Tomorrow (August 15, 2017) marks the first anniversary of my live, full-time, online ministry. Doing ministry on the Internet was a radical change for me. I had many questions floating around in my brain when I started. Could I get my message across? Would anyone listen? Would anyone do anything about it after they listened? Would I be able to make sense out of all the technical minutiae that bedevils the Internet? Would the ministry be too impersonal? What would it cost? And on and on.
Now that I’ve been doing this for a year, I have some answers to those questions.
First of all, I’ve been able to minister to far more people on a much deeper level than I ever have before. About 3,500 people read this blog every month. When I was doing conference work, I would spend on average $500 to travel hundreds of miles on a weekend away from my family just to speak to twenty or thirty men – once. Now I can “speak” to these same men three times a week for as long as the Lord enables my fingers to peck away at a keyboard. And these men – actually, you, my readers, who are mostly men – contact me back through comments and emails. So we have an ongoing relationship; something that rarely happened before.
Secondly, my online membership site, Meeting to Meet Needs, has allowed me to go even deeper in ministry with men. All of my training material and publised material is now online. Men can learn how to form a men’s team ministry at their own pace and download whatever material they need for reproduction in their church. They can even learn about other great men’s ministries that are out there through interviews, books and links.
All of this has taken a lot of work, of course. I spend about 50% of my time writing my blog and 50% working on the membership site. The membership site is definitely NOT intuitive to start and maintain. It is unbelievable how complicated it can get. Then, on top of the complexity, hackers are constantly trying to break in. I liken building a membership site it to a bricklayer trying to build a brick wall while dodging arrows coming in from Russia, China, Uzbekistan and who knows where else. I take solace in the fact that even the CIA can’t avoid getting hacked.
Finally, starting and hosting an online ministry is more expensive than I thought it would be. The membership site isn’t breaking even yet. To those of you who are paying $9.99 a month, or $97 a year for a membership, thank you for your support! I hope you feel like you are getting a good return on your investment. I’m working hard to make sure you are. (For those of you who are not members and would like to join, you can do so here.)
All in all, I’m pleased with the results from this new turn in ministry I’ve taken. The Lord’s hand seems to be in it. Please pray that I will listen carefully to the His voice as I continue in this ministry.
This post first appeared in NewCommandmnt.org.
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