This is the story of how God gave one man a vision for partnering with local churches to make Internet Evangelism a core ministry option.
A longtime resident of Houston, TX, businessman Ed Thomas was invited by a friend to attend a workshop in Dallas to learn more about Internet evangelism and Global Media Outreach (GMO). According to Thomas, his ministry plate was full, but he went along to support his friend.
At the event, Thomas learned that in 2009, 125,000 people a day visited GMO’s 100+ websites. Of that number, 20,000 made decisions for Christ. About 4,000 asked for follow-up. And since its inception in 2004, GMO had been tripling in size every year.
“Those numbers, occurring day in and day out, made the tool the best I had seen since the ‘JESUS’ film,” marveled Thomas.
Partnership of stewardship
Thomas uses two filters to determine if he should get personally involved in a new ministry work. The first filter, leverage, represents maximum utilization of resources for the kingdom. The second, legacy, represents maximum return from those resources.
“I had never seen anything like the leverage and legacy that GMO was experiencing,” said Thomas. “I knew that God was putting it on my heart to get involved. God found a way to put sideboards on my plate.”
To minister to the number of seekers responding to the outreach, Thomas concluded more online missionaries were needed in the digital mission field. He believed the solution was to partner with the local church.
I am certain that GMO is a tool to be used for the local church.
“I had never seen a paradigm like this,” Thomas exclaimed. “We’ve all been trained in the Evangelism Explosion, The Four Spiritual Laws, The Roman Road or whatever evangelism track is preferred. We’ve always knocked on other people’s doors to see if we could tell them about Jesus.”
Thomas said church leaders needed to understand that online seekers are literally knocking on the door of churches wanting to be told about God. “ I want to them to know this has never happened before in the history of the Church,” he said.
Partnership of faith
At the end of May 2009, Thomas scheduled meetings with pastors and business people in Houston to tell the GMO story. GMO Founder and Chairman Walt Wilson joined Thomas to talk about what God was doing through online evangelism.
“We had nearly a hundred leaders fill out comment cards when we were done,” Thomas explained, “and 100% of those in attendance wanted to help in some way. I wasn’t used to seeing immediate commitment like that. That was a large confirmation by God.”
A pastor in his 70’s involved with a church heavily engaged in evangelism said, “This is the cutting-edge of evangelism. This tool is God’s gift to the body of Christ.”
The ball was rolling. Thomas next asked God to bring the people forward needed to operate GMO Houston. One of the attendees at the early meetings was Cindy Brannon, a former executive with Compaq Computers who had been involved in building a large team there.
Brannon felt like God had called her to volunteer with GMO a couple days a week. “I never thought it would be full-time,” she said. “God committed me really quickly.”
Partnership of creativity
Churches have adapted the tool to ministry programs in creative ways.
One church uses it in their school. Another uses it for discipleship training. GMO’s tool is one of the steps people go through to learn how to share their faith. And it’s a step toward church members becoming an online missionary.
Today, God has increased the number of church partnerships and online missionaries allowing GMO to triple the number of people visiting its websites to over 350-400,000 daily. In 2010, almost 15 million people indicated a decision for Christ.
This is a brand new paradigm. God has given the local church a tool to help complete the Great Commission. Ed Thomas
Partnership of prayer
Prayer is an integral part of GMO’s work with churches. God has put it on the heart of Colin Millar, a prayer strategist in Houston, to be the CPO – Chief Prayer Officer – of GMO. “We have to start talking with God about how He’s going to get even more churches involved globally,” Millar believes.
When asked what has created the most momentum for the church strategy, Brannon doesn’t hesitate, “Honestly, prayer!”
“We have to be in the throne room on a regular basis asking God to overcome obstacles through His power,” added Thomas.