Mediaworks, a ministry of OM that supports OM teams and other Christian organisations in creating and distributing media effectively, started LightNet to help ministries share resources from videos to in-depth Bible study plans. LightNet is helping ministries around the globe to run their own digital media library, so more people can find the resources they need and grow in their faith.
When Simon (Germany) joined the team in 2023, he and his colleagues wanted to make the software easy to run and easy to use. “We’ve created a tool that helps ministries run their own digital media libraries,” he explained.
There are now two options available to ministries. “LightNet is available as an open-source solution (made publicly accessible for anyone to use) for ministries that have someone who’s a developer to set it up. This is what we are promoting at the moment because we want to find ministries that are not too dependent on us as a team. This is our dream, that we find lots of ministries that have a developer and can set up their own libraries, and also contribute back to the LightNet source code.
“But we realised that for lots of ministries, even having someone who’s a developer like this is a big challenge for them. They don’t have access to developers. So what we’re currently doing is building a services pipeline where we have some volunteers who are able to do the work for the ministries. We have someone managing the volunteers and they help the ministries to get the sites up and running.”
A needed resource
With resources in over 50 languages, MediaWorks has made its library of content available through the software, and the library can serve as an example for other ministries. Another site provides information and resources for Ukrainian refugees, while one of OM’s teams in Central Asia has collected hundreds of links to all types of resources in local languages.
“The hope is that through LightNet a lot of good resources can be made available so that people all around the globe can grow in their faith,” Simon said. “We get feedback from people that this is a resource that is needed. Still, the challenge right now is to make it more accessible to the non-technical people. This is what we need to work on, and this is also where we need more people to help us.”
To help expand the project, Mediaworks is looking for another software developer to join Simon. For more information on working with LightNet as a software developer, visit https://www.om.org/eng/opportunities/mediaworks-software-developer
For more information about LightNet, visit https://lightnet.community/
