Let me tell you my story and why I have created this web site.
I have been a Christian as long as I can remember. I was baptized as a little baby, raised in a Christian home and attended church and Sunday School every week. My family was involved in every possible church activity. My mother was a Sunday School superintendent for 25 years and both my parents taught Sunday School. I sang in choir and played the piano for both Sunday School and choir. Church was a major part of my life and Christ was the head of our home.
My first experience of the power of prayer was when I was a young boy. This may seem like a trivial thing, but one I remember to this day. I was taking apart a milk crate that had long bolts from side to side, to separate the milk bottles. I had a wrench, trying to turn a nut that would not budge. Try as I might, I could not turn it. There on our lawn, kneeling next to the milk crate, I prayed to God to loosen the nut. On my next try, the nut came loose.
Maybe it was that same crate that I stood on to preach to my family. I would play preacher after church on Sunday while my family was gathered for dinner. My mother says that I always passed the collection plate as well.
I worshiped at a Lutheran church on Sunday morning and a Bible church on Sunday evening. It was through the Bible church that I started attending the Blessed Hope Bible Camp as a teenager. After one evening service at camp, the preacher gave an invitation to which I responded. Though I had certainly asked for forgiveness of my sins before and confessed my faith through confirmation, this was a special commitment and I experienced a surge of God's power in my life.
When I think back to that time, I remember the Bible verse:
Titus 2:13-14 - Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
Being a Christian is not always easy and especially more difficult as a teenager. But then I led a rather sheltered life and had good friends. My father used to say, "Show me your friends and I can tell what kind of a person you are." Compared with the temptations of today, I was very fortunate to be a teenager in the early '60s.
In a Junior High School music class, I once refused to dance, saying that it was against my religion. The teacher asked what church I went too - Lutheran, I answered. She thought that Lutherans could dance to which I responded. "It is my faith, not the Lutheran religion." This reflected the strict upbringing of my Christian family where dancing and movies were forbidden.
Don't think that I was a saint then or even today. I would just rather tell you the positive, Christian experiences of my life. The sins that I committed have been forgiven and washed away by Jesus Christ.
I remained fairly active in church activities through college and the first few years of my marriage to a wonderful Christian girl of a similar background. As I got into my first job, the workplace and business travel, I found keeping the faith difficult and fell away from the Christian fold. It wasn't until after ten years of marriage, the birth of our first child and changing jobs while moving to Minneapolis that I started attending church again.
It was about this same time in 1983 that I felt God's call to start GospelWare, the sponsor of this web site. I had a TI-99 home computer and developed my first computer story, "The Christmas Story", for the 1983 Christmas season. I remember selling just a few copies of the software which I distributed on cassette tape for the TI-99 computer. During the same Christmas season, in November, 1983, TI exited the home computer market and quit building the TI-99 computer. Discouraged, I soon gave up on the business for a few years.
In 1985, I purchased a Macintosh XL computer and started developing for that instead. I was a registered Apple developer and developed a program named "Go-Spell", a play on the word "Gospel". I never did market this program, which was similar to Hangman, requiring spelling of books of the Bible. It was about the same time that I developed a version of the Bible called the "HolyHyper". It was named such since it was based on HyperCard, a Macintosh database that was a precursor to the Internet web technology. This program was distributed through dialup computer services such as Compuserve in 1988. This was the start of the shareware era where people could download a program and pay for it if they liked it. I called my type of distribution PrayerWare and received just a few payments, but not enough to encourage further efforts.
In 1996, I attended my first Promise Keepers conference at the Metrodome in Minneapolis. Worshipping with 65,000+ men was quite a powerful experience. PK claimed that this was the largest number of people ever in the Metrodome and must have been the loudest as well. I remember singing as loud as I could and not being able to hear myself. It was invigorating for my faith, like an infusion of high-octane spiritual energy. My wife comments that she noticed a change in my life at that time.
But maybe it takes a setback to really get back on track. In 1999, after returning from a business trip, I was informed that my supervisory job was being eliminated and I was offered a voluntary layoff or another lower level position. Since this was a shock and I was unprepared to be without a job, I had to do some real soul-searching.
After much prayer, Bible study and family discussion, my daughter suggested that I should get GospelWare going again. After looking over all my old files, I did an Internet search for GospelWare to see if anyone was using the term. After over 10 years, my original HolyHyper program had migrated from Compuserve to a web site of Christian resources. I took this to be a sign from God that I needed to invest more time into GospelWare and that possibly someday it could be a business. I registered the domain gospelware.com and a few other domains to stake my claim on the Internet.
I conducted more research into how the Internet was being used and decided that it lacked good wholesome entertainment for children. My goal is to develop a web site of Bible stories using advanced animation capabilities similar to Disney's Club Blast. One day in early 2000, the song "We've a story to tell to the nations" came to mind, leading me to register the domain name of this web site. This was about the same time that I did change jobs, going back with the company that originally brought me to Minneapolis. I now am only minutes from work in a less stressful job, with energy to spare and put into this story telling mission.
In February, 2001, our family took a mission trip to Ensenada, Mexico. During this trip, I read a new book named "eMinistry - Connecting with the Net Generation" by Andrew Careaga, eMinistry. What a contrast, being in a poor area of Mexico and reading about Internet ministry.
Two chapters in this book struck home to me. Chapter 10 - Cyber Stories discussed story telling as the age-old method of spreading the Gospel. Chapter 6 - CyberSpace: Land of Peril, Land of Promise referenced the story of the twelve spies scouting out the land of Canaan. Ten of the spies reported that the new land was dangerous; just as many people today view the Internet. Two spies, Caleb and Joshua, saw the Promised Land.
As Careaga writes:
"We should heed the Calebs and Joshuas. The Internet is part of God's unfolding creation. We are able to enter the land and be His witnesses there."
So here I am, telling my story on the Internet. Do you have a story to tell as well? If you do, why not tell it here and spread the word about this web site.
If you have not experienced Christ in your life, read the stories of others who have. Also read "The Story" of Jesus Christ, believe in God's promise for your life and come back here to tell the nations about your decision.