Janine Winkler loves reading books to her 2-year-old grandson, Judah, but instead of sitting on her lap at her home in Michigan, he’s usually half a world away in Nigeria, where his father works for Wycliffe Bible Translators.
What connects them is Skype, the free online telephone and video service, which has made expensive phone calls and lengthy periods of no contact a distant memory for many missionaries abroad and their families back home.
“I’ve told people that I think God waited to send them overseas until the technology got to where it was,” said Winkler, who never had a camera on her computer or used Skype before her son and his family left the country. “I couldn’t imagine just waiting to get letters from them.”
More and more Southern Baptists are making use of Skype and other videoconference and call services, too.
The Sunday after Independence Day in 2009, Taylor Road Baptist Church, Montgomery, used Skype to talk to a church member serving with the military in Afghanistan.
“He told us about his typical day in Afghanistan, talked about freedom and thanked us for supporting his family in his absence,” Communications Director Brian Harris said. “Our people talked about this video experience for weeks.”
But that wasn’t their first experience with Skype.
“To promote the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering in 2008, we spoke through live video with one of our former students serving as a [Baptist representative] in a high-security country,” Harris said. “We played a short Lottie Moon video and when it ended, on the screen was our own [representative], live. People gasped and cheered. You could hear people throughout our congregation crying tears of happiness.”
Hunter Street Baptist Church, Hoover, also has used Skype for live video talks with Baptist representatives around the world, but it uses Polycom videoconference systems on a weekly basis for distance-learning classes offered by Union University in Jackson, Tenn.
Unity Baptist Church, Ashland, Ky., leaders keep one of its MasterLife class members who attends college out of town involved with Skype.
“We wanted him to be part of our group (which meets weekly),” said Senior Pastor Floyd Paris, who leads the class. “Other members of the group see and talk with him, and he sees and talks with us.”
The University of Mobile (UMobile) wants its students to stay in contact with their families, so all of its dorms have a computer equipped with Skype.
“Students use their own Skype accounts, log in on the dorm computer and have real-time, face-to-face conversations with their families back home,” said Kathy Dean, media relations director for UMobile.
Skype, along with other tools, has also found its way into the classroom at UMobile, as well Alabama Baptists’ two other schools.
At UMobile and Judson College in Marion, Skype has allowed professors from other college campuses to give lectures to students. Judson’s departments of education, social work and arts have even used it to administer tests, and one education faculty member teaches her classes via Skype so she can be home with her newborn.
David Smolin, a law professor at Samford University in Birmingham, is also teaching a course that way, but the students are in a classroom in Virginia.
Samford business professors Betsy Holloway and Jeremy Thornton have used AIM Chat and Skype to speak with students at other colleges abroad. Samford business students have used these videoconference services to make presentations to business leaders in other cities.
The colleges and other Alabama Baptist entities also are utilizing Skype as a means of streamlining the hiring process.
“In the past, when there was a faculty or staff search conducted by the academic dean’s office, I would use the telephone for interviews with prospects who lived out of state. Now I use Skype,” said Sara Kiser, Judson’s vice president and academic dean.
Buster Taylor, executive director of Shocco Springs Baptist Conference Center in Talladega, said he uses Skype to conduct all his initial interviews with potential staff. Unlike a phone interview, “you can see the person and his or her reactions to questions,” Taylor noted.
Shocco Springs recently used another conference system, GoToMeeting, to meet with trustees.
“We were connected through computers and audio,” Taylor said. “I presented the budget figures, and the trustees could see them on their computer screens. The online meeting saved money on travel expenses.”
The International Mission Board (IMB) is doing the same thing.
“Our trustees use videoconferencing in the committee work they do. This work is done virtually and eliminates travel to Richmond (Va., where the IMB has its headquarters),” explained Bill Bangham, director of media production for the IMB.
The directors of the IMB’s five communications centers around the world also have found Skype to be a timesaver. They use Skype for conference calls twice a week.
“The technology eliminates time spent at a keyboard writing e-mails,” Bangham noted.
In Southern Baptist disaster relief efforts, Skype has saved the day.
“In American Samoa (after the September 2009 earthquake and tsunami), we had trouble using our cell phones. We could get an Internet connection, so we used Skype’s phone service,” said Bruce Poss, disaster relief coordinator for the North American Mission Board (NAMB).
“In Haiti (after the January 2010 earthquake), we had the same experience.”
The American Red Cross and NAMB have connected several times through Skype videoconferencing to see what each entity is doing during disasters. “Instead of having to travel to them, we could see what they were doing by looking on a computer screen,” Poss said.
According to Poss, NAMB also uses WebEx web conferencing to connect the 35 state disaster relief coordinators a couple of times each year.
The Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) has used Skype to connect with its churches.
Interactive experience
When Providence Baptist Church, Daleville, wanted an exciting way to kick off its fall children’s missions programs, the SBOM set up a Skype conversation with Scotty Goldman, an associate in the office of global missions.
“He told the children about missions partnership work being done by Alabama Baptists, specifically the partnerships in Ukraine and Guatemala, then answered questions from the children,” said Doug Rogers, coordinator of communications services.
Rogers pointed out that video technology has opened the door for churches to have live access to previously unavailable people: missionaries in the field, members on missions trips and experts in a training session in another city or state.
“With a computer, a free Skype account, a high-speed Internet connection and a webcam, a church can do many exciting, but simple and cost-effective, things,” he said. (RNS contributed)
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