The Field is The World

It was, as the saying goes, a “big, hairy, audacious goal”: to reach a billion people with the gospel by 2020. We could never have anticipated the smartphone revolution, which drove the fulfillment of that goal six years early in 2014. Social media has also accelerated our reach in the last few years. Today, our all-time results have reached 1,816,350,556 gospel visits, and an incredible 201,290,759 indicated decisions for Christ! That’s roughly the population of Brazil, the world’s 6th largest country.

“Global Media Outreach was God’s idea,” Walt likes to say. God put our founder in the right place, gave him the idea, and has continued to provide. As long as He does, we have no intention of slowing down in our efforts. In fact, as we see such dramatic evidence of spiritual decline all around us, we feel called to redouble our efforts.

This year has been a particularly busy one. We’re known for making a simple, broad appeal with an easy way to respond. This continues to work very well. This year, we have been adding more personalized approaches, based on demographic research: exploring what works with whom. We’ll never alter the eternal truth of the message, but we will need to appeal to different people in different ways, like Jesus’ approach with the Woman at the Well differed from His approach to Nicodemus. Our March African Campaign, for instance, was meant to invite those laboring for what does not satisfy to find the abundant life in Christ.

Serusha, in Uganda, wrote us in response, “Why do I need to get salvation?” His Online Missionary, Christopher, explained how our sins separate us from God but that the sacrifice of His perfect Son takes away our sin if we receive His offer. Serusha answered, "What do people expect from salvation?” Christopher explained, "the end destination is heaven with Jesus when you die. But your eternal life starts today—the moment you put your faith in Jesus.” Serusha responded that he could feel God’s work in his life and knows he has been changed.

Just in time for Veteran’s Day, Global Media Outreach launched updated versions of our sites to reach American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen and Marines. Our team redesigned the appearance of the sites, rewrote the gospel presentation to offer restored wholeness and purity to servicemen and women scarred from things they’ve lived through, created targeted versions of our initial “Look To Jesus" follow-up material and recruited partner ministries to enrich our discipleship content for military seekers.

We’re also bringing live chat response back to our 4StepsToGod.com website, and making plans to include it for our upcoming “Something Better” campaign for reaching America. Please join us in prayer for this large group effort.

I’ve been helping to write gospel presentations and followup material, recruit and set up Online Missionaries with live chat accounts, while continuing to help guide our weekly devotional publications and ongoing Mentoring program to ensure our Online Missionaries are well-equipped for every kind of encounter. We want each one to provide the best opportunity for seekers to sincerely follow Christ as we continue to advance our outreach.

We have so much to be thankful for! Careful calculation reveals there have been about two indicated decisions for every second of the past 14 years of our ministry’s existence! Is that a good application of Ephesians 5:14, which says we should be wisely "redeeming the time, because the days are evil”? I think so. It’s also so fitting for our day. We’re so thankful for our ministry partners, who have made it possible for us to spend our full-time working hours in this ministry for these 14 years. It would be impossible for us to fully communicate how grateful we are to God for you!

Love, in Christ,

One Day Closer!
Romans 13:11