SYDNEY (ANS) -- Following a two week Mission trip to Cambodia by a team from Gymea Baptist Church in Sydney, results of a survey released today show that daily e-mails, videos, blogs and two Skype video-calls into church services generated over a 90 percent ‘engagement’ rate with family members and supporters.

“This is the second time Gymea Baptist Church has sent a team to Cambodia,” said Missions and Evangelism Pastor, Paul Summers. “Last year God raised up 14 people from our church who worked with local partners in Phnom Penh and the surrounding area to build water filters, assist with evangelism and outreach and support a school for Vietnamese refugees,” he said.

“One of the difficulties of this first trip was the problem of maintaining the connection between the team on the ground in Cambodia and our church back home. As we planned the 2010 trip, which has just returned, we wanted to look at how we could do this better,” Paul said.

Martin Johnson, a communications practitioner and a member of the church volunteered to join the 2010 Mission team.

“Martin has been in the communications business for over thirty years and as well as working with the other older guys on the team, he offered to help with keeping the team and their families, supporters and friends back home, plus the church, all connected,” said Paul.

Using communication tools was something that Martin has a passion for. “I worked with Paul and co-team leader Richard Dwyer, to work out the best way to keep everyone connected,” said Martin. “Whilst we knew it would be web based, we weren’t sure whether we should use a social networking site, such as Facebook or MySpace or build our own,” he said. “After some investigation we decided to build our own site as it did away with the need for people to join a particular social networking site and also gave us much greater flexibility in designing the pages we knew we would need,” Martin said.

“Key to the success of the communications strategy was e-mail. We asked our team of 19 to encourage their family, friends and supporters to sign up on the web site and join our supporters e-mail list. At the end we had just on 170 individuals signed up,” Martin said.

Whilst the team was away, Martin wrote a daily e-mail which included two or three photographs.

“I knew that if we could establish a pattern of daily e-mails which arrived each morning in the in-boxes of those back home, this would help with the connection we were after. Along with the e-mail, I also uploaded up to 20 images from the team’s activities that day. (Two or three of these images were included in the e-mail.)

“I tried to capture the main activities of the day and also personalise the content so that not only was there information, there was also something specific about one or two team members. The text of each e-mail was also uploaded as blog text on the web site,” said Martin.

As well as writing e-mails, Martin was also shooting video footage of the projects. “Whilst most of the footage was for a series of video reports that we planned to produce when we got back, I was able to edit some short segments about each of the key projects we were involved in and post these on the web site. Together with the stills on the web site, these were also used as overlay for each of the Skype video calls that we made to two Sunday services,” he said.

For Paul Summers, keeping family members in touch with what Mum and Dad were doing in Cambodia was also an important part of the communications strategy. “Team members had 11 children under ten at home being cared for by Mum or Dad while their partner was in Cambodia,” said Paul. “We decided to do a Skype video call into two Sunday services and this was a great hit with the kids and also the spouse at home. Just being able to see Mum or Dad via video from Cambodia, was a great reassurance for these families,” he said.

As the trip progressed, the impact of the e-mails and the videos on those back home was fed back to the team in Phnom Penh. “We were all quite amazed at the impact,” said Paul. “Some parents commented that they had never had such daily updates from their Gen Y children – they were stoked,” Paul said. “Every comment I got from Gymea was that the whole church felt really connected with the team and they all appreciated the images and video – to the point where one spouse made a special request for us to include some specific photos so that her children could see what an important job daddy was doing. We were happy to oblige, “ he said.

On the technical side, the strategy was dependent on reliable data connections in Cambodia. “I had been to Cambodia twice before,” said Martin. “I knew that their mobile phone system and hotel data connections were very reliable, to the point where we could be standing in a rice paddy, fours hours drive away from Phnom Penh but still be able to have mobile phone conversations with Australia,” he said. “Whilst the connection speed did vary at times, we were always able to load each day’s e-mail report and the videos by midnight Cambodian time. Knowing that they were having such a positive impact back home was very encouraging,” Martin said.

At the end of the trip, a 15 question survey of all 170 e-mail recipients revealed the positive impact the strategy had had on the individuals and the church.

“The most encouraging result of the 15 questions was Q12, which was; “In your opinion, how effective were the e-mails, video and Skype sessions in better connecting the whole church to what the team was doing?” The result showed that by far the majority of respondents said that it was ‘very effective’ (90%),” Martin said.

The full survey results are are available on the Gymea Baptist Church 2010 Cambodian Mission trip web site: http://www.cambodia2010.com

Images, videos and more information about the trip are also available on the web site.

Martin Johnson has spent 30 years working in Christian media. After 20 years at Sydney's Wesley Mission and six years with Bible Society, he now runs his own Communications Consultancy in Sydney. During his time at Bible Society he helped develop the 'Jesus. All about life' campaign which has run across five Australian states. He can be contacted at: martin.johnson@bigpond.com http://www.martinjohnsoncommunications.com.au