An Introduction
Greetings from the heartland! Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m A. Jay, the newest member of the MMM team.
I live in the middle of Iowa with my wife and our young daughter, where I’m a network administrator for a local ISP. I also do a little web work here and there. I’ve been working in IT since 1992 when and have had many and various opportunities. I’ve supported mainframes in one of the larges data centers in the country, installed networks, managed classroom PC’s in Hawaii’s largest computer training facility, was a field engineer repairing PC’s wherever they broke, worked in a very large international relief ministry, and installed laboratory computer systems in hospitals all over the country.
July 13, 1996 when I was visiting my brother in Hawaii, at a Saturday evening service at Calvary Chapel, Honolulu, I ask Jesus Christ to come into my life, to be my Lord and Savior, and forgive me for my sins. I accepted what He did for me in dying on the cross to take away the penalty for my sins by faith, understanding for the first time that there was nothing I could do, in and of myself to “earn” my way to heaven. I recognized the state of my soul as wretched and hell bound and trusted Jesus Christ to save me from eternal separation from God in hell. To say that was a life changing experience would be an understatement.
The churches and ministries I’ve been involved with have been almost as diverse as the jobs I’ve had in the computer industry and have run the gamut from extremely liberal to hyper-conservative but I’m grateful to God for all the experiences both computer and church related that I’ve had and for all the things that He’s shown me along the way, and for all that I continue to find out about technology and the Bible as I grown in the knowledge and love of Him.
For the past several years, I’ve enjoyed hand held computers as well, and I’m fascinated by the technologies we have today that allow people to go around the world from their keyboard and have broader reaching ministries that they’ve ever had before. It’s uses can be as diverse as the jobs I’ve had in IT, or as the churches I’ve been involved in, and it can be as sinister as anything that’s ever been, or it can be a tool that helps to shine the glorious light of the Gospel into a lost and dying world.
Somewhere in between my love for my Savior and my fascination with technology (or maybe it was just a broken Palm Pilot…) I stumbled across Mobile Ministry Magazine and formed a fast friendship with Antoine Wright whose brainchild this ministry has been.
I’ve never actually met Antoine (when my young daughter was learning to say his name, it sounded like Ant One, which made me mindful of the passage in Proverbs 30:25 where it says “The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their food in the summer.”) but the things we have in common made it easy for us to get to know each other, electronically and across the miles, the knowledge he’s accumulated, and his heart for people, his desire to minister with the gifts he’s been given like it says in 1 Peter 4:10 are all part of the reason I was flattered to be asked, and I’m blessed to accept the invitation he so graciously extended to be a part of the MMM Team.
My prayer is that in some way, I’ll have something to share that will either encourage someone or answer a question for them, or help them consider a technology or a passage of Scripture in a way they hadn’t before. If that’s the case, the blessing will be all mine.
Grace and peace,
A. Jay
I live in the middle of Iowa with my wife and our young daughter, where I’m a network administrator for a local ISP. I also do a little web work here and there. I’ve been working in IT since 1992 when and have had many and various opportunities. I’ve supported mainframes in one of the larges data centers in the country, installed networks, managed classroom PC’s in Hawaii’s largest computer training facility, was a field engineer repairing PC’s wherever they broke, worked in a very large international relief ministry, and installed laboratory computer systems in hospitals all over the country.
July 13, 1996 when I was visiting my brother in Hawaii, at a Saturday evening service at Calvary Chapel, Honolulu, I ask Jesus Christ to come into my life, to be my Lord and Savior, and forgive me for my sins. I accepted what He did for me in dying on the cross to take away the penalty for my sins by faith, understanding for the first time that there was nothing I could do, in and of myself to “earn” my way to heaven. I recognized the state of my soul as wretched and hell bound and trusted Jesus Christ to save me from eternal separation from God in hell. To say that was a life changing experience would be an understatement.
The churches and ministries I’ve been involved with have been almost as diverse as the jobs I’ve had in the computer industry and have run the gamut from extremely liberal to hyper-conservative but I’m grateful to God for all the experiences both computer and church related that I’ve had and for all the things that He’s shown me along the way, and for all that I continue to find out about technology and the Bible as I grown in the knowledge and love of Him.
For the past several years, I’ve enjoyed hand held computers as well, and I’m fascinated by the technologies we have today that allow people to go around the world from their keyboard and have broader reaching ministries that they’ve ever had before. It’s uses can be as diverse as the jobs I’ve had in IT, or as the churches I’ve been involved in, and it can be as sinister as anything that’s ever been, or it can be a tool that helps to shine the glorious light of the Gospel into a lost and dying world.
Somewhere in between my love for my Savior and my fascination with technology (or maybe it was just a broken Palm Pilot…) I stumbled across Mobile Ministry Magazine and formed a fast friendship with Antoine Wright whose brainchild this ministry has been.
I’ve never actually met Antoine (when my young daughter was learning to say his name, it sounded like Ant One, which made me mindful of the passage in Proverbs 30:25 where it says “The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their food in the summer.”) but the things we have in common made it easy for us to get to know each other, electronically and across the miles, the knowledge he’s accumulated, and his heart for people, his desire to minister with the gifts he’s been given like it says in 1 Peter 4:10 are all part of the reason I was flattered to be asked, and I’m blessed to accept the invitation he so graciously extended to be a part of the MMM Team.
My prayer is that in some way, I’ll have something to share that will either encourage someone or answer a question for them, or help them consider a technology or a passage of Scripture in a way they hadn’t before. If that’s the case, the blessing will be all mine.
Grace and peace,
A. Jay
posted by A. Jay Sutton @ 2/22/2006 03:25:00 PM
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