“Let me introduce myself – my name is Andre Yee, I am founder of an initiative called Gospel Translations.   Two years ago, we launched GT with the goal of making gospel centered materials accessible to as many peoples as possible, in as many languages as possible.   The target audience we are seeking to serve?  Non-english speaking churches, missionaries and church planters.   We translate and publish these materials online for free atwww.gospeltranslations.org

Here’s a video that explains our mission and methods – http://gospeltranslations.org/wiki/Main_Page

In the 2+ years since we’ve launched, we now have almost 1800 translated resources in 42 languages and a database of over 550 translators worldwide.”

I’ve checked out the website and am pretty impressed with what I see there. Gospel Translations is using a well-formatted wiki to enable collaboration on the part of their translators. I can’t read half of what I see, but a quick Google Translation of one Spanish page looked very nice.

Here’s some of the swarmish elements of this:

Plausible Promise: to make gospel-centered books and articles freely accessible in as many languages as possible.

Roles: http://gospeltranslations.org/wiki/Volunteer:Getting_started

Free Tools: http://gospeltranslations.org/wiki/Handbook:Contents has translation tools on it.

Encouraging reuse: “In fact we encourage you to give our content away to others, too.”

Download the January 2010 Momentum PDF now.

Please feel free to share the link and the file with others.However, if you find the material of use, we would appreciate a contribution.Info…rmation can be distributed free, but it costs to gather! We need your support especially right now, as our work is significantly under supported.Your gift of $10, $100, or $1,000 or more will enable us to publishinformation, train mission leaders to form “micro-mission” teams, andrecruit mobilizers to start new mission mobilization efforts.

You can contribute online here:
http://www.strategicnetwork.org/contribute
(or you can send a gift via the postal mail address on that page.)

Post comments about this issue below.

Swarms are not very well known. Trying to understand who is “in” and who is “out” is a challenge when there are many different levels of “in.” This is one of the reasons why sharing with other organizations is important – because other orgs can be “in” while being “out”.

Swarms are about people working together, all the time, in lots of ways, editing each other, fixing each other, helping each other, encouraging each other. Swarms are not about clear boxes, cubicles, or defined job descriptions.

Swarms are cheap and unknown. They are not about credit, glory, or money. They are not about the long term, being the biggest, being the best. They are about the goal.

Swarms are not perfect. They are not precision-guided machines, well-oiled and performing the same way every time. They accept imperfection, striving to be better but accept some error-rate and increase their own resilience.

Swarms are not closed. The borders between two similar swarms with lots of friends on both sides are necessarily a little … messy. You cannot draw clear boundaries: just accept that it will be blurred.

Swarms are not strategically expanded and perfectly planted. They spread organically, strewing seeds everywhere—some of which birth and some of which die. A high loss rate is known and accepted.

First, figure out your SHAPE. I first heard the SHAPE acronym from Rick Warren’s ubiquitous Purpose Driven Life. It stands for: S)piritual giftings, H)eart/passion, A)bilities, P)ersonality, and E)xperiences. Grab a piece of paper, and make some simple lists under each category that help you figure out your SHAPE (or, read the book).

Second, read what God commands us to do for non-believers in the Bible. Read about care for widows, orphans, the oppressed, etc. Use a search engine like Biblegateway.com… or my personal favorite, Blueletterbible.org….

Third, figure out the intersection between the two. Think about one of God’s commands, and ask yourself: how can you use your SHAPE to specifically obey this command? Under what circumstances would one of your spiritual giftings, your abilities, or your personality enable you to do something God has told you to do?

Once you figure out the circumstance–go there!

In a related article, “The Muslim veil: modesty has its own style” (Christian Science Monitor, http://bit.ly/8yf2RK), Carol Huang explores the world of hijab fashions: silk print scarves, scarves from the Gap, and more. JoKima Hamidullah is a New Jersey housewife who runs an Islamic fashion blog: one of hundreds available on the Internet. (Westerners often have the image of the traditional burqa which we envision as a head-to-toe shapeless styleless black robe. Yet if you observe carefully, you’ll see that rarely are two burqas alike, and each has a definite style.)

Stylish as they may be, the veils are a growing issue. In France, the immigration minister said he wanted the wearing of Muslim veils to be grounds for denying citizenship and long-term residence (Associated Press, http://bit.ly/5FVB5E). Perhaps we need to begin by befriending people instead of shoving them away.

See also:

• Behind the veil: why Islam’s most visible symbol is spreading (Christian Science Monitor)

1.    Hunger: Approximately 850 million people go to bed hungry every night and search for creative ways to ignore their discomfort. [page 25]

2.    Child Mortality: Worldwide, eleven million children die every year before reaching their fifth birthday. That translates to thirty thousand children who die each day from hunger and preventable disease ― one child every three seconds.   [page 25]

3.    Drinking Water: Twenty percent of the world has no access to clean water. Millions more walk long distances to carry every drop of water to their homes. (Geography IQ, “Infant Mortality Rate,” www.geographyiq.com/ranking/ranking_Infant_Mortality_Rate_aall.htm (August 19, 2008). [page 25]

4.    Diarrhea: In the developing world, diarrhea wracks the thin bodies of tens of millions of children who have no access to diapers or plumbing ― and it kills between 1.6 and 2.5 million children every year. (University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, “Novel Compound May Treat Acute Diarrhea,” Science Daily, June 21, 2008, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080616170801.htm (August 19, 2008). [page 25]

5.    Health Care: More than half of all Africans do not have access to modern health facilities. The result is ten million annual deaths from the four most common preventable diseases: diarrhea, acute respiratory illness, malaria, and measles. In many cases, one simple shot could save a life. (Mark Kinver, “Water Policy ‘Fails World’s Poor,’” BBC News on the Web, March 9, 2006,http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4787758.stm (August 19, 2008). [page 26]

6.     Women’s Rights: An Afghan man was told that his sick daughter’s life could be saved if he took her across a dangerous mountain pass to medical care in a city two hours away. “No, I don’t want to do that,” he responded. “Girls are free, but donkeys cost money.” (Kirk Magelby, “MicroFranchises as a Solution to Global Poverty,” December 2005, www.microfranchises.org/file.php?id=35(August 19, 2008). [page 27]

7.    Employment: In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, only 10 percent of the entire population is formally employed. There simply are no formal employment options, no “Help Wanted” signs, and no employers who are legally mandated to provide a minimum wage and other rights. [page 27]

8.    Poverty: As of July 2007, there were approximately 6.6 billion people living on earth. Approximately four billion live on less than $4 per day, nearly all of whom live in developing countries. Their incomes are distributed in the following way:

a.    One billion live on less than $1 per day.

b.    Two billion live on $1 to $2 per day.

c.    One billion live on $2 to $4 per day. (For a more complete analysis of the breakdown of poverty and the difference between the countries moving out of poverty and those stuck in a poverty trap, we recommend The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). [page 29]

Peter Greer and Phil Smith, The Poor Will Be Glad (Joining the revolution to lift the world out of poverty), Daniel Literary Group, LLC, Nashville, 2009

Doug Nichols,
Founder & International Director Emeritus
Action International

Swarming is important to me because it is a key part of a broader process. It is an organizational structure which leaders can use to transform a community into resilience. The process is simple:

Mobilizing: we recruit missionary candidates …
Training: who are discipled, trained, prepared and equipped as …
Leaders: who operate not by ranks & rights but by responsibility & stewardship & influence …
Swarms: through visionary, community-oriented, decentralized self-organized, culturally influential, adaptive, open, multiplying groups…
Multiplying: raising up multiple generations of leaders in a multigenerational pass-on-the-baton model…
Resilience: who achieve specific goals within communities that increase their resilience and sustainability.

Note: Resilience isn’t about salvation. There are numerous spiritual worldviews and paradigms out there, of which for example Buddhism, Christianity and Islam are only three. These worldviews fight for the allegiance of communities (for a case study, see this article about how the Taliban takes over villages using a model reminiscent of the Luke 10 “Person of Peace”). More than that, communities often have a certain element of brokenness: for example, rampant disease, lack of resources, or lack of water. Salvation, from the world’s perspective, is generally just the transition of a community from a not-Christian perspective to a Christian one: this is not always viewed in a positive light by non-Christians. On the other hand, salvation from a Christian perspective is the rescue of a community, healing of its brokenness, and return of its allegiance to God. The beginning of salvation and the process of discipleship increases resilience, which is a measure of a community’s resistance to attacks which would take it away from following Christ. The process, put simply:

Evangelization: is about the proclamation and spread of the Good News so that people can understand it
Making Disciples: is enabling people to respond to the Good News, grow in their faith, and share it with others
Church Planting: is helping disciples to create locally, contextualized structures for worship and mutual encouragement & support
Church Planting Movements: are helping churches to reproduce themselves rapidly and spread into other contexts
Resilience: shoring up the community around the church, increasing its ability to sustain itself, and protecting it from attack

Resilience is a measure of the ability of a community to withstand attack and to sustain itself over time. ”Protection from attack” does not imply militancy, at least not in how I am using it (although I am sure it does take that form from time to time, but I do not want to here debate the right-ness or wrong-ness of that). However, it does mean standing up for justice, communicating news about oppression, as well as providing apologetics for communities where Christianity is being attacked, debated, slandered, etc. in the public square. “Raising sustainability” means in all spheres: food, water, business, philosophy, education, theology, government, etc. If Christianity is firm in one area but is weak in others, it can be open to attack.

Missionaries, therefore, must contribute to the Resilience of a Community. Stopping only at the salvation of a few individuals – or even the salvation or Christward movement of a community of a whole – will endanger the long-term stability of a community. A community where we are unconcerned about the long-term resilience is like the rocky soil in the parable of the Sower and the Seeds (Luke 8): when trials and tribulations come, the community will be lost.

See also: how many church members does it take to be connected to 100,000 people

Providing financial and logistical support to these faithful servants is important, but even more needed in these difficult times is an intentional and strategic ministry of encouragement, pastoral and emotional care.  Effective support in these areas can help make sure workers leave the mission field fulfilled instead of burned and empty.

Seeking to help churches, agencies and others working closely with missionaries, a local group of leaders will host Care Connexion 2010 April 16-17, 2010, at Cedar Mill Bible Church in Portland, OR.

Care Connexion will focus on equipping and networking leaders to provide relevant and effective care for missionaries.  Those attending will meet partners in the ministry of Missionary Care from churches, missions organizations, schools and Christian counseling Centers. Speakers from around the country will share strategies, resources and encouragement in efforts to meet the needs of overseas workers.

Some of the topics to be covered include, but are not limited to: building member care networks, parenting children on the mission field, healing moral failure, crisis counseling and more.  For a complete list of break-out sessions and keynotes, visit www.careconnexion.org….

Into the heart of the mafia: a journey through the Italian south, by long-time journalist David Lane.Profile (Profile Books) explores the daily accommodation to the pervasive influence of organized crime in Italy.

God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World, by the editor-in-chief of the Economist and its former Washington correspondent, looks at the growing appeal of religion in the modern world (Penguin Press).

An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Sandage examines how food has been a catalyst of social change and conflict (Walker & Company).

There is a fantastic online resource of mission photos from Africa at the Yale Divinity School via the USC Digital Library: read more about it at http://tinyurl.com/ycc7dh4.

The Zwemer Center is now offering a Master of Arts in Muslim Studies that can be taken through distance education (with half the course done in intensive one-week classes offered every summer and winter). See bit.ly/4Ru4Oc…).

Millions Fed, published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (http://bit.ly/72fEx8), tells 20 “success stories” that have helped eradicate hunger and malnutrition among the one billion people who lack food every night.

The latest issue of Encounters Ezine  (bit.ly/8JP0Zv…) focuses on how technology is used in and affects mission.

Can Islam be French? Pluralism and pragmatism in a secularist state by John Bowen (Princeton University Press) is a measured account examining whether Muslims can integrate into a secularized society. Bowen, an anthropologist, previously wrote Why the French don’t like headscarves in 2006.

WarViews is a new system for viewing and exploring GIS data on conflicts. It comes in two versions: one  run in a web browser, and one based on Google Earth: http://www.icr.ethz.ch/research/warviews.

Notable web links

“Wider and still wider” (Economist, bit.ly/5TbnFS…) documents the expansion of Paris, a World B (evangelized non-Christian) megacity.

“Some Indians find it tough to go home again” (New York Times,  http://bit.ly/4Z367m)  explores how Indians who were educated and raised abroad experience reverse culture-shock upon returning home and trying to build businesses in India.

“Would Russia really use nuclear weapons against its neighbors?” (Christian Science Monitor, http://bit.ly/8ExP0M) examines the new Russian doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear strike.

“The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery: in India, a factory model for hospitals is cutting costs and yielding profits” (Wall Street Journal, bit.ly/6GAhUf…): $2,000 on average for open-heart surgery, compared to $20,000 to $100,000 in the United States, by the doctor who served as Mother Theresa’s cardiac surgeon. This health group is pioneering “health cities” and 1,000-bed hospitals.

“Nepal: Hindus at Festival to Sacrifice 200,000 Animals, Despite Protests” (New York Times, http://bit.ly/60VfDo) offers  a little bit of culture shock.

“36 Hours in Rajasthan, India” (New York Times, http://bit.ly/6YSGQi) is  a brief glimpse into the culture and life of Rajasthan, home to three megacities: Jodhpur, Jaipur, and Udaipur.

“Eritrea: Africa’s version of North Korea” (Christian Science Monitor, http://bit.ly/6sn1pX) profiles this tiny, impoverished, distressed corner of the world.

“Missionary positions” (Economist, http://bit.ly/5SinE2) reviews the impact of Christian thinking in British politics.

“The comedy of errors that caused a wall to fall” (Christian Science Monitor, http://bit.ly/8QMmxi) is an interesting look at the unexpected series of events that brought the end to an era.

“A superpower stirs” (Wall Street Journal, http://bit.ly/4Ad6il): 600 years after bringing home its world-shaking armada, will China once again “stride the world’s stage”?

“Right to play” (World Vision, http://bit.ly/6MrFur) examines 43,000 refugees packed into a camp with an area of less than one square mile, and the workers trying to help them.

“Money matters: missions in a hard economy” (Baptist Press, http://bit.ly/73WMY4) profiles IMB families who want to go as missionaries but can’t because of lack of funding due to the economic downturn (as well as the impact of inflation on missionaries presently abroad).

• Vocations and what to do with them: how Jesuits identify and recruit: great little book that talks about a number of “tests” for potential candidates to help recruiters determine whether someone has potential as a missionary candidate. Applicable to Protestant agencies, too.
• Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves (Adam Penenberg): examines how “viral” businesses can grow massive without any significant advertising.
• Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing: How Leaders Can Overcome Costly Mistakes (Geoff Surratt): a humorously written guide to mistakes you can learn from.
• A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens): because it’s Christmas, and it’s a great book to read with your kids.
• Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands: Lessons in Non-Linear Leadership (Nancy Ortberg): a leadership book I was able to order free of Amazon (watch the “Amazon Best Deal” pages for books for $0.00), which I haven’t finished off yet.
• The Deputation Manual for Missionaries (Austin Gardner, Tony Howeth): another free book that I haven’t finished off yet.

David Dougherty (USCWM):

• The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army (David Cloud)
• The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 (Dinesh D’Souza)
• Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life (David Allen)

Malcolm Webber (LeaderSource.org…):

• Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Chris Anderson)
• Building Faith at Home: Why Faith at Home Must Be Your Church’s #1 Priority (Mark Holmen)
• Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means (Albert-Laszlo Barabasi)
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Chip Heath & Dan Heath)
• Awakening (Marie Monson): the story of revival in China
• US News & World Report: Malcolm highly recommends the subscription direct from usnews.com… which gives you a weekly download of the text-only PDF; this can easily be converted to Kindle format. It works very well and is cheaper than the Kindle subscription.

Steve Moore (The Mission Exchange):

• The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army (David Cloud)
• Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help (Edgar Schein)
• Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves (Adam Penenberg)
• Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst (Susan Scott)