Partnership training for network reaching Japanese

The Reaching Japanese for Christ This Network met in late February 2008, drawing heavily from visionSynergy as it transforms itself into a well-functioning network of ministries across North America focused on evangelism among Japanese.

Attending were indigenous leaders from Japan, leaders of ministries based in the US, and others interested in evangelism aimed at the Japanese population.

visionSynergy Associate Dave Hackett gave presentations to this large conference on collaboration and on the potential to reach the Japanese through Internet and mobile evangelism.

Network growth in Muslim regions

Efforts to use the Internet for evangelism among followers of one of the world’s largest unreached religions have been rising almost unnoticed in recent years across a huge swath of ministries.

Initially, very little collaboration among these ministries was taking place until an enterprising group of internet evangelism ministries formed an alliance to bring together in a neutral atmosphere many of these practitioners.

This Muslim Internet Evangelism Alliance (which goes by a different name we won’t list here for security reasons), now in its fifth year with continuous visionSynergy counsel, is a glowing success. It has practical work groups moving forward strategic but commonly-shared concerns, such as media-to-ground follow-up and security.

Many partnerships have flowed out of the alliance-advancing the gospel in powerful ways.

Turkish Internet evangelism

An ambitious group of mission workers and nationals in Turkey has caught a vision of the potential for Internet evangelism in Turkey to reach Turks with the gospel.

The group and a foundation called on visionSynergy Associate Director Rev. Dave Hackett to facilitate the convening gathering of about 50 practitioners, which was held in Istanbul in April 2009.

Some Networks are Itching to be Born

Efforts to use the Internet for evangelism among followers of one of the world’s largest unreached religions have been rising almost unnoticed in recent years across a huge swath of ministries. Very little collaboration was taking place. An enterprising group of internet evangelism ministries convened an alliance to bring together these practitioners in a neutral atmosphere with good facilitation. That alliance, now in its fifth year, is a glowing success with practical work groups formed to move forward strategic, but commonly shared, concerns. Many partnerships have resulted – and the gospel is advanced in powerful ways.

Embrace and Extend: Far Better than Duplication

The creative team of a media outreach ministry spent considerable funds and time developing a mobile downloadable Bible in an unreached language – that is, a complete Bible that can be read on a cell phone. A strong effort… except that basic research would have shown them that working models of this had already been done by several other ministries. The gap has prompted a concerted effort for mobile evangelism ministries and agencies to be in touch with each other. A network has been formed – with a large email list group – focused on connecting practitioners in this rapidly expanding field of international digital evangelism.