As we conclude our fifth year of Completion Global in June 2023, we remain committed to innovation for the Great Commission, accelerating collaboration in three ways:
1) Raising awareness about diaspora missions opportunities without leaving home;
2) Mobilizing the under-resourced, especially those affected by incarceration;
3) Creating crowdsourcing tools to get more people involved.
Each year on our July 1 anniversary, we have selected an annual theme to guide us in setting priorities, making decisions, and avoiding distractions. Each year, we have been encouraged by the year’s theme. God has used them over and over to keep us motivated and focused.
2018: Adventure or Die!
2019: Patience and Persistence.
2020: Humility and Agility.
2021 Allies and Advocates.
2022 Strengthen the Overcomers.
Now, we turn the page into a new chapter, with the theme: Convening New Communities. Here is why this is important: When we think about “Innovation for the Great Commission” there are three components to innovation. First, you have to look at a situation and realize it’s not working well; you have to challenge the status quo; you have to disrupt existing paradigms. For example, the status quo is to send a Western missionary overseas for a lifetime of work in a remote village. While this is still needed, it is no longer the only way to do missions.
Second, after challenging the status quo, you need to create new tools by designing alternative systems and offering inventions that match the new paradigm. So we are building technologies, curriculum, and consultations to help people do missions in new ways.
Third, you need to connect people and organizations into networks so their efforts can be leveraged for maximum fruitfulness. In the past, we had focused on connecting individuals to one another, but now we want to give more attention to convening whole new communities, joining people and organizations into their own networks or coalitions. This will allow us to multiply the number of gospel workers, reach more people for Christ, in a shorter time frame. In short, we can get the job done faster and cheaper.
Please pray for several ideas we have brewing to convene new communities such as a diaspora coalition in 50 U.S. cities (like we’ve done in Houston and Dallas), international student ministry networks, and collaborations that mobilize the formerly incarcerated.
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