We Support God’s Work Around the World

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Leah and Marlene with some special friends in Nanchang, China.

Several weeks ago I started a series to explain what Keep Believing is all about. You can read the previous installments here:

We’re an Internet-Based Ministry 
We Believe in the Power of Preaching 
We Support Gospel Outreach Through the Book Depot 
We Encourage People Everywhere to Keep Believing in Jesus 

It occurred to me that there are a few other important facts about this ministry you need to know. 

Here’s the fifth important fact about KBM .  .  .

5. We Support God’s Work Around the World.

Several years ago I read Thomas Friedman’s influential book The World Is Flat. Friedman demonstrates in a thousand stunning ways that the world of the past is gone forever. The hi-tech revolution has changed everything because now the whole world is interconnected. He says we are living in the dawning age of Globalization 3.0 where individuals themselves can interconnect with people around the world in ways that were not possible twenty years ago and were not dreamed of fifty years ago.

In earlier generations travel was expensive and difficult. Today it’s no big deal to go online, book a ticket, and fly to Spain or China or Kenya or Chile. In the old days missionaries traveled to some distant land, knowing that they would not return for years, if ever. And missionary letters would take months to arrive. Today we can connect around the world in seconds via IM, Facebook, Skype, and dozens of other programs. 

At Keep Believing, God has given us a heart to use technology to support what God is doing among the nations of the world. We fully understand that the real action isn’t here in the US. It’s in places like China, Nigeria, Paraguay, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and in dozens of other countries where Christ is building his church. We have several particular burdens in this area:

A. We want to provide high-quality biblical material for pastors and Christian workers in other countries. In the US we are blessed with an abundance of resources, but that’s not the case around the world. So we do all that we can to sign up pastors and Christians workers for the free weekly sermon, and to answer their questions, and make ourselves available to help them. We received this note that shows the combined impact of radio plus the Internet:

I just wanted to tell you that I preached from an outline you prepared this last Sunday. It was called “What does God want for Christmas?”. I used Micah 6:6-8. Thank you for putting these tools out there. It was a great starting point to jump start my sermon.The study of Micah was neat. I had never taken the time to get to know his background or the historical setting surrounding this ordinary people’s prophet. I preached in a church in the country of Bermuda last Sunday and this morning the sermon (Part one) was heard on a Bermudian radio station that can be heard all across the island. I just thought you would like to know that your ministry is stretching across the ocean to reach people you may never meet on earth.

B. We want to support missionaries in every way that we can. Back here on the home front, people don’t understand the sacrifice missionaries make every day and the enormous pressure of living “between cultures,” trying to find a way to share Christ and make disciples.

We love missionaries! And we want to do whatever we can to help them. Here’s a wonderful note we received from a missionary in the Czech Republic:

Thank you for this message. It is very fitting for me and Lucie in our young marriage. May God continue to bless you and Marlene in your ministry. It is great to be able to read your messages from wherever we are in the world!  God bless.

C. We want to translate our material into other languages. We’re starting with Chinese, and slowly it’s happening. We’ve set a goal of having 50 sermons in Chinese online by the end of the year. We dream of having a group of websites with titles such as “Keep Believing China,” “Keep Believing Indonesia,” “Keep Believing Russia,” and “Keep Believing Pakistan.” Little by little we’re seeing that dream come to fruition. It takes time and prayer and patience, but we’re seeing God lead us along that path.

In the last few years we’ve been to China, Thailand, the Philippines, Bolivia and the Czech Republic. Next year we’re committed to go to Uganda and Kenya and to Korea (and hopefully also to China). Part of loving the world means showing up and meeting people face to face. Here’s a note from a student in the Philippines:

I’m brother Relan Rodriguez of the Bukidnon Fundamental Baptist Seminary (BFBS), the seminary you visited to speak during our Mindanao Ministers Congress. I would like to personally thank you guys for being a blessing not only to the school but also to all the servants of God who attended the congress. Im a 3rd Year Bible Student of the seminary and I admit that I was really blessed by the messages God spoke to us through you…. I’m hoping that God would continue to bless you and your ministry as you continue to labor for the Lord…

I was going to write “It’s a big world,” when I heard that song ringing in my head, “It’s a small world, after all.” The Internet has made it even smaller. We’re glad to be part of God’s mission to bring the love of Jesus to the nations of the world.