Latest News...

Jan 26, 2024: Code-a-Thon 2024: We had the privilege of recruiting at LeTourneau University's GO Week this week.
We've got 12+ coders coming from LeTourneau for our Spring Break Code-a-thon for Missions in March. Sign up to join them at [link]
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Apr 16, 2023: Operation Mobilization founder George Verwer passed into eternity this past Friday.
[link] We should celebrate his passion, servant's heart, and impact. At the same time, know that you don't need to be the founder of a large international mission agency to hear those words, 'Well done, good and faithful servant'. Focus humbly on seeking God's kingdom first and on faithful obedience. Love the things God loves. Let Him in His sovereignty do the rest, as He weaves your life into the beautiful fabric of His Kingdom. LightSys is one of dozens of missions agencies today that have roots in Operation Mobilization - we were based out of the OM USA office for our first eight years of ministry.
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Oct 5, 2022: Come use your skills for the Kingdom!
Mobilization season is here again. We're preparing the LightSys booth for college visits where we share the need for Geeks in Missions. Our first stop is LeTourneau University's Career Fair on Thursday, October 6th. Pray for God to bring us the right students!
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Mar 17, 2022: A huge thank you to Dan Williams - our amazing volunteer Scrum master who flies out to Colorado each year for our Spring Break Code-a-Thon for Missions events.
His goal: to help the young coders understand basic project management and keep them on task as they work on programming projects for missions. Dan - you make a huge impact on the students and the projects and in our hearts. Thank you.
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Feb 19, 2019: Story One: Becoming a Nonprofit: If Jesus can provide a tax payment in a fish's mouth,
then surely... Today's anecdote is a testament to God's faithfulness from long long ago in the ancient history of LightSys. That is, back in the ancient days of May 2000. You probably know that LightSys is a "tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit". But, what does all of that gobbledygook mean? To you it means that your gifts are tax-deductible and provides you the assurance that we're not essentially a for-profit corporation in disguise... but to us it meant a lot of work and a real faith-building endeavor! God Provides Finances Just for some context, LightSys has always sought to be a financially efficient organization, and our early days were no exception (in fact, those days were almost too much of a non-exception!). We had a total of $1,400 in donations during our first year (1999), setting the stage for being in a position to need a miracle. May 31st of 2000 was for all practical purposes our deadline for filing for 501(c)(3) status. Unfortunately, by May of 2000 we only had $433.50 in our bank account -- not enough for the $500 filing fee. Not only so, but we lacked the knowledge to fill out the form (and we definitely lacked the finances to pay someone else to do it!). The form was a real bear, too, at 10 pages long, not to mention requiring dozens of pages of exhibits and attachments. We were praying for the finances and expertise, as well as for a fair and understanding person at the IRS to review our case (we had heard horror stories of poorly handled cases). Then, in mid-May, we received a $100 check from a generous donor - we finally had the funds (with a whole $33.50 to spare)! Excitedly we continued to research the IRS form and continued to pray for the knowledge and confidence to fill it out. God Provides Knowledge About five days prior to the May 31st deadline, we received a surprise email from a guy from Texas who had just visited our website, saw a note that we were in the process of obtaining 501(c)(3) status, and wanted to send us a copy of his (computer related) ministry's 501(c)(3) application, if it would help us file ours (i.e., so we could use his successful application as a model for ours)! He even mailed it overnight to us and wouldn't let us pay him for the shipping! Encouraged, we got our application package (all 50 pages of it) in the mail to the IRS, on time. More Divine Provision But this was not to be the only set of miracles related to becoming a nonprofit. In mid-August of 2000, the IRS had a concern about one aspect of our application, and our case reviewer brought up the issue with us. After kindly explaining the issue and the recent IRS ruling applying to it, she gave us several options we could pursue in order to resolve the issue and obtain our exempt status. The IRS needed our answer within a few days, and our "answer" legally required that LightSys co-founders Greg Beeley and Tim Young hold an official business meeting. Unfortunately, while Greg was discussing this with the IRS, Tim was meandering around among random mission groups between San Francisco and Seattle, and he did not plan to "surface" for another week. A week would be too long! Not knowing where else to turn to locate this exceedingly itinerant Tim Young, Greg called Tim's parents. In order to appreciate how much of a long shot this was, you need to understand that members of the Young family rarely kept each other up-to-date regarding such detailed goings-on. Predictably, Tim's father did not know where Tim was. However, he did happen to know someone who did! While meandering through Oregon, Tim had providentially come across an old friend of his father; that friend had then promptly called Tim's father in Arizona to catch up. Greg then called Tim's dad's friend, who also did not know where Tim was, but he knew someone who did. After yet a third phone call, Tim and Greg were finally in touch, had completed their required business meeting, and Greg faxed the appropriate documents to the IRS. Less than a week later, in late August of 2000, we received our official "tax exempt" recognition from the IRS, allowing us to confidently issue "tax deductible" gift receipts! Not only so, but the IRS issued us a firmer decision than we had expected, meaning we did not have to do as much work to justify our 501(c)(3) status in the years to come.
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Feb 19, 2019: Stories of God's Faithfulness: A collection of short stories of God's faithfulness to His children serving in missions. This blog is dedicated to God's glory and to your encouragement.
We deeply desire that you would be set free to place your full trust in God, not primarily because of our stories, but because you choose to trust Him. But, our hope is that these stories will help you envision walking in a place where your faith can't be shaken by circumstances. Many years ago, pastor Jimmy Seibert of Antioch Community Church said, "Many of us want to see God do a miracle in our lives, but we don't want to be in a position to need one." So, God has to force us into those situations, for His glory and for our joy. Count it all joy, my friends!
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Dec 3, 2018: A Mission Infobank major update!
Visit [link] to browse tens of thousands of Great Commission maps, charts, photos, research documents, and useful internet links (create an account to download high-res images). #missions
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Come Journey with Us!

A Fork in the Road Have you ever considered using your IT skills in missions work? Has God been moving in your heart, a longing for "something more" in your work than just the "rat race"? Is our Lord stirring a vision within you for a new creative way to glorify Him in missions with your IT experience? Do you sense you are at a crossroads in your walk with Him? Do you have a lot of responsibilities and feel unsure how to proceed? Has your job been affected by the economy, and you're wondering if God may be nudging you in a new direction?

If so, we'd like to stand with you and pray with you! You probably have a lot of questions, and are yearning to seek God's face and to hear from Him. We'd be blessed to be a part of His work in and through you. Do contact us and let us know!

Urgent Need: We're in urgent need of missions-minded software developers with programming skills in JavaScript, AJAX, and/or C/C++ to assist us (as volunteers, interns, or full-time missionaries) in some very important open-source projects for missions. Please contact us for more information!

Free 10/40 Window Prayer Map

Prayer Map Some 90% of the people who have never had a chance to hear about Jesus are in what's called the "10/40 Window", a region stretching across northern Africa, through parts of the Middle East, and across southern Asia. Pray for the unreached peoples of the world and live with intentionality, whether your role in missions is as a sender or a goer. Learn more about the 10/40 Window, and get your free poster by contacting us or by downloading the image.

Worship and Pray!

We welcome you to our weekly prayer, worship, and devotional gatherings! You can join online from anywhere, or in person if you're in Colorado Springs; come join us for sharing, worship, learning, and prayer for each other and for the world. If you'd like information on this gathering, please contact us for more information!

Join Missions Full-Time...

Road Ahead Many missions (including us!) are in need of software developers, analysts, consultants, and more. We've worked with missionaries and home offices representing more than a hundred organizations, and so we're familiar with a lot of the need! Feel free to write us if you'd like to know more.

Joining missions full-time is a big step, a giant leap of faith. You'll be laying aside your huge financial earning potential, a lot of the "creature comforts" you are used to, and more. You'll be trusting God to provide for you in ways you've probably never before dreamed! He is faithful!

Partner With LightSys Part-Time...

Partner with Us Perhaps you'd like to get involved but need to do so on an occasional or part-time basis. If so, we'd love to come alongside you. We have two key areas of ministry that you might be interested in, CODN and the LAN.

Come participate in our ninth annual Spring Break Code-a-Thon for Missions! This March, we'll host three or four gatherings of students and professionals who desire to use their coding, design, writing, graphics arts, and security skills to further the Kingdom of God. We've hosted over twenty of these one-week hackathons since 2012, and we enjoy seeing people engaging their skills for the kingdom of God. Come join us for this event, and perhaps you'll get to work on a project like Joshua Project's Unreached of the Day app which was written (original Android version) and inspired (iOS) by teams at our 2012 and 2015 events, and which has been used by the Lord to mobilize people to reach unreached peoples with Jesus' good news.

The LightSys Associates Network (LAN), the membership-based voluntary service arm of LightSys, is a way you can serve alongside us on a part-time or occasional basis to help out missions. For example, you might want to take a short-term trip with us to help a certain mission group, or perhaps you'd like to spend three months of each year working with several missions in your area of IT specialization. We're here to help provide the community, infrastructure, trust, and contacts to let that happen!

Kardia and Centrallix are a pair of Open Source software projects what we're working on for missions. We'd love to have you join us and help! Kardia is a ministry administrative software suite for missions, and includes things like accounting, donor management, mailing lists, check writing, and more. Centrallix is a Rich Internet Application (RIA) / Declarative Domain Specific Language (D-DSL) application platform that provides the infrastructure for Kardia.

CODN, the Christian Open Development Network, is a community and resource for developing software solutions for missions and Christian ministry, using the "open source" paradigm. If you're a software developer and have some time to help out on a semi-regular basis, check out CODN!

Get more information about Code-a-Thon or LAN!

Take a Short-Term Trip...

Partner with Us Are you interested in helping missions and missionaries overseas, by taking a short-term (2-3 week) trip? If so, we have two options that you can choose from.

Are you good with basic PC repair and maintenance? If so, contact us for more information about partner ministries of ours which sponsor "Tech Trips" overseas to a missions conference to help fix missionaries' laptop computers.

Do you attend a missions-minded church that might be interested in sending a technology-savvy missions team overseas? If so, we may be able to help you organize and plan such a trip. Your team will travel to one or more countries, and use skills such as network wiring and setup, Linux and Windows server troubleshooting, training, consulting, and more, to bless several missions groups in a particular area and thus help them be more effective in their ministries. Write us for more information!

Join the LightSys Team...

Travel The Road Are you ready to take the step of joining with an intentional Christian community focused on furthering the Great Commission? We have several needs, including:

Software Developers / Computer Programmers
Traveling Consultants and Trainers
Information Security Professionals
Administrative and Communications Professionals
System Administrator
and more...

And, if you have a specific vision for technology in missions that you'd like to pursue through LightSys, please feel free to let us know - we're open to new and creative ways to serve the Lord. LightSys is first and foremost a fellowship of like-minded believers who serve and pray together, learning to be more fruitful and impactful together than apart.

If you are interested, please contact us for details! We'll get back with you so we can discern how best to proceed. Please note that full-time work with LightSys is on a support-raising basis.

Know God. Forget what's behind. Press on toward the Goal. Journey With Us.