Almost 2 years ago now, God planted a seed in my heart for something huge, something too large for me, for my friend who has shared this same passion, and for our small church, LifePoint. Over the course of 2 years we’ve brainstormed over this, prayed about it and for whatever reason, it’s just never really taken flight. Maybe the timing hasn’t been right, maybe we aren’t the right people to get this off the ground, but this morning God re-awakened my passion and heart for this vision that He gave me several years ago. I think it’s time for me to let go of it and let it take flight and allow God to use it however He pleases.

I wish I had the ability to get it going myself, but I don’t, I need your help. It’s my hope that God will draw the right people to this page and that they will catch the same passion and heart that we have for all of this. When we initially started planning, we saw this as a ministry of LifePoint. And some day, it very well may be, but let me say from the start that we want no credit for this vision or for the far reaching implications and changed lives that may result. We give this vision back to God and ask Him to do His will and accomplish His purpose, whatever that may be and whatever that may look like. Perhaps there is someone reading this that knows how to make it all a reality, I don’t know.

Chances are, you have talents and resources we do not. Or if nothing else, you know of those that do or you may even be part of a church that does. If you feel God tugging at your heart to get involved with this, please take this model and show it to whoever you feel can help get the ball rolling. Undoubtedly, it’ll take developers, designers, writers, pastors, prayer warriors and just everyday people who are trying their best to live for Jesus and want to have an impact in the world around them.

I don’t even know where to start, or what the best way is to explain this, but if you’re still with me and want to know more, it may be best to start with a little back-story so you can understand where the following vision came from and what it was born out of. I wrote this a long time ago, but I hope it will give you an understanding of the vision God’s given us. Click here to read it. And while you’re reading it, please keep in mind that the original intent was for our church to launch this, so be thinking how you can use this idea or model in your own ministry. Once you’ve read this, hopefully the model below will make a little more sense.

The diagram above demonstrates your online website visitors, either to your church website or various ministries you’re a part of or possibly those people that stumble on your blog by accident, that are searching for answers. The steps below will describe what’s going on above in a little more detail and the people and organizations involved:

Step 1:
Design sites like whatsthepointoflife.com – filled with a visual representation of the gospel. Created with the sole intent of reaching the lost, hurting, and disillusioned with the hope of Jesus. Filled with practical (relative/relate-able) content, like videos (i.e. Nooma, Erwin McManus), discussion forums, live chat, etc. These could also be sites designed to address specific topics like divorce, death, sex, addictions, etc. People who are searching for answers may not go to a church website, but if there is contact there that catches the eye, there’s a good chance they’ll take the time to dig deeper.

Step 2:
Establish ContactPoints (web traffic helpers/communicators) who will reach out to these website visitors (PeoplePoints) to establish a relationship with them, provide resources, direction counseling, encouragement, etc. Our church receives many emails every month from people who are searching, who’ve accepted Christ or who have returned to Him as a result of listening to a sermon. If our little church of 150 has had this kind of impact, I’m sure larger ministries have seen this too. What are we doing to help these people? And if we are reaching out to them, does it go beyond surface level?

Step 3:
Establish ConnectionPoints globally (i.e. Missionaries, Tentmakers, Churches) that would be willing to go and meet one on one with our PeoplePoints to establish a personal relationship with them, point them to Jesus, help get them into ministry and ultimately help reach their friends and family with the gospel. This model may seem ‘social networking’ oriented, and it very well may be, but the core of it involves personal contact, something sorely lacking in today’s society. Most ministries focus on the areas surrounding them, which is totally fine, but what about the people that are impacted by your ministry in other parts of the country or even the world? Establishing these ConnectionPoints will help build a network of individuals and ministries that can meet them one on one, where they’re at.

Step 4:
Establish a very personal connection with our ConnectionPoints (mainly Missionaries and Tentmakers) to help fill the gaps that their mission boards and supporters at home often leave, and provide consistent, continual encouragement, resources and prayer. If you were in a foreign city with no family or friends or possibly even fellow Christians, you think you would have a hard time adjusting and adapting? Surely Missionaries have needs, more than financial ones that their mission boards cannot begin to fulfill. I’ve heard firsthand from so many who just desperately want personal contact and communication with people from home. This is just a side-step to all points above, but one I think is an integral part to all of this as well.

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This “model” may not be new, perhaps it’s been developed by much more talented individuals than us, but if it exists, we could not find it anywhere. The closest thing we did see were church CRM packages that help you get people in your doors… which is a good thing, but leaves a gaping hole. What about all the people that would never think to step foot in a church, no matter how convenient, casual or comfortable it is?

To some, I’m sure this all seems like a pipe dream and perhaps it is. I live in the south where there is literally a church on every corner, yet I’ve never seen churches work together to share God’s love. Never. Perhaps unity exists elsewhere, but I doubt it. For some reason our churches are in competition mode, striving to be bigger and better, offer more programs and activities. Be cool, be hip, be trendy. But is that the point? Is that what the great commission was all about? IS THAT THE CHURCH GOD INTENDED?

So like I said at the beginning, I don’t know what to do with all of this, but I felt God prompting me to at least get something out there. A cry for help if nothing more. In a perfect world I envision our churches working together to reach the world with the love of Christ. And no, I’m not talking about ushering in the Ecumenical Movement. I’m talking about doctrinally sound churches partnering together (despite perhaps, differences of non-stated Biblical preferences) to reach those who are actively searching for hope.

I know this has been a long post, I don’t know how to condense it. I’m horrible at this, I know. But I don’t know what else to do. This whole thing has been on my heart and mind for years now and I don’t know what to do with it. I feel like I’m just throwing up all over my blog, but I felt led to do it. If you have any ideas, or would like to take the torch and run with it, I would love to talk with you. You’ll find me on Twitter via @nathanduvall or you can email me here.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Originally Written April 2008

Life is full of routine and monotony, the “daily grind”. We all experience it–it just comes in all different shapes and sizes. I think the same statement could be made about our churches and our ministries as well. If you look at the church as a whole, the same “tactics” (for lack of a better word) that were created in the early 20th century (i.e. revival, door to door visitation, passing out tracts) are, by and large, the same tactics most churches still use today. I’m not going to say that these methods no longer work, because God can use anything to accomplish his purpose. But I do think it’s time to re-think how effective these methods really are and what we can be doing to reach out to people in a way that’s relative to the modern day culture we’re a part of.

Over the last year or so, God’s been planting ideas in my mind along these lines. We have been working on re-designing our church website to make it a more effective means to reaching out to the community and to the world at large. We’ve never really been able to figure this out, but our church website is visited by thousands of people from all over the world every month. We’ve received emails from the UK, France, Germany, India and even remote places I’ve never heard of that are hundreds of miles out in the ocean–places like Mauritius, Seychelles and Vanuatu. We recently started adding pegs to a Google Map, just to get a visual for where all of these places are located. Check it out here, it’s pretty amazing. A lot of these people have accepted Christ as a result of reading our “Finding Peace” page or from listening to our Podcasts. Just recently we delved a little deeper to see how many people were downloading our Podcasts, and discovered that it was over 19,000 people just last month! We were absolutely blown away by that as you can imagine… especially since our church consists of around 150.

So it was about this time last year when I created that map and it was at that same time God started working in my heart and planting seeds in my mind. I was taking a shower one morning, and just started thinking about all the people from around the world that were contacting us… this was all really great, but could we be doing any more to help them? Was there any way we could reach more people who were searching… maybe that wouldn’t necessarily go to a “church” website? And how could we really reach someone half a world a way to establish a connection, help them grow in the Lord, answer their questions, or point them to a good church? Getting our people actively involved with the website ministry would be a start, but for whatever reason, I just felt like we needed to be patient and wait on God’s timing.

A few months ago I was meeting with my pastor and in the course of conversation he told me how he felt God was leading our church to go on a mission’s trip. He didn’t know where or even when, but he knew God just wanted us to pick a date and that he would fill in the details. So a few Sunday’s ago, we announced this to the church, and also unveiled the new website we’d been working on for the last year or so. Right after the service, I was talking with my friend Ben and God just sort of led the conversation back to that idea we had been talking about over the last year… what we could do with our site visitors.

While we were talking, we both just started to sense God’s calling again… that the timing was right, that the door was now open, especially with our church focusing on missions. Since then God’s been pulling back the clouds and giving us a vision for what he really has in store for us. It’s enormous, complex… but simple all at the same time. It’s something so obvious that we know it could only be of God. So if you’re still with me and if I haven’t lost you, here’s the start of the ministry idea God’s given us…

[Edited 12/18/09] It starts with you, your blog/website, your Twitter/Facebook page, your churches website, etc. Our original thought was to purchase domains like whatsthepointoflife.com and several others that would provide answers and help to those looking for it, but we never had time or resources to develop them. To this point they’ve just be redirecting to our “Finding Peace” page on lifepointsc.org. Should you or your ministry be interested in taking them on and developing them for this ministry, please contact me. [/End Edit] The last time we pulled the traffic on some of these sites, we were getting hundreds of unique visitors a month. That’s pretty cool in and of itself, but still not convinced? That’s ok, check this out… on Wednesday of last week we received an email from a girl in Minnesota. She Googled “What’s the point of life”, found our site and sent us the following email:

I need help.
Iv been strugling with so much for way to long.
How do I know hes real?
My boyfriend is very advanced in his faith..
He says when he prays..he can feel that god is there..feel his presence…how come I can’t?
I try SO hard.
I really honestly..would love to know the point to life…and heaven..not that it doesnt sound great.. or life isn’t all that bad..
This is how I see things…
Ok.. im here.. im having a good time.. so what? what does that matter?
what does that mean?
If there is an afterlife…then what? I mean.. is there really a point to it all?
I feel so numb..
I wish I could convince myself that there is a point…and god has a plan that I as a human being..can not understand.
But I can’t, this question takes up all my energy, time, and happiness.
It isn’t healthy…
PLEASE please if anyone can help me..

Thank you,
Jane

HOW DID YOU LEARN ABOUT US?:
I googled “whats the point of life?”

WHERE ARE YOU LOCATED?:
Brainerd, MN, US

Needless to say this email threw an oil tanker on the fire God already lit in our hearts. Everywhere we turn, He provides us with more confirmation that this is from Him and something He wants us to do. Obviously, we’re in the very beginning stages of thinking through the websites. We want them to be extremely visual, yet simple representations of the gospel, using lots of images and videos to help us address key issues like “Is there really a God”, “Is there life after death”, but ultimately pointing them to the Point of Life, Jesus.

So where do we go from here? Well, this is the cool part and the biggest, scariest part for me. [Step 1] We feel God wants us to start making “ContactPoints” globally. In other words, establishing relationships with missionaries, tent-makers, other churches… and yes, even other churches here in the US!

Wait, pause for a second… can we do that? Are we allowed to partner with other churches of like faith to help accomplish the same goals? It’s never really been done on this scale before (that we know of)… but that’s a topic for another discussion. ; )

So, once someone makes contact through our church website or through whatsthepointoflife.com through these websites or various other ways, we’ll work to establish a relationship with them and help answer any questions they have and help council them in the certain issues they’re facing. Ultimately though, the goal is to point them to one of our ContactPoints (or vice versa) who will meet them one on one and help accomplish all of the above, only face-to-face and potentially even have an open door to reach out to their family and friends.

Establishing these ContactPoints is going to be the tough part, but think about it for a second… all of us know a missionary family in another part of the world, or someone in a church in another part of the country. At this point, I feel like this ministry will grow simply by word of mouth or through our little “spheres of influence”.

[Step 2] From there, I feel like God really wants us to establish a working relationship with our ContactPoints, in particular, the missionaries and tent-makers serving in another country to help “bridge the gap” that their mission boards and supporters often leave. We want to keep in constant contact with them, and be there to provide consistent encouragement and prayer. We also want to help by providing them with the resources they need to make their ministry more effective.

[Step 3] And then last, but certainly not least… once we have these “models” in place, we want to offer them to other churches and ministries of like faith so they can begin to reach beyond the walls of their own church and ministry. We don’t want any of this to be exclusive to LifePoint. If any of this is ever going to be effective, it’s going to require people from all walks of life from all over the place to come alongside and help us. We will need designers, developers, missionaries, churches, and just average people who have a heart for God and a passion to help people, who are lost and hurting.

So you may be reading this, thinking it sounds great and all, but don’t think you can never make a difference like this for God? Think again. Ever feel like you’re just floating along in life with no real direction or purpose? Do you know the Lord, but still have an aching in your heart that a great job, a nice house or love hasn’t truly satisfied? Even those of us that know God can easily forget the point of life. We go looking for the same things the world does to satisfy us, but why, when we know the only source of true happiness and satisfaction is found in completely surrendering to God and his will for our lives?

So my purpose for writing all of this is two fold. First, I want to ask each of you for your prayers as we embark on this journey God has called us to. Pray that God will continue to show us his will and that he would make it obvious to us.

Secondly, I’m writing this to encourage each of you. You may be sitting at work reading this note wondering in the back of your mind what you’re really doing there. You may be sitting on the couch at home, amongst the screaming kids, wondering if you’ll ever make a difference. I just want to encourage each of you to be faithful. God has us where we are for a specific reason. Pray that he will show you how to minister where you already are, first, then oftentimes He’ll pull back the clouds and show you something even greater. One of my best friends gave me some great advice the other day… he said the formula for finding God’s will for your life is simple: patience + faithfulness. So be faithful where God has you right now and be patient and wait on God. It’s as simple and uncomplicated as that.

Thanks for taking the time to read all of this today. I know it was a long explanation, but I really felt like God wanted me to share all of this with you, for whatever reason. If you have any other questions about this, don’t hesitate to email me. Thanks in advance for your support and prayers!

~ Nathan

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