In this episode, Dr. Todd Johnson shared his journey from a child loving mathematics to using his gift in math to help the body of Christ better understand the trends and status of world religions, including Christianity. Growing up in Minnesota, USA, in a Christian family, Todd had the heart for evangelism since the beginning of his ministry. As he served Cambodian refugees in Thailand, he witnessed people who’ve never heard about Christianity accepting Christ and their lives being transformed, and as a result he was increasingly concerned for people who have no opportunities to hear the gospel. God used this experience as a turning point and led Todd to a different path in mission, becoming the author of the World Christian Encyclopedia, the most extensive survey of Christianity and world religions.

In addition to sharing the findings and trends in Mission and global Christianity, Todd also emphasizes the importance of diversity. As the world is getting more diverse, both in ethnicity and in religion, we now have a lot more opportunities to meet and interact with people coming from different cultural and religious backgrounds without the need to travel far, far away. This opens the door for Christians to understand different people groups and eventually share the gospel with them. We should all be encouraged by Todd’s care and concerns for people who’ve never had the opportunity to hear about Christ in their entire lifetime, and as we devote ourselves into the Great Commission, God can use the unique talents that He gives each of us to advance the gospel to more corners around the world.

About Todd Johnson and his work
Todd M. Johnson is Eva B. and Paul E. Toms Distinguished Professor of Global Christianity and co-Director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Johnson is visiting Research Fellow at Boston University’s Institute for Culture, Religion and World Affairs leading a research project on international religious demography. He is co-editor of the Atlas of Global Christianity (Edinburgh University Press) and co-author of the World Christian Encyclopedia (Edinburgh University Press, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2nd ed.) and World Christian Trends (William Carey Library). He is editor of the World Christian Database (Brill) and co-editor of the World Religion Database (Brill). He is married to Tricia and has three daughters.
https://www.amazon.com/Todd-M.-Johnso...

More about Center for the Study of Global Christianity
The Center for the Study of Global Christianity is an academic research center that monitors worldwide demographic trends in Christianity, including outreach and mission. They provide a comprehensive collection of information on the past, present, and future of Christianity in every country of the world. The data and publications help churches, mission agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to be more strategic, thoughtful, and sensitive to local contexts.
https://www.gordonconwell.edu/center-...

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“If you want to change the world, start with the university” - Martin Luther

Raised in Wales by his grandmother who is a devout Christian, Lindsay experienced first-hand the life of a believer. He himself came to know the Lord through his local youth group. He shares of his enriching cross-cultural exposures at university and then at OM Logos, a mission vessel, where he
spent 1 year in the continent of Africa. His enriching campus life prompted him to experience the
importance of student ministry, to nurture the next generation, and the significant impact of the
gospel to international students. In the pandemic-affected world, new technology arises quickly,
replacing ‘traditional’ methods of advancing the gospel. However, Lindsay warns his listeners to
stand firm on keeping personal connections with another, personal witnessing and public
proclamation is vital, in conjunction with the use of technology. This episode is sure to leave you with gems from the open and honest conversations with Lindsay and Ray.

About Lindsay Brown
Lindsay Brown is a native of Wales. He studied European history at Oxford (MA) and theology at the Free Faculty of Theology at Vaux-sur-Seine, near Paris, under Henri Blocher.

He has been involved in student ministry with IFES since 1981 and served as General Secretary from 1991-2007. He has been secunded part time to the Lausanne Movement since 2008 and spends the rest of his time running the IFES-FEUER (Fellowship of Evangelists in the Universities of Europe) network which seeks to stimulate the public communication of the gospel in universities across Europe. He is convinced of the strategic importance of student work for the continuing health and strength of the worldwide church.

Lindsay also serves as the International Director for the Lausanne Movement and is the author of ‘Shining like Stars’ – a collection of student stories from the 20th century. He also has a doctorate from the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology in Jamaica.

More about IFES
IFES shapes lives and develops student leaders all around the world. We support locally-led student movements in over 180 different countries. We are committed to seeing a student witness established in every university in the world.

Official website: https://ifesworld.org

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This episode is filled with interesting stories of Greg sharing the life of him as mission-mobilizers, where they began the journey when mobilization was not very much heard of. His love for mission resources is evident in his excitement as he speaks of the different materials available. He encourages his listeners to pray for the diasporas and the unreached daily with use of prayer guides. He invites his listeners to engage in missions as a mobilizer, or as an ‘along-sider’, through helping other people walk into their global mission. The field is ripe and ready.

About Greg Parsons
Greg and Kathleen joined the staff of the U.S. Center for World Mission (USCWM) in 1982, now called Frontier Ventures.Greg was the Director of the USCWM from 1990-2010. Now his role as Director of Global Connections takes him around the globe to meet, learn from and serve leaders. Greg also serves as the Chancellor and Associate Professor of Intercultural Studies at William Carey International University. He teaches and speaks in churches and in the course, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. He also writes a regular column in Mission Frontiers magazine, the bulletin of Frontier Ventures. He is working on several books and serves on several boards including Missio Nexus.

More about Frontier Ventures
Formerly known as the U.S. Center for World Mission founded by Dr. Ralph Winter, FV is the birth place of the Perspectives course, Global Prayer digest, Mission frontiers Magazine, and many more. In 2015 The U.S. Center for World Mission and the Frontier Mission Fellowship were joined together again as one entity, known today as Frontier Ventures.
https://www.frontierventures.org/

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Malaysia boasts of a multicultural and multi-religious society. Thus, exists churches of different cultures and languages. Having worked with the national missions movement - the Malaysian Centre for Global Missions (MCGM) for many years, Peter shares of how this platform bridges the gap amongst different mission agencies, missionaries, churches to encourage cross-cultural missions, sharing of resources, and networking. The global Pandemic has seen the birth of more virtual gatherings hence digital missions is likely to be an important tool moving forward in mobilizing missions. Peter values spending time to build relationship with people over coffee or tea. That way, working together is a lot easier!

More about Peter Shankar
Secretary General of Malaysia Centre for Global Missions (MCGM)

About MCGM https://mcgm.asia
Malaysian Centre For Global Missions (MCGM) is the umbrella body for the national missions movement in Malaysia. MCGM is a member of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) Mission Commission, and a member of ETHNE, the official network for Unreached Peoples for WEA Mission Commission.

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This episode tells of a unique way of mobilization - starting with children. Carrisa herself caught on the fire of God to missions at a young age and stood out as salt and light within her circle of friends.

Carissa continues to carry her passion into adulthood and commenced mobilizing children as a
Sunday school teacher. She currently works with Weave by CMM who provide and publish resources to encourage the concept of thinking ‘smaller’, that kids are important in the picture of mission mobilization. This begins within the family unit. As parents support their children to use their gifts to pursue their God-given dreams, they may get a paradigm shift as they find meaning and role in their part of the picture.

About Carissa Potter
Carissa is a fun-loving, world-traveling, truth-sharing, friend of Jesus. She loves to lead and teach, and never misses an opportunity to talk about the amazing story God is writing throughout all of human history. She desires to see every family find their place in God’s big story. She is the founder and the director of Weave.

About Weave ministry https://weavefamily.org
Weave is a ministry of the Center for Mission Mobilization. Together we are engaging, equipping, and connecting believers worldwide to their most strategic role in completing the Great Commission.
Weave exists to align the hearts of families with God’s global purposes by equipping them to define, embrace, and live out their unique role in advancing the Kingdom, growing to their fullest potential in Christ.

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Having experienced the peaks and valleys of being in the mission field with his family, David now
serves as the director of the Center for Missionary Mobilization and Retention in Ellendale, North Dakota. Plenty of resources are available on their website to support churches and missionaries worldwide into mobilizing and importantly supporting longevity of missionaries in the field. He dissects the often-confusing terminologies of mission, missions or being a missionary, bringing clarity based on the Word of God.

Hear of interesting discussions on how we can partner with God to mobilize people, the beauty and challenges of diversity and cross-cultural collaborations. Cancelling out the mindset of “passing the baton” in missions, David warns his listeners against complacency- Do not stop running. Let us run and learn together. Keep our eyes on the end goal: Jesus.

About David Jacob
Since 2008, David P. Jacob has been an Assemblies of God missionary to a sensitive country in Northern Asia. He currently serves as the missionary in residence and chair of the intercultural studies department at Trinity Bible College and Graduate School in Ellendale, ND. David is the author of It’s Your Call: To a Missional or Missionary Life.

More about The Center for Missionary Mobilization and Retention
https://www.missionarymobilization.org/
The Center for Missionary Mobilization and Retention aims to resource the Christian community to increase and retain the number of long-term missionaries sent around the world.
The Center was officially launched in October 2018 and aims to resource the Christian community by researching missionary mobilization and retention, publishing various articles and academic papers, and training local church leaders and missionaries on various topics impacting the missionary call and missionary care.

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Today, we dive into the vision and heart of Daniel for the West Africans to become a ‘sending’ church. Despite having a statistically high number of Christians, Ghana remains a partly unreached nation with 19 tribes still yet to know God. There is a lot of work to be done in the area of discipleship, especially amongst the youth. Daniel emphasized intentional discipleship of the youth with a shift in worldview to bring missions into different spheres of society wherever they go. He sees the need for local resources to be produced, to ‘tell their own stories’ and doing research by and with the local people. He stresses the importance of collaboration as truely “team work makes the team work”!

About Pastor Daniel Appiah
Daniel lives and serves in Accra, Ghana as the National Director for Fullstature Missions International ministering among the Konkomba. For over two decades he has been mobilizing in Ghana and West Africa. He is Training Director of the Ghana Evangelical Missions Association (GEMA). Since 2012, he has been engaged with Simply Mobilizing (Kairos) and also Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.
Pastor Daniel Hyde Appiah is also serving on the Executive Leadership team and the prayer coordinator of the GMN.

About FullStature mission international
https://www.fullstature.net/
About GEMA (Ghana Evangelical Missions Association)
https://www.gemagh.org/

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Today, we tune into an in depth discussion and reflection on the Encountering the World of Islam (EIW) course with Keith. He refers to the 3D model to Discover, Develop, Deploy when unravelling this mobilisation tool at the same time reminding the listeners to contextualise the tools to suit global needs and cultures, with the emphasis of including the non-Western world.
As a mobiliser, Keith is strongly convicted of supporting the local church with evangelism and discipleship. Rather than sending students directly to the field, Keith urges the listeners to first focus on honouring and building the students to the local church. Revival happens in the church through hardships and threats, which could be poverty, authoritarianism, wealth and/or materialism. However, threats are not obstacles to mobilisation, rather prerequisites.

About the special guest:
Keith and his wife Ethel, a university professor teaching English as a second language, have been married for over thirty years and have two daughters: Margaret and Charis. In addition, their family has often included international students hosted for up to two years at a time.

From 1993 until 2002, Keith was on staff with the U.S. Center for World Mission (now Frontier Ventures) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A focus of Keith’s ministry since 1992 has been the development of the Encountering the World of Islam (EWI) course. After September 11, 2001, EWI became his main ministry focus. In the summer of 2002, the Swartleys joined Caleb Project in Littleton, Colorado, to further develop EWI, which subsequently came under the ministry of Pioneers in 2007.

For the last twenty-six years, the EWI course has trained over 25,000 participants to express the love of Christ and to plant reproducing churches among Muslims. EWI has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish, empowering Christians to love and effectively share the hope of the gospel with Muslims in 29 countries.

https://www.encounteringislam.org/

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Stay to the course of our calling and things will be less complicated when the vision is clear. The
conversation with Ross in this episode has surely prompted a lot of self-reflection. He followed his calling, lived amongst the Chinese and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese. It is a power-packed half-hour with insights into Ross’ journey into mission-mobilization, cross-cultural concepts, the ‘three keys’ to church, and using stories to bring principles to life. The significance of working together was illustrated as putting all the puzzle pieces together to work out what God is saying to the team.

More about Our guest:
Ross and Christine Paterson have spent over 40 years of their lives on the mission field serving the Lord and His Church in China. They are currently based in Taiwan, serving as mission consultants with a global ministry. They have decades of experience in cross-cultural mission, which has fueled their passion to help others navigate cultures well and live healthily on the field.

Further info
Field Partner https://www.fieldpartner.org/
An online portal of resources for Christian missionaries working across cultures. Through FieldPartner, they join with other experienced missionaries to share decades worth of wisdom in cross-cultural mission to encourage and equip the next generation.

禾場夥伴（中文宣教培訓網站）https://fpinter.org/

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Born of a diverse, multi-ethnic nation, Nosa breaks out of cultural norms to follow the calling of God, standing firm as a woman, a leader, and a beloved daughter of God. Africa now has a large number of evangelical Christians, and this is the time for Africa to take up the baton to mobilise workers into the field.

Nosa shares of many heart-moving testimonies on committed believers who had not wavered in the face of persecutions. Our African brothers and sisters encounter various challenges when professing their faith, priming them into a nation of resilience compared with their Western counterparts.

These stories of immense bravery speak of something important – that in every circumstances, God’s grace is sufficient for us. Nosa encourages the church to walk together despite our differences in age, gender, tongue and colour, recognising that each member adds a special value to the table.

About the special guest 
Nosa Edokpolo Tukura is the Deputy International Director, Resource Development, at Missions Supporters League (MSL) based in Abuja, Nigeria.

She has been involved in children’s ministry for over 2 decades and serves as one of the Pastors at Mana Evangel Faith Assembly, Jubilee Centre in Jos. She also serves as a leader on the continental team of the Movement for African National Initiatives (MANI). She is the Executive Coordinator of the African Women in Missions Network (AWIMN) and Coordinator of the Children in Missions Network (CIMN); a member of the Facilitating Team of Ethne; WEA Mission Commission and the Global Children’s Forum (GCF). Her passion is to see women and children restored and active in God’s mission. She is married to Victor Maigida Tukura and they are blessed with children and grandchildren. She lives in the city of Jos, Nigeria.

Further reading and information:
Movement for African Initiatives (MANI) https://maniafrica.com/
MANI is an African movement, a network of networks and African National Initiatives, focused on catalyzing African National Initiatives and mobilizing the resources of the Body of Christ in Africa for the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

MANI’s stated purpose is to affirm, motivate, mobilize and network Christian leaders by inspiring them with the vision of reaching the unreached and least evangelized in Africa, and the wider world, through the communication of up to date research, reports and models; consultations and prayer efforts focusing on the unfinished task.

MOBILIZING WOMEN FOR MISSIONS (Nosa Tukura)
https://www.academia.edu/33577397/MOB...
We live in a kairos moment, a time where we have more educated, entrepreneurial and professional women than ever before. We have several young women studying in our institutions of higher learning in various fields including the hitherto designated 'male dominated fields'. Many women have proved their mettle in academia, science, medicine, engineering, arts, etc. Many have broken the proverbial 'glass ceiling' by becoming heads of institutions previously headed only by men.

AfirGo Magazine https://afrigo.org/
 AfriGO was launched in 2016. This quarterly magazine celebrates this history while encouraging the church's increasing participation in God's global mission. As the Global South provides new leadership and workers for Gospel proclamation, AfriGO is here to tell the stories, report on the developments, and share news and information to support both pastors and the mission workers they send.

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