By day, they are engineers, mothers, marketers and entrepreneurs.
By night, they are digital missionaries.
It's a pleasure to serve with them. But I'll confess it's not always convenient to be on mission together.
Last Thursday night, it was past midnight when our online meeting finally ended. I was exhausted.
Working past midnight to design an online experience for Singapore's Celebration of Hope.
I was on day 7 of solo parenting with Meredith gone on a trip. I barely had any energy left. But I knew it would be worth it to see people reached with the hope of the gospel.
Here's the back story. When we arrived in Singapore in January, we learned of the Celebration of Hope, a country-wide initiative to rally together the church to bring hope to the citizens of Singapore. It's an evangelistic rally at the national stadium, which holds 50,000 people, being held this weekend. Tickets are mostly sold out for all six events.
I told my Singaporean colleague Simon, "There must be an online component. Many won't or can't come to the physical rally, but they can watch online." The organizing committee hadn't been thinking about this and so Simon started working his networks to find a small, nimbe cohort of volunteer missionaries who would make an online livestream of the rallies happen. I told Simon I would do whatever it would take to support him and the Singaporean church leaders.
So there we were, past midnight, Thursday night, a band of volunteers, figuring out our strategy and building resources for the people that would watch the livestream and request follow-up.
As we closed our meeting last Thursday, we prayed that 100,000 people would tune-in to the rally events online and that 1,000 would reach out to chat with our team of responders. These are real people, that need to experience the real hope of Jesus. My sleep could get restored another day.
There are still many hurdles to overcome this week so pray with us that Singaporeans would hear a message of hope this weekend and that the digital engagement piece would work smoothly.
WBC Friends, we feel privileged to be sent by you to Singapore to lead the next generation of digital missions. Thank you for your partnership. We'll let you know how God answers your prayers.
P.S. There are some great video testimonials promoting the event. My favorite: Olivia's