We have been on quite a ride this past month exploring the digital territory. Today we want to take you on a journey to meet with some of our friends around the world, with whom we have been partnering closely.
Partnerships are very powerful and beautiful. But they are not easy and it requires willingness, teachability, humbleness, and commitment on each party to make it work. It starts from a bigger vision than yourself and an awareness that you are better together. In his book “Never Alone”, Dr.Bekele Shanko makes an important note that every one of us is in a daily partnership with others, even if we don’t realize it. I loved for example an exercise he gave to a group of leaders when teaching on the partnership: make breakfast from scratch, using only products they themselves have produced without the help of any outside agent.
Who of us, even being farmers, would be able to prepare something from scratch with things that we made only by ourselves? A farmer depends on God to send the rain and create the necessary climate for his harvest to grow, not to speak about using the soil that he did not create.
Today let us introduce you to some of our partners that are more than that. We call them friends on mission.
NextStep
Next week will be a year since we started meeting with Aaron Thompson head of the Jesus Film overall Production team and Sway Ciaramello, the product manager. The first meeting was like “Come and see” on both parts. We shared what each one was doing in the digital field and see how we as digital GCM and Jesus Film could partner and combine our efforts. Later on, Aaron introduced us to Boshra Shohdy, their Lead Strategy for Namestan and Europe, and later on to Melissa, David, Raile, Vlad.
I feel at home with this Jesus Film Production team and I have come to love our Wednesday meetings. We all have witnessed that there is a great spiritual interest online.
What is the purpose of this partnership?
The purpose is to serve well our staff and volunteers focused on engaging people online and launching faith communities in different digital networks.
We are bringing to this meeting the voice of the field practitioners we connect every week with and they are helping create an innovative platform to meet the needs that lead toward the new communities.
The new product which is part of a multifaced strategy called NextSteps will be launched in a few months. Jesus Film youtube channel and their website see every month hundred and thousands of plays and reads on their videos and pages, in countries and languages, consider unreached and many unengaged. What would it look like if we could filter these visitors according to their spiritual interest, organize them into groups, then connect those seekers with you and your church? You then take those groups, share the gospel, and disciple those who respond.
When I think of this partnership with this group from JF, I feel like we are in a design atelier with passionate and gifted friends who see and evaluate the product from different angles. It is a learning experience as we listen to each other thoughts, ideas, progress. We speak openly as we know we are together for a higher goal than to please each other.
We are focused and want to come up with an effective tool. I love the flexibility and teachability to bend and adjust for the common goal.
As we have seen some of the initial mock-ups of NextSteps, we are excited. It is going to be a powerful tool that will help our staff to remain engaged with people from social media, lead them into a journey of next steps till they find and meet Jesus and connect with other believers forming new communities.
Burundi
From all the previous digital partnerships around the world, we have not seen more spiritual hunger and openness than in Burundi. Yesterday I shared this with Burundi’s national team leader. He is fully committed to taking advantage of these open doors and has been supporting all the strategies in the country to make the most of the open doors in the digital networks.
In another meeting, while talking about metrics with a professional marketer, hearing on the statistics about Burundi, his jaw dropped. We do not know how long this door will be open but we want to make the most of it. Thus, we have been working closely with Emile – the national DS leader as he is serving the different strategies in the country. We share the same vision to see beyond exposures, which can get easily get, to see online faith communities. Yesterday together with Emile we launched another national campaign to identify the key volunteers for SLM. It has been only 24 hours since we started, but I can see people positively responding to the call to be key volunteers. Pray for them as they establish digital communities in every University in the country.
We would like to close with a quote from Dr.Bekele Shanko, in Never Alone, a book which we highly recommend to read if you would like to grow in partnering effectively with others and generating resources. You can find the book here
“Without partnership, life itself is impossible. We exist because of others. I have never
been alone, nor will I ever be. Nor will you”.
