The Field is the World (Matt. 13:38)

YWAM founder's talk about the use of Internet Evangelism as God's gift to reach the world today (see Episode 19!) Click here to get your own player. Please do pray God would continue to meet our needs, make our work effective and send other laborers to help us!

Here's a review of the movie "Expelled" which I submitted for the Orlando Sentinel last month. (It was rejected) I was trying to be as single-minded as I was capable of, focusing tightly on the concept to which the film also tries adhere, that true academic freedom would demand that students be able to evaluate honest portrayals of each idea. Currently, the way the law is being interpreted, that is not possible. Scopes and Darwin, it appears, lived in an era of more academic freedom than is possible today. In 1925, the famous " Scopes Monkey Trial ," in Dayton, TN, was about whether a teacher violated what was then accepted law in Tennessee--that no theory should be taught by a state-supported school which denied Biblical Creationism and substituted instead that man descended from a lower order of animals. At the time, the American Civil Liberties Union advertised in the local newspapers for a willing teacher to violate and challenge this law in court. John Scop...

Isn't it comforting to know that you're being prayed for? I know during Emily's recent Emergency Room visit dear friends in our hometown had contacted everyone they know and asked them to pray for Emily. When I learned that, it was real comfort in what could have been a desperate situation. Today (May 3, 2007) is National Day of Prayer, as well as Emily's 8th birthday. I want to ask anyone who might read this to pray for her, and drop me a line at sowers {at} thefieldistheworld {period} com, if you will. In case we haven't contacted you through e-mail or telephone, in case you haven't read our update in our prayer letter, or you need a summary, here's the situation: On Saturday, April 21, at about 12:30PM, Cindy was in line at a store with Emily and Luke, and Emily started telling Cindy she was tired and wanted to go home. That would have attracted no attention, except that Emily said it with a pronounced slur, like someone who needed speech therapy. We had ...

For those of you who thought the last book in the Bible, after the book of "Concordance," was called the book of "Maps," this might not be that interesting. http://www.openbible.info/ This site contains a Google Earth -compatible downloadable file which maps out every identifiable place found in the Bible...both Old and New Testaments. Ever wondered exactly how far Jonah was headed in the wrong direction when he took a ship bound for Tarshish after being told by God to go to Ninevah? Now you can map it out! (2717.15 miles!) Locate the seven churches in the Book of Revelation, Ai from the book of Joshua, the land of the Amelekites, Ammonites, Edomites, Midianites, Moabites, Jebusites, and Philistines, as well as the Valley of Jezreel, where the Battle of Armageddon will be staged. Because the Google Earth program has been constructed using satellite imagery, you get a very good impression of topography and surroundings; with the measurement tool, you can get a good...

Exciting? A little scary? Ready for the increased speed of information or barely keeping up now?

I've been going over the statistics for all of our sites in order to create a Google Earth Tour simulating typical results in an hour from Europe and Russia. (109, with 13 from Russia) It's astonishing to realize we got 4.7 million visitors to our websites last year. Every hour: 21 people from the UK 13 people from Russia 9 people from France 5 people from Austria 5 people from the Netherlands 5 people from Romania 4 people from Sweden 3 people from Greece 3 people from Poland 3 people from Hungary 3 people from Norway 3 people from Spain 2 people from Bulgaria 2 people from Belgium 2 people from Ireland 2 people from the Ukraine... ...and someone from: Croatia, Lithuania, Italy the Czech Republic, Latvia, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Macedonia, Finland, and Malta... ...are exposed to the Gospel through GMO 's ministry.

Our church hosted Vacation Bible School the week before last, as I'm sure many of our friends' churches did. Cindy volunteered to head up the "craft time" and, perhaps in the process of her preparation, (including applying iron-on transfers to 100 t-shirts), has developed some back and arm pain. Cindy has a back condition called " Scheuermann's Disease ," so she's very susceptible to back injuries. We ask that you pray God will relieve her pain. Luke enjoyed himself at Vacation Bible School--a little too much! He tripped while running in the gymnasium, and fell, hitting his head above his right eye. The injury required four stitches, which he endured with silent courage. What a brave little man! Emily invites all her neighborhood friends to church. She was a disappointed that her friend Alex couldn't go to VBS with us, but her grandmother allowed her to go with us to last Sunday evening's service. She was pretty excited--it was her first time...

Some of you may be aware of our latest prayer request: Emily's vision. She was diagnosed last month by an optometrist with "Latent Hyperopia," which is, basically farsightedness. The problem is, she has likely had this condition for some time...and during the early years of development, if vision doesn't work too well, the brain tends to shut down input from the bad eye. That's what's happening in Emily's case. The optometrist recommended something called "vision therapy" which is a program of treatment based on, we have discovered in subsequent research, questionable science. This week, we got an appointment with a pediatric ophthalmologist in Orlando who prescribed glasses for her and has informed her that, although she's 20/20 in her right eye, 20/30 in glasses will be the best she can hope for. In his opinion, having just turned 7 last month, she's beyond the point at which patching the good eye and forcing the brain to interpret vis...

Last night, Cindy and I participated in Campus Crusade's first "Virtual Homegroup," a chat based on CCCI President Steve Douglass' small-group study, "Essentials of Spiritual Growth and Multiplication." It was pretty exciting to see how God worked. All the participants were people who had come through our Ministry Response Center, so at one time or another, they had responded to one of our Gospel presentations online. Our study was on assurance of salvation, and we began with the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19, his genuine repentance, Jesus' statement that salvation had come to him...it was great, because we had at least two in the group who didn't feel assured of their salvation before we began...yet, based on an in-depth study of repentance and receiving Jesus identified that they had done that. Based on that, we could share the Bible's assurance of salvation, and it was very freeing to them. Another participant was able to testify of her spirit...

I have to confess, I have been in this camp. A few short months ago, my idea of an appropriate response to this book and movie was, "Hey. It's fiction, OK?" The latest results at our JesusandDaVinci.com prove how wrong I have been in my dismissal. This is a novel which has sold some 50 million copies, more than any work of fiction in history. The movie and the hype surrounding it will keep it in the public's attention span for some time to come. Something that big deserves more attention than that. At the heart of the controversy is something at the very heart of my calling--communicating Christ to the world. As the public's notoriously short attention span is once again captivated by the person of Jesus, we have an opportunity to share the well-documented truth about him and dispel the poorly-researched tangle of conspiracy theory garbage that the book disingenuously promotes. For some, this will finally register the watershed issue of Jesus' uniqueness and ...

Today we joined Faith Baptist Church of Kissimmee . We've been here for some months without declaring a home church, and it's good to be able to finally make a decision. We haven't missed a Sunday--we've just been observing many area churches carefully to find the right one for us. Our extended time of "deputation," or finding ministry partners, has given us a unique perspective. We've met wonderful, committed christians from many different ethnic and social backgrounds, many different walks of life and many different types of churches. We've also seen and heard some striking examples of what to avoid. It all went into a two-page checklist of questions I posed to our new Pastors. Even after promising myself I would have these meetings, they were still difficult, even uncomfortable, at times...I don't want to ever convey the impression that I feel like I have all areas of my life in order, that I have no struggles! But still, I think one of the many...

Last week and this weekend, I spent precious development time trying to rid myself of unwanted software on my coumputer called " Virtumonde ." Believe it or not, I'm pretty new to viruses and that kind of thing, coming from a background of developing on the Macintosh platform and using the Windows platforms to deliver product on. Well, this was a nasty wake up call to what Windows users have to deal with all the time. Virtumonde is called "Adware" and it's something that has sneaked on to your computer either by being installed along with some kind of trial software, or getting past your computer's defenses on the network. Its job is to watch what you do at all times with your computer, then occasionally pop up advertisements. In my case, most of the time, these advertisements were for anti-virus software. But they kept popping up an installation window for the software and beginning the installation even when I clicked, "no" for "do you w...

We've had time to get a good start here in Florida. All the normal things, like getting the cars registered, getting drivers' licenses, finding all the services, (fun things like that), have been done weeks ago. We switched mobile telephone providers, but kept the same numbers. So glad you can do that now. I've been getting settled back into programming after having been away for more than a year. It was a little frightening at first, how rusty I felt--but it's pretty much all come back to me now. I'm working on a big project--the "Who Is He?" mini-cd . It has 39 language versions of a very complete presentation about who Jesus is, what the Bible predicted about Him, detailed material from Josh McDowall's "Tough Questions, Honest Answers," "A Ready Defense," and Bill Bright's "Jesus and the Intellectual." It also has our "Growing In Christ" automated discipleship site locally on the CD-ROM. My job is to inte...

Well, those of you who received our Christmas letter know about our recent home purchase in Florida. Cindy's family in Aiken, SC helped us make the move down on January 12, staying a few days afterwards to help us get settled. We unpacked some things from boxes that had not been opened since our move from Yorba Linda to Diamond Bar in 2001. We bought some furniture, since we gave away a good deal of ours before leaving California. Luke received his very first "big-boy" bed, a twin-over-full bunk. (So we will have lots of room for those who want to visit.) Cindy's mom, Donna, actually stayed three weeks with us, through February 4. Her and I recently returned to Aiken, where I am following up on a few pledges and making appointments with prospective ministry partners. There's not very much left to raise, but there is a little. Just as when I visited California last year, visiting Aiken after being away for a while is almost surreal. It makes me think of all the won...

I'd like to share something with you that the Lord did last week in our progress. A fellow who was referred to me by a large church in SC told me at our meeting of his excitement for what we were doing. His church, he said would probably never support us, since they have their own denominational missionaries, but that didn't stop him from supporting us personally: he's owner of a chain of restaurants in the Augusta, GA and Aiken, SC areas. A month later, we received a check for $100--and we thought, naturally, that was ongoing. After we returned from our staff conference we realized that we hadn't received any more gifts, So I started calling. When I was finally able to get them, I discovered the gift had been intended as a one-time gift. (And we had already counted it as ongoing, having received the first check). This prompted me to call someone else who was a little behind, also assumed to be a $100/month supporter. Sure enough, they were also one-time givers. We hav...

I thought I'd tell you a little story about how the Lord used frogs to remind us of something we'd been meaning to do. Emily's bedtime prayer really touched us last year after she was allowed to watch a World Vision-type television program while we were living in Florida last year: Dear Jesus: Please let our family help those kids on TV that have nothing. Please give them the biggest cup of water to drink and a potty seat for the kids and one for the Mama too and some toliet paper and let us send Luke's extra toothbrush (he volunteered) and some toothpaste and some soap. Please give them underwear, if they are boys give them underwear ,if they are girls give them panties. Thank you that we have beds and please make a bed to fit in those giving boxes that folds out into a big bed,big enough for the whole family to sleep on and some tools to put the bed together and a soft cushion for the bed. Thankyou for our toys and please give those kids toys and a tv and then have so...

Many of you know that despite the fact that it's necessary for us to continue to build our team of ministry partners, we are actively involved in a part of our ministry: helping to staff the world's first Internet-based Ministry Response Center . It's really a blast--I get to follow up, disciple and answer seeker questions coming in from people from all over the world. Last month, responses came from England , France , Slovenia , Romania , Nigeria , Cameroon , Ethiopia , Tanzania , Zimbabwe , India , Malaysia , The Philippines , New Zealand , and even Pakistan and Algeria . I personally handled 71 responses, (and I'm only one of over 300 volunteers), communicated the Gospel, prayer, doctrine and encouragement with Christians and seekers from all these countries. Helped a believer in Ethiopia get a bible through Campus Crusade's office in Addis Ababa. Helped answer the question, "Where in the Bible does it say I can pray a prayer and be saved" I helped ...

Well, obviously, looking at the situation in New Orleans the last few days, we got off light last year. We knew we did, even then, because we saw damage all around us but experienced none ourselves. Sometimes a crisis, like 9/11, brings out the best in people. As we're seeing in New Orleans, it can also bring out the worst. Jesus taught us how to use pointed examples of our mortality like this as opportunities to share the Gospel. In Luke 13, the Pharisees confronted Jesus about the destruction of the Tower of Siloam, which fell on 18 people in their day, as well as the Galilaeans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the sacrifices. He said, it wasn't that they were worse sinners than everyone else that this had happened to them, but that unless we repent, we will all likewise perish. No one knows the hour of their death, no one expects death when it comes. We expect each moment to be like the last, and we have no real reason to think that way. Life is full of unexpectedness, an...

We've been back home for the past two weeks, and have had to hit the ground running! First, we moved from one side of Aiken to another. Our landlord, who has been such a blessing to us since January by letting us go month-to-month at a very low rate, needed his place again, so the Lord provided another place we were able to get at a 3-month lease just before our CSU trip! One difference is that the new place was unfurnished, and we gave away some furniture before leaving California, stored a lot (most) of it in Florida, and had been staying in a furnished home. So we had to buy a few things in the last couple of weeks just to avoid sitting on crates and using spools (see images) for tables like in college. We also have a new nephew! Our sister-in-law, April Eckburg, gave birth to Scout River Eckburg, 8lbs. 6oz, on Tuesday, Aug. 9th. Both Mom and baby are doing great today, but April suffered internal bleeding following the Caesarean-Section and had to have a second surgery. We'...

Last night we stayed in Mt. Vernon, IL , exactly 500 miles from Salina, KS where we spent the previous night. Today we drove from Mt. Vernon to Calhoun, GA, to make tomorrow's trip a light one of only 236 miles. We were able to purchase the entire CSU conference audio package on MP3 the last evening of the conference. (now that's quick!) So we were able to listen to some of the sessions Cindy missed due to stomach flu. Listening to the conference audio, we heard again the amazing news that as of the conference time, every five seconds someone reads a gospel presentation from one of Campus Crusade's websites! It's exciting to be a part of such a revolution. Our group, WorldLINC , is a part of a larger division called Global Media Outreach , which includes "God Loves the World" , EveryStudent.Com , Starting With God , and "The Life" , among others. Dr. Douglass told the story of a young Canadian lady who was so excited by the individualized contact wit...