The website askGod.co.uk is looking for new volunteers. On this platform, people can post their questions about faith, God and meaning. Bob Salm, initiator of the Ask God Foundation, admits that the name sounds a bit cheeky, "but it is immediately clear what it is about. We make it very clear that the answer comes from people and is based on the Bible. It's great that people come with their questions and that in this way we get to reach non-believers with the gospel."
There are plenty of questions coming in, more than the current volunteers can answer. There is therefore an urgent need for more churches to participate with a team. "The answers must be really justifiable from the Bible, which is why we deliberately approach Bible-believing churches," Salm stresses.
The website vraagaanGod.nl has deliberately been kept as simple and neutral as possible. People can submit their question here. They can do so anonymously. Based on the IP address, we can see roughly where the questioner is located and the question is then forwarded to a church team near him or her. That way, follow-up is possible, such as a personal conversation. Therefore, it would be great if as many churches as possible across the country sign up with a team of about five people.
Sometimes pithy questions come in and that demands something of volunteers. The team coordinator therefore first goes through all the questions and distributes them among the team. This is not a lot of work, but it has to be done carefully, especially with the more difficult questions. "Teenagers can give surprisingly good answers, but of course you don't want to ask them a question about sexual abuse, for example. We want the volunteers to last a long time, so we try not to have them answer more than one question per week."
Churches interested in participating can contact the Ask God Foundation by sending an email to Bob Salm: bob@vraagaangod.nl. A personal interview will explain how it works, what is expected of a team and the costs.
Evangelising in closed countries
“Together with pastor Jan Bosch, the concept was translated into Farsi in Maastricht. There was a large group of enthusiastic Christian asylum seekers from Iran there. The intention was to limit the outreach to Maastricht, but we accidentally opened it up to the whole world. Then came wonderful enquiries from all kinds of countries where the Christian faith hardly gets any space, often from Muslims. This allows us to evangelise in countries where it is difficult to enter, in a language we don't speak ourselves. We have taught the team to safely bypass digital blockades. The privacy of questioners and volunteers is well protected, so it is a relatively safe way to share the gospel. The team from Maastricht has fanned out across the country and disbanded, but a new team will take over in Apeldoorn.
We would also very much like to start in Israel. We already have the Hebrew translation ready, now we are looking for contact with Messianic communities there. So far, unfortunately, this has not been successful.“
