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| This is one aspect of mobilisation that I've already been involved in producing. |
What's mobilisation?
Mobilizers stir other Christians to active concern for reaching the world.
Phil ParshallThis is an excellent video by OMF which explains six ways that Christians can be a part of reaching God's world, five out of the six don't require you to move countries! I recommend every Christian watch it. If you aren't a Christian I recommend watching at least the first 38 seconds, because it explains why we do what we do.
This is a good article about mobilisation at varying levels of involvement and locality. However, our mission doesn't quite agree with what he writes about missionaries and mobilisation.
Our mission expects that all missionaries on the field are also mobilisers. Admittedly we do more of that when we're assigned to our home countries (i.e. home assignment) for short periods of time, but just us being here and being supported by people in other places is an awareness raising thing, in other words, mobilisation.
Our prayer letters and other communications are mobilising others, be it for prayer, or support, or even going. This blog is part of what I do in the area of mobilisation.
So back to this table for our conference in June, I have to spend some time thinking about what we're going to with with it to help equip our 120 missionaries to be better mobilisers. We have some ideas, but I'm wondering do you have any ideas?
I can't wait to hear what your final idea is! I agree that communication in all forms from missionaries helps with mobilization, if only to help debunk people's myths about what missions is and what missionaries do and the idea that, "I could never do that."
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this would fit your setting, but it might be fun to have several writing prompts on the table (or wall) and have missionaries complete the sentence, e.g., "I thought I could never be a missionary because .... but God ..." or "Some of the ordinary things I do as a missionary are ..." or "I was mobilized by means of x, y, and z...." It might end up being something you (or someone else in your organization) can use in official mobilization materials, or it might serve its purpose as a brainstorm to help individual missionaries see more of their unique story which they can share in their own mobilization efforts.
Or decorate the table with lots of speech bubbles telling how different ones mobilize.
Exciting stuff!
Thanks J. I'll definitely blog about the end shape of this new initiative. What a great idea having people tell us what mobilised them. Someone has also suggested that we ask people to bring what mobilisation tools they've used for "show and tell".
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