Take 2 minutes to click this link and read Peter Deitz’ transcript of his Australian conference presentation on what he calls action-oriented short term web volunteer opportunities. (AOSTWVOs?)

Catchy title there. I wish we would have thought of it instead of our much clunkier moniker, ‘Signature Participation Projects’, or SPPs.

(You can read more about SPPs on this post.)

Peter’s article is much catchier than his name for these kind of opportunities. In fact, his focus is on (what we would call) SPP’s  that can be done in 20 minutes or less.

These are all secular examples, of course, but quite instructive and eminently applicable.

The most intriguing one to me is an outfit called The Extraordinaries, a downloadable app for your cell phone that enables you to volunteer 20 minutes rather than whiling away the time playing Tetris. Peter leaves the link to the Extraordinaries out of his presentaton, but I’ve tracked it down and have it for you here, to save you another minute or two.

As Christians, should we be striving for SPPs that take 20 minutes or less?

By my read, most of the SPPs Jesus did (for Jesus, his SPPs were his miracles, always intended to move the participant to kingdom engagement) would have easily fit within that time limit.

My favorite 5 minute Christian SPP?

World Gospel Mission’s 30-day Concert of Prayer, in which readers of WGM’s magazine, The Call, gather groups of friends to call in on a toll-free number for a daily 5-minute prayer call each day for 30 days, with the prayer led by a missionary in each of WGM’s 30 fields and potential fields. The COP runs from mid-September through mid-October, so you can subscribe for free to The Call now and get in on the action come this fall.