Expanding Your Global Footprint Through Global Media Outreach

It is hard to think of a more effective evangelistic outreach than Global Media Outreach (GMO). In 2013 GMO presented the gospel to more than 300 million people; and more than 30 million people (many from the 10-40 window) read through a gospel presentation on one of GMO’s 150 Websites and indicated a decision for Jesus Christ. Each week nearly 10,000 online missionaries from over 100 countries personally follow-up and disciple thousands of new believers, grounding them in their faith, giving them life, and giving them hope.

65% of GMO traffic comes from mobile users.

In September 2010, I was hosting the second gathering of the Global Connections Leadership Community (GXLC) and our focus for this session was technology and mission. I asked Steve Cooper, a lay leader from The Crossing in Costa Mesa, CA, to tell us about GMO. “Better still,” Steve said, “why don’t we follow up with someone who wants more information?” In his personalized GMO box there was a woman from Tehran who had a question, “I really want to become a Christian. What do I do? What will happen to me?” Steve said, “Now get in groups of three and discuss how you would answer this woman.” Immediately we saw the genius of GMO. GMO was not only a means to help non-believers come to faith but was a means to help congregants become missionaries…often among the hardest to reach people groups. Today many churches are discovering that an integral part of their overall global missions strategy can be done online. As Dan Lacich from Northland, a Church Distributed, a multisite church in Longwood, Florida says, “As a first step it’s a no-brainer to connect people here with people overseas…with people we would never meet.”

So how does such a ministry happen?
In 1993 as the first Web browser, Mosaic, was giving birth to the Internet as we now know it, Walt Wilson, a VP at Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), a $16b US corporation with 600 offices overseas, was sent to the MIT Media Lab to figure out how this newly-minted World Wide Web might “affect business around the world.” Walt is a strategic thinker who had an eye for practical innovation. As the General Manager of Operations in the early years of Apple, Walt worked closely with Steve Jobs on several projects, including the rollout of the Macintosh. Now with CSC, Walt was anxious to learn all he could about the Internet in this “discovery” process. As a bright, strategic thinker and futurist Walt immediately grasped the business potential of the Internet but as a follower of Jesus Christ he had a recurring four-fold question that would not go away: “If we had a connected global network…
1. Could we put God on it?
2. Could we connect to people who were searching for God?
3. Could we minister to people at their point of need?
4. Could we lead them to a relationship with Jesus and disciple them?
This was Walt’s “Gutenberg moment.” So for the next few years Walt shared his question with prominent Christian leaders and funders around the country and most of them smiled benignly but no one took him seriously until he shared his vision with Paul Eshleman (JESUS Film) and Steve Douglass (President of Cru). They invited Walt to join the staff of Cru and “figure it out together.” So Walt locked arms with Cru and from 2001-2004 he worked with a team of passionate and talented co-workers to establish proof of concept—people from every nation were responding to the gospel on the Web. “Up until then,” Walt says, “it was just an idea and was too far in the future for most people to see it…but Paul and Steve saw it. GMO was born and since 2004 they have reached over one billion people and seen 100 million individuals make a decision for Jesus Christ. ” (1)

Too good to be true?
So this begs the skeptic in each of us to wonder, “How genuine are these conversions?” In 2011 GMO received surveys back from over 100,000 people who said, “yes” to Jesus Christ 3-12 months earlier through one of the GMO sites. Here’s what they discovered:
• How sure are you that you know Christ as your personal Savior? 87% answered “Very Certain”
• How often are your thoughts / actions changed by a prompting from God’s Spirit? 62% answered “Daily”
• How often do you read your Bible? 28% answered “Daily” 35% answered 1-2x / week
• How much time are you spending each day in prayer with God? 47% answered 10+ minutes
• How often are you attending church or meeting with a small group of Christians? 50% answered “Weekly”
• How often have you shared your faith with others? 55% answered “3 or more times”
Even if these numbers are somehow discounted by 50% they are still very impressive.

So, how does GMO process work?
GMO works from the premise that every day millions of people around the world are searching for God and purpose on the Internet. Working with over 175 GMO partners they have created over 150 Websites that utilize key words that a person might type in when looking for God or for answers in life—key words like “Jesus?” “divorce,” “marriage,” “suicide,” or popular activities like “world cup soccer” or “surfing.” GMO then pays search engines like Google to insure that seekers see one of the GMO websites first. So if someone searches Google for, “Who is Jesus?” the first site listed is usually a GMO site. Through the site they can find practical answers and understand how they can enter into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ (you can actually observe this process at www.greatcommission2020.com). Thousands who trust Christ ask to be put in contact with another Christian. The online missionary (like Steve Cooper) is then given the contact information and so the relationship begins through a secure server. To increase effectiveness, online missionaries can use templated letters and have access to www.gotquestions.org that has answers to more than 370 thousand questions. GMO harnesses the best technology and the best people, blending high tech with high touch in order to introduce others to Jesus and help them grow. As one American pastor noted, “It’s like door-to-door evangelism except all of these people are knocking on your door.”

Lifechurch.tv’s Bobby Gruenewald, who recently partnered with GMO to make the Bible available to all GMO seekers in over 300 languages through Godlife.com, says technology is “helping people walk together even when they’re far apart.” This is the essence of GMO’s online discipleship. (2)

Church planting
GMO can also be used for church planting. In 2012 GMO partner Youth With A Mission (YWAM) invited people from Mexico City, who had made a decision to follow Jesus online through sites like Jesus2020.com to meet one another at a celebration in the city and 300 new believers showed up.

Mike Neukum of Bent Tree Church in Frisco, Texas, leads three online teams consisting of 31 online missionaries. Last year these stay-at-home missionaries responded to over 9,000 emails and saw 2,800 indicate decisions for Christ. “Being able to correspond with people in closed countries, like Iran, is just something we are not going to do apart from the Internet,” says Mike. “GMO does such a great job with the templates and scripts that even a young believer can answer questions from Hindus and Muslims.” Bent Tree is partnering with GMO to invite GMO respondents among an unreached people group in West India to on-the-ground live open-air concerts Bent Tree hosts each year that hopefully will lead to church plants.

Growing vision
GMO’s vision continues to grow as Internet access becomes more ubiquitous. “There are 7.1 billion cell phone subscriptions in the world. More people have access to cell phones than a tooth brush,” Walt Wilson says. In fact, 65% of GMO traffic now comes from mobile. “This is the Internet moment in human history. Global Internet coverage is growing and becoming increasingly cheaper so by 2020 every person on earth will have access to the gospel through mobile or wearable devices. If you have a mobile device we will reach you with the gospel.” Walt is keenly aware of this opportune moment. “I tell my peers in Silicon Valley, ‘This is not about market share; this is about what God is doing to spread the gospel to the entire earth.’ No other generation has had this opportunity. We cannot let it pass.”

If you are interested in learning more about how GMO can help your church expand your global footprint go to www.globalmediaoutreach.com, or contact Michelle Diedrich for more information.
Endnotes

(1) Historical facts taken from a personal interview with Walt Wilson by the author, Eric Swanson, December, 2013.
(2) Gruenewald, Bobby. “New Possibilities: Technology & Discipleship,” Outreach Magazine, Mar. 21, 2013. Accessed Jan. 22, 2014. http://www.outreachmagazine.com/features/5246-new-possibilities-technology-discipleship.html

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