Communicating Securely With and About Your Arab World Missionaries
More than you’d think I’ve received a call from our IT department, informing me that they’ve found a church’s website that is openly advertising a missionary that the church sends through AWM to the Arab world. And I’m asked to call the church and politely request that it remove or modify the webpage. That’s why we think it’s important to let churches new to AWM know what we’ve found to be best practices in communicating with missionaries to the Arab world, and publicizing them to your church.AWM’s general approach to security
AWM has a basic policy for communication security, but we largely allow missionaries to determine what security guidelines they want to use for communication. Missionaries working with AWM fall along a broad continuum of their personal concern about security. Some are deeply concerned and others feel much freer in their communication. The best rule of thumb is to talk directly with your Arab world missionaries and ask their preferences regarding security.
AWM maintains an encrypted internal email system designed primarily for communication between AWM missionaries. Email addresses that are part of this system have two domains, which we can’t publicize here for security purposes. If you want to know if your missionary’s field email address is part of the encrypted system, ask him or her. Your missionary may tell you that when you write to him at this address, you can write freely, without any security concerns.
This actually may or may not be true. All email written to these addresses is routed through Europe, at which point it becomes encrypted. However, if you send an email to such an address, its path from your computer to Europe is most likely not encrypted. For that reason it is probably wisest to write emails to your missionary as if it might be read by an unwanted party. Whenever possible, avoid using words such as church, missionary, missions, evangelism, and discussion about the conversion of Muslims.
Obviously missionaries in North America and Europe are less concerned about what you communicate in emails than those who are in the Arab world.
Reports from missionaries
Your church may request annual reports from your missionaries and/or their supervisors, and you may send them by email. Sending such reports by email faces the same security issues that were mentioned earlier. The safest way to proceed (if you’re not sure if your email is encrypted) is to send your request to us at the US office and let us send it to your missionaries through our encrypted email system.
Your church’s missions web site
We appreciate churches’ desire to foster care and prayer for their missionaries in the Arab world. However, “you need to assume that whatever you post on the internet is or will soon be known by security authorities in the Arab world,” says Greg Wright, AWM-US’ Information Technology Director. “They regularly scan web pages looking for clues about what westerners are missionaries in their country.”
As such, here are some guidelines as to what to post about missionaries in the Arab world:
Please do not:
- Use full names of missionaries
- Use city names where missionaries are located. (It's best to refer to their region--North Africa, Europe, Middle East, Arabian Peninsula)
- Refer to Arab World Ministries
You can safely:
- Use first names or pseudonyms
- Say that they are working among Muslims or among Arabs
Some churches post security-sensitive missions details on web pages that are password protected. “What concerns me about that,” says Greg, “is not knowing who gets those passwords. Most security breaches on password-protected web sites do not occur through hackers; they occur because passwords are either stolen or indiscriminately passed on to someone who is presumed a safe user.
“The best approach is to confer with your missionary before you post anything on line.”
