What do you get when ten Christian computer geek college students get together to write code for their spring break? The answer: four apps custom designed for three ministries that didn’t have the means to write their own! (Not to mention mass consumption of Mountain Dew).

A unique ministry called LightSys invites computer science and engineer majors from Christian colleges to spend their spring breaks on a short term missions outreach to write their own code for ministries. They call these Code-A-Thons, but they’re also known as Hackathons.

I have an idea to do something similar for eDOT. To research this idea, I spent a week with a Code-A-Thon to observe and participate with my own technical skills. It felt good to put those old skills back into practice, and I believe I really helped.

Almost every day, eDOT gets requests from various ministries from across Europe that need technical solutions to their ministry problems. The demand is great, and our team is small. But what if we hosted something similar to a Code-A-Thon in Europe to help create these solutions?

My experience with LightSys was invaluable. I’m really excited about this project, and I think it will be an excellent way for the more technically minded to use their gifts for the great commission!

Click here to view my original article along with a complete review of the Code-A-Thon.