Accelerating ministry through technology.
Archive for the ‘Prayer Letters’ Category.
Greetings from Keynote! Liesl and I love the “Keynote Connection” emails that Keynote sends out each month (we get some of our stories from them). We thought we’d share this one with all of you and suggest that you subscribe – just go to www.keynote.org and fill in your email address at the top right corner of the page.
This edition features an outreach trip to Australia, Keynote’s Summer Project, and the new Keynote.org web site.
To see the newsletter, click this link.
Well, the daffodils are blooming and there’s snow swirling in the air! Life’s full of strange transitions like that isn’t it? So good that our God never changes, never fails to keep His word, never stops loving us.
Karl is increasingly busy with regular Keynote tech needs, and preparing for our US staff conference time out in Colorado this summer. He will be directing the tech team out there this summer for the first time and is still overseeing parts of the project to use technology to connect people with global ministry opportunities. The goal is to have that developed enough to train our staff to use it this summer. And he has a birthday tomorrow! [this was written on 3/30 -kwk]
I just did an overhaul of most of the Keynote library. We keep resources on hand to train and develop our staff, and it occasionally needs some reorganization and attention 
. My highlight of the month though, was being able to host friends from Orlando who we used to work with. Keynote occasionally has communication trainings. This past week was a marathon of Comm Lab and then Speakers training (for those whose ministry is predominantly in front of groups). Our friends came in for the latter, and stayed with us, so that we could care for their little girl and make it possible for both husband and wife to attend.
It was a pleasure just to reconnect and hear how God is using them, but it was also a joy for me to use my home to serve. Ironically, my back got cranky, and made it tricky to take care of their child, but that turned out to be a blessing, too. Anja and Karl were around to help, and we all thoroughly enjoyed having a sweet, singsongy little girl in the house. I loved seeing Anja rise to the occasion and be so sweet and kind and helpful with her. It did my heart good (especially after a week of dealing with her sin issues, and my sin issues, too).
And as for Anja, she’s proud to be up to my chin now, excelling in 3rd grade, and will test for her karate gold belt this week. She also is looking forward to spring break, but thinks it’s awful that it starts on April 1, because she can’t do April Fools jokes at school
Karl and I also do some online missionary work with Global Media Outreach (affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ). This past week they asked us to prepare for a lot more contacts to come, as they were going to have a 2 day campaign to reach 2 million people. Here’s what happened!
God drew over 2.5 million people to the websites, over 244,000 people indicated decisions for Jesus Christ and we saw about 26,000 emails requesting follow up from our Online Missionaries.
From there we direct people to web sites designed to help them grow in their faith. We also do our best to answer questions they have. We know that not everyone truly “gets” the Gospel, but the chance to help so many people grow to know the Lord is amazing.
Thank you for being a part of all of this! Your love and care, prayers and financial support make our lives in ministry possible, and we love having such a wonderful team like you! God bless you in your victories and in your struggles,
Liesl, Karl, & Anja
How have you gotten connected with opportunities to serve in your local church or another ministry? Many of you filled out a form and dropped it into an offering plate or a collection box. Over the years, thousands of students have done the same thing, expressing interest in a summer mission trip, or serving on the worship team, or joining a small group Bible study.
Here’s a different way: Imagine that you’re a college student at a winter conference, and you’re told that you can be connected to ministry opportunities by sending a short text message. You send the text, and get a reply that sends you to a form that lets you indicate the kinds of opportunities that you’re interested in.
Because the system is connected to facebook (and you and your friends are avid facebook users), you soon find out that several of your friends are interested in the same overseas trip as you. You’re even more interested in the trip now that you know that you could be serving with some of your friends.
In another context, the local leadership sees that a student, Alice, has expressed interest in an investigative Bible study. The system shows them that Alice’s friend Beth is a student ministry leader and Beth gets to introduce Alice to the Bible study and eventually the Savior.
This is just part of the vision that we have for a project that we’re currently calling the “Mission Accelerator”. It’s already under development, and we’re praying that the first phase will be ready for use on campus in the fall. Down the road we hope that it could be used by churches and other missions organizations.
Please pray with us for:
Thank you for your partnership with us! We’ll keep you informed as progress is made.
I can’t believe this is the last day of January! I personally lost the first half of the month to being sick (Karl and Anja got bugs, too), but we’re all well again (just in time for my 40th birthday . Keynote has been hopping, with all kinds of good things going on. Here are just a few of them:
For many years, Keynote has been sending representatives to various college Campus Ministry Christmas Conferences in order to recruit students for our own Summer Project or for internships or full-time positions.
In recent years, God has opened doors for Keynote to be a resource to some of these conferences through worship leading, program planning and emcee training.
In December of 2010, Keynote sent teams of musicians to San Diego, Minneapolis and Boston to lead worship bands of students from the respective regions. We love being able to work alongside the Campus staff and help shepherd these students in becoming “lead worshipers.”
Along with helping conferences musically, Keynote has served in other roles. Keynote was able to serve the conference in Denver again in the area of program planning. Several of the student emcees at conferences across the country were trained at Keynote!
You all could pray for the students around the country that God wants to be a part of the 2011 Summer Project to begin the application process! (And if you know any students who would like to take part, send them our way or to www.keynotesummerproject.org)
Please pray for the team to be creative as they field multiple requests for tech tools, apps and language translations for existing tools. They have a lot of great new ideas, so pray that God would help their time and energies to be used well.
Happy belated Thanksgiving! We hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating and that you had a chance to really be thankful (the preparations and shopping can make for a crazy time). We had our first Thanksgiving at our own home and loved it.
It was especially nice to slow down after a full month. Keynote’s Vision Event went sooo well. If you weren’t able to watch Karl’s live broadcast you can see it now at www.keynoteconnection.org.
The weeks before and after that event also saw us hosting Tom and Harro, two CCC Australia Interns! They just released an iPhone app to help others share the gospel. They took the most widely used booklet for understanding who Jesus is, Would You Like to Know God Personally?, and made it available through the iTunes store (since it’s the Australian version, it has slight differences from the American booklet).
Similar to Have You Heard of the Four Spiritual Laws, Knowing God Personally is the perfect tool for helping people understand how to have an intimate relationship with God. People can download the application free of charge. Harro grins, “It’s a God thing because we didn’t advertise it. We placed just one wallpost on Facebook and it took off from there. The first week the Lord allowed us to have 350 downloads from 31 countries.”
We had them come in to brainstorm ways we can use modern media to communicate the Gospel in more creative ways (and do programming). Keynote’s New Media Labs has been working on God Tools, another app for iPhones (and soon for Android phones). God Tools offers several Campus Crusade for Christ gospel booklets and the great articles from EveryStudent.com. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can download Knowing God Personally and God Tools for free from the app store.
This month we’ve also had a number of conversations that reminded us just how challenging it can be for most of us to know how to clearly communicate how to begin a relationship with God. Even long-time believers find it hard to know what out of the whole Bible and their lives to focus on when talking to someone who doesn’t know God.
Simple outlines of the Gospel can be a big help. Whether you get an app for your phone, carry a paper copy with you, or use some other method, the important thing is to be ready to share, in a simple way, what God says. I find that just getting the 4 points in my head (and keeping them there) can make it so much easier to know I’ve clearly shared what’s important when I have limited time. When in doubt, just read through the booklet with someone!
Most important is praying and trusting God to work in people’s lives. He’s the life changer and he can use all of us as we step out in faith to share our own stories of God in our lives. You don’t have to “do it perfectly” for God to use you to share His love with someone. We’ll be praying for all of us to trust God and reach out this Christmas season.