by David Armstrong

At the annual M-DAT Board Retreat this Spring, the staff and Board made some significant changes in M-DAT’s leadership roles to better facilitate continuing growth in our services and better match our team member’s skills and gifts with needs in the office.

Some key responsibilities were shuffled and the organization is moving to a three person leadership team composed of an Executive Director, a Director of Program Services and a Director of Operations.

Peter Armstrong, who has ably led M-DAT for its first 10 years, has assumed the role of Program Services Director to focus his energies and skills on the ongoing development of our web based missions training and preparation services.

The legal, financial and overall administrative tasks for the organization will now be covered by the Director of Operations. David Armstrong has moved into that role. Amanda Snodgrass has assumed the position of ShortTermMissions.com Service Manager and will be helping the many organizations who use ShortTermMissions.com to make known the opportunities they offer.

And lastly, we are now looking for a new Executive Director. Pray for our Board as they define the unique job description for this position and then find and interview candidates. We would appreciate your prayers as we wait on God to provide the right person for the new role. Also pray for the team as a whole as we adjust to these transitions.

As always we remain committed to helping people take their next step in missions involvement.

Prayer: Pray that God would provide a new Executive Director for our Leadership Team. And pray for the M-DAT team as we adjust to the modified and enlarged roles.

Prayer: Pray for us as we are in discussions about a partnering arrangement with another website to provide broader coverage for the many great mission trips posted on ShortTermMissions.com. There are a lot of details to be considered.

Praise: Praise the Lord for a college student and recent graduate who are inquiring about helping develop content for our web sites as volunteers.

Praise: Praise for a great time of interaction at our March Annual Board Retreat. We have a terrific Board which provides helpful perspectives.

Praise: We were greatly encouraged to see the number of people looking for mission trips go back up this Spring after a plateauing of interest last Spring.

On Saturday November 21^st, players will tee off from all over the United States to play nine holes of golf on a Nintendo Wii™ and help the next generation get involved in missions. In addition to three main event locations (Siloam Springs, AR; Orlando, FL; Grand Island, NE), people will play along from their living rooms. We invite Propel readers to be a part of this unique event.

Will you help M-DAT’s ministry by forming a “home team?” Organize a team of friends, co-workers, or members of your church group to play at your home (or someone else’s home if you don’t have a Wii™). Another option is to make it a mother/daughter or father/son activity.

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Prayer: M-DAT Participating in Urbana 09 — Our team is getting ready to head to St. Louis at the end of December for Urbana 09—the largest student missions conference in the United States. If you are attending, look for us in the exhibit hall. Paul Nielsen has designed a new display (very exciting!) and is now working on designing the resource cards we will be handing out. Please remember him in prayer and also begin to pray that God would put us in contact with students we can encourage in their missions involvement, as well as some who will have a vision for using the internet as a tool for helping mobilize their generation and join our staff.

Prayer: Wii™ Golf Tournament Nov. 21st — M-DAT’s Wii™ Golf Tournament is just around the corner. Please pray for good participation and smooth working of the technology during the event.

Praise: Web Design Progress — We are happy to have visible progress on the AskaMissionary.com redesign and the design work for PreparingToGo.com. The logo design for both websites is complete! Take a look. They are posted on the media board here: http://www.causes.com/mdat.

News: M-DAT Leads Social Media Workshop at FSTML — Peter Armstrong, M-DAT’s executive director, twice led a workshop titled “Using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube Effectively in Short-Term Missions” at the Fellowship of Short-term Mission Leaders conference. The workshop was done via video conference. The workshop was well attended and we received positive feedback on the content presented.

by Peter Armstrong

I am excited to share that AskAMissionary.com is now included in M-DAT’s family of mission websites. AskAMissionary started out 10 years ago as an eNewsletter to help people get their questions about mission service answered. As questions and answers poured in, a website was launched to make them more accessible. The site now boasts 400-plus answers from experienced Christian missionaries to hundreds of questions about being a missionary for one year or longer. The email version of the service continues and has grown to 2,000 subscribers. God brought all of this about through an ordinary person who offered up a portion of his free time to encourage people in missions involvement!

Early this year M-DAT entered into an agreement with John McVay to take on the lead role in operating the service. The agreement is a one-year trial period, intended as a stepping stone toward a permanent partnership. We are happy to have John continue his involvement with the project and he is excited to see his “hobby” taken to the next level.

Our team is pleased to have the opportunity to help raise the profile of this good, solid content. Over the coming months we will overhaul AskAMissionary.com, making it a bit more user friendly, updating the look and improving the visibility of the site in major search engines. We will also integrate the Q&A content into PreparingToGo.com, which is currently in beta. No immediate changes are planned for the newsletter.
Please take a look at the site. You can post a question or contribute an answer. While you are at it, don’t forget to subscribe to the AskAMissionary eNewsletter to get the latest questions and answers!

John McVay is administrator of In His Image International and coordinator of the Tulsa Missions Mobilizers Network, as well as developer of The Journey Deepens retreats.