Quick update on David’s trip to Canada:

Thank you so much for praying.  I had a very fruitful time.  Shannon and the kids managed well while I was gone but as always it’s much better to be back under one roof.

Here are a few photos from the conference at Columbia Bible College – in British Columbia, that is   Directly below is the Canadian “Ops Team” – about nine full time staff devoted to providing operational excellence for all of their campus missionaries.  In total, Campus for Christ Canada has about 160 staff on campus.

Joshua Wong is one of the trainers on the Ops Team.  He facilitated several excellent seminars on Social Media, Team Collaboration and Digital Basics.

We learned so much!!  The teams in Canada are trusting the Lord for huge things.  It was great to see them so eager to share ideas.  They’ve really created a good learning environment for their teams.

Want to hear some of their secrets? I made a short list of their good habits – very simple stuff which could help any team!  See the short list here.

I’ve also posted a video clip.  See it here.

We spent part of one day sightseeing.  See these photos here.

In this short video, you can get feel for how the Canadian campus staff do their operations training.

Russ Martin – director of campus operations in Canada – talks about some very simple habits his staff have developed:

• For a team to function well, there must be smooth, well defined modes of communication.
• Sharing ideas – even sharing failures – is a must for collaboration.
• One team can learn so much from other teams.  Ideas should not be hidden.  Wheels should not be re-invented.
• A threaded conversation (such as a message board or Facebook wall posts) is often most effective for sharing ideas.
• Russ trains his staff to use a threaded conversation rather than email in most cases.
• Canadian teams have common resource pools online where they can all share documents.
• Using online documents such as Google Docs provides a great solution for saving meeting notes.
• Rather than emailing a document as an attachment, the Canadians upload the document to a common resource pool and then share the link.  Subtle but powerful difference.

All these practices tend to reduce email inbox overload and promote the highest level of interactivity and sharing. Can all this help increase capacity of field teams to reach more people for Christ?  You bet!  It’s happening even now in Canada.

All of the Canadian teams use Google Docs.  If anything, this has been their “killer app” – the tool which has been the most helpful to enhance team communications.  Google Apps for Non Profits has also been a huge boost for them.  These tools are free, easy to deploy, easy to use and allow ultra fast sharing of critical resources.

Here’s the direct link to the video.

Here at the international headquarters for Campus Cruasde, we’re two of about 900 staff who serve in a wide variety of administrative capacities.  Our team is the Global Technology Office – helping ministry teams integrate technology into their mission.  Here’s a quick video we made showing the 25 staff on our team, our vision for ministry and the people we serve:

Here’s the direct link to the video on YouTube.

You make our outreach and service through the GTO possible!  Thank you!

To learn more …

• Our team web site
• Our team prayer calendar
• Facebook Application developed by our team (quick video)
• More videos done by our office

Discipleship with Skype::

Recently I overheard a new phrase from some of our overseas missionaries:  “Skypleship.”   Discipleship is happening in amazing, fruitful ever increasing ways through Skype – a software tool which allows people to talk face to face over the internet for free.

Skypleship is most likely happening right now, across many time zone and country boundaries. At a conference called MinistryNet – which our team sponsored several months ago, our staff in Central Asia shared how they have used Skypleship as a filtering strategy as well as a means to interact with disciples.

Several times a month, staff spend a half an hour or so searching for Skype contacts in particular cities (Skype users may choose to be “listed” in a directory of sorts, showing as much or little contact information as they wish – such as location).  Like a phone book, once you find another Skype user you want to communicate with, you send a request to that person and, if they accept, you can just push the “CALL” button on Skype and then a chat, voice or video conversation is started.  In several locations in Central Asia, staff find that Skype users contacted often will be interested to talk at least for a few minutes once they learn that the person on the other end is actually from his or her region.  Staff ask a few questions about the person’s interests, including spiritual interests.  According to the staff, a decent percentage of people indicate a desire to talk about God, sometimes even leading to a face to face appointment for coffee or tea.

Once a relationship is established, contacts indicating further interest in Jesus can be invited to join a 5 or 6 week topical discussion group via Skype. This discussion group is a Bible study of sorts.

A few weeks ago we posted the scoop on Global Media Outreach – one of Campus Crusade’s Global Evangelistic Web Site Strategies.  Want to learn how easy it is to be involved in reaching out to people all over the globe through your home computer?  Volunteer with Global Media Outreach (GMO).  As the image above describe, almost 2 million people every day look for God by searching for Him on the Internet!  A large percentage of these are visiting sites such as Jesus2020.com, TrueLoveandGod.com and 4StepstoGod.mobi – these are just 3 of hundreds of web sites GMO operates.

See how people are coming to faith in real time.  This map is very cool to watch!

In 2009, Global Media Outreach:

• Presented the gospel 61,695,024 times
• Saw 10,502,641 people indicate a decision for Jesus
• GMO volunteers responded to 1,943,585 emails requesting follow up from 191 countries

For another view of internet evangelism in real time, check out another real time estimate of numbers of people coming to faith.  This one is not associated with Global Media Outreach:  http://www.internetevangelismday.com/worldpopulation.php

Everyone watches movies.  Our culture loves them.

More often than not, movies tell a story that has some idea that is related to God, spirituality or topic that Jesus talked about.

Why not go to the movies with some friends who don’t know God and then discuss it with them afterwards?  You’d need to be prepared to ask some good questions – which is always key in transitioning a conversation to the gospel.

Global Short Film Network is an entire ministry dedicated to leveraging short films – less than 20 minutes, usually lower budget films, not 2 hour blockbuster movies – to fuel gospel centered conversations.  Visit their web site here and click on “Training” to see how to get started.  You can actually watch their training videos to see examples of how to use the films.

You can even download films from their web site to your iPhone or laptop for easy sharing.  Many students now share the films on their phone with friends.

Want to watch one of the films featured on Global Short Film Network?  Visit their home page and click play!

http://GlobalMediaOutreach.com

Click the map below to see a live, real time geo corrdinated map of evangelistic web site visitors from around the world.  See who is searching for Jesus right now.  Amazing:

Are you looking for a way to make an eternal difference for Christ? Wondering how you can help tell the world about Jesus? Global Media Outreach has several inspiring and exciting opportunities and hands-on activities to help you pass on your spiritual gifts and talents while learning how to use technology to spread the gospel.

Global Media Outreach offers you many different ways to help spread the Gospel by using one of our online widgets, sending a gospel email, linking to a gospel website and more.

Find out how your church can begin its own online missions program. Or, if you are looking for a way to share your faith, they provide the training and a safe, online environment. Just a little time online each week and you can share Jesus with the world.

I have been volunteering for GMO for about 3 years – responding to about 3 emails a week.  The emails come from visitors to evangelistic web sites all over the world.  Here is what my GMO inbox looked like earlier this week – this is a screen shot from an actual message I received.  Results like this have been typical for me at least 2x per month.

I’m heading up to the global missions conference at Westside in Mableton this weekend.  Hope to see many of you there!

During and after the conference, I’ll be sharing my thoughts about topics raised and asking pertinent questions.  I’ll be doing this in a digitally social fashion.

There are several avenues available to enable this digitally social conversation.  Feel free to just “listen in” or reply with your comments, thoughts and questions.  Here’s how.  Choose any of the methods below that works best for you:

Mobile phone text messages:

I have set up a special phone number for this.  Just send me a text to (407) 278-8185.  Text something like “add me 2the conversation for this weekend’s conference.”  From there I will put your mobile number on my list to include in the conversation.  You will not receive unwanted texts from me or others.

Web:

www.HandsHeadlines.com – our family blog.  Post your comments and questions there, receive an email (optional) of all the responses and follow up comments.  Just click the link below the title of any post where it says “Comments and Reactions.”  Note that you may sign in with your Facebook, Twitter or Yahoo account to synchronize comments on both our blog and your Facebook wall, for example.

Facebook:

If you are not my friend on Facebook, you can find me at facebook.com/dhandman Every time I respond or comment in the ongoing conversation, I’ll update my status with the content.  From there you can comment, ask, or just say you “like this.”  It’s easy.

Twitter:

My account = @dhand  You do not have to sign up for Twitter to follow my posts and replies from others there.  Just go to http://twitter.com/dhand and read it all there.  However, if you want to “talk back” using Twitter, then you must have a Twitter account.  Twitter is also very good for text message response and delivery.  You can configure your Twitter account to work with your mobile phone texts.

RSS Feed:

“Listen Only” Point your web broswer to http://hellotxt.com/dhand and just read the scroll.  Click the RSS Feed Icon just below and to the right of “Lifestream” to see the RSS Feed.  From there you can subscribe to the RSS Feed as you normally do using Google Reader or any feed readers.

We’re pleased to introduce you to Together on Mission – otherwise known as TOM.  This is a Facebook Application which was the brainchild of staff and students at the University of Central Florida.

Basically the idea is to engage movement builders where they “live and breathe” on the internet. For many students, and now days just about anyone in the 70 and under crowd, that’s Facebook!

Together on Mission provides a central place for people of a local movement to share stories, resources, prayer requests and build momentum towards reaching peers with the love of Christ.  All information shared is kept private inside the movement – others on Facebook, whether friends or “strangers” are unable to view it.

Like all Facebook Applications, TOM is an optional added feature which Facebook users may find and choose to turn on or off – allowing the TOM app to interact with his or her profile information.  It’s called 3rd Party Software because it did not originate from either the user nor Facebook itself.  The software was developed by our teammates here at Headquarters and the information stored in TOM is actually stored safe and secure on our servers.

Go ahead Facebook users and addicts, give it a whirl!  This could be perfect for your student ministry, church group or even a neighborhood outreach.

HOW TO get started on TOM (PDF File).

TOM Fan Page on Facebook here.

Promo Video:

Following Jesus is a response to His lavish grace and love. It involves repentance, which is also a response to His great initiatives of kindness and love.

Often the closer I get to Jesus the more I see I need Him.  The more I see I’m so prone to sin.  I’m pondering and wanting to understand more of the stark contrast between wordly and godly sorrow.  Here’s the quote from a Bible commentary which really gripped me:

The sorrow of carnal men about worldly objects, loss of fortune, fame, or friends; which, being separated from the fear and love of God, and faith in his providence and mercy, frequently drinks up their spirits, breaks their proud, rebellious hearts, or drives them to lay desperate hands on themselves.

Btw, I was looking at 2 Corinth 7:10 on Blue Letter Bible.  this is where I found the commentary.

What’s of further interest is that BLB has a MOBILE VERSION – sweet on a cell phone browser.  Check it out here:  http://mobile.blb.org/