Thursday, March 15, 2012

An Interconnected World

Most of us are still trying to play catch-up to what the interconnectedness of our world means, and that it has changed forever.  As Seth Godin points out in his (free) e-book Stop Stealing Dreams, immediate access to information changes the role of the teacher from being to main source of information, to instead being a facilitator.  Our role increasingly becomes motivating kids to CARE.

Our inter-connected-ness also impacts missions work (or should).  As I was driving down from Dallas last month, listening to different Christian radio stations, I thought, "What if I would write an email to every single Christian radio station in the country and ask them to support one of our projects here?"  I could attach one of several cool videos that has been made of the work here.  There must be hundreds, if not thousands of Christian radio stations in the U.S.  Many of them are looking for that meaningful project to insert during their commercial breaks.  "Want to make a difference?  Help plant 10 churches in southeast Mexico City."  "Help your friends in Mexico City teach music and sports classes."  "Help us give a Bible to 100,000 Mexicans."

I need to pray about some of these things, because just because something is possible doesn't mean it is necessarily wise, or the right thing to do.  The two key questions in all of this are:  Why?  and Why not?

But still...

Ok, a practical example.  Our co-worker, Tina, bumped into an organization last week that, among many other things, is working to give wheelchairs to people who need them in Mexico.

Operación Bendición Mexico (en español, enfoque México)
Operation Blessing (in English)

Turns out this organization has a warehouse about 20 minutes from here, in Los Reyes.  A brief glimpse of their website in English informs me that they did relief work in Tabasco recently (we did too, in 2007).  If there's ever another big quake in this area, this organization would be a great one to be tied into.

And guess what...there are probably many other great organizations that work nearby.  In years past, we might never know they even existed.  But now...we can know, if we care to know.

I'll be writing a letter soon to Operation Blessing, expressing our desire to reach out to our community in June by giving away 15 wheelchairs.  Maybe a radio station in Virginia or Arizona or Montana would like to be part of that project.



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