/roles/0190.
[12] “Video – What is Media Outreach?” Pioneers, accessed January 15, 2021, https://pioneers.org/2020/11/25/video-what-is-media-outreach.
[13] Hitching, “Creative Evangelism,” 2020.
[14] Z-Media team member, 2020.
[15] Hitching.
[16] Z-Media team member, 2020.
[17] Interview conducted via videoconferencing, December 2020. Karen is a pseudonym.
