We Are Less Than Four Feet from 6.64 Billion Hearts

Photo: ©fotostorm from Getty Images Signature via Canva.com

Merry Christmas, everyone. The holiday season is the best time of the year, especially when our focus is Christ as we celebrate His birth and what it means to us. The Christmas season is a snapshot of what our ministry is about, sharing the practical message of Christ globally.

You may want to read:

• Go Here to Donate to Our Ministry
• Go to Leaders Over Coffee Conversations Forum
• Learn More about Our Mastermind Program

Our Mission

Life Over Coffee exists to bring hope and help to you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation.

I want to briefly share how you have helped us fulfill our mission by letting you know what God has been doing because of your financial partnership with us. As you know, our ministry model is to freely give our resources to the world, which we can do because of your generosity. And so, with much gratitude, how about if we take a quick tour of the past and peek into our future plans for 2023? Then, I’ll finish with a fantastic announcement from two of our donors.

The Past

In 2022, we wrapped up five years of legacy planning by launching our fully rebranded website. Out with the old: RickThomas.Net and in with the new: LifeOverCoffee.Com. If you have not made it over to our amazing coffee shop, please do; the street address is lifeovercoffee.com. We’ve had dozens of responses and affirmations, every single one blown away by the excellent work of Clear Design, who designed it, and our web developer, Jonathon Harris, who built it.

In July, we brought on Lt. Col. Chad Vorderbruggen, a fresh graduate of our program to take my spot as Director of the Mastermind Program. Because of my diverse job role, we always had a lid on the number of students we could train at any given time. Now, we can raise our fifteen-student limit. In the past few months, our student body has doubled: we have thirty-one students currently, and our 2023 goal is 100. We can scale our student body because we have someone who does not have divided duties.

In October, we brought on Joshua Chappell as our Marketing Director, taking another job from me. With a website able to accommodate unlimited traffic, we hired Joshua to build the world’s most enormous megaphone to share the practical message of Christ with everyone. Let me share with you just a few stats to let you know what your generosity has accomplished:

• We ran a Google Ad campaign in November; it reached more than 46,000 people.
• We post multiple times on Facebook daily. I was looking at one of those posts that reached 10,000 people.
• We have twelve social media platforms, including Facebook, reaching each mission community uniquely.
• We had one Instagram reel reach 5,000+ people.

There’s more!

I am teaching 300 people a day, seven days a week, on YouTube. A 300-person church is a reasonably good size church, and I’m teaching the equivalent of seven of these churches every week throughout the year. That’s 109,500 eyeballs just watching our YouTube videos annually, which rises daily. Also, I taught sixteen hours daily on YouTube in November, up from nine hours a day the prior month. How do I do this? By placing content in our YouTube “missional community” channel and letting it work for us. After I build the content and put it in our communities, it works for us without our oversight or management.

One more stat: We gave away thirty books every day during November. That’s more than 10,000 free books. We aim to give more than fifty books away each day during December. These are just a few things you permit us to do by giving to our ministry.

The Future

This month, I’m writing two paperback books. One is a rewrite of Suffering Well, which has been wildly popular; I want to add more content to it, and the second paperback is a book on anger. The goal is to publish them in 2023.

• Clear Design is developing our website’s “educational wing” because that will be our focus in 2023, in addition to growing our Mastermind student body to 100 students.
• In January, we will launch our first mini-course; it will be on the fear of man.
• We aim to launch twelve new “one-off” courses in 2023 for those unable to take our massive Mastermind Course. We’re calling this new emphasis “Leaders Over Coffee,” where anyone doing soul care can come, learn, and engage with our team. They can become Mastermind Students, take single courses, and receive daily feedback on questions that are vital to them in their ministry spheres.
• We have already created a Leaders Over Coffee Conversations Forum on our site.
  • We started that forum this past week, and fifteen leaders have jumped into it.
  • If you’re a supporting member and want a private place to talk “all things discipleship,” please start your personal thread on the Leaders Over Coffee Conversations Forum.
• Finally, we’re working with Salem Media, which manages more than 300 Christian radio stations around the country. To give you an idea of part of their network, they provide a platform for folks like Charlie Kirk and Eric Mataxes. They are working with us to promote our ministry throughout the United States on radio shows and other creative means to let folks know about Life Over Coffee.

These are just a few things the Lord has done through your financial giving and some of the initiatives we have planned for 2023. It’s stunning to me that it was just a blog in 2008. Now it’s a global ministry that continues to expand, reaching hundreds of thousands of folks with the practical message of Christ as we go where they are; we’re cyber missionaries.

Our Opportunity

Consider this: In 2022, 6.64 billion people own mobile phones. We are less than four feet from 6.64 billion hearts.

Let me finish with this. Two of our donors have stepped up and said they would give $50,000 apiece for a $100,000 matching campaign. Their generosity and yours will cover our expenses for 2023, continuing to enlarge that megaphone for more folks to hear about Christ.

Will you ask the Father your role in giving to this ministry?

Everyone cannot give $50,000, but some can. If you are able, will you match our two donors? Our goal is $300,000 this fall campaign. For the rest of us, what can you give? Any amount is appreciated because laborers can do a great work.

Will you help us?

You may click the donate link on our website or make a check to Life Over Coffee and mail it to 8595 Pelham Rd Ste 400 #406, Greenville SC 29615, United States.

These are exciting times. Since COVID, our ministry has been accelerating. The “COVID irony” is that it pushed folks into technology, giving them access to organizations like ours that believe and practice the redemptive use of technology for God’s fame or everybody’s benefit.

Thank you for making the light of the gospel shine brightly through this ministry.

Thank you for your generosity!

God bless!

Rick

Need More Help?

1. If you want to learn more from us, you may search this site for thousands of resources—articles, podcasts, videos, graphics, and more. Please spend time studying the ones that interest you. They are free.
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Rick Thomas

Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.

In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).