The digital skills you need to excel in today's workforce are drastically different than even 10 years ago:

  • I work remotely in West Lafayette, Indiana.
  • With missionaries from all over the world.
  • My graphic and web design team works remotely (2,634 miles away) from Colombia.
  • Our Missionary Coach, Matt, works from home in Tampa, Florida.

This really wouldn't have been possible until pretty recently.

A quick tech recap of 1970 - Present 🤖

classic Macintosh set
The 1987 Macintosh Plus

The 70's, 80's, and 90's saw the birth of the internet. Before that, we had... landlines and pagers 🤷‍♂️

  • The first email was sent in 1971 (a message from Ray Tomlinson to himself).
  • In 1983 the DNS appeared allowing for user-friendly addresses like www.its.ErikScott.com instead of complex numerical IP addresses.
  • Access to the internet expanded outside of university or government networks.
  • In 1986 the Macintosh Plus launched with a whopping 1MB of memory (my phone has 12 GB of memory... that's 12,000 times more).
  • The first website was launched in 1991 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (https://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html).

Fast forward to the 2000's:

  • Google was founded in 1998
  • MailChimp in 2001
  • WordPress was founded in 2003
  • Facebook founded in 2004
  • Whatsapp 2009
  • Zoom 2011
  • TikTok in 2016

Where are we today?

To run a small nonprofit I use over 30 different software programs. Missionaries (the original remote workers) need some of these same tools.

Here’s my “Technology Stack”:

Why this matters??

Most missionaries are still sent into the field with the equivalent of pen and paper to do their jobs. We can do better.

In the past, missionaries relied solely on newsletters to update their supporters. It was the only option they had.

Today, newsletters are one of many tools available for getting the church excited about joining in the fight to save lost people.

Our favorites...

  1. Ghost: a personal website builder and newsletter publishing platform all in one
  2. Canva: quickly design graphics for newsletters, social media & print
  3. ConvertKit (now Kit): create automated email series and custom forms to collect contact info
  4. CapCut: easily edit videos on your phone to share on social media
  5. Texting: yep, good ole texting has close to a 100% open rate...

We have to start using the other tools we've been given 💪