The vision began in 1993 when I injured my back in a automobile accident. I didn't get hurt bad, I just wouldn't heal and couldn't work. The pain was not really that intense, but I was just uncomfortable all the time. I just couldn't get to sleep at night, I would toss and turn and finally just get back up out of frustration. It was common for me to be awake for 72 hours at a time and then collapse for 10 or 12 hours, then start the whole cycle over again.
The only chair in the house that gave me any comfort at all just happened to be sitting right in front of the computer (and I was just too lazy to move it). Out of extreme boredom I started to play on the computer (I originally got it just for Sunday School lessons). After running out of free time on Prodigy, I started to call local BBS's (bulletin board system's).
It didn't take too long for me to see that the Christian community hadn't been very active in this method of communication. I found only a handfull of Christian bulletin boards and some of them were pretty lame. I can't really put them down for their efforts because there was no payment involved, and it takes a lot of time to put together and maintain a nice BBS.
About that time God began to deal with me about my walk with Him. The first thing He taught me was that my attitude was actually hindering His plan. When I was in the accident there was only minimal damage to my truck, and the insurance company was being just about as difficult as they could. Since there was only soft muscle tissue damage there wasn't really anything to take a picture of. There was no way (other than my word) that I could prove that I really was hurt. They were treating me like a criminal and were trying to prove that I was only out to make a buck.
Due to the treatment I received from the insurance company I developed a rather bitter attitude about the whole thing. The insurance company actually spent $10,000 on experts and such to avoid paying my medical bills that only amounted to about $4,000 (go figure). It was then I realized that it is easy to forgive something that happened 20 years ago but to forgive someone that was still actively trying to hurt you takes a lot more effort.
The Holy Spirit helped me work through the bitterness and finally taught me how to forgive them and remove the bitterness that I had allowed in my life. Then God began to show me His plan in all of this. I do not believe for a second that God caused me to be injured, however I believe that God did use this situation to His advantage. The thing that allowed God to use this for His purpose was my attitude of forgiveness. If I had not forgiven I would have been unable to hear the Holy Spirit speaking to me.
With all this time on my hands God began to lead me to start a bulletin board of my own. This was quite a feat at the time, since I barely knew how to log on to someone else's BBS. As I was learning and making mistakes God began to show me what He wanted.
We named the BBS CrossRoads because we were at a cross road in our lives. The Holy Spirit revealed to me as I was setting up the BBS that this was a new opportunity for us to win souls and make disciples. I did my best to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit while designing the BBS. I figured the main focus should be on disability ministry, since that's where God had us at the time. There was an emphasis on disability issues, however that's not how the board turned out!
God had other things in mind. The personality the board took on was different than I had ever seen. When you logged on there was no mistake that this was a "Christian" BBS. There were tons of Christian and disability message bases, files, and games. The board itself was Christ oriented, but had a definately secular feel to it. The way the board turned out confused me at first. What it had become was not what I put together. Then I started to see what God had intended from the start.
The board blossomed into a support site for the Renegade BBS software! There were other sysops (BBS operators) from all over the state logging onto our board and asking me questions. (keep in mind that 3 months prior to this I could barely get on a BBS myself). It wasn't long before the CrossRoads was the state hub for the Renegade support net. All the newest Renegade software came to the CrossRoads first. We wound up hosting for about 4 different networks. What this means is that if an Arizona sysop wanted to carry any of these networks they had to go through the CrossRoads BBS to do it.
The majority of the people who logged on to the board were not saved. There were plenty of message bases, files and door games (games you play on the BBS with or against other users) to keep them coming back. As they came back over and over they got their daily scripture verses and were exposed to the Gospel on almost every screen. There was even a discussion base for questions about Christianity. The rules were simple - no arguing and no subject pertaining to the Bible or any denomination was off topic as long as it was debated appropiately.
After we had been up for about 6 months or so we started getting some strange messages. Satanists logged on to the BBS and tried to hack into it and take it down. God was with us, there was one guy that actually took down most of the Christian boards in town, but couldn't touch the CrossRoads. After we went through all that mess, then we started to catch heat from the users.
It seemed that some of the unsaved users wanted me to put in an adult files section (and were quite demanding about it). About the same time many of the Christian users were complaining about the secular feel of the board. I prayed really hard about what to do and basically the Holy Spirit told me to leave it alone.
I put up a mission statement defining the purpose God had given us. We were a Christian BBS where everyone was welcome (including the satanists) as long as they followed the rules. The mission of the CrossRoads was to provide a safe place for the unsaved to ask their questions without being attacked for their beliefs or ignorance in spiritual matters.
This seemed to satisfy everyone except for some of the Christian users. They continued to attack the CrossRoads for not making a 100% commitment to Christ. They felt that we should carry only Christian content. I attempted to explain that there were several 100% Christian boards in town, but the unsaved never logged on more than once. The CrossRoads on the other hand saw many unsaved come back over and over. Although the battles never did quit, they did slow down enough that they were not a problem.
God began to show me what was really going on. He was actually using the CrossRoads to fulfill the great commission! The Gospel was being preached to every creature and He was making disciples. Then He revealed to me that the board I thought I built (with disability issues as the main focus) was also being fulfilled, but in the background.
I began to monitor the message bases and mail transfers. I found that although there were not many people with disabilities logging on the CrossRoads, however there was considerable mail being transfered through the CrossRoads. The bulletin board was acting as a connection and transfer point for many users.
After looking at the amount of mail being transfered I looked at the message bases themselves. I was amazed at what I saw. There were message bases for every disability and Christian topic I could find, and they were being used in a mighty way. As I said our main focus had been in the field of disability ministry. In the disability message bases there was a lot of traffic but very little of it was coming from the CrossRoads, most of the traffic was going through the CrossRoads.
The message bases dealing with discipleship, education and counter-cult information were also producing much traffic and people were getting the training and prayer they needed. All of this information was passing through the CrossRoads in the background un-noticed by the average user.
I was excited about what God was doing with the CrossRoads. God began to enlarge and define the the vision He had given us. Then the Holy Spirit revealed to me the real purpose of what He had done. As Christians we need to first fulfill the great commission in a personal way. Sending money and supporting ministries is not enough. God's word says "YOU" go and preach the Gospel to every creature and make disciples. This has to come first, supporting other ministries is part of that, however our day to day lives have to be a mission field before we are obeying the great commission.
God clued me in a little on how His annointing works. Once a person had committed to the great commission God can then begin to use them in other ways. He gives certain people an annointing in a specific area of ministry. Sometimes He will give the same person a different annointing for different tasks. Our area of annointing is in disability ministry and counseling. God showed me that I didn't have to be an expert in discipleship or counter-cult issues or any other field of ministry, all I needed to do was provide the vehicle for others to share the annointing God had placed on thier lives.
Not only could we network disability issues and ministries together, we could effectively preach the Gospel at the same time. When I had received this from the Lord, He allowed me to see much more into His plan for our lives. I began to check into 1-800 numbers in order to allow more people to access this new method of communication. The numbers were very expensive and since I was not working at the time I could not afford even one. Then through a brother in Christ (I met on the BBS) I was introduced to a solution.
Bernie invited me over to his house and showed me this new thing he'd found. When he was explaining to me how it all worked I thought to myself "boy, if this thing catches on it's the answer to my BBS limitations". Well, here we are 5 years later and the "Internet" is now a household word.
I wound up with "www.christianstuff.com" on kind of a fluke. I had barely conquered bulletin boards and was not ready to take on HTML, Java, and server problems. Another friend of mine was trying to start a web based business building and marketing web sites. He needed one more domain in order to get a price break at the company he was renting server space from. So guess what, I got a domain! It set more or less dormant for a long time. I wasn't really sure why I got it, I just prayed about it and God said go ahead and get it, He even gave me the name.
With the Internet explosion most of the BBS callers transfered to the Internet. I was only getting about 3 or 4 users a month on the CrossRoads so eventually I shut it down. As I began to learn about the Internet, I found the same things going on. In the background in the message bases and several web sites the Gospel was being preached, and souls were being saved.
I started to ask God what I was supposed to be doing. It seemed that everything He had given me to do was already being done on the Internet (and better than I could have done on the BBS). There were many Christian and disability sites, files, message bases and even more than I ever thought of doing on the BBS. Even with all that was being done, I still believed I was being led to do more.
The Spirit let me ponder this for a while, then He showed me what I was to do. It all came back to the original vision God gave us - Disability Ministry. As our own ministry (See the "Son" Beams) grew we noticed that there was not many resources for disability in general, and much less in the Christian community. As I searched the Internet I found the same problem, though there were many sites there was very little usable information available for people with disabilities.
Then The Holy Spirit gave it to me, our primary annointing is to win souls (this is EVERYONE"S PRIMARY ANNOINTING), and once we embrace the great commission we are able to be used of God in other areas of ministry. Using the lessons I learned from the CrossRoads I applied the same principles. I don't have to research every area of ministry - all I need to do is make people aware of where the help is.
Linking all the sites together would be easy (I thought). When I began to research what was out there in cyberspace I still sensed a void. There was something missing, but what was it? Then the Lord revealed it to us, and the vision has remained the same for about 5 years now.
We not only needed to link the information, we needed to put the Body of Christ in touch with each other. The end result will produce what could be the worlds largest data base for disability issues. What the Spirit revealed for us to do is to put into one data base ALL of the disability information we could find. Again I thought this was a big task, but it get's bigger.
In the United States and Canada the world's system will provide counsel for people with disabilities, but not scriptural counsel. What we need to do is take into consideration the totality of a disabled person's life. Who is affected? Spouses, parents, children, siblings, caregivers, friends, inlaws, Church attendance, medical personal, work, leisure activities and the list goes on and on. The fact is that when a person lives with a disability, the life of everyone they come in contact with is affected.
Everyone that is affected needs to talk to someone that has been where they are. This presents the need for the Body of Christ to start acting like a body, when one member hurts we all should feel it, but do we? The Body of Christ has so far missed the mark on this one. Our vision is to make available at no cost the ability for anyone affected by a disability to contact Christian brothers and sisters who have been in the same situation. In this way, the people who need the support most will be in contact with the people who can help the most.
Next, we plan to go state by state and find people who have the same burden as we do. Then have them contact and research all of the state, county, and local agencys that provide assistance and advocacy for people with disabilities as well as finding Chruches, Christian support groups, doctors, etc. that are accessable and skilled in meeting the needs of our brothers and sisters who live with disabilities. We also plan to have mailing list, and live chat rooms broken down by need, location, and whatever else God tells us to do.
The task is bigger than we are, but God is bigger yet. We will be needing all sorts of help with this ministry. If you know of someone that has a similiar burden please let us know.
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