Reach the world

We live in an area of the world that is the cross-roads of a multitude of cultures.  It’s not uncommon to hear 3 or 4 different languages spoken each day by the people who live in our town.  And we don’t live in some big city like New York.  We live in a smaller (about 4000 people big) town but that tells you the extent by which Europe is a melting pot with people from everywhere converging onto the one of the smallest continents.

But that’s what’s exciting about ministering here – there’s an opportunity to reach not only the Germans, French, and other traditional European populations but you can easily walk along side people from the Far East, Middle East, Russia, South America and Africa as they are on their spiritual journeys.  The reality is that those away from their home cultures are usually more open to discussing spiritual matters.  Now is the time to engage with them.

All the nations – in one location.  Come with us and reach the world.  – Greater Europe Mission

Tech Team 2011

A nice thing about having almost your whole mission body on one continent is that we can all get together on a regular basis.  So right now I’m in Poland (Krista & Alex are arriving soon) working with a group of techies who are giving up their vacations & paying for the privilege to work on missionary laptops.  So while the missionaries (including myself) are in the meetings, these guys (no ladies this year) will be working diligently on fixing computers so that the missionaries can work more on helping people know God and less on struggling with computer issues.

This is my fourth year working with this group (some of them change every year but they all come from the Mark5Ministries) and it’s a blast to be with the geekest geeks.  Just as a little bit of how geeky they are – they started pulling out all the electronics they had in their pockets (and only in their pockets – not what was in their backpacks or luggage).  That’s what in the picture to the right.  There’s only 5 guys and they still had all of that in their pockets.

Wondering what kind of issues they encounter?  Below are two issues they had last year – one is where a screw was coming up through the motherboard and case shorting the motherboard (no one knows how that happened) and the other is a seriously messed up screen.

Technology as a part of culture

It’s obvious these days that technology is changing our world.  But just how much is it permeating our world?

• The other day I was speaking with a missionary who was in rural Africa where he walked into a mud hut that had no running water, no electricity & no indoor plumbing – yet there sat (3) mobile phones! (Yes, there was reception in the village!!)
• During the H1N1 (Swine Flu) scare a few years ago, Google Trends was able to predict where the next outbreaks were going to happen based on the different kinds of searches people were performing – it was as accurate as the findings by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) but instead of being published 2 weeks after the data was collected – Google Trends was updated nightly.
• Facebook has over 600 million people on it (70% are from outside the US; almost 283.5 million are over 35 yrs old _*_) where people are interacting on a daily basis with people they wouldn’t normally see face-to-face on a daily basis & some that they do see in person daily as well.

I continuously have people coming up to me saying they’re not “technology people” but then I see the smartphone in the pocket or purse, an iPad under the arm and get a Facebook friend request from them later in the day.  They tell me that they don’t “text” (i.e. send text/SMS messages via their mobile phone) but then talk about following their stock portfolios using a web service.

Digital technology is now a part of almost every culture on Earth. It is a commonality that weaves the world into a giant quilt – each culture represented by a patch – held together by technology. Now each culture has integrated technology differently but it’s there all the same.  Banking in Kenya is done through mobile phones but in the US it’s done through web applications & ATMs for example.  However, both cultures use technology to handle a majority of their banking needs.

The idea behind our ministry, eDOT, is that we see technology as a significant way to reach into these cultures and reach people where they are.  We explore how each culture is using technology and help local churches & European-based ministries develop strategies that use technology as a way to engage their culture to fulfill their overall God ordained mission.

Join us in helping followers of Christ throughout Europe, North Africa and into the Middle East use technology to creatively engage their cultures.

New Website Look & Feel

Many of you know me and know that I can’t let things sit for very long.  We’re always going to be experimenting and trying to improve things which is why it became time to update our website, RoesGarden.com .  RoesGarden.com has been in some form since 1998 when our dial-up account came with free web hosting space and I decided to try my hand at HTML (the basic coding of the Internet).  This past iteration of RoesGarden.com was a blog.  Mainly a place for me (Courtney) to put my ramblings and findings out there for others to share in.  However now we find that we are in need for more of a website by which we can share more about our ministry.  While the Blog is still a part of it, it’s the not the primary feature on the front page.  Instead, we’ll be highlighting different things of interests that we blog about & write about in various ways through the website.  We’ll be continuing to make modifications (some will go silently, others we’ll make sure you know about) but it’s always fun to work with something to make it more practical in this ever changing world.

Please join us on the new site and let us know your thoughts in the comments area.

GEM eDOT Facebook Page

We all just want to be “Liked” – Right?  Isn’t that what Sally Fields said long ago – “You like me, you really like me!!”  Well, now we at eDOT just really want to be liked.  We’ve created a new Facebook page and would love for you to “Like” us and tell your friends about us.  This will help get the word out about our ministry and may help us in finding the people that want to be a part of “Connecting & Discipling People through Technology!”  Be sure to check it out:

Interesting Fact about Mobile Phones Today

Now how do you think this can change ministry today?

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What does it take to worship God?

I received a link to an interesting article entitled “If Muslim’s asked Europe for ‘empty’ churches” (you can find it here) and it’s an interesting development happening in Europe.  Europe’s history is with Christianity but the indigenous population has in majority left their faith however major immigration from North Africa and the Middle East has brought Islam to their foot steps.  So much so that on Fridays, the traditional day of worship for Muslims, mosques don’t have enough space to contain everyone and their worshippers are overflowing out into the streets causing traffic to be backed up or rerouted.  This is normal practice for where they come from but to many Europeans, its disruptive and illegal.  So the solution that’s being raised – let the muslims use the ‘empty’ churches to get them out of the streets.

Now I know there are many churches in North America and especially in South America, Africa and parts of Asia that do have these problems of running out of capacity but there’s very few in Europe.  While many towns have a church, not a whole lot goes on there and no where near where it will fill up except for the occasional musical performance (because of the acoustics) or wedding or funeral.  So what does it take for people to want to worship God so much that they’ll pour into the streets to do it? My thinking on Islam is that for most muslims, its just engrained into their culture, community identity, and social structure that they are compelled to participate in worship & prayer but in a way, do so under duress. Christianity has been like that too (and in many ways, still is) as we have seen in the last 2000 years and for Europe we see its remnants in the empty churches scattered throughout the land now being converted into museums, concert halls, dance clubs and now possibly mosques.  But is worship & prayer to God to be a cultural thing?  Are we to go through the week marking off our to-do list :  grocery shopping – check, picked up Tommy from football – check, went to the worship center & did something required – check, ….?

In my wrestling with this (and I’m in no way an authority here), I have to think that to really worship God (creator of the universe and all) it has to be something more from the inside (that He put there; created there) that erupts out in an outward expression.  It can’t be something that comes from the outside (i.e. culture, expectations, etc) that moves us but a deep down movement within us that explodes out in the form of worship and prayer.  Otherwise it’s just an act and doesn’t reflect our true core being.

What’s your thought of worship?