Welcome to the September edition of the Inside Report. This special newsletter is lovingly prepared each month for those friends and partners who support our mission. Want to start receiving these, or discontinue them? Click here...
The picture above captures exactly how I feel right at the moment. Exhausted, ready to sprawl out and get some rest. But at the same time, excited about where I am.
Why? Because this past month was an incredibly busy time filled with lots of huge changes for our site. And while I'm ready for a week's vacation to catch up on sleep--I'm also super excited about what has been accomplished.
Recent Upgrades
If you've been keeping up with our emails you know we accomplished three really big upgrades:
1) First, a brand new store with all our resources upgraded to use a new logo and new format (that matches our digital resources). Best of all, we now have all our Online Classes available for purchase in printed form. Exciting!
2) Second, we overhauled our
Training Teams, to allow plans for families, small groups, and of course churches as before. We trust these new options will give even more people a chance to plug into FAST training.
3) Third, our entire training curriculum was organized into something we're calling the
Lab Roadmap. This actually involved a huge number of changes--but in a nutshell we opened up pretty much every one of our training classes year round and organized everything for you in a step by step success path.
To get all three of these done in one month with no major hiccups was pretty massive. But the effort was worth it. We've been wanting to make all of these changes for months now--and knowing it's all behind us is, well, still hard to grasp. Wow!
Revival Keys
The other thing that makes me incredibly excited, was the successful launch of
Revival Keys, a brand new training program for Lab members on how to seek, spark, sustain, and spread revival. In many ways, I believe this is one of the MOST important training courses we've ever put together. And we're well under way now.
We had just a handful shy of 200 participants sign up, making it one of our largest classes yet--and the engagement during the first few weeks of the class has been great. In fact, it's left me more convinced than ever of the vital need for this training, and that it is going to play an increasingly important part in our ministry's future. The fact this class is actually running right now is also, hard to believe...
A Bright Future
I was just looking over last month's
Inside Report and noticed where I wrote I expected August to be "one of the critical turning points in our ministry". Looking back, I think it proved to be exactly that. Between all huge changes to our site, and the launch of Revival Keys, it was a month I won't forget soon.
Of course September won't be much slower. (Ok, maybe a couple days break in there somewhere!) This month we're shifting our focus toward setting up systems to help us grow our ministry more quickly. Now that we've largely completed our site upgrade, we want to get the word out to as many people as possible. And we've got a long list of ideas in mind to help facilitate that.
This month's changes will be quieter, more under-the-hood kind of stuff--but God willing, they will enable us to attract many more students, and speed up our efforts to bring cutting-edge, Bible-centered training to the world.
Of course, our ability to devote constant uninterrupted attention to this work is only possible because of committed partners, like you, who give sacrificially to support what we're doing. Our burden to empower believers everywhere to make disciples in their small corner of the world is as strong now as ever. And our eye is fixed on 2020 to do something big. But our freedom to focus strategically like this is thanks to you. And I'm sincerely grateful!
To the future,
Dan & Vi
Comments
Has FAST been a blessing to you? Have a question about our upcoming plans? Just want to share a quick note? Use the comment box below...
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Posted by Dan Vis on 09/14/19 - Coach |
| So glad FAST could be a blessing to you Erica. I think God is inspiring many people around the world with the importance of making the Bible more central in our lives. If we've helped do that in some small way in your life, we're thrilled! |
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Posted by Erica Cameron on 09/14/19 |
| Hi Dan, yes FAST has been a blessing to me. It encourages me to think and to grow in my walk with Jesus. Also, as a child I learnt Bible verses, but the importance of doing that had dwindled, but now I realise how important it is! Not so easy when you reach my age! However I am persevering to do it. Thanks Dan. |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 09/08/19 - Coach |
| Yes, no doubt! I always say she is the heart behind the ministry. My better half for sure Qing. Actually, I think the account she uses is Marieanne. |
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Posted by Qing Ling on 09/07/19 - Coach |
| My favourite part is that you signed off with both your names. For those who haven’t met the other half of FAST Missions, she is one special Spirit empowered lady! 💓👏 Vi |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 09/06/19 - Coach |
| Hmmm, it looks like only our coaches were able to get the like feature to work. Why not try it again. Just click the thumbs up icon bottom right corner of the post you like. Let me know if it still isn't working for you Anita... |
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Posted by Anita Huffman on 09/06/19 |
| Dan, I'm glad it was helpful. I tried to "like" your post but nothing changed so I don't know if it worked or not. :) |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 09/05/19 - Coach |
| Ann, why don't you message me on the Help Hotline and explain more what you mean. Our digital Prayer Journal shows all your requests for the day on one page so there's no clicking or advancing at all. Are you talking perhaps about the Prayer Chapel in our Student Lab? |
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Posted by Ann Lavenburg on 09/05/19 |
| I’ve been extremely busy and barely keeping up with daily reviews. My formal FAST computer prayer part has diminished and I was thinking about why. It is not as user friendly as the verse review. If every time update was clicked if it would automatically advance to the next prayer request that would make it much easier to use. |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 09/05/19 - Coach |
Thanks for the really helpful feedback Anita. And of course super glad FAST ended up being a blessing to you.
We've been gradually trying to improve things in some of these areas, including a "Free Stuff" tab that always has one or more starter classes plus other resources, and a START link in the resource bar that introduces a bit more about our site. And of course if you click the FAST Missions link at the top right, or one of the Our Story links or the About Us link in the footer you get even more information about our ministry. So we're definitely trying to help orient new members better. We also recently revamped our welcome page for non members. But no doubt there is still more to do.
This month, we'll be (hopefully) creating an extended welcome sequence for new members, and another for new lab students, and maybe even one for new team members. I think that has been a big missing piece for a long time. Add that to what we've done with the Roadmap and hopefully future students will have a much easier time figuring out what FAST is. :)
If you have additional suggestion please let me know! We're always trying to climb higher ourselves!!! |
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Posted by Anita Huffman on 09/04/19 |
FAST has most certainly been a blessing to me.
I want to share some issues I had when I first found the site to maybe give you some insight as to how a new person might feel. :)
I don't remember who told me about FAST at first but when I tried looking around, I couldn't figure out what it was all about. I could see the different lessons mentioned but couldn't find a clue what most of them were about. I kept looking for a sample lesson so I could see how they were done and what I might be getting myself into! My thought was 'No way am I paying for something if I don't know what the format it, what they are going to ask me to do, what I'm going to be learning, etc.
I finally figured out the Memory Engine and the Rocket class was offered for free. Then I was hooked! I tried telling all my friends at church about FAST. Three of them joined but two of them told me they couldn't figure out what it was all about. I think the new changes are great and it's easier to understand what it's all about. I'm going to re-introduce it to everyone again. |
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Posted by Dan Vis on 09/04/19 - Coach |
| Thanks Jamie, and Paul for the feedback. Really excited to be able to see the site do more good as it improves little by little. All glory to God! :) |
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Posted by Paul Carson on 09/04/19 |
| Thank you Dan & Vi for following our LORD's leading as Coach-Encouragers. Being a disciple of Christ has never been so rewarding. FAST is facilitating that. Thank you. |
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Posted by Jamie-Leigh Timoti on 09/04/19 |
| Amen - site is looking amazing and is impacting my spiritual walk in a MASSIVE way - I can’t stop sharing this with the ones I love. Keep going team FAST - God bless |
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