Dear Prayer Team,

The web site ministry has a wide spectrum of readers. One day email came from Ghana about a possible visit to train 700 leaders. The next email was entitled, "Re: changing diapers." I think you can guess what that referred to! I referred the second email to Linda.

From our perspective, these readers are disciples. They are learners (a literal translation for disciple). This world is changing rapidly. I recently read that in another 2 years China will have more people using the web than America. This is simply amazing.

One brother recently shared with me how some pastors without formal theological training learn their theology. The pastor of a small church shared that they simply go to the web, review what is there, discuss it together to form their theology. Many Christian leaders have not had formal training and the web enables them to sharpen their mind. Our materials form a great bridge because they are developed from God's Word.

Readers are going where they want. They really want to be reading! Notice the difference about the web.

Print, video, radio and TV are mainly 'push' mediums. They communicate by sending out a consecutive ('linear') message, usually only to a single area of the world. The Web however is a 'pull' medium. It pulls in visitors - though only on the basis of a defined interest. People usually go only to pages on subjects they are searching for. And of course, the incredible advantage of the Web is that it is global: anyone, anywhere - in China or the Middle East - can find a page in seconds. (Brigada)

This year we are reaching for a new level of web experience. We need your prayers. Last year we reached our goal of 1 million page views. This year we hope to increase that to 1 and a half million. This is a huge step forward since it took us six years to get where we are. We cannot and do not want to do it without God's extraordinary grace.

Many Means

We hope to do this through several different means.

More top notch articles. Pray for wisdom for this and the grace to keep putting good web pages up. About 5-10 pages are put on the web each week. We are wondering how to put the Biblical counseling book online. Should we open another website for articles focusing on counseling?

Translation of present articles. Someone recently has agreed to translate the marriage material into Chinese. Pray for this busy brother. Several have asked about Spanish translations, but we have not had any volunteers to do this yet.

Greater popularity. We are thankful that BFF is placed on the first ten listings (the first page they find in a web search) in quite a few categories, and yet we continually need wisdom for improvements. We have many older articles that have not been redesigned to accomodate web searches. And don't forget! Perhaps you can review one series and post a reference on your blog or church website. Other ideas include forming specialized indexes, video training and mp3 audio.

Our real pursuit for 1,500,000 is not just increased numbers. When I ask the Lord for 4,000 pages to be read each day, I also ask that God would really move their hearts to repentance, hope, faith and love. This is our real goal: revival and renewal. We are strengthening His disciples here and abroad.