Ablaze! moving toward a 100 million goal
partners, mission responders encouraged to report online

In July 2004, the LCMS World Mission Web page for reporting Ablaze! activities—the number of unreached or uncommitted people with whom LCMS individuals, groups and congregations, as well as international church partners have shared the Gospel—went live! The address is www.lcmsworldmission.org/ablaze.

Future plans include upgrading the ability of the site to not only capture activity information, but share it as well. Once the upgrade is complete, users will be able to use the site as a resource to query various fields to learn valuable ministry and contact information from the activities that have been posted online.

The user-friendly reporting system currently accepts two kinds of online accounts of “Ablaze! activities.” The first is from entities registered as “official partners” of LCMS World Mission. This includes such groups as international partner churches, districts, mission societies, recognized service organizations, LCMS auxiliaries, and other Lutheran agencies with some organizational relationship to LCMS World Mission. These reports are collected and entered into a database called “validated reports,” since each of these groups can verify their collective data. Entities may apply for a partner password so that reporting is secure. Individuals and other groups may also log on as “guests” to add their reports to the site.

The online reporting forms also include space to write a brief summary or “story” of activities. Selected “Ablaze! stories” will be featured on the Web site.

For those who do not have access to the Worldwide Web, reporting forms may be requested from LCMS World Mission and completed manually for submission. A visual tutorial of how to log on and use the site will be included in LCMS World Mission's new Ablaze! DVD to be released and mailed to congregations and groups in October 2005.