Missionary Work & Entrepreneurship: the Most Unexpected, Yet Awesome Duo
CELESTE SAMASEIA
What Counts as Missionary Work
When you think of missionary work, what do you think of?
Is missionary work wearing a name tag and knocking door to door?
Is missionary work wearing old worn out shoes?
Is missionary work (now) calling home every Preparation Day?
Obviously, missionary work looks like many different things to many different people. In fact, here’s what three BYU-Hawaii students said missionary work looked like.
Missionary work looks like completely forgetting about yourself and comforts unconsciously because you love the people. It looks like biking 30 miles at night because you don’t have the mileage to drive but you have to teach investigators how they can live with their family again.
Tess Schwalger, History Education
Personally I think of sitting criss cross sitting in a hut with no walls teaching a family, worn out pants from kneeling and praying so much, and jandal tan lines on my feet. Missionary work is love for God and His children.
Chad Samasei’a, Business Marketing
Missionary work to me is sharing the hope and joy of Christ with others so that they can access it in their own lives.
Rachel Roundy, Exercise and Sports Science
But, one of the Willes Center’s students, Jaeden Schafer found a new, and maybe even unexpected way to do missionary work.
The Gospel Meets Facebook Ads | Das Evangelium Trifft Facebook-Anzeigen
How?
Through Facebook Ads.
First of all, what are Facebook Ads?
According to Fred Perrotta, a Marketing Manager at Udemy, Facebook ads are a powerful tool to target an exact audience to view your advertisement. He said:
“Facebook ads are targeted to users based on their location, demographic, and profile information. … After creating an ad, you set a budget and bid for each click or thousand impressions that your ad will receive. Users then see your ads … on Facebook.com.”
When these ads are put to use, they can be used to target very specific demographics.
Which could be perfect to target people who are believe in Christ, are interested in religion, and are in a specific part of a world (even the exact mission and city).
Genius, right?
Well, this idea came to Jaeden while he was serving as a missionary for the Church in France. When asked about why he decided to start doing Facebook ads for the Church, he shared the following:
I was inspired to do the Facebook ads on my mission. I thought it was very difficult to contact people on the street and have them be interested in what we were doing. I always thought it would be cool on my mission, if somehow, I could have had an online ad shown to everyone so they knew who I was and what I was doing before I introduce myself on the road.
Jaeden Schäfer
Since he didn’t have that for himself, he decided to create it for his younger brother, Elder Schafer serving in Germany.
Missionary Work Done in Hawaii Reaches Germany
First, Jaeden created a Facebook page called Missionare Von Deutschland that was directed to this landing page.
Then came the process of creating Facebook ads.
This ad was centered around a video Jaeden asked his brother and his companion, Elder Schäfer and Elder Glück respectively, to record.
This quick 44 second video was in German and was inviting viewers to talk about prayer with them.
Since running the ad, it has had 9,000 impressions, the video has had 2,741 views, and the landing page has had 1,126 clicks. This ad has reached over 10,000 people in Germany and neighboring European countries.
Jaeden states, “This Facebook ad has helped over 10,000 people see my brother and know what he is doing before they ever meet him on the road. It’s a lot like being introduced to somebody by an acquaintance or a friend you automatically trust them more.”
The Gospel & Entrepreneurship
What is so different about this type of missionary work, is that it has an entrepreneurial flair to it.
Most people, when they think of entrepreneurship, they think of starting businesses. But, that’s not always the case.
Entrepreneurship is about innovating current processes; entrepreneurship is changing and challenging how things are being done. It’s trying to improve on what exists, only to make it better.
That’s why doing entrepreneurial missionary work is vital today. Now that missionary work is growing at a beautifully fast rate, our missionary efforts could be used on the very thing we spend our time on (maybe more than we would like to admit): Social media and Facebook.
Although Jaeden hasn’t started a business out of this, his entrepreneurial mindset has challenged the way missionary work can and will be done.
He is sharing with the world the Gospel of Jesus Christ, one Facebook ad at a time.
So, log onto Facebook and be a missionary today!