Communicating as a Team

By Shirley Brinkerhoff

Ask any missionary what his or her job is all about, and you’ll hear one word over and over—communication.

When missionaries go to the field, their challenge is to learn the language and acclimate to the culture in order to communicate God’s good news. When they return home on furlough, their challenge once again is to communicate, portraying the work God has done to their supporting churches.

MEDIA

Helping missionaries communicate is the primary focus of ABWE’s Media and Publications Departments. That’s why the skill and dedication of team members such as Bob Henry, who recently retired as ABWE’s Media Producer, are so important. After serving as a missionary in Hong Kong, Bob returned to the home office, where he helped grow the media department from a “one-person show with a tape recorder and a couple of hundred slides,” to a “first-class media department” that now turns out sophisticated productions using Power Point and Scala. In Bob Henry’s 22 years, he produced nearly five hundred presentations, which communicated missions to half a million people.

“The media department at ABWE has been a great help for us. We’ve used their abilities and help three times in our pre-field ministry and once now on furlough.”
—Dennis Weaver, England

Pastor Ron Berrus says:
“We’ve sent out a lot of missionaries over the last dozen years, and those we’ve sent out with ABWE have been helped to a great extent by Bob Henry and the others in the media department. The ministry of a media department is certainly behind the scenes and yet the effectiveness of the ministry is seen in the presentations of the missionaries that come to your local church.”

Under the direction of Wayne Haston, other media team members include Bob’s son, Mark Henry, ABWE’s Video Producer. Mark’s productions have challenged many to consider world missions. Jeff Raymond, Imaging Specialist, oversees the mission’s extensive slide library; he also recruits and organizes volunteer photographers who raise their own support, then travel overseas to help meet the photographic needs of ABWE missionaries.

"The media department (at ABWE) has been a great advocate for the Gambia. Jeff visited in 1999 and took a host of photos and Mark Henry came this year to shoot footage for a new field video. What more could we want?” —Kevin Johnson, The Gambia

In addition to helping missionaries prepare presentations, members of the Media Department, including Ben Barrett, Multimedia Producer, also spend a considerable amount of time teaching missionaries the technical skills needed to prepare presentations independently.

WWW.ABWE.ORG

Jeremy Frank and Ethan Ziegler design and manage the ABWE website, giving visitors access to the most up-to-date information about all aspects of mission activity. The public website, along with the intranet site, provides valuable information for our missionaries as well. Working with Mobilization, the web team developed a separate site, www.soulpursuitz.org, mostly for young people interested in short-term missions opportunities. One reader wrote this to Rick Caynor in Student Mobilization, “I know that [God] wants me to do something significant with my life. After viewing the SoulPursuitz website, I feel...I want to do missionary work.”

PUBLICATIONS

On your home office tour, stop in Books and More and pick up some missions-related resources. Cindy Carmer, Administrative Assistant for the Publications Department, manages Books and More and handles orders for ABWE books. Donna Messenger, Coordinator of Communications, oversees all print communications, implementing ABWE’s vision to inform, instruct, and inspire people to participate in missions. ABWE Publishing strives to produce four or five books each year, including missionary biographies, children’s books, missions handbooks and other resources. The Message , the mission’s quarterly journal, has been communicating missions in print for over seventy years, and now has a circulation of 110,000.

Recent books from ABWE Publishing include Port of Two Brothers, by Paul Schlener, the story of two missionary brothers and their work on the Amazon River. “It was difficult to put down,” writes Robert K. Rohm, Vice President of Christian Ministries at Cedarville University. “I found the book to be both riveting and God-honoring. I laughed and cried as I turned the pages.”

Interwoven, the story of Russ and Nancy Ebersole, was published in 2002, and readers have been quick to respond:

From a reader in New Jersey: “I have gained more insight on what it ‘looks’ like to trust in the Lord for all things.”

From Thailand: “I am so blessed after reading Interwoven …I am really encouraged to go on and wait for God’s will; to serve Him faithfully and to trust Him fully…”

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