All good things must come to an end. That includes great things like this year’s ICCM-Europe! Thad Hoskins – AKA “Keynote” – closed the week with several good reminders:

• We should remember who we are. We’re not tech-professionals first, but instead children of the Living God.
• We have been called to the work we’re doing. Tech in missions is good, honorable, and worthy of being called a mission.
• We are needed. It is all too easy to think, “I’m just a techie. I’m not out there winning the masses to Christ. Can I really call myself a missionary?” Should the toe compare himself with the eye, or the elbow with the neck? Without tech in missions, communication breaks down between the sent and the senders, between the all the workers of the field, and between the harvester and the field itself.

He ended our time together with what almost felt like a commencement address to encourage us for the coming year:

• Be strong in the Lord. Lean into Him and depend on Him for his wisdom in every realm of life, especially the tech work we do.
• Think on the character of the Lord. (Philippians 4:8-9) Let His character inspire and influence all that we do.
• Remember you are not alone. Of course the Lord will never leave us, nor forsake us, but Thad’s point here was that we have each other. By Saturday afternoon, new relationships had been formed and the old had been rejuvenated. We’re to lean on each other as a community throughout the year.

With that we go into the next year, encouraged to be men and women together using the world’s tech for the Lord’s Eternal Kingdom.