Odyssey, Webster's unabridged dictionary defines this word as meaning a long wandering and eventful journey. What would an odyssey be though if it did not include those spiritual lessons intrinsic to the nature of man, or more importantly, the journey of the soul in relation to God? So what does odyssey have to do with Christian Explorer Ministries? First and foremost, Christian Explorer Ministries is an odyssey in the making. Scripture says, "…many are called, few are chosen…", and here at Christian Explorer Ministries, we feel that we have been called to an exciting, challenging, and rewarding mission of service to the King of Kings.

With today's technology and a true desire to serve the Lord, we feel that a mission of inspiration and fellowship coupled with works of charity and mercy is the calling the Lord has for us. Framed in an exciting and adventurous atmosphere, we hope to show that service to the Lord can be truly fulfilling and energizing while appealing to young and old alike. How do we plan on doing this? Great question! What we are planning on doing is taking the talents the Lord has given us and applying them to His service by building a web site that will be constantly updated and allow for real-time, live interaction between the Internet and a mobile element of the ministry called, "the Odyssey".

The Odyssey will be traveling across our great nation visiting with clergy and congregations, fellowshipping and sharing with churches ranging from the largest to the smallest. With permission, we will be recording some of the sermons, praise, and fellowship of these churches and sharing them through the Internet with any and all who may be interested. We also hope to foster communications between different churches and denominations through Internet discussions, questions and answer sessions, and by going on "assignments" posed to us from members of the community, through the Internet. During this journey, we will also be seeking and exploring for people who have interesting, enlightening, and encouraging stories of the works of The Holy Spirit in their lives.

Another portion of the ministry will be acts of mercy, charity, and kindness. We plan to deliver the Lord's good word by assisting and serving those whom we encounter who are in need, whether it is an individual or an organization. We feel that it will not be unusual in our travels to encounter people in desperate need, spiritually, emotionally, and materially. As a servant of the Lord, we will be seeking opportunities to assist in every manner the Lord enables us to. From stopping to help a motorist who has broken down along the side of the road to assisting to build a new roof for a family recovering from a storm, there is much to be done in His service. Our service to individuals and to the community is something we want to be very mindful of. Scripture tells us that service should be performed so that it is not made public and exploited for ulterior motives. Our ministry is a ministry of service, yet the message is a message of great joy, faith, and a real relationship with the Lord. We will always strive hard to maintain the highest standards in balancing the spirit and intent of the Scripture, as well as the words, by sharing only those encounters that are inspirational.

It is going to take us some real steps to achieve the goal of this project. First, we have to incorporate the ministry and get licensed as a nonprofit organization for tax-exempt status. We also feel that establishing these very basic credentials are necessary in building the acknowledged legitimacy that we are striving for. We are planning on funding this project through philanthropic donations from people like you and from any other source, whether by government grant or by grants from private foundations. To start out with, we feel that it will be through primarily public donations that the project will be capitalized and funded. Most foundations that provide grants prefer doing so to established organizations. It makes perfect sense and is safer and less risky for them to support organizations with a long record of excellent service. Since our ministry is so early in its foundation stages, we have a lot to prove. Unfortunately it is going to take us being funded some how to establish ourselves before we can show that this project is so much more than just good intent. That is why we are putting everything we have on the line and hoping that a few others, after prayer and thought, also see the potential for the project and support it by assisting with funding.

So what is it going to cost? We want to do this with a minimal amount of monthly expenses as we already know that it will cost us to maintain the networking technology, fuel, insurance and the basics of living for at least two people on the road. Just these alone will give us a monthly operating expense of nearly three thousand dollars. We want to have the truck and the communications equipment completely paid for and right now it is looking like the cost of that will be nearly ($80,000) eighty thousand dollars. So to get the ministry from the current, conceptual stage to operation, we'd like to have enough funding to pay for the equipment and the operating costs for one year. We are hoping to exceed that funding however and be able to utilize any funds in excess of our operational expenses in the mission of charity and mercy.

Our ministry is very small, consisting of only three people at this point in time, but we believe the Lord will provide for this mission. We could use your help though. For us to achieve 501 (c) (3) status we have to incorporate the ministry, file all the proper paperwork to the Internal Revenue Service, establish a tiny office which can house our network and business offices, build the network that our web site will work through, and employ at least one, if not two highly skilled programmers to help us provide a whole new level of experience through the Internet project. All of this requires the proper funding to achieve. The licensing fees, lawyer expenses, and other related fees can cost nearly ($3000.00) three thousand dollars, however we are hoping to reduce as much cost as possible by doing the maximum amount of work on this prior to needing a lawyer to read through everything and make changes and suggestions as needed. The licensing fee for incorporation is rather inexpensive, however the application fee to the IRS for nonprofit status is ($500.00) five hundred dollars itself.

We are hoping though that due to the way this ministry is designed, we will not need much of an office space or maintain a high overhead on the administrative side. Ultimately we feel that we will be able to put far more asset towards our mission than towards maintaining our mission. Sadly, most charitable organizations spend far more money maintaining their missions than on their missions itself.

We are currently working on getting the funding through personal resources to incorporate the ministry and to achieve 501 (c) (3) recognition. Once we accomplish this, we hope to be able to interest enough people in the project to fund the first year of operations fully before we even complete the necessary construction and modifications to the Odyssey and officially launch the mobile element of the ministry.

There are currently an estimated 288, 368, 698 people in the United States, based on US Census Bureau information. If we can get less than 2/10ths of one percent of this many people to have enough interest in our mission to even support it for a dollar, we'll be launched and on our way to fulfilling this calling in no time flat. We cite such a large number of people simply because we intend for the ministry to be a national one and we feel that if enough people knew what we were attempting, we'd have little to no problem meeting our funding needs, quite probably exceeding them multifold. Here is where we could really use your help. Tell everyone that you know about this project and show them the site. The more people that know about it, the better off we'll be. Once we achieve 501 (c) (3) status we will start to seriously attempt to raise the funds to get the project off the ground.

Remember, this is an interactive project and we really want you involved. We would love to start collecting invitations to churches who would like us to visit and get your input and ideas as well. Once we have the proper funding for the technology side of the ministry, we'll be offering a much more dynamic service through our Internet site, enabling for an even closer relation between our supporters and ourselves. Please, lift us up in your prayers as we proceed on this project and get involved. We know we're going to be successful with this; we'd love for you to join us as we build something new and very special.