Praising God, Pressing Forward
Growing in gratitude and faithfulness with every opportunity entrusted to us.
“Captain’s Logs” are behind-the-scenes snapshots of how things are progressing across the ministry. Leave a comment with your thoughts or if you’d like to know how to get involved!
As married co-founders, a lot of our drives across our city incorporate ministry strategy discussions. Yesterday, as I had been thinking of what to write for this post, I had been hitting writer's block like crazy and asked Leah about what I should write. Every time I tried to come up with a concise update on what’s been happening across Lightworks, there was just too much to tell. “How on earth do I convey the feeling of being so overwhelmed by blessing that it feels like managing the blessing is one of the biggest challenges we face right now? Especially without coming across as pretentious?” Leah’s response: “Just be honest and praise God!” So, that’s what I’ll try to do here.
Following God’s Lead
It’s such a strange, sweet, and challenging season for us right now. It feels like over the past 2 months, our ministry has turned a corner and hit a tipping point. Especially after incredible connections and inspiration from both Exponential (see my previous post) and the Missional AI summit.
When we left Cru in ‘21, we always described our season as one like Abraham - we didn’t know exactly where God was taking us, but we knew He was challenging us to take a leap of faith and “go to the land that I will show you”. So we moved forward in faith, spending that next year experimenting, praying, and trying to figure out where we were supposed to land – where is God taking us? What does this vision practically / tangibly look like?
I think our season has changed. Since then, we’ve done a lot of hard work and spent a lot of time in prayer to clarify the vision, scope, and strategy of this ministry that we now know as Lightworks. We can actually talk about what we do with someone we’ve just met in a way that they’ll understand in less than 60 seconds. If you’re new here or could use a refresher, here’s the gist:
Lightworks is a digital missions organization dedicated to harnessing the power of digital to make disciples. We believe every person is on a spiritual journey, ranging from never having heard of Jesus to fully walking in His ways. We make disciples by building digital experiences that support each person along their journey towards walking fully in His ways. Tangibly, that looks like building websites, apps, and other digital experiences that support individuals at various points along their journey using the latest technologies (like generative AI and behavioral & cognitive sciences) and industry best practices, while also thinking critically about how to ethically and redemptively use technology in the way of Jesus.
Our first product is a digital discipleship platform called dship. Digital evangelism is taking off, with more than 1 Billion gospel presentations each year online. But follow-up too often looks like a single e-course or email follow-up series. We need a digital discipleship platform that can scale at the same pace as digital evangelism. So that’s why we’re creating dship - your copilot for navigating the Christian journey. Christianity can be extremely difficult & overwhelming to navigate, especially as a new Christian. dship helps believers find and take their next step on their journey with Jesus.
As we’ve been sharing this vision & our approach with others, including the people we aim to serve and the partners we need to serve them, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, on both sides. The result? So many opportunities & gifts from the Lord that we can’t even keep up with it all.
And that’s the craziest thing in this turning point season: If I’m really honest, we feel like God has been opening so many doors for us that we’re struggling to even begin to walk through each of them. It almost feels like too much too soon. And it totally debunks the non-biblical adage of “God never gives you more than you can handle.”
The way of Silicon Valley vs the Way of Jesus
Since the beginning, we decided that we didn’t want to operate fully in the way of Silicon Valley. While there’s incredible practices & processes we can adopt there, we’ve also seen too many times where Silicon Valley culture can lead to founder burn-out and destroyed families just to get a startup off the ground. Instead, we aim to operate out of trust in God’s provision and His timing to accomplish things that we could never do, even if we worked 120 hours a week.
Right now, I’m struggling to live within that value. Normally, I can pretty easily evaluate which opportunities are helpful and which are distractions. But these opportunities could address some very real, immediate gaps. With so many opportunities in front of us, should I hustle more to pursue every opportunity? And at what cost? When God opens a door, isn’t it my responsibility to try walking through it?
I think the challenging reality is that there is truth to this, but faithfulness to God isn’t just being faithful in work/ministry – it's being faithful to walk in His ways in every dimension of my life. The Way of Jesus is to faithfully steward my work AND my marriage, my personal relationship with God, my relationship with our daughter, the relationships in my neighborhood with the people around me, and my involvement in my local church. In every aspect of life, we are called to be faithful to Him; and not at the cost of another area of our responsibility [1 Timothy 3:1-7].
So then what do I do? I’m not sure. But each day, we’re working hard to be faithful stewards with everything entrusted to us. And today, I’m praising God for His good gifts and the good people He’s placing around us. I’m also praying that these opportunities in front of us bear fruit that leads to people across the globe seeing, savoring, and sharing Jesus more in their day-to-day lives.
Prayer Requests
PRAISE GOD for His goodness and grace to water the seeds we’ve been planting.
Discernment for everything described here.
Wisdom and wise counsel for how to manage these.
Supernaturally multiplied time, insight & skill to continue building this platform God has called us to create.