Happy New Year and welcome to 2017. It is our habit to create and publish a short article on the past year and the expected plans for the new year. For those who may not know, Lambchow is a ministry with the goal of encouraging folks to walk with Jesus. There are four facets to the ministry at this time.
There is a slowly growing list of Bible studies that can be downloaded or subscribed to. The Bible study on forgiveness is advertised via paid web search engines. Last year Lambchow freely provided close to 1500 Bible studies via email or from the website to folks in over 20 different countries. Our goal is to convert our recent Walking Through Philippians series into a downloadable and emailable Bible study.
Each week Lambchow publishes new articles through our website, our mailing list and on our new Facebook page. Our publication schedule changed over the course of the year. We began with three articles a week, one of them being a guest article or a rewind article from a couple years ago. A few months back we scaled down to 2 releases. The Thursday articles tend to be longer and more like a Bible study or sermon while the Tuesday article is meant as a short encouragement or reminder. On average, each article was read about 160 times last year (that we know of anyway).
Our Lambchow Facebook page was a new addition this year. We’ve previously announced and shared new articles via my personal Facebook account. A few friends encouraged us to develop a Lambchow Facebook page. This has expanded our reach into new areas, enhanced with a little advertising along the way. Facebook creates a whole new set of struggles. Like how to know if someone “likes” the article, the picture that is with the article, or the little blurb that introduces the article. All in all, Facebook brought an additional 2000 article interactions in 2016.
Another behind the scenes part of the Lambchow ministry is prayer requests via email. On the website, on the emails we send out, and on the Facebook page is a button to submit a prayer request. These come directly to me. Each one is dealt with personally and confidentially. Last year we received and responded to 175 prayer requests and numerous other questions and comments.
All in all, Lambchow planted 34,917 seeds in 2016. A seed is counted for every Bible study lesson or article read, and prayer requests responded to. That is 14,000 more than 2015 but short of our goal of 45,000. We’re not setting a goal for 2017 other than to see an increase in this number.
None of this happens without cost. In 2016 Lambchow expended $4200.00 to advertise and provide the tools for ministry. We had an in-flow of 1700.00, mostly for helping another ministry with their website. This seems to be our baseline since 2015 was about the same. If you’d like to help purchase more advertising designed to get Bible studies into the hands of more folks, please let me know.
Our plans for 2017 are to keep it all going. Our known prayer concerns are – 1) pray the advertising hits the right folks at the right time. 2) That I’d have the wisdom to make our Facebook connections more fruitful. 3) That folk would come alongside to grow our advertising and ministry reach even more. 4) Insight for what comes next.
Thank you all for your time and readership. Thanks for the comments and encouragement that you’ve given. Thanks for the times you shared something you read on Lambchow with others. Thanks for your prayers as we strive to follow Jesus through this ministry.
- Corinthian Controversies: Freedom’s Restraint - April 17, 2024
- The Legacy - April 15, 2024
- Corinthian Controversies: Big Little Sins - April 10, 2024
well done
Thank you for all the work you put into your articals, I enjoy reading them and use them for some of our home group meetings
All the best for the new year
John
Thank you Dale for your Ministry…..You have impacted many!