TechMission - Christian Volunteering Using the Internet
Guest: Andrew Sears
Teleconference Transcript - 11/20/08
Jarvis welcomed callers as they joined the call. We rejoice in the opportunity we have as resourcing and networking tools for men and women who want to see their cities and communities transformed by the gospel. The Mission America Coalition (MAC) vision is “The whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole nation.” The Lausanne Covenant is the document that unites us. All MAC members are asked to affirm and sign it. You can see a copy of it at www.cityreaching.com, where we also share information about national and regional City Impact Roundtables (CIR) and other resources.
Today we have a wonderful tool/resource the Lord has provided in Christian volunteering. It’s a thrill to be able to share ways to engage Christian volunteers around the country to advance the gospel.
Chuck Singletary, Birmingham, AL was asked to open the call with prayer.
Announcements:
► These calls are designed to connect men and women who have a heart for cityreaching with resources that can help them.
http://www.cityereaching.com - On Dec. 1, the site that you see today will be totally new. You’ll probably get an announcement. Plan to visit the new site (same address). There will be new tools and resources. It won’t be perfect, but we’ll keep working on it.
► Regional CIRs are being scheduled for 2009 so you can drive to a regional.
Bruce Jones has one scheduled for Syracuse, NY May 4-5 Cityreachers from the surrounding area will be participating.
Portland, OR is holding a regi next month.
You’ll be able to go to the website and see where regionals will be.
► A National CIR will not happen in 2009, but we are planning a big CIR in 2010.
► Our next conference call Dec 18 – watch for email re: the special guest and topic.
Glenn Barth is unavailable today (traveling to India) We have co-hosted this call for nearly a decade.
Jarvis: Today we have with us Andrew Sears of TechMission Christian Volunteering, a unique ministry and business approach using technology to help ministries in potential and output. When we were introduced to Christian Volunteering, I could quickly see this was a great tool to connect those folks in the pews who would like to volunteer but don’t know about needs that are appropriate for their gifts and skills. So we want to share this resource with you. Let me give you a practical example: I put the Mission America Jackson office in for an admistrative assistant. I have been contacted by 3 potential candidates. They aren’t even in Mississippi, but this is a unique way to access volunteers. Andrew, would you briefly share how Christian Volunteering was birthed.
Andrew: I gew up in Kansas City. It was a bit like Detroit to me. My ticket out of the city was God and technology. I went on the fast track. I went to MIT, studied Computer Science. I was there during the dot.com boom and got caught up in that hype. Then God broke me again, and I realized that my heart was really for the city, helping people in circumstances like I came from, using technology to do that. We got started in 2000, largely through CCDA (before that running a computer company). I saw how technology could make a big difference. We launched TechMission in 2000. Technolocy can be used to make a difference in our cities. The world is being radically transformed by technology. It’s like a spiritual battle: one side has tanks and fighter jets and the other side has sticks and stones. We’re trying to help ministries reach their cities. It's what the internet is really good for – TechMission is about helping ministries reach our cities, but what we really do is connect people. That’s what the internet does, whether through E-Bay or others, it connects people. Christian volunteers – there are 22 million faith-based volunteers in the U.S. Their work is valued at almost $52 billion a year. Lots of times volunteers can’t find the opportunities they are looking for, so it’s under-utilized. Maybe a lawyer in your church who is being paid $200-300 an hour during the week, but at church gets stuck with stacking chairs. Chairs need to be stacked, but what if he could use his abilities to help the church.
Jarvis: What does Christian Volunteering do?
Andrew: Instead of matching people to jobs we are matching people to volunteer opportunities. Ten years ago people would find a job through want ads in the newspaper or asking friends. Now 80-90% of people look for jobs through the internet like www.Monster.com. The same type of transition is happening in volunteering, where people increasing look online to find volunteer opportunities. VolunteerMatch is the largest secular volunteer site. They placed half million volunteers last year. In organizations that used their services, over half of their volunteers came via the site. In our first year we matched 1300; last year 5500 were matched online. We expect to see growth of a comparable scale – placing tens of thousands, eventually hundreds of thousands of volunteers with opportunities.
Jarvis: Give us an example of a match:
Andrew: Boston Rescue Mission has a lot of volunteer opportunities. They posed 10-15 opportunities on our website. During the past year they got 15-20 volunteers for their soup kitchen, doing administrative things, some direct spiritual support for people in 12-step groups, grant writers, web design. Basically it become one more way to recruit and place volunteers. Another, we are currently talking with Christian networks, and have partnered with the Salvation Army and the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions. Re: the Salvation Army, within a month of placing the ad, they were receiving several hundred volunteers. We are trying to transform Boston. We have a national directory of over 4000 opportunities for 4000 ministries. The greatest density is in Boston, with over 200 volunteer opportunities. A Christian in Boston can find something that matches his interests. If you have very specific skills, like web designer or graphic design, you could find perhaps 50 ministries that could use your skills. In a church, it might be harder to use your skills. We are looking for groups that want to place volunteers, like World Vision. It helps churches that want to work outside the walls of the church. Hundreds of churches are looking for volunteer opportunities for their members. We just launched www.family.christianvolunteering.org also partner with groups like MAC. We’re excited about partnering with the whole MAC community. We don’t need to be upfront. We enable them to use our search and volunteer engine as part of their website. You’ve seen google – it wll say search powered by google, but it will say “search powered by google.” That’s how we work thru cityreaching and MAC website. It’s part of their website but using our volunteer data base and software to help their network find and place vol opps. So various ministries that have a lot of potential volunteers or vol opps – we would be interested in partnering with you.
Jarvis: One practical thing, I’ll take Churck Singletary Mission Birmingham. In a cityreaching group, if you have maybe 100 churches that included some para ministries. Those ministry groups could make a list, i.e. habitat, or a ministry to mentoring boys. You can list those ministries through a Birmingham website and hopefully communicate that to the churches – we know there are folk sitting on pews who are interested in helping, being involved, but don’t see their skills or giftings used effectively. If there were specific, clearly designed job description for oppsortunities, someone might see it and recognize that as something they could do. How difficult is it for single ministries to connect with Christian Volunteering?
Andrew: It takes about 5 minutes with us. You post your information on your site and your volunteer opportunity. Volunteers will search, click on “I want to volunteer” – then you contact and interview the volunteer.
Jarvis: Go to www.missionamerica.org – volunteer tab or www.Cityreaching.com If denominational leaders are on the call, MAC is encouraging denominations to come through the MAC site, or you can go directly to ChristianVolunteering.org. Each volunteer opportunity is locally based. Wherever your ministry is located, you can define the opportunity. The volunteers don’t have to physically be in your city if their skills can be used over the internet, you can be
Andrew: There are both local volunteer opportunities and virtual volunteer opportunities where they can do it from home The third is short term missions internship opportunitiess. A lot of ministries have 1-year internships, or summer internships, or short term mission trips. Part of the website is devoted to short term missions opportunities. In some cases, the short term person might pay to go on the tirp; on some they might get a stipend or room and board for their internship. We provide the intern directory to yjr Assovisyion of Gospel Rescue Missions. In Boston, we’re getting into further stages, seeing the potential of what this can do for transformation in the city. . We have google maps where you can see an entire city and what ministries are doing. We just sent a mailing to 2000 churches and ministries to expand the opportunities in Boston. We want to see thousands more volunteers. This year we placed 675, but want to see it in the thousands. That’s how you can bring transformation in a city, like what E-Bay did for selling junk. Before you had to go to garage sales or pawn shops. Now with E-Bay anyone who has something to sell can find someone who wants to buy it. We're trying to build a large market connecting the needs in the city with the skills, gifts and resources in a city. That’s how we believe we can bring tranformation for a city.
Jarvis: Now we’ll open up the call for questions to Andrew. Pleasse mention your name and where you are calling from.
Q & A
Bruce Jones, Syracuse, NY: Do you have a list of volunteers for greater New York?
Andrew: We’re going to put out a directory on our site next week, a zipcode search to find volunteers. Go to our site next week and find the volunteer opportunities at www.ChristianVolunteering.org Tell me your zip code. It's 13090 In Syracuse, we have 24 volunteer opportunities, including the Savationl Army and rescue missions.
Jarvis: If Bruce wanted to say he needed office mailing help, he could post a job description. Someone could find the need. But you are also saying that shortly you will have volunteers listed with their abilities and amount of time they could give.
Bruce Jones: We’re going to do a prayer care share emphasis. When we get to share, I’m looking for people who would come in to share with children i.e. Bible clubs.
Andrew: Smaller cities and towns get less response. They might have better luck using virtual volunteers.
Jarvis: One of the things we will try to do through our network is ask our cityreachers to put their ministries out there, tell local pastors about it so they can populate the site with potential volunteers. So many of you got involved in our conference calls because someone forwarded the notice to you. We need to pass the word about this opportunity.
Andrew: What we particularly need are ministries and groups that can provide the volunteers. Everyone wants volunteers, but we need denominations or other groups see how this could help get their members out in the community. We are talking to www.gospel.com where one of their partners would provide free banner aids on BibleGateway. We’re in talks with Saddleback Church about integrating our site with their peace plan initiative. There are 2 ways to partner. 1 – go to the site and post 2 – find my phone information on the site or email Andrew@techmission.org.
Chuck Singletary, Birmingham: Is the website ChristianVolunteer or Volunteering? www.ChristianVolunteering.org.
Say I want my website polished up. It’s very basic right now. I want to sign up for a web designer. Would you walk me through what I would do?
Andrew: Go to the website, create an account, list information about your organization, post the opportunity for web design. Next week you’ll be able to go to our volunteer directory and find someone who has that skill and you could contact them to see if they could help you. Opportunities outnumber volunteers 10 to 1. We just launched a consultant directory at www.urbanministry.org. Some volunteers are willing to provide discounts to urban ministries. We hope to have it populated in the next month or two. If you can’t find a volunteer, you might find someone who would do the work at a discount.
George Ordway, Fresno: We just finished an eight month process of putting a website together, walked right up to the point – so much of what we were doing was like what you are doing. In cityreaching, we need to communicate what’s happening in the city with many different people; we need to communicate what’s happening to the chuch in the city. Calendars. Did you see that happening?
Andrew: Yes. We haven’t talked much about this. A partner site www.urbanministry.org does what you are describing. It’s still focused a little more nationally, but we plan to make it more local. Basically it provides what people are calling web 2.0 user content. It takes new technologies i.e. blogs, social networking, Facebook; it takes video like U-tube, audio pod casting, making them available to the urban community. 15,000 users have posted profiles - local profiles, directories, blogs, pictures, on topics like human trafficking, homelessness. there are over 100 bloggers on the site. Next year, we will make it so if you come from a particular city, it will provide a city view at www.urbanview.org with a map of your city, a google map showing ministries and volunteer opportunities, and a directory of people who have posted profiles. Eventually we hope to have city blogs. It provides the opportunity for people to have common community. Calendars are one potential application as well as other applications.
George: It’s almost like a national clearinghouse approach, going through the MAC but finding connections locally. But there is a contest within each city. It’s going to help us tremendously to do city reaching.
Andrew: We’re looking for local partners. In a lot of cities we’ve done city hubs at www.ChristianVolunteering.org. Scroll down to the bottom, find a bunch of city-based sites, like Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis. Groups are pulling together ministries in their cities so we can be a part of what’s already happening in the city. We’d love to talk with you about partnering to set up a city site.
George: We just finished this – hundreds of churches and ministries together on a website, almost a directory.
Andrew: Did you work with Faith in Action ?
George: I went to conferences, but I pulled together a roundtable of business and ministry people asking, How can we do this in our city? We just posted it last month.
Andrew: I’d love to talk with you.
Jarvis: The transcript of this call will be posted at www.cityreaching.com along with other resources. remember our last call of the year on Dec. 18th
Bruce: The gentleman from Fresno is a pace setter. May we have that website?
George: www.ESALI.org
Andrew: I love to hear from people. We do this for free. We are funded through grants and donations. My email is Andrew@techmission.org
Jarvis thanked Andrew, and asked Paul Hoy to close in prayer.
