Captain's Log: May 1-15, 2022
Significant progress in many areas!
“Captain’s Logs” are quick, weekly snapshots of how things are progressing across the ministry. Subscribe for the latest with Lightworks!
High/Low(s):
Highs
Finalized the insights gleaned from our most recent research test. 4,865 stickie notes later (no, that’s not a typo), we’ve learned a lot from the interviews we completed, honing our theories, and continuing to tighten our process for product development. This test has been instrumental in helping us refine what a digital discipleship platform could look like.
Better framing of our product - more to come soon as we start to build landing pages and marketing language. While we have bigger visions for a full discipleship platform, our MVP is exploring the idea of “micro-mentorship”. More on this later.
Better framing of how we tell the story of our ministry - refined language that we’ll share soon. We got some early feedback this week that it was clear - and we’re praising God for that!
Finished a v1.0 of a “digital railroad map”. Using a railroad analogy, we’re aiming to map the existing digital products that support the spiritual journey. This helps us identify what products need to be built and what partnerships we need to forge to support the entire spiritual journey.
Lows
Leah was sick for a total of 9 days the last 2 weeks. Took a lot of energy out of her and slowed us down a bit. Thankfully she’s feeling much better now!
Something I’m processing:
One thing I’m processing or learning personally
I’ve struggled a lot recently with not explaining our ministry very well. I’ve often received blank stares or confused looks by people as I try to explain what we’re doing. Honestly, it’s really bothered me. But this week, I think I’m recognizing that I’m bothered because I care too much about what others think of me.
Plus, I’ve had unrealistic expectations of how much I should expect others to understand the details of what we’re doing. Unless you’ve worked in either the Christian missions or product development worlds, it’s probably not fair for me to expect people to understand what we do. I do hope to be clear about why we do it and that we’re doing quality work. But I can’t control what they think of me.
In the end, I need to be faithful to the call God has given us. I need to be okay with when people don’t understand the details of our work. And while that can feel a bit isolating at times, it leads me to pray for the Lord to provide more coworkers for our work - it can be lonely trying to do this work just the two of us.
Prayer Requests:
Pray that we are able to find more community with others in the Christian Missions + Tech sectors. We’re glad we love working together, but we long for a broader community of people to share war-stories with as we explore how to make disciples digitally.
Pray no obstacles come up as we start building out our MVP in bubble.io this week. It’s a new platform for us, so we’re praying we don’t run into any pitfalls along the way.
Pray for courage. We’re feeling pretty intimidated about releasing something into the wild for the first time. Pray we can trust the Lord with the details and focus on putting something in people’s hands so we can learn and start more rapidly improving this product idea. Pray that we’ll release our fear and desires for control in the process.
Praying for you and Leah this week as you get ready to release your MVP. 🙏🙏🙏