In this edition: Resources to help you raise up and equip tomorrow’s mission force. Image from At Any Cost by Faith Based Musicals.
Month: January 2019
FILM: The Least of These, the Graham Staines Story
Source: SkyPass Entertainment
In rural India in the late 1990s, journalist Manav Banerjee moves with his pregnant wife to Orissa. When speculation mounts that local Australian missionary Graham Staines is illegally proselytizing patients, Manav agrees to investigate undercover.
Coming to theaters across the US on February 1 with a special sneak peek on January 31, The Least of These tells the story of Graham Staines and aims to beautifully illustrate the power of love, hope, and forgiveness to overcome hate.
» Watch the trailer below. Learn more or find a theater.
WEBINAR: Nurturing the Missions Call
Source: Sixteen:Fifteen
Students who sense God is calling them to be missionaries may feel scared or uncertain about what to do next. Join Sixteen:Fifteen and David P. Jacob for a one-hour webinar designed to equip pastors and youth leaders to help young people keep their passion for ministry alive.
Jacob is the author of the related ebook It’s Your Call, recently published by William Carey Library. Looks like it might be a good resource to distribute broadly; take a look and let us know what you think.
The webinar will take place Wednesday, February 6, 2-3pm EST.
» Register for the webinar. You can also watch recordings of past webinars from Sixteen:Fifteen.
» See also Afterglow or Transformation? on how churches are maximizing the long-term fruit of student mission conferences (Catalyst Services).
DRAMA: At Any Cost, a Story of Obedience and Sacrifice
Source: Faith Based Musicals
What if, instead of a film or speaker at your next mission event, your church, school, or ministry presented a drama with a mission theme? Such a choice would also immerse participants in the story for weeks or months as they learned their parts and put the show together.
Faith Based Musicals has developed a simple, one-hour musical production that shares the story of Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, and three other missionaries killed in Ecuador in 1956. Based on Elizabeth Elliot’s book Through Gates of Splendor, the production includes singing, basic acting, and a combination of movie clips and still images and can be presented by any group with at least five (male) singers.
» Learn about At Any Cost. They also have a musical production based on the life of Corrie Ten Boom, inspired by the book The Hiding Place.
» See also dozens of mission-related scripts listed at the Christian resource website DramaShare and let us know if there’s one you’ve used (or created) that might interest Missions Catalyst readers.
SERVICE: Short-term Mission Solutions
Source: XPCulture
Need help organizing and equipping a short-term mission team? XP Culture has lots of content you can use along with a variety of online trip management tools to help you serve your team better and improve the impact of the trip on them and their hosts.
Some of the resources are free; any STM participant can create a free account to go through 90 minutes of video content before or after the trip. The basic level of service is US$30 a person, and for a bit more you can customize materials and create your own training courses.
XPCulture is certified as a resource provider by the Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Mission (SOE).
» Visit the XPCulture website or watch a two-minute overview video.
» Read about other tools and services designed to help you manage mission trips (ShortTermMissions.com).
EVENTS: Coming in February
Source: Missions Catalyst Events Calendar
February 1-2, Santa Barbara Mission Conference (Santa Barbara, CA, USA). An annual event.
February 1-3, Missionfest Manitoba (Winnipeg, MB, Canada). Free, annual, community-based mission festival for all ages.
February 3-8, ABIDE (Joplin, MO, USA). Re-entry debriefing for global workers from TRAIN International.
February 4 to June 9, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement (online). New classes begin throughout the year.
February 6, Nurturing the Missions Call (online). Webinar from Sixteen:Fifteen.
February 10-22, Second Language Acquisition Course (Union Mills, NC, USA). Provided by the Center for Intercultural Training.
February 11-15, Emerging Leaders: Developing Critical Skills (Orlando, FL, USA). Training event from Missio Nexus.
February 12-13, Support Raising Bootcamp (Austin, TX, USA). Provided by Support Raising Solutions. Events in various locations throughout the year.
February 14, Building Missionaries: Fostering Souls for Success on the Field (online). Webinar from Missio Nexus.
February 14 to March 14, Foundations of Media Strategy (online). Training course from Mission Media U.
February 15-16, Midwest Conference on Missionary Care (New Hope, MN, USA). An annual event.
February 18-21, Thrive Retreat (Tuscany, Italy). For North American women serving cross-culturally. Retreats in different locations each year.
February 20 to March 20, Story in Ministry (online). Mentored course by Mission Media U on applying elements of story to your outreach.
February 21, Creating an Annual Fundraising Plan (online). Webinar from Missio Nexus.
February 21-22, Standards Introductory Workshop (Clackamas, OR, USA). Training in the Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Mission.
February 22-23, Short-term Mission ConneXion (Clackamas, OR, USA). An annual event.
February 22-24, Missions Fest Alberta (Edmonton, AB, Canada). Free, annual, community-based mission festival for all ages.
February 25 to March 23, COMPASS (Palmer Lake, CO, USA). Language and culture acquisition provided by Mission Training International.
February 28 to March 2, IMPACT Gathering (Dallas, TX, USA). Annual event for those desiring CPM among UPGs of SE Asia.
» View the complete calendar, which includes some interesting listings for March, April, and beyond. Want to know more about a specific event? Contact the event organizers.
History’s Largest Human Gathering | World News Briefs
Once again it’s time for the world’s largest human gathering, the Kumbh Mela. See related story below. Image from Allahabad, 2001 (source).
KYRGYZSTAN: Project Toktogul
Source: Far East Broadcasting Company, January 3, 2019
On December 14, FEBC Kyrgyzstan received an FM frequency for the station they plan to launch in Naryn, a city in the central part of the country. Less than a week later, Janysh, director of FEBC Kyrgyzstan, abandoned his vehicle due to heavy snow and rode for four hours on horseback in -10-degree weather to the top of a mountain to visit the transmitter site and begin initial planning. The station is expected to be up and running by late spring or early summer once the snows have melted.
In a video sent from Janysh during his snowy trek, he explains how part of the first stages of planning involves determining whether FEBC should rent or build their own transmitter. As the staff continues to make plans for the new station, lots of funding and prayers are needed to help the station meets its launch-date goals.
» Read full story or jump to the Project Toktogul page and watch the 15-minute video, which I highly recommend. Maybe it really speaks to me because I am sitting in a deep freeze here in Northern New York!
» Readers might also be interested in a recent edition of the Global Missions Podcast exploring the question How Is God at Work in Central Asia?
INDIA: Hindus and the Ganges River
Source: International Mission Board, January 4, 2019
The Ganges River begins in the Himalayan mountain range in northeast India, near the border of China. It meanders southeast across the plains of northern India, delivering offshoots of its holy water via new rivers as it makes its way toward the Bay of Bengal on the coast of Bangladesh.
All along, as far back as history has recorded, people have asked more from the Ganges than fish, hydration, and a good bath. As early as one thousand years before Christ, people who would eventually be known as Hindus viewed the Ganges as a birthplace of the divine. It’s believed to be a crack in our physical world where the supernatural can slip through and immerse us mortals in its wonders.
Hindus have submitted various creation narratives about how the Ganges River came into existence. [Some] hold that the river not only sprung from a god but is itself a goddess. Rajiv Malik, a writer for Hinduism Today, summarized this view by writing, “Ganga is a living Goddess who can be felt in one’s life and can have a positive and profound impact every time one has her divine [viewing].” People with Malik’s view will refer to the river as Mother Ganga.
Despite the varied opinions, the cornerstone of most Hindu beliefs about the Ganges River is that because of its divine origin, it offers divine opportunity. For that reason, people travel for days and stay weeks along the riverbanks, hoping to siphon a bit of blessing and peace.
» Let’s pray for the up to 150 million people who will participate in this year’s Kumbh Mela pilgrimage. See Why Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj Is Festival to End All Festivals or see it in dramatic pictures (The Guardian). See also In a Muslim-Majority Country, a Hindu Goddess Lives on (National Geographic) or watch the Prayercast video on praying for Hindus.
WORLD: Five Tech Trends That Will Impact Mission
Source: International Mission Board, January 14, 2019
In 1949, Father Roberto Busa approached Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM, with a simple proposal: let’s bring words to your computer! Busa recognized God’s ultimate creativity and dominion over all creation. And he challenged Watson to take the computer beyond pure computational power and make it work with text.
Busa was motivated by a desire to digitize the works of Thomas Aquinas so they could be accessible to anyone with a computer, but the result was that digital text revolutionized communication. Busa once said, “Since man is a child of God and technology is a child of man, I think that God regards technology the way a grandfather regards his grandchild.”
I wonder what God thinks of his technological grandchildren today? Is he pleased with the way we have used our God-enabled creativity to create the tech that is impacting this world?
Let’s take a quick tour of five technology-enabled trends and explore their implications for Christian mission.
1. Uberization
2. Blockchain
3. Surveillance
4. Artificial intelligence
5. Internet of things
» Read full story and consider each trend’s implications. I learned a lot!