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Modern Missions Has a Place for Designers

From her time as a student to her work in full-time ministry, Ashley Crutcher has seen God bless her different technical and creative talents. As a designer, she learned how to design for missionary work. As a developer, she’s worked on projects that help missions organizations thrive. As a UX professional, she’s created experiences that help people come to know Jesus. We recently met with Ashley, the director of experience strategy for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA to talk about her experiences and how others can trust God for creative ways to be involved in missions.

What does a director of experience strategy do exactly?  “In the secular world, we have these companies that are doing a lot of work trying to discover the pains and goals of people and they’re trying to intentionally design the experience so that you buy more from them,” Ashley explains. “As I dug into the design-thinking, experience strategy world, I was convicted that we love the idea that a company sees us and gets us. And if people can feel seen and known by a company, how much more should they feel seen and known by missions organizations or Christians who work for the God who deeply knows and sees them?”

Hackathons as an introduction to missions

Like many people, Ashley once had a very narrow idea of missions and what it means to be a missionary. “Growing up, when I thought about missions and how I could engage in that, I was always centered around missionaries go over there, or be a nice person in your work environment and then give to the missionaries that are going over there,” Ashley says.

But through attending some hackathons and missions trips, she learned that her definition of missions was far too narrow. “Hackathons and trips were the first exposure to the Lord saying to me, ‘No, actually, this is something you can do for your career or your work all the time.’” Ashley says.

Ashley’s first experience with using her own skills for missions came when she went on a three-week computer science mission trip while a student at Taylor University. During the trip, the students worked on open software projects for Operation Mobilisation. While working on OpenPetra, open-source administrative software for nonprofits, it occurred to Ashley that she was working with OM staff who did this work every day as part of their missional careers. “It was really incredible to see these role models doing this work and having my imagination opened,” Ashley says. “This was something I could do.”

Contributing while learning

Missional hackathons such as Indigitous #HACK offer opportunities for people to use their technical skills for God by collaborating on missional projects. But a lot of people think they’re not skilled enough to contribute. 

Ashley refutes that idea. When she was invited to the computer science mission trip, she almost said no because she didn’t think she knew enough about development. “I had three semesters of programming under my belt, so I basically knew nothing,” she says. “But it was awesome to be there and to learn from others and to have that experience.”

After that initial hackathon, Ashley joined Code-a-Thon during Spring Break, a missional hackathon for LightSys. During that one-week hackathon, Ashley worked on a team that redesigned the organization’s homepage. 

On a second hackathon with OM, Ashley worked on the intranet for the organization’s ship, Logos Hope.

After graduating from college, Ashley joined a missions organization called Global Media Outreach, where she worked on software that connects seekers with missionaries over email. 

She has also taken part in various hackathons with Kingdom Code and Indigitous. One of her favorite experiences was attending a hackathon put on by OneHope in partnership with a local church. Instead of looking for a certain skill set, anyone was invited to the hackathon, thinking that everyone has something to contribute. 

“I remember coming as a guest designer and sitting in the room with a youth ministry pastor. They had some of the teens and myself and there was a developer. But it was really a lot of the church staff that was told, ‘You have something creative; just come,’” Ashley says. The variety of perspectives and skills ended up being an asset. “The ideation and the ideas that came up were so much better and we could riff off one another.”

In the different hackathons, Ashley has used various skills to make a Kingdom impact in a lot of different ways. “One of them was moving an org’s volunteer application process from a Word doc to an online form. Designing icons and logos for a group called Cost Studio. Building small websites. A lot of these, particularly medium-sized to smaller ministries, just don’t have these skill sets,” Ashley says.

At missional hackathons, attendees get to experience a community of like-minded believers and using their talents for God, while missional organizations benefit from tapping into that talent. “Nonprofits get access to skills they don’t always have on staff. I think that’s an incredible matching space,” Ashley says.

Making a career in missions

Hackathons are great, but they’re finite. Whether the event lasts a weekend, three weeks, or a month, it will eventually end. But that doesn’t mean that people with creative and tech skills can’t continue doing missional work.

That could mean continuing to contribute to a hackathon project after the event. It could mean volunteering with something like Indigitous Serve. It could mean becoming a regular volunteer with your church or a missional organization. Or it could mean going into full-time vocational ministry.

“One of the wonderful things I’ve seen happen over the last couple years is there are a lot more missions organizations opening positions, opening up opportunities to do this kind of work,” Ashley says.

Ashley suggests seeing if there are any organizations doing something you’re passionate about and then seeing if there is a role where you can serve, either as a volunteer or as staff. “More often than not, they are interested in having folks like you, but they probably haven’t had the bandwidth or space … to start it up within their own organization,” she says. 

Ashley suggests being proactive even if you don’t see a job posting online. Missions organizations and churches aren’t always great at recognizing their needs and posting them.

An encouragement

There are a lot of different ways to serve God, as Ashley’s experience shows. Whatever talents and passions you have, God has given them to you for a reason. “That thing that you’re nerdy about and you’re gifted in, God wants to use that,” Ashley says.