- Is She Beautiful Or What?
As I write this I want you to know that I am well aware that a number of those reading it could care less about what is going on in my personal life and in our business. To those of you who fit into that category I offer my apologies for taking up the amount of time you have wasted reading this far and encourage you to exercise the option to hit the delete key and get on with something that more effectively leverages your time.
To those of you who fit into one or more of the following categories … friends, family, colleagues, one of the more than 1,100+ clients we have served or the insatiably curious types I/we have what I think is an awesome announcement and story to share with you!
The Short Version Goes Like This … after 19 years in the consulting, speaking and training business we are in the process of closing down Champion Education Resources. It isn’t because we have succumbed to the challenges of the current economy and the shrinking of the marketplace for sales and sales management consultants. As a matter of fact, in the last 30 days we have walked away from enough business to keep our company doing well for the next 2 to 3 years!
The reality is, as strange as it may sound to many of you, God called! On Thursday, March 4th Christie and I attended a luncheon on the invitation from a friend of a friend I had never met before. This was a pastor’s luncheon introducing a Campus Crusade for Christ ministry called Global Media Outreach that leverages the power of the internet to share the gospel and bring people to Christ. I was absolutely blown away by what I heard and saw at this luncheon and a few short weeks later I have accepted a full time opportunity to develop and lead the sales efforts for this amazing (read the details if you want to know how amazing!) work that God is doing!
I share all of this to say “thank you” to so many of you who have so richly blessed our lives and our business in so many ways. Our 19 years speaking, training and consulting have been an amazing time in the life of my family. While it was a no brainer decision to accept this new challenge we were aware from the start that it meant unplugging in varying degrees from a lot of things that have been part and parcel of our daily lives both professionally and personally. I have struggled to write this message for a few weeks now because I didn’t know how to express the gratitude I feel toward so many. I didn’t know how to express the joy I have in this new journey that is mixed with the sadness of saying good bye to what we leave behind. Perhaps I should just say from the bottom of my heart and from Christie and Jason as well that our prayer is that God richly blesses each of you for all that you have contributed to the fullness we have experienced in our lives.
I invite you … to jump on board and join us for the next leg of this journey! I can promise you from what we have already experienced in the last couple of weeks that it is going to be filled with amazing stories of what God is doing in the lives of people all around the world, ours included and perhaps yours as well! If you want to keep up with it all then do nothing and we will make certain to keep you informed on what’s happening. As always we promise to do nothing other than push great information your way in all of our communications and not invade your privacy with sales and marketing messages! If this is a jumping off place for you then we completely understand and again say thanks! Simply respond to this message and ask to be removed from our database, or simply unsubscribe from the email tool we use and we will honor that request with no questions asked.
The Details!
Here are the details and the back story to what you read above! A little preface to set things up!
About 10 years ago Christie and I began to sense that God was calling us to use the gifts he has so graciously given us to earn a living to serve him. Knowing what God had done in our own marriage we were excited to be able to give back by becoming involved in a number of different ways over time. Fast forward to recent history and we are actively and deeply involved in at least a 1/2 dozen ministry activities from our pre-married work with Prepare To Last workshops, our R3 Marriage Retreats, Christie’s counseling practice, me leading Divorce Care groups and a number of other ministry opportunities.
With all of that going on and the opportunities growing every day to do more I started vocalizing (about 5 years ago) to people close to us that I felt one day God would call us into full time ministry. Now my little “pea sized brain” thought that our ministry work would grow to a point where we would just walk away from what we had been doing and into our varied marriage ministries. A number of you have heard me state that when that day came I would gladly leave everything behind to serve the Lord! Little did I know what he had in mind!
Enter the invitation to attend the Jesus 2020 Global Media Outreach luncheon! It is no exaggeration to say that 20 minutes into that luncheon I knew where God had in mind for me to serve full time! I didn’t know how just yet but I knew where. Here’s why …
Global Media Outreach is a Campus Crusade for Christ Ministry that leverages the internet to share the gospel with people all over the world. Every day somewhere around 2,000,000 people do an internet search for God, Jesus or some sort of spiritual guidance. At GMO we have approximately 100+ websites in a dozen different languages designed to capture those searches through simple SEO techniques and the use of Google Adwords technology. With these tools we have somewhere on the average between 300,000 and 400,000 people a day hitting the sites we have created. We have topped 500,000 on a handful of occasions!
Each of those sites is designed to provide answers to the searcher based on the type of search words employed and then present the gospel through written word and/or video. At the end of each gospel presentation the opportunity to pray to accept Christ is presented and there is a button the person can click to indicate they have prayed to receive Christ! Every day, on the average, somewhere between 30,000 and 45,000 people are indicating they have made a decision and prayed to receive Christ! For those skeptics out there … the numbers are real! I have checked it out myself. Our research shows that 6 months later those that 87% of those that have indicate a decision for Christ are “assured” of their salvation and 60% are involved in some sort of discipleship program and are connected to a local church!Check out the “live” Google map at www.greatcommission2020.com !
Is that cool or what? Think about it … through the power of the internet (93% of the world currently has internet access) the Great Commission could be completed, yes I said completed, in our lifetime! The stated goal for GMO is that every person on earth will have had multiple opportunities (between 5 to 10) to hear the gospel by 2020! This is game changing stuff here!
So, where do I come in? Well, when people go to our websites and are presented the gospel. If they don’t choose to make a decision for Christ they can ask for more information. If so they end up being referred to a group of nearly 5,000 Online Missionaries (OM’s) that have volunteered and been trained through GMO to respond to those requests and hopefully lead them to Christ. If they make the decision to accept Christ then they are presented an opportunity to have someone follow-up with them with information about how to move forward and live a life that follows Christ. The same pool of OM’s are trained to disciple the new believer moving forward as well. Both the evangelism and the discipleship efforts are carried out via e-mail in a one on one, personal connection leveraging, guess what, the power of the internet!
My job? GMO is taking this Online Missions opportunity directly to the church believing that God intends for the church to be actively involved in this colossal effort. In short, we are taking this set of tools to the local church as a missions tool with each church raising up a community of Online Missionaries that can get actively involved in the evangelism and discipleship of people all over the world from the comfort of their own keyboard. In the process of becoming and serving as an OM each individual 1) grows in their understanding of God’s word as they respond to the requests, 2) their prayer life is enhanced as they grow accustomed to praying for each e-mail they send out, the people they are responding to and sometimes the country that individual lives in and 3) they become much more confident and bold in their day to day lives as a by-product of their experiences, repetition sharing with others and by seeing and experiencing God work directly through them to impact the lives of others!
I am responsible for the design and development of GMO sales processes as well as recruitment and management of a sales force that will take this opportunity to the church worldwide! Imagine that? For someone like me, who is a “sales guy” and who has been helping clients for the last 19 years select, develop and retain high performance sales teams it “doesn’t get any better than this”!
So … that’s the story! A lot of changes are being made around the office and around the house. Ilene, our executive assistant, has moved over with me to this endeavor. We are shutting down and turning off all of the systems and tools we used in our business or converting them over to help us in our new work! And, we are answering questions daily from friends and family about what we are doing and how they can get involved.
For more information or details and/or some crazy stories about how all of this has happened call me at 281-937-9911 or e-mail me jim.jacobus@CCCI.org . To learn more about GMO and perhaps how you can get involved check out these websites …
www.globalmediaoutreach.com
www.greatcommission2020.com (my fav site!)
www.globalmediaoutreach.com/always_ready.html (how to get your church involved)
God Bless!
