When we started, we were told doing a work/faith ministry couldn't be done. "No one will listen," they said.  "Even if they listen, no one will pay. You won't be able to feed your family if you do this. It just won't work."

They were wrong about the first part. Tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands are listening. Not just listening, either.  Many are writing to tell us the Holy Spirit is literally changing their life because of the work we do.

Unfortunately, increasingly, it's the second part of the predictions causing us the most concern. Our fund appeals have generated only a trickle of giving.  While the downloadable Bible studies ask users to make a per-study donation, and while there have been over 5000 copies of the studies downloaded in the past sixty days, only two groups/individuals have contributed towards those studies.

Read these words from A.W. Tozer:

"They were prophets not scribes, for the scribe tells us what he has read, and the prophet tells us what he has seen. The distinction is not an imaginary one. Between the scribe who has read and the prophet who has seen there is a difference as wide as the sea.  We are overrun today with orthodox scribes, but the prophets, where are they?  The hard voice of the scribe sounds over evangelicalism, but the Church waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the veil and has gazed with inward eye upon the wonder that is God.  And yet, thus to penetrate, to push in sensitive living experience into the holy Presence, is a privilege open to every child of God."  A.W. Tozer, The Wonder of God's Presence, from The Pursuit of God (Christian Publications: Camp Hill, PA) 56-67.

Tozer was right when he wrote these words, and he's probably still right.  We need more eyewitnesses than experts. The difference, though, in our day, is the scribes are now separated from the real world by their words, and the prophets are separated from the Word by their real worlds.

We need scribes willing to be trained as prophets; and we need prophets willing to be trained as scribes.  However, that isn't enough. Then we need both to get outside the church walls and into the culture.  Otherwise, the church becomes irrelevant and the culture increases its irreverence.

It's the final part of Tozer's quote that sticks, though.  While most workers will never be scribes, almost every worker can be a prophet, eyewitness to the love and power of God. More than eyewitnesses, though. Trailblazers. Pathfinders. Guides. Even, as God wishes, agents of change.

That's the niche Madetomatter fills.  We turn everyday workers into prophets. No, not Old Testament prophets with new visions, but 21^st century working witnesses to the mercy of Christ and the meaning of life.

In Pittsburgh, leading members of the working community sit down in Bible studies taken from Madetomatter.org. Same thing in New York City, where workers on Wall Street, the garment district and the theatre district also sit down to studies drawn from Madetomatter.org. The same thing is happening in Kenya, Singapore, Australia, China, too. In city after city, literally around the world, workers gather in conference rooms, restaurants, churches or private homes to study Biblical answers to real-world issues.  Or they use our weekly devotionals as starting points in discussions of faith, or faith and work, or even just work.

Nearly 10,000 hard copies of our Bible study series have been sold or given away; thousands more are now downloading those studies from our website. Worklife.org (previously known as His Church at Work), a ministry that helps churches train their parishioners to live and minister in the world, takes these studies into thousands of other lives.

What started as a devotional seen by 191 readers in three states now reaches thousands and thousands of readers and viewers in fifty states, and more than a hundred-fifty countries on every continent except Antarctica.  Fortune 500 firms post us on their Intranet; NASCAR companies forward us to their workers; factory workers read and here the same words CEO's do, along with professional athletes and professionals in nearly every vocation that exists.  Thousands of new people find us as the result of Randy's work as a guest devotionalist for Our Daily Bread and hundreds more with the  release of our first book by an outside publisher, Discovery House Publishers, part of RBC Ministries.  Already you can find us at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, plus nearly every outlet where books are sold.

All because over twenty years ago, God told us to get ready to do precisely what it is we're doing today.

Please, help us continue.