An Audience of One (Hundred Thousand)

People ask me what my job is at Adventures. I tell them I'm a copywriter. I write blogs for the WR, content for our websites, content for brochures, mass email announcements, all of that. Sounds legit, right?

But then I tell them "And about half my time is managing social media. So, I manage the Adventures in Missions Pinterest and World Race's Facebook page."

…What? You're a missionary and you FACEBOOK for your job?! Well, yeah.
And it's the coolest ministry ever. Because by it's nature, it has to be all Jesus, and not me.

At first, being the "man behind the curtain" of our biggest social media presence FREAKED. ME. OUT.

For those (at that time) 11,000 fans on Facebook, the World Race was, well, whatever I felt like posting that day. What if I did it wrong? What if I wasn't funny enough? Or talked about adventure too much and Jesus not enough?

There were thousands upon thousands of people reading my posts. As silly as it may sound, it was kind of a lot of pressure.

"I'm not good enough. I can't be given this kind of responsibility. These are real people. Not numbers. People that Jesus loves and is calling to. I can't do this."

But a few months ago, I decided that I should start taking my own advice, the advice I posted all over Facebook, and aim to please only God. I had an audience of One.

I pray over the posts. I aim to represent Jesus well – his heart for the world, his desire for people to walk in their calling, his challenge, his love, and the freedom we have in Christ.

As I focused more on an audience of One, our weekly audience grew. And grew.

We're now reaching an average of 100,000 people per week on the World Race Facebook page alone. 100,000 people. 100,000 people Jesus is calling to live for him. To live full, abundant lives for him. 100,000 people he loves.

Excuse me? Hello, responsibility. Hello, blessing. Hello, GIFT.
 

The way it works is this. (Social media is actually pretty scientific). We have 15,172 Facebook fans as of today. The better the content I post (the more "sharable") it is, the more of our fans like, comment, and share the posts, then reaching their audience. When they share our posts, their friends see them too, and that's how we're reaching an average of 100,000 people each week! Our "friends of fans"  is 7.5 MILLION! In a perfect world, whatever we post could reach 7.5 million hearts. How insane is that?!

And out of our 15,172 fans, approximately 60% are of "Race age." That's 9,000 people. Out of that, let's say 2,000 are World Race alumni. That means 7,000 people are out there, reading our posts, that could have their lives changed forever by something I post that gets them on the Race.

It's some of the most incredibly humbling, scary, exciting, rewarding ministry I've ever done.

All on Facebook.
 

When God gives you a bigger ministry than anything you could have asked for or imagined yourself, remember: it's an audience of One.

The 100,000 become less scary, and serving the One becomes more joyful.
And He sure as heck blesses it.

Our "best post" to date. 80,336 people blessed by the wisdom of
Francis Chan. Praise God for words like his to change a generation!