by Peter Armstrong, M-DAT Executive Director

I always thought steady cams were cool. Now, I know they are! Last week Paul and I made one out of a mono pod, a 2.5 pound weight, and a weed trimmer handle. We rigged up the contraption in preparation for a trip I take at the end of April. I fly to Atlanta to do a test video shoot at Operation Mobilization. If all goes well, it will be the first organization headquarters tour for the website we are developing for aspiring missionaries — a very exciting milestone.

For good reasons, selecting a mission organization to go with from the hundreds out there can be a daunting task. We believe these headquarter tours will take the edge off of that experience. Viewers will catch the vision of the organization, hear what God is doing through them, meet key staff, learn about the mission candidate process, and hear why people who serve with the organization decided to join up.

How we will cram all of this into a three to five minute video clip is a mystery. That is why we are looking for gifted video editors to volunteer their skills. Six have already stepped forward. We need at least six more so we can spread out the work and publish new video clips more frequently. If you have video editing skills you would like to apply to the Great Commission please contact us.

My trip to Atlanta will get us ready for a rather unique mission trip we are assembling a team for — a week-long mission headquarter blitz in July. Each day we will visit a mission agency and shoot the raw video for the tour. We will also conduct interviews with missionaries who are home from the field. We will inquire about key moments in their journey to the mission field and get their responses to questions commonly asked by aspiring missionaries. At night we will review our footage and start editing. In the morning we will move onto another mission agency. I anticipate this will be a challenging and fruitful week. If you are a cameraman or video editor and want to get in on the action we want to hear from you.

Peter Armstrong, M-DAT executive director

In our last issue I requested your input to help shape M-DAT’s new web resource for aspiring missionaries. We have had an amazing response, 350 completed surveys to date! Wow. Thank you so much to all of you who took the time to give us your valuable input. I wanted to share with you some of the highlights from the survey.

First, the most encouraging tidbit of information: 98% of respondents said they planned on using the internet to find information to help them on their journey to becoming a missionary. This serves as confirmation to our staff of M-DAT’s mission “bringing people and missions together using internet technology.” (Now if we could just find a few more people to join our team and expand our capacity to provide great web resources!)

Respondents overwhelmingly affirmed that the video segments we described would be “helpful” or “very helpful.” 75 to 90% of people responded this way for each segment type. We take that to mean we are on the right track!

We learned that people have high speed internet and like to watch video clips. Almost 95% said they had high speed internet and 80% reported watching video clips on the internet everyday to a few times a month.

We learned it takes a long time to get to the mission field! Roughly 50% have had the desire to become a missionary for more than five years. 70% expect it will be at least another two years before they make it to the mission field as a full-time missionary.

We learned that the process of becoming a missionary is difficult. 90% said from their experience so far the process was “moderately” or “very difficult.”

More respondents than we expected indicated they had nailed down some specifics on the who, where, and what questions, but a significant number still had outstanding decisions to make. Roughly 40% said they either did not know or only somewhat knew what type of missionary work they wanted to do, what type of training they would need, or where in the world they would like to serve. 60% do not yet know what organization they want to serve with.

Finally, we had several hundred excellent responses to the open ended questions. Those responses are already influencing some of our decisions for the new web resource.

The survey exceeded our expectations of learning about the needs of aspiring missionaries. We are so grateful to all who participated!

Praise: Response Exceeds Expectations — Over 350 aspiring missionaries completed the survey we conducted in November and December. The responses and feedback have been extremely helpful to gauge the need and interest for a long-term mission website. We were also pleasantly surprised to have over 200 respondents sign up to receive Propel!

Praise: Volunteers Man Display at Mission Connexion Northwest — We broke into new territory this past weekend (Jan. 18 -19th) when for the first time ever, the M-DAT display was entirely setup, manned, and disassembled by volunteers. Thanks Nick and Kari! Nick reported: “I found that people really appreciate the work that you guys do. I expected that, but it was really encouraging to actually hear it from people. God is really using M-DAT, and I think that is really cool.”

Prayer: Volunteer Coordinator and Website Project Manager — Please pray for God to provide a volunteer volunteer coordinator. This person would help us tap into people who desire to invest a portion of their time to help accomplish our ministry vision. We are also still praying for a website project manager to join our team — an addition that would greatly expand our capacity to serve.

News: Mission Book Giveaway — In February, March and April we will be giving away ten short term mission books each month. Rules and details will be published in the next few weeks on ShortTermMissions.com.

Prayer: Video Gear — As we move forward with plans for the website for future missionaries, we have identified the need for basic video equipment and editing software. Later this Spring we’ll be letting folks know about the need and asking them to give to help meet the need.

Prayer: Spring Board Retreat — Coming up March 13th-16th our board meets for their annual retreat.

Peter Armstrong, M-DAT Executive Director

The M-DAT Vision, part 4 of 4
Our vision is that every believer desiring growth in mission involvement would obtain the practical assistance necessary to realize significant, lifelong involvement in the Great Commission.

Contrary to initial perceptions, “lifelong involvement” refers not to career missionaries but to the ongoing nature of the missions endeavor. Reaching the World has been on God’s heart since before we were born and will continue on His heart, if the Lord tarries, after our death. We do not clock in and out of mission every ten months like a seasonal job or check it off our list of things to do after going on a short-term mission trip. Missions is a core part of following Christ that should permeate our lives. While the exact expression of involvement grows and changes over a believer’s life, the heart, sacrifice, love, and worship behind it remains constant.

So, what is significant involvement? First, and foremost, significant involvement sights in on the completion of the Great Commission (Mt. 28:19-20). Whether directly or indirectly, a clear connection should be present. Second, significant involvement speaks of a wholehearted and intentional giving of oneself to a selected task. Whether it is praying, going, giving, encouraging, welcoming, working behind the scenes or ministering on the front lines every part of the missions endeavor is important and necessary for the completion of the missionary task. All are interdependent. All deserve to be done with persistence and sacrifice. Over time, M-DAT hopes to provide a broad range of services that help a believer expand his or her capacity to participate in each of these areas and facilitate crossing over into different forms of involvement as life changes and God prompts.

Well, this wraps up the series on M-DAT’s vision. If you missed one, you can go to read all four parts here. Apart from God, accomplishing this vision is impossible. We are obviously in over our heads, but we serve a big God! We covet your prayers for the ministry and would love to hear from you if this vision resonates with you. Email us at PeterA(at)mdat(dot)org.

• Praise: ShortTermMissions.com buzzed with activity over the last few months as people looked for summer opportunities. One website visitor wrote:

“Yes, I found a short term mission trip through your site (praise the Lord!).  I’ll be going with Eastern European Outreach to Kiev in June 2007.”
— Steve

We are encouraged to see God working through the website! Watch for more user testimonies in the near future.

• Praise: As our staff prepared some reports for our annual board retreat we rejoiced at seeing a solid, steady annual growth rate of 15-20% since M-DAT’s birth seven years ago across all areas of the ministry (service reach, man hours, funding). Praise the Lord for His provision!

• Pray: This year we hope to expand further into helping believers who are considering becoming a full time missionary. To that end we have a number of additions slated for a website we have in development (currently called PreparingToGo.com). Pray that we would be able to pull off these additions in our already tight work schedule! (Keep on praying for a few more people to join our team!)