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Bringing Missions Online to Offer Hope During the Pandemic

Right now it is easy to be overwhelmed by negativity in our newsfeeds, with news of the pandemic dominating the discourse. The news and social media is saturated with death tolls, infection statistics, rules for stay-at-home orders, and experts giving conflicting theories about what will happen next. “We want to encourage them with messages of hope,” says Jan-Willem Bosman, Executive Director of Jesus.net.

Jan-Willem recently joined an Indigitous Ministry from a Distance webinar to share what Jesus.net is doing to share hope in these bleak times. They are countering that negativity with two main strategies, an email series and a daily interactive video.

A miracle every day

The email campaign follows a four-step strategy. The goal is to move someone from the first step through to the last step:

  • Access
  • Know
  • Grow
  • Share

Access: During the Access phase, one of Jesus.net’s websites has an online prayer request form for those who want to receive prayer regarding the COVID-19 situation.

Know: Those who fill out the form to receive the email campaign are then moved to the Know phase, where they are shown a short video that explains that God loves them.

Grow: When people are ready to take the next step, they are led into the Grow phase, where they can sign up to receive a daily encouragement email called A Miracle Every Day.

Share: While people are growing in that phase, they are invited into the Share phase, where they are encouraged to visit their local church and share their stories on MyStory.me

The growth of those who engage with content on Jesus.net is made possible by volunteer e-coaches (and, of course, the Holy Spirit). Currently Jesus.net works with more than 2,500 e-coaches in 34 languages to connect with people by email and chat, walking with them on their journey and helping them get plugged into their local church community.

MyStory.me

Connecting on Zoom

With so much of the world isolated right now, Jan-Willem also saw a great need for connection.  People want to hear from pastors and church leaders, those in their church, and be able to connect with those who reside outside the walls of their homes. “If you can’t leave your house, you need to get your experts from other places,” Jan-Willem says.

To offer encouragement while also helping people to connect, Jesus.net has been posting daily live streamed video messages of hope where people are able to connect with Jesus.net, ask questions, share concerns, and pray together. They decided to use the same tool for this that most of the world is using to connect: Zoom.  “We focused on simplicity because we need to be able to keep doing this,” Jan-Willem says.

Using Zoom to broadcast these messages, they embed the video and chat on a website while also live streaming to YouTube to gain a bigger audience. For those who want to chat during the video, they can share publicly or in a private chat. During a recent video, Jan-Willem had members of his church join as panelists so they could respond to the chats.

Live Streaming from Zoom requires a paid account, but these principles can be followed with little to no money. Encouraging video content doesn’t need to have a high production value when it’s being shown on Zoom; the audience doesn’t expect it to look like something on Netflix. And if you don’t want to do paid ads to promote the videos, you can start with free advertising on social media and by encouraging word-of-mouth sharing among your contacts. Whatever you do, the key is to understand what your audience wants and how to connect with them. “Our goal is always to make a personal connection,” Jan-Willem says.