We are currently working on websites with many of you as you design and define your vision.
During our time at YWAM Together, Chris and I were moved by the call for YWAM Philippines to walk through the open door before us for the schools of the Philippines.
This has been a point of our prayer: What does it look like to expand what your bases are already doing to see Jesus presented to the Elementary Schools, High Schools, and Universities of your City?

How can a continually developing website be a viable way for you to communicate with students?
How can you help them to avoid the traps of Social Media and Porn?
How can you help create healthy self-images based on what Jesus has said about us, not the latest photoshopped pictures on Instagram?
Add to this the rise of AI, and we need to get ahead of this wave that could crash down on top of us and throw us into the rocks.

I want to help you develop your presence on the Internet.
I want to help you create content so that your friends, family, and people you minister to can be encouraged in Jesus.
This does include a website, either for you personally or for your Base.
You are getting this newsletter from me as part of our Webmasters group. (Previous Newsletters) What could you be writing? What could you be resharing?
How do we combat the flood of bad content ‘out there’? You could criticize the bad content directly, but a better approach is to shine your light on the good content, reposting, and then creating your own good content.

Let’s become content creators.

Let’s get going, we are in New Zealand for the next three months, I have time.
Grab some one-on-one time with me.
Let’s develop a game plan for your digital content.
Let’s work our way through the Seminars.
Let’s take you into your Vision and on to your Provision.

Facebook is chum. 

You throw fish bits into the sea, and the fish come biting.
There is a lot of activity, but you don’t have any fish in your boat.

You also need a fishing line or a net to catch the fish you have just attracted with your chum. This is your website.

You need Facebook to create noise on the internet, but you also need a website to capture the attention of those who are attracted to this noise.

Somehow, someone was able to get a file on my server that then went active and started to send bad emails.

I checked email logs and found nothing.

I did check my virus logs and found nothing.

To be safe, I deleted this website.

Within a few hours, I had the server up and running, but I had a few unhappy customers.

The website I deleted was an inactive one.

It was running old software and old plugins.

I think this is how the hackers were able to inject a payload into this site and cause this problem.

Every week.

Please, make sure every week that you check your website for me and make sure all the plugins are up todate.

In my case, I have two updates that I need to run.

When you have logged in to your dashboard, it is a simple task of clicking on updates and running them.

There may even be WordPress update to run.

If you have any questions, contact me.

Click through below to get the skinny on previous Webmaster Newsletters.

In having these things in poor order, we work to our own harm and weaken our relationships with others.

I start with Vision and then build out from there.

• • Vision
    • Someone has captured you.
    • Now, Why do you do what you do?
    • And what are you?
  • Who
    • captures you?
  • Why
    • did they capture you?
  • What
    • keeps you with them?
  • How
    • did they capture you?
  • Where
    • is all this happening?

Hopefully, the person is Jesus.

A website can become a hydra, chop off one problem, and three more grow out of the stump.

A website is meant to be a tool, yet it can become consuming where it, the website, forces us to serve it rather than it serves us.

A website, like a ministry, is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The plan

• Hosting
• Development
• Design
• Content
• Learning / Training
• Information, informativeness
• Capture: Prayer Partners, Students, Staff, Partners, Donors, Participants, Donations
• Newsletters
• Donations
• Applications
• Discipleship, Training, Qualifying

Your Focus

• Content – Vision – Jesus – Information –
• Prayer
• Discipleship
• Newsletters
• Applications for Schools
• Applications for Staff
• Applications for Outreach Teams
• Capture People as Partners
• Grow giving to come from Vision, not Need.

My focus

• Hosting
• Security, Dependability, Speed
• Development
• Deployment
• Design
• Training
• Tools, plug-ins

Click through below to get the skinny on previous Webmaster Newsletters.

0You have to do what you are assigned for eight hours a day. You may like your job (or do you loth it?) But you are under the instructions of your employer.

It’s not actually 8 hours a day; it’s more like 9 hours daily.

You get an hour for lunch, but you can do nothing with it except eat your lunch, maybe read a book; yes, I am that old, or watch YouTube, Netflix, or Hulu before returning to work.

But it’s more than 9 hours, there is the travel to and from work, what?

Another hour, 10 hours working.

Then there is getting ready for work, and now we are at 11 hours a day. You get home at night, and the rest of the day is shot. It’s taken up with what you need to do, have to do, kids, cleaning, preparing, eating.

By this time, your work day is 14 hours long, and that is due to having to work for money. You’ve got two more hours in the day if you want to get a good night’s sleep.

Finally, you have some time for you. That is unless your spouse wants some of that time, or your too tired, or you just want to blob.

This is what working for money looks like. You are not your own; you have been bought with a price, and I am not talking about Jesus, the cross, or the resurrection.

This is losing your autonomy.

I’ve been self-employed for 25 years, which has disadvantages.

• When I’m sick, I don’t get paid.
• A public holiday is another unpaid day.
• I have to save for vacations, not just the vacations, but also the wage that is not coming in because I am not at work.

If this is all I have for being self-employed then i’m not very good at being self-employed.

However….

I have autonomy.

I do have to attend to taxes, VAT, GST, bank payments, various interest payments, insurance, and professional fees.

But I have Autonomy.

Unlike an employee who only works in a business. I get to work on my business,even as a YWAMer.

• I do get to choose my course.
• I do get to choose my hours.
• I do get to choose where in my future I want to go.
• I get to choose how I do what I do.
• I get to plan with God.
• I get to become good at what I do.
• I get to know why I do what I do.
• I get to own my mistakes.
• I get to find out why they happened.
• I get to learn how not to repeat them.

This is the power of being self-employed, even in YWAM.

Working for money is a sure way to become a slave to that money, to fall into a love-hate relationship with it. This is the love (need) of money (even the hate of money) that is the root of all sorts of evil.

If you know how to work with money, something like embezzlement becomes ridiculous. Employee embezzlement is an issue, this is not just money, but time, resources, industrial secrets. If employees have been empowered with autonomy, mastery and purpose, why steal coins when you work at a gold mine, and get to share in its capacity? If you work from autonomy, mastery, and purpose, money is merely one of many tools at your disposal, and as a tool money is low down on the list.

Money is low on the tool list? Why?

It is a trap to think money will solve your problems, be it to get ahead in life (employment) or to get a job done (mastery). Even an employer knows that money is only so useful to advance his business.

As a self-employed YWAMer, church worker, and follower of Jesus who is employed, these are some of the tools that put money low down on the list.

• acquiring skills in collaboration,
• teamwork (even if you prefer to work by yourself),
• promotion of the other person,
• encouragement of the other,
• empowerment of the other,
• of helping to grow the pie bigger such that even as your slice gets smaller, you have more pie, and more people have pie,
• that you can advance so that all you do is win-win,
• that even if they win better, that you win.

An attitude of working with money instead of for money opens up a different paradigm; all the tools above become yours because money also becomes only a tool.

Another aspect that becomes yours when you gain autonomy and see money as a mere tool is luck.

People who merely work for money see other people’s success as them having luck that they do not have.

This is like growing a new limb.
You now have a third arm.
It’s going to get in the way, it’s going to feel odd, use it and you will begin to see your capacity to do things increase.

Click through below to get the skinny of previous Webmaster Newsletters.

Your website will change from being a thing you feel obliged to do,

• to a thing you begin to master,
• to a thing you have autonomy over,
• to a thing that gives you purpose.

Truly your website will become a thing you can’t wait to do.

What do you already do that you could move over to your website?

What ministry work are you involved in?

Do you produce material for a Bible study, children’s ministry, or a feeding program?

You are producing materials for work you are already doing.

Put this on your website that others may be interested in, that other people might want to use in their ministries, that people would want to get behind you in prayer and support.

This is like growing a new limb.
You now have a third arm.
It’s going to get in the way, it’s going to feel odd, use it and you will begin to see your capacity to do things increase.

Click through below to get the skinny of previous Webmaster Newsletters.

Your website will change from being a thing you feel obliged to do,

• to a thing you begin to master,
• to a thing you have autonomy over,
• to a thing that gives you purpose.

Truly your website will become a thing you can’t wait to do.