As I noted in my first post in this series, one of biggest oversights in Christian missions is the lack of current event research taking place prior to missionaries moving to their locations. I’ve already covered the importance of getting to know the culture and understanding the cultural importance of food, but what about the day to day happenings and major news events in your target location? In the past, this idea would have been unthinkable; information travelled slowly and cultures were isolated pockets. If something happened on the other side of the globe it was days, weeks or even months before it was known elsewhere. Today however, technological and sociological advancements have revolutionized the flow of information. In the era of globalization and 24-hour news cycles global happening are literally a click away. For those of us preparing for missionary work, this means we don’t have a lot of excuses. With a computer and internet connectivity it is dead simple to integrate your target’s news stories into your daily routine. Read below and I’ll show you a simple way to set an automated news feed for anywhere in the world. Adding this to your preparation time will pay huge dividends for your cultural assimilation. I’ve been doing it for years and it has served me well.

1) For our purposes, we’re going to rely on a global news aggregator like Yahoo! news or Google news. All news organizations use the global news sources like Reuters, Associated Press, and Breitbart. These are the sources behind the sources but using these sites alone is too much work.

2) The next step is to narrow your news scope down to your preferred location or country. Go to Yahoo! News and type your target location in the search field as seen below. Keep in mind that news doesn’t hit the wires using one term. For my purposes, I have RSS feeds for “Portugal” and “Portuguese” which seem to grab most of the major news stories for Portugal.


3) Once you’ve pulled your desired results you’ll want to subscribe to the RSS feed (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) and add it to your favorite RSS Reader.


4) In order to subscribe to these terms you’ll need something that “collects” the RSS feeds. Some people have their RSS feeds updated in their favorite Internet browser- browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Firefox have RSS built in. Others like me use stand alone RSS clients for our subscriptions. No matter what platform, my choice for high quality RSS readers are made by a company called NewsGator. Their RSS readers are easy to install and use, well designed, and best of all free! (They’ve recently switched to an unobtrusive ad-supported model but are virus and spyware free for Windows users) NewsGator isn’t the only option out there but I’ve found them to be the best I’ve used. Click below for your particular platform. (No I’m not a paid endorser...just a satisfied user)


Following the news is another way we can get to know our target locations. This will make us better informed ministers, deepen our love for the people, and equip us in yet another way for the task of preaching the gospel. Happy reading!

Tags: Missionary Life, Missions