USING THE WEB FOR ADVOCACY

There are several groups which are the concern of John Mark Ministries – pastors and expastors (John Mark Ministries website), pastors’ wives (priscillasfriends.org website), persecuted Christians (newsgroups and the JMM website), and advocacy for one of my clients who’s been ‘taken to the cleaners’ by a couple of governments in Australia and several politicians and powerful people. You can read Dawn Rowan’s story on http://jmm.org.au/articles/4728.htm

THE JOHN MARK MINISTRIES SITE (jmm.aaa.net.au)

This may be the largest religious website in Australia (7662 articles today) – and with 10,000 hits a day one of Australia’s three busiest (with the official Anglican and Catholic websites).

Its aim: to provide a ‘homepage’ for pastors and thoughtful Christians. (In the I.E. browser – Tools, Internet Options, Home page address, type in http://jmm.org.au/ then ‘Apply’).

Eventually this site will probably develop into a ‘Portal’ through which anyone can access the best of reference sites and religion on-line, engage in interactive sessions with peers and/or experts, and perhaps, by invitation, join a web-community and contribute to the site. The sky’s the limit!

How much personal feedback and thanks? I just looked at our ‘Thanks/ Guestbook’ folder and saw there were 277 personal messages sent in the past 12 months.

Here are the Links from the Frontpage of the JMM site. (There’s another list of 1000+ links within the site). Which major links would you add to the frontpage?

Search Altavista, Google, Google Images, IXQuick, Teoma, Wisenut

News ABC, CNN, Newsguard, Religious News, The Age Yahoo

Tools Currency Converter, Dictionary/Thesaurus, Encarta Dictionary, Quotations, Writing and Grammar

Bible Tools Bible Browser, Bible Encyclopedia, Bible Gateway, Bible Search, Bible Search, Bible Study Tools, Blue Letter Bible

Sermons/Life Skills Sermon Central, Health, Personality Tests, Counseling, Counselor, Lectionary Resources, Richard Rohr’s website, Psychology

Spirituality/Religion Apologetics Belief Net, Christian Daily Quotes, Cyberhymnal, Daily Prayer, Daily Devotions, Helps for Scholars, Island of Freedom, Religious Tolerance, The God You Like, Virtual Religion Index

Information Britannica, DMOZ Internet Directory, Encyclopedia/Atlas, Virtual Library

Internet Abuse/Spam, Computer glossary, Hotmail, Internet for Christians, Usenet Newsgroups, Yahoo, More Good Links..

Internet Shopping Books Books – best price eBay Secondhand Books

PRISCILLA’S FRIENDS (priscillasfriends.org)

This is a new website for pastors’ wives. It majors less on things like ‘hints for hostesses’ (there are plenty of sites which offer those) than on providing serious discussion-material for pastors’ wives to use in their local prayer-groups etc.

From the Priscillasfriends frontpage: ‘We in John Mark Ministries have been concerned for many years about the ‘least-pastored’ group in the church – pastors’ spouses. These people, mostly women, are the focus of this website. Using the ministering team of the Biblical couple Aquila and Priscilla as a model, we at JMM hope to provide encouragement, hope, and many resources for this specific and unique group of people.

An idea: Why not contact all the pastors’ spouses in your town/suburb, and invite them to consider meeting regularly for study, discussion/sharing and prayer? Once a month for two hours, say ten months in the year, might be an optimum time-frame. Feel free to print out the materials on this website, particularly the Articles for Study/Discussion. We hope eventually to provide 50 of these – enough for five years! God bless you all!’

Encourage any pastors’ wives you know to visit the site – and tell their stories for others’ encouragement!