Outreach

The "Outreach" track is primarily for pastors, evangelism committee members, or those interested in using technology to share their faith. Examples from outreach efforts around the world will inspire new ideas and thanksgiving for how God is working through things like mobile applications and websites.

Creating Christian Community - From a Distance

  • 4D-Friday 1:30 pm to 2:20 pm
  • 1D-Saturday 9:10 am to 10:00 am
  • Presenter: Missionary Nathan Wagenknecht

Your congregation members move to an area where there is no sister church. Someone on the other side of the globe finds your church website and contacts you for more information. How can you serve others, even when you can't be with them face-to-face?

Latin America Missions has two new projects, Academia Cristo and iGlesia Cristo, to share the gospel and create Christian community in new areas where WELS is not yet doing mission work. Their work is in Spanish, but in this session we will apply lessons learned and discuss how any congregation in any language can use technology to create community even when contacts are hundreds or thousands of miles away.

We will share resources that Academia Cristo and iGlesia Cristo use, from social media to live chat to databases for tracking contacts. The discussion will also be open for participants to offer input on resources they use.

GospelTech: Focusing Our Use of Technology on Gospel Outreach at Home and Around the World

  • 1F-Friday 9:30 am to 10:20 am
  • 3D-Saturday 11:10 am to 12:00 pm
  • Presenter: Pastor Tom Kuster

Lots of investment in tech around church and school, with many useful functions; how do we maximize its use to carry the Gospel to those who don’t yet know it? World population just passed 7 billion; is technology the megaphone God has given us in these Last Days to reach them all with the Gospel? This session will survey everything we have learned so far at the Christ in Media Institute about using technology and mass media to reach out with the Gospel at home and around the world, with special attention to applications in congregations and schools. We will peek ahead at future challenges and opportunities, and welcome ideas from the audience.

Prospect Management...Exploring The Possibilities

  • 4E-Saturday 1:10 pm to 2:00 pm
  • Presenter: Martin Spriggs

Tracking and communicating with your church's prospects is critical. Technology can help. But which technologies. There are so many to choose from. Do you use your Church Management Software? How about something standalone? Do you use email? How do social networks help? This fast moving session will explore many of the options available and help you formulate a workable strategy to manage and share the Gospel with your prospect list.

Using Mobile Technology to Proclaim the Gospel in the Homes of People in Latin America

  • 5D-Friday 3:00 pm to 3:50 pm
  • 2E-Saturday 10:10 am to 11:000 am
  • Presenters: Michael Hartman, Jorge Briones, José Daniel Delgadillo

Learn how mission work in Latin America is utilizing mobile technology to enable people to share their faith with others, teach people the truths of God's Word and plant churches in places where we do not have a physical missionary presence.

This session will focus on creating simple videos for Bible studies, utilizing online advertising for church work, and show how WELS members can use Academia Cristo to share their faith with friends and family in Latin America.

Websites In World Mission Outreach

  • 2E-Friday 10:30 am to 11:20 am
  • 5E-Saturday 2:10 pm to 3:00 pm
  • Presenter: Sylvia Falcon

ElMensajeroLuterano.com website (Spanish Lutheran Messenger) is based on Multi-Language Publication's magazine by the same name.

Using WELS.net as the model, WELS technology at the CMM worked with MLP to create the Spanish web site and adapt it to reach the targeted audience.

An explanation of how and why the website needs to be different from the WELS.net will be given. The challenges of finding the audience, reaching it and serving it will be explained. Discussion about the creation of audio files, such as the daily devotions. A comparison of the Spanish web site and the Japanese site that followed the approach taken by the Spanish site.