Pray
Once you’ve learned a bit about the nations coming to the  World Cup, I want to encourage you to begin praying for the teams and the fans that will accompany them. This is an important first step we can take to engage the nations among us. Here are a few ideas to help you foster prayer during the  World Cup.

Prayercast
Prayercast has created some amazing prayer videos for every country in the world. As the  World Cup approaches, begin prayerful watching and praying through the Prayercast videos for each of the countries coming to play. Watch the Algeria Prayercast video below. [Find a Nation at Prayercast]

Further Reading: Four Ways To See The Nations At Our Doorstep

From hidden prayer rooms to global mission movements, discover how God consistently uses ordinary believers’ prayers to spark extraordinary breakthroughs among the unreached.
​By Aaron Myers

 When Jesus went up the mountain to pray, He did so knowing He was launching a movement—one that would spread across the nations as His disciples made more disciples. Prayer has always been the foundation of any move of God. It was the foundation of Jesus’ ministry, the early church, and the modern missions movement. If we are to join the Father in His mission to reach the least-reached, we must begin with prayer. It always has been and always will be the starting place.

The Moravian Prayer Movement
In 1722, Count Nikolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf welcomed a group of Moravian refugees onto his estate near Dresden, Germany, helping them establish a community called Herrnhut. He ministered to their spiritual needs, leading them in Bible study, prayer, and worship. After a season of disunity and conflict, Zinzendorf called for a prayer meeting in August 1727. That night, the Holy Spirit moved powerfully, dissolving their divisions and uniting them around two priorities:
​

• Prayer – They launched a 24/7 prayer movement that continued unbroken for over 100 years.
• Missionary Zeal – This prayer movement became the foundation for their missionary efforts, sending believers to some of the hardest places of their time—Caribbean islands, Greenland, North America, and Africa.

The Haystack Prayer Meeting
By 1806, as the Moravian prayer movement was winding down, five young students at Williams College in Massachusetts were discussing William Carey’s famous missions pamphlet. They wondered if God was calling them to take part in the global work of evangelism.

When an unexpected storm forced them to seek shelter in a haystack, their discussion turned to fervent prayer. There, in that simple refuge, the Holy Spirit stirred their hearts with a burning passion to take the gospel to the unreached. This prayer meeting birthed the first North American mission agency, which sent Adoniram Judson as its first missionary. Several of the men followed Judson to the mission field, while others worked to mobilize the church.

The Haystack Prayer Meeting stands as a powerful example of how God can use even a small group of dedicated believers to spark a global movement.

Equip your missions committee with practical, actionable ideas to cultivate a thriving missions culture that mobilizes your entire church for God’s global purpose.
​By Aaron Myers

Missions committees. They are an important part of any small church and yet increasingly, it’s becoming more and more difficult to know if the churches they serve are all that interested. It can be an uphill battle to keep global missions at the forefront of church culture as congregations become busier than ever with frantic schedules and hurried lives. Previous generations saw missions as an important part of the duty of all Christians and so they joyfully gave to the work of global missions, attended missions emphasis events and prayed regularly for those missionaries whose pictures adorned refrigerator doors. Within younger generations, that emphasis is slipping and this can make the work of the missions committee difficult and frustrating.

I was recently reading the story of two small churches in rural Minnesota who, between their founding in the late 1870’s until 1980, had sent out 35 missionaries and 55 pastors. These two churches sent out a new missionary every three years! They did this by creating a strong culture focused on global missions. In 1887 they began celebrating the Fourth of July with a missions festival in addition to the quarterly missions festivals they already had. Ladies' prayer meetings for mission work and the missionaries they supported were held weekly for decades. Older members report that there was a general expectation that their young people would go into missions, the pastorate, the medical field or teaching - anything focused on serving. These churches had in them an ethos for missions.

While we probably won’t be able to talk our church leaders into five mission festivals a year, there are things we can do to grow a missions culture in our churches. In Turkish there is a proverb, “Damlaya, damlaya göl olur” – drop by drop a lake is formed. The focus of these ten ideas is to take small but consistent steps to increase awareness of God’s heart for the nations, working toward slow but steady growth in mission culture at your church.

Note: As our churches and world become increasingly digital, be sure and pay attention to how you talk about your missionaries, from the stage in particular, during Sunday morning services if they are being shared online. This creates a real challenge in telling the story of what God is doing in and through our missionaries, but their security and ability to remain in their country of service is vitally important. Make sure and have a good conversation with them about what is appropriate and not appropriate to share. Every missionary will have different contexts and different thoughts on their security. 


1.  It Starts With You
It’s an old truism that a leader can’t lead where he or she hasn’t been. In order to lead your church toward a more robust mission culture, the mission committee is going to need to lead the way. A few years ago I wrote Ten Ways to Focus on the Great Commission this Year. I’d encourage you to bring this article to your mission committee and discuss a few options to pursue together. Choose just one to get started with - even one is more than none and will be the first step toward greater missions awareness and excitement. Some of these will also show up in the rest of the list below.

2.  Movie Nights
Movie nights are a fun way to bring your congregation together for fellowship while also creating an opportunity to stir their hearts for the nations. You could host quarterly movie nights or one in the fall and another in the spring. Make these fun nights and perhaps open them up to the greater community. Pop popcorn, serve ice cream and after the movie is over, spend some time praying for your missionaries and the countries in which they serve. Make sure and preview the movies so you can let parents know if it would be appropriate for their kids. Here are a few movies that will encourage and challenge your congregation: End of the Spear | Beyond the Gates of Splendor | The Insanity of God | Many Beautiful Things: The Life and Vision of Lilias Trotter | Better Friends than Mountains | More Than Dreams Movies | The Distant Boat

3.  Serve The Kids
Investing early in the kids of your church will ensure that a heart for missions starts at a young age. Fill your church library with missionary biographies written for children and young adults [YWAM Publishing]. Have each Sunday school class “adopt” one of your missionary families. Hang their picture in the classroom along with a flag and a map of the country in which they serve. Make sure the teacher is getting the missionary’s newsletter and sharing updates with the kids. Pray for them every week and make sure the missionaries know there is a class of kids who are praying for them every week. Learn about a simple snack from the country and bring it to class for the kids to share. And, if the missionary family is visiting your church, make sure they spend the Sunday school hour with the kids. Some churches have a missions moment for the kids every day of VBS and take an offering to support their work. There are a lot of creative ideas for getting the kids of your church excited about missions.

4. Prayer Focus
A pastor friend of mine once told me that our hearts and minds follow our prayers and our pocketbooks. And so if we want our hearts to grow in a certain area, we need to focus on beginning to pray more for it and find ways to give towards it. I’ll focus on prayer here. It’s important that our congregations begin praying for our missionaries and the mission endeavors of our church. Here are a few ideas for how to do that:

1. Prayercast Videos - Prayercast creates powerful videos that are usually 3-5 minutes long and focus on particular countries by creating a beautiful video montage with a native of that country praying for their people. These can be helpful to play during a church service, small group or a specific prayer meeting for missions. Here are a few examples: Turkey | Ukraine | Bangladesh They also have religion specific videos that can be very helpful: Islam | Judaism | Ayatollah Khamenei
2. Prayer Guides - There are a lot of different prayer guides being produced for people groups, countries and religious festivals. These are often 30 day guides, sometimes in print and others through email, but all of them will both help your congregations pray and also help them learn more about the work that the missionaries we send are apart of. Here are a few examples: 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World | 15 Days of Prayer for the Hindu World | Voice of the Martyrs Global Prayer Guide | Let All the Peoples Praise You
3. Prayer Events - As you build the culture of prayer in your church it will be important to begin to host regular prayer events for your missionaries and the great commission needs of our world. You want the majority of the time to be spent in prayer but it can be good to start with some worship, utilize a prayercast video or two and have a prayer focus for the night or a list of topics to be praying through. Reach out to your missionaries a week before the event and ask if there are specific ways you can be praying for them.

5.  Missionary Focus
It’s important to keep your missionaries and the missions efforts of your church and denomination continually in front of your congregation. If the only time they hear about a missionary family you support is when they come and visit every 3-4 years, there’s not going to be a lot of relationship built. Without relationship, prayers will be meager and support lacking. So one thing a mission committee can work toward is ensuring that the congregation gets to know the missionaries supported by the church. And while the missionaries themselves have a role to play in this, the mission committee is most equipped to actually make it happen. A few ideas have already been discussed in the previous topics. And like the prayer focus above, I’ll offer a number of bullet points with ideas for how to do this better.

1. Share Their Stories - When you get a newsletter from a missionary, find ways to share highlights with the congregation. This could be as an announcement on a Sunday morning, an insert in the bulletin, an email in the church email chain or a text to members of the church. Video Updates. Invite your missionaries to create 2-4 minute video updates to share with the church several times a year. This is something they can create with their phone and will allow your congregation to see and hear from them more regularly.
2. Monthly Focus - Consider using a month to focus on a missionary. One week you could share a video update. The next week you could use a Prayercast video about the country in which they serve. Another week could be just a story or testimony about a person they’ve impacted. You can be creative but make sure and pray for them each week as well as a congregation. If you have six missionaries your church supports you could do this every other month and cover them all in the course of the year.
3. Serve Them - It is important to get your congregation involved in serving them as well. Send cards at Christmas and allow some in your congregation to write a short note of blessing. Invite the congregation to contribute to send gifts to the kids of the missionaries. You’ll want to communicate with mom and dad first to see what would be best. Bless your missionaries with a gift card to Amazon or Starbucks (you’d be surprised how easy it is to find a Starbucks around the world these days). Find ways to bless these families as they serve in the field.
4. Utilize their Time - When missionaries are on home assignment and are going to be coming and visiting your church work in advance to plan their time with you. Have them visit the kids’ Sunday school class who have been praying for them. Give them time to share from the stage during the service. Provide a table for them in the entryway where people can learn more and talk with them after the service. Help them get people signed up for their newsletter. Do you have small groups? See if you can have them visit small groups to share in a smaller setting. This will allow more people to hear from them but it will also communicate your interest in and desire to partner well with the missionary. When they come all the way to your church just to share a five minute update after which few people talk with them, it can be hard for missionaries to feel like the congregation is even interested in them or their work.

6.  Short Term Missions
Many of the missionaries I know point back to short term ministry or mission trips as instrumental in beginning to shape their hearts toward making Christ known among the nations. Creating opportunities for youth and adults from your church to engage in short term missions then is a fantastic opportunity to disciple hearts and cast vision for missions. Talk to the missionaries you have sent out and see if there are opportunities to come and serve with them or if their sending organization has short term mission trips. You can find other opportunities at: Global Gates Sifting Week | Adventures in Missions | Ethnos 360 | Praying Pelican | Hundredfold | Cafe 10/40 | Multiply

7.  The Perspectives Course
Perspectives in the World Christian Movement is a powerful 15 week course that will give participants a new “perspective” on God’s heart for the nations. The Perspectives course is another launch point for many of the missionaries I talk with who claim it was this course that sent them on a trajectory toward the mission field. Classes are available in person or online.  Perspectives in the World Christian Movement 

There are also other curriculums similar to Perspectives that can be used for Sunday school classes or small groups. These kinds of classes can be a simple way to help your congregation to be more informed about God’s missionary heart and what He is doing to bring the nations to himself. A few of these include: Storyline | God’s Heart For The Nations

8.  Vision Trips
Vision trips are different from short term mission trips. They are for a small group of people from your congregations who are A) considering long term missions and want to learn more, B) Leaders in your church who you as the missions committee want to gain a deeper understanding and heart for God’s work among the nations, C) People who can specifically serve the missionary family you are going to visit, D) Prayer warriors, and E) Members of the missions committee. It doesn’t need to be all of these but as you can see, the focus of the trip is not on the personal discipleship of those who are going like it may be on a short term mission trip. The group isn’t going so much to serve as to listen and learn.

These trips are about deepening relationships and helping you as a sending church move toward deeper levels of engagement and understanding. They could also be about exploring new opportunities for partnership in new locations.

9.  Host a Conference
It can be a lot of work, but is an opportunity to put together a great weekend program to help encourage your church to catch a vision for missions and the work God is doing in drawing the nations to himself. It can also be a great opportunity to partner with other local churches in order to share the workload and costs of a conference and to get out of our respective silos to do kingdom work together. Some organizations are looking for churches to partner with and will bring in the content and speakers.  There are also a lot of great conferences going on across the world that will be an encouragement to those who go.  Here are a few:  | Moody Bible Mission Conference | Cross Conference | Urbana. You can find a complete list of conferences, trainings and other missions events at Missions Catalyst. And if you need help thinking through how to host your own, regional mission conference, we'd love to assist in any way we can. Reach out at our about page.

10.  Missionary Hosting
Several times a year one or more of the missionaries you support will come and visit your church. They are most likely on what used to be called their furlough though that term was never accurate. That word conveys the idea that their work has been suspended for a season, that they are on vacation or a break. And this is categorically not what three months back in one’s home country feels like. One agency I’ve worked with now calls these times away from their country of service as their Ministry in North America (MINA) which is much more accurate. It is ministry and it is work.

Some missionaries will put thousands of miles on a vehicle over the course of two to three months in the summer. Nearly every weekend finds them in a new church, engaging with new people, working to meet unsaid expectations and for some, all of this with kids in tow. When they come and visit your church, my challenge to you is to make that time as special and meaningful for them and their family as possible. Missionaries aren’t proud of it, but we all have a mental list in our heads of the churches they can’t wait to go back to and the ones they dread. So how do you become a “can’t wait to get back to” kind of church? Here are a few ideas:

1. Communicate Well - You’ll have to discover what a colleague of mine calls their “communication love language”.  Some people email. Others text. Some just want a phone call. Missionaries may do most of their communicating on Whatsapp. Whatever it is, once you find it, begin communicating early with them once you hear they are coming back to the states. I’ll cover some of the other details of this below but make sure they feel wanted and welcome. Ask lots of questions to learn what their expectations and needs are. Do they need to raise a lot of extra money this year or are they just wanting to tell the story of what God is doing and raise up more prayer support? As you communicate, remember that they may be in the midst of a long road trip and may be setting up meetings all along the way. You may need to be patient if you don’t hear back right away. If it’s been a week, send a gracious reminder. They are probably having the same kinds of conversations with many others and will appreciate the reminder.
2. Lodging - Every family is different so make sure and ask the missionary coming to visit what they would prefer for lodging while they are with you. Some will want to stay with a family - this will be more likely if ample opportunities have been made in the past to build relationships. Others, especially those with kids, might really feel blessed to stay at the local hotel with a mini water park inside. Another missionary family might love the chance to stay at a cozy Airbnb or someone’s guest house.
3. Schedule - While most missionaries I know would love to be invited to share in multiple classrooms, small groups and in the service as I mentioned above, some may be in a season that just doesn’t allow that. If they have small kids, they may not want to drag their toddlers to six different events during the few days they visit. My kids disliked going to new churches every weekend when they were small. Those are the kinds of challenges your missionary family may be struggling with. Letting them know that there is grace for whatever works best for them will go a long way in helping them have a good experience at your church.
4. The Small Things - There are lots of small things you can do to make their stay with your church a good experience. If they have small kids, a gift bag for each with some things inside (things you’ve asked mom and dad to help you pick out) will go a long way toward blessing the whole family. A well stocked Starbucks gift card will allow mom and dad to enjoy coffee as they travel. The offer of a date night for the parents (give them a gift card to a favorite local restaurant) will allow them to have much needed time together - something that is desperately hard to find when traveling from church to church. And because most missionaries are on a pretty tight budget, it can be a real blessing to give them a small cash gift to help with their travel expenses.
5. Make Space for Relationships - The most important thing that any missionary takes away from a visit to your church will be relationships. Relationships only grow with time and so you need to create the time for that to happen. As a mission committee it's a great idea to share a meal with your missionaries after the service on Sunday to just hear more from them. If one of the kids in the church makes a good relationship with one of the missionary’s kids, encourage them to become pen pals, either in the traditional manner or through email or social media. Whatever you can do to help foster relationships and build a real partnership will go a long way to serving the missionaries you support.

​This list of ten ideas is not meant to overwhelm. Celebrate the things you are already doing and pick one or two to try and initiate in the future. If you keep at it with patient endurance you will slowly see your congratulation grow in both their understanding of their role in the great commission and their passion to be a part of it.

If you have other ideas you seen or tried at your church, please share them in the comments below.

Ramadan is an important month in the Islamic lunar calendar because it is the month in which - according to Islamic theology - the first revelation of the Koran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed. During Ramadan all Muslims across the globe are required to abstain from all earthly pleasures - food, water, cigarettes, sexual relations - from sun up to sun down.  Fasting like this during Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam and it is one of the most important religious and cultural holidays for Muslims.  This year Ramadan runs from March 22nd through April 21st.

Ramadan is a unique opportunity to pray for our Muslim friends and the Muslim world.  There are a host of great resources to help Christians and their churches dedicate time to prayer for the Islamic world during this month.  

30 Days of Prayer
Since 1993, the 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim world has been a helpful resource to guide prayers throughout the month of Ramadan. Available in booklet form or as a PDF, you can order your prayer guides at:
​30daysprayer.com/booklets/

Pray4Movements
The Pray4Movements team have partnered with churches and missionaries to create 24/7 prayer for individual countries and regions during the month of Ramadan.  This is a great opportunity to partner with the global body of Christ to see non-stop prayer for Muslims during the month of Ramadan.  We've partnered to form the Pray4Turkey initiative through the month of Ramadan and would love to invite you to sign up for one fifteen minute slot of prayer or a daily fifteen minute slot. 

You can sign up at: pray4turkey.pray4movement.org

You can find the complete list of pages here: pray4movement.org/ramadan-2023
​
Prayercast
Prayercast creates powerful videos that will help you and your church pray for the Muslims world. They have videos for nearly every country on earth as well as a whole section of videos focused on raising up prayer for the Muslim world.  You can watch the Ramadan prayer video below but here is the link to all the prayercast videos focused on the Muslim world:
​prayercast.com/love-muslims-home.html

Prayer is an important work in seeing the great commission fulfilled. These are just three ways you can be involved.  Sign up for one today and share this post with a friend.  We need the whole body of Christ to join in this important time of prayer.

Laylat al-Qadr - the night of power - is the night during the month of Ramada that Muslims celebrate the receiving of the first of the Quranic revelations by Mohamed.  For Muslims it is a sacred night, perhaps the most sacred night in the Islamic calendar and is a night spent on tasks such as prayer, reciting the Quran and spending as much time as possible at their local mosque. 

It is believed that worship and prayer on this night is more valuable than one thousand other nights of worship and prayer.  It is a night when the hearts and minds of Muslims all across the world are focused on one thing:  trying to please God.  And it is a night that we as followers of Christ can gather around our Lord's throne of grace, asking God to make Jesus known to Muslims all across the world.  

This year, Laylat al-Qadr falls on Tuesday, May 19th.  

Will you set aside time this year to take action?  Will you do one thing to join God in His global purpose to see Muslims worshiping Him?

WILL YOU LEARN MORE?  
Stop by the Prayercast page, watch the prayercast video and read more about the Night of Power.

WILL YOU PRAY?
Will you set aside time on Tuesday, May 19th to pray for your Muslim friends and Muslims in general. 

Pray that on this night:

• the true character of Jesus would be revealed in visions and dreams.
• Muslims would be delivered from the crushing burden of trying to earn God's favor.
• God would demonstrate His love and power through signs, wonders, and miracles.

WILL YOU FAST?
Consider fasting on Tuesday May 19th as you pray.  Skip meals from sun up until sun down.  Fast for 24 hours or more.  Maybe fast from media or your smartphone.  Give something up as a way to focus your prayers during this day.  

Will you do something this year to join God as he calls Muslims to himself?  

For most of my life I’ve wanted to improve my prayer life.  Having read the biographies of many great men and women of God and observing the Biblical examples from Jesus to Moses to the apostles, I’ve always known that prayer was an important part of the life of the disciple of Jesus.  And for most of my life, I’ve not lived up to my own desires to pray more.

The reality is that my knowledge of the importance of prayer has not yet led to a default toward prayer.  But I want it to.

Curtis Sergeant introduced me to a helpful tool to improve my prayer life, helping me to pray for one hour at a time.  I don’t use it often enough but because it is a helpful tool, I’ll be adding it to the Everywhere to Everywhere resource page.  The resource is called The Prayer Wheel and it is a part of the Zume Free Online Training.

The prayer wheel allows you to pray in five minute increments for one hour.  You will need some sort of timing device (Zume Timer) that you can set to let you know when five minutes is up so you can move on to the next section for prayer.
​
THE BASIC PRAYER WHEEL OUTLINE

• PRAISE: Spend time praising God for who He is.
• WAITING: Spend time silently waiting on God.  Just quiet your heart and wait.
• CONFESSION: Spend time confessing sin and all that hinders your relationship with God.
• READ THE WORD: Spend time reading the word of God.  
• PETITION: Spend time praying general prayers of blessing and protection for yourself, family & others.
• INTERCEDE: Spend time praying specifically for one or two people or issues.
• PRAY THE WORD: Go back to the scripture you read.  Read a verse and then pray the essence of that verse back to God.
• THANKSGIVING: Spend time thanking God for all of His blessings and actions in your life.
• SINGING: Spend time singing a favorite hymn or play a worship song on youtube.
• MEDITATE: Spend time meditating on one aspect of God, a phrase of scripture or a word or phrase  from a worship song.
• LISTEN: Spend time listening to what the Holy Spirit might be wanting to say to you through this time.  Have a notebook and pen handy to write down anything you hear from God.
• PRAISE: End your time praising God.

I have created a simple bookmark so that you can carry the prayer wheel with you where ever you go.  Set aside an hour and spend it in prayer with the Prayer Wheel as your guide.

Download the Prayer Wheel Bookmark

I hope that you will find the prayer wheel a helpful tool for increasing your prayer life and your ability to hear from the Holy Spirit.  It has been in many ways a helpful training tool for me but it will only help you if you try it out and apply it.  

Learn more about the Prayer Wheel from others:

• More Disciples
• Zume Tool Kit
• Zume Timer

I remember growing up, my grandmother would tell stories of the waning days of the Great Depression and the first years of World War II.  I was captivated by the way she and the whole country seemed to respond to the crisis of war and depression.  She told stories not only of the young men who willingly signed up to defend freedom but also of the ways those who stayed behind stepped up to serve, sacrificially rationing and growing gardens and doing anything they could to support the war effort.  Those stories left a longing in me to live a purposeful life of sacrifice and meaning.
  
The Covid-19 pandemic is our crisis.  For many of us, we are looking for purposeful ways to respond.  Somehow, “stay at home and watch Netflix” just doesn’t seem all that meaningful, even though we know it is the best thing to do (at least the stay at home part).

As followers of Christ then, what are the ways we can respond that are meaningful and in partnership with the mission of God.  Nearly six billion people in our world do not yet call themselves Christians and over two billion don’t even have access to an opportunity to hear the gospel.  Here are five different ways you can be a part of God’s global mission, even as you stay at home.

LEARN
As the global pause button continues to be depressed, take the extra time you have to learn more about God’s mission and how you can be a part of it.  Here are several ideas:

• Crescent Project’s Online Bridges Study
• OMF’s Six Ways to Reach God’s World
• ​Beyond's Nugget Trainings
  
• Multiplication Concepts Training Videos
• 7 Books to Fuel the Missions Fire

ENCOURAGE
Isolation and loneliness are real issues in a time of pandemic.  I trust you are already doing your part to discover creative ways to encourage those in your neighborhood, your church family and your immediate family.  But missionaries and our global brothers and sisters in Christ are also isolated in times like these.  Here are a few ideas for encouraging them.

• Write a letter to a Missionary - find out who the missionaries your church supports and consider writing them a letter or sending them an email.  Maybe even send them a gift card for iTunes or Amazon.
• Write a letter to persecuted Christians.  You can learn how at Open Doors International.
• Send Bibles to Believers in Restricted nations. Partner with Voice of the Martyrs to send a Bible to countries where Bibles are difficult to access.

PRAY
Too often, followers of Jesus underestimate the power of prayer.  It seems that in the pandemic and the forced slowing of life, prayer would be the greatest response would could give to the Lord.  Here are a number of resources to help you pray more.

• Ramadan Prayer - Today (April 24, 2020) marks the first day of Ramadan in the Muslim world.  Sign up for Prayercast’s 30 Day Ramadan Prayer email series.
• Develop a personal prayer strategy. 
• Learn from the leading edge of Paul’s disciple making strategy. 

GO
Mission trips have been canceled, missionaries have had to return from the field and stay at home orders abound across the globe and yet the opportunity to go into the Muslim world has never been greater.  Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, more people on every continent are home bound than ever in world history.  They are isolated, alone, and wondering what tomorrow will hold. Hundreds of thousands of young Muslim men and women who speak English are also sheltering in their homes, smartphone in hand, surfing the Internet in search of answers, hope and friendship.
  
What if they met you?

Volunteer with Embassy and they will teach you how to connect online with Muslims in difficult to access nations.  You will almost certainly be the first follower of Jesus they have ever met.  

Sign up for a free one hour introductory training or stop by the Embassy website to learn more.

FILTER
We live in a media saturated world.  Messages come fast and furious from every device we own and many are wondering if we can trust any of the news we hear.  How do we filter through all the nose? 

The reality is that we are all being discipled - being formed -  by the messages that dominate our days.  Because of this it is imperative that we shut off the noise and immerse ourselves in the word of God.  As we do this, the word of God will increasingly become the filter through which all other messages have to pass. 

If the dominant source of messages in our day is our favorite right leaning or left leaning news outlet, it will become the filter, even filtering the way we read the Bible. 

Nobody is making you listen to the news or keep scrolling through your Facebook feed.  Nobody is forcing you to not read your Bible.  It’s a choice we all have to make. We have an opportunity to filter what we read, hear and see.

As we do that and as we prayerfully seek God’s direction each day we will find the things we can do in this season of global pandemic and God will use us in his global purposes.