A Resource for making Contacts

This was sent to me by missionary Ron Link. This may help with new contacts as you are setting up meetings. May God bless you greatly as you serve Him.


I have a great new tool that I wanted to tell you about, and if you think it is worthy, you can pass this along to all our missionaries on deputation.
The website is www.ifbtools.com (named for Independent, Fundamental Baptist Tools, so that should give you some confidence in the site) and it has just been put up by a missionary who was a computer programmer before the Lord called him into missions.
I suggest that everyone who uses the site should register, and you will see why shortly. Here is how it all works:
There is a button on the page listed as Find A Church. It brings up a page with two options; you can enter what information you have on a church you want to locate, such as Pastor's name, or the church name and city, or just a name and a zip code, etc, and the site will search its database to locate that particular church and provide the rest of the available information for that specific church.
The other option is at the bottom of the page, and I have found it to be very useful. You simply enter a zip code, such as for an area you already have a meeting booked, and then enter a search radius in miles (i.e. 30458,
15 miles) and it will search for all churches in the database within 15 miles (or whatever number you enter) of the zip code you entered. I have found many churches near places I have meetings booked, that were not in my ACT database.
The reason to register on this website it this: members can click on the name of the church that comes up in the search, and then edit incorrect or missing information. If you have a correct phone number, pastor's name, address, website, etc, you can update the info on that particular church.
That way, we all will have the latest and most accurate database information. You can also remove a church if you know it no longer exists.
Also, there is a button for Add A Church, which allows you to add to the database.
Coming soon is a tool similar to Google Calendar, with which you can manage your meetings online, through the website.
I use Skype for all my calling, and with Skype, all the phone numbers on the website generate a little Skype icon. I simply click on the icon and it automatically dials that church's phone number. No more misdialed calls! It is a great way to make calls.
I sent the website designer a copy of my ACT database and he found 93 contacts in my list that were not in his already, and he added them. And I have found many contacts on his site that are not in my database.
So, you can either use this website as your primary source for calling, or as a supplement to the one you already use. I think every missionary I ever heard of uses that Baptist Info website, and the ACT database we all seem to have has been passed down from missionary to missionary for a decade or more. This www.ifbtools.com website can be a great new resource if we all use it and update it with current information.