Cara volunteers with a student ministry while attending a university in Southeast Asia.
While on campus, she talks to other students about her faith and often uses the 4 Spiritual Laws gospel presentation. Instead of using physical booklets, she uses the mobile app GodTools. “GodTools is very convenient for me for sharing the gospel without needing a booklet,” she says.
Since the gospel presentation is on her phone and her phone is with her wherever she goes, Cara doesn’t have to worry about whether she has a booklet on hand or about ordering more copies when she runs out. It also allows her to be more discreet when sharing, which is important where she lives. Having a conversation with someone while looking at a phone together is less likely to raise eyebrows than talking to someone while holding a tract.
GodTools app
GodTools is an app designed to help Christians have conversations about Jesus with the people they care about. The app has a number of tools that can be used for spiritual conversations and lessons to help people gain the skills and confidence to share their faith. Though it was originally designed as a tool to be used in face-to-face conversations, during the pandemic, new features were added to make it a more effective tool for sharing from a distance.
Sharing her faith by sharing her screen
Since starting a relationship with Christ, Cara has felt that it’s important to make disciples. “I have the motivation to share the Gospel with other people,” she says. With resources like GodTools, she’s able to make disciples digitally and have a greater reach than she ever imagined. In fact, the first time she shared her faith using GodTools, the other person wasn’t even with her.
“The first time I used GodTools was with my friend. I called my friend and shared my screen,” Cara says.
Cara shared the 4 Spiritual Laws presentation on her screen as she walked through the gospel, explained everything to her friend, and came to a point of decision. “She prayed to receive Jesus,” Cara says.
Sharing the gospel from another country
Cara has another friend, Geert, who lives in Germany. She knows him through a mutual friend, but they’ve never met in person. Without digital tools, the only way she would be able to share the gospel with Geert would be to write him letters or get on a plane and fly thousands of miles to meet him. Luckily, that’s not the reality that Cara and Geert live in.
One day, when Geert asked Cara about God, she called him up and used GodTools’ screen sharing feature to walk him through a gospel presentation. Cara shared her faith and explained how God loves him and wants a relationship with him. Geert wasn’t ready to accept Jesus at that moment, but Cara wasn’t discouraged. “I told him to download the app so he can go through it by himself,” she says.
Geert was able to take his time reading through the gospel presentation at his own pace, while Cara prayed for him and trusted God for the results. A little while later, Geert texted her with good news. “He came back to me and said, ‘I’ve received Jesus by reading the prayers on GodTools.’”
Ministry from a distance
Though Cara loves sharing her faith with people face to face on campus, she’s found it helpful having an app that can be used either in person or from a distance. In addition to the situation with Geert, she had to find a new way to do ministry during the pandemic.
Her university, like many of the schools around the world, was closed during much of 2020. But Cara was determined to continue having faith conversations with her friends, so she used the screen sharing feature of GodTools and walked them through gospel conversations from a distance. “Many of my friends at the university received Jesus using GodTools during the pandemic,” she says.