Cross-cultural Mission Resources

Many of the resources on this site have particular relevance to effective communication in a cross-cultural setting. Here are a selection of pages:

MISSION
Contextualization	How to present the Gospel in terms that people understand
Locality outreach teams	Using a website to enhance effectiveness
Lack of web evangelism	Why don't mission agencies do web evangelism - usually?
Shame cultures	Reaching people in shame cultures
Other religions	What they believe, differences compared to Gospel
The Engel Scale	Plus other communication models
Communication models	Thinking God's thoughts after Him
Teaching IT and web skills	A powerful means of outreach, even church-planting
Computer tips	Particularly for missionaries
CDs videos & DVDs	Using them for evangelism in cross-cultural settings
Free evangelistic literature	Papers in 4 languages for the non-Western world
Free evangelistic literature	Papers in two dialects for the Fula/Fulani people
Take 'ex' from ex-missionary	Two women's stories - producing evangelistic literature back home
English and TEFL	Teaching English, TEFL, easy-English links and sources of literature and Bibles
Post-modernism	How it affects our presentation of the Gospel
Editing guidelines	Example of some editing guidelines used in preparation of evangelistic literature
Open letter	Letter for missionary executives on Web Evangelism
Main mission-links page	Range of cross-cultural mission links
Online evangelism	The importance of web evangelism to mission organizations
Chat Rooms	A way that missionaries - or anyone - can share the Gospel in a national chat room
Bollywood films evangelism	A major outreach opportunity to India
Felt needs	The biblical strategy that unlocks closed minds

Please link to our mission gateway page if it is appropriate to your site, or syndicate it directly into your own site with a customized introduction.

The sitemap displays every page at a glance.

Amazing example of mission networking

The Web can be used for networking in a remarkable way. Read how a web-savvy missionary used the Internet before his arrival in the host country, to make his ministry much more effective:

"Before I arrived in [Asian country] as a missionary, I went online to the city I was sent to. It is a mixed Christian-Muslim regional center in a very remote part of the country. I then read the daily paper online, emailed the mayor and local officials, joined a local discussion group, got informed and made friends. When I arrived, a number of people whom I had met online invited me out to dinner and my ministry started as soon as I arrived. I also managed to join the email group of the then Vice-President (now President) and made a few constructive comments – so when I had problems with my visa, I just sent an email and it was soon fixed! I reckon that I saved between six months to two years of ministry time by making a wide range of high-level friends before I arrived and "starting fast and well-informed". Sure, only 1% of people there were online, but that 1% were the leaders and they boosted my ministry so it became effective. Church-planters can use the Internet to network their way to success."

Mission webmaster discussion list

Our MishMash email list is available to help mission webmasters and advocacy teams.

Other mission resources

There is a vast range of mission-related websites. The problem is – finding what you need.

• OSCAR – focuses primarily on UK-related issues – but will help any mission, missionary, or mission motivator
• Strategic Network – large range of strategy/knowledge pages on mission topics
• Missiology – articles, strategy, monthly newsletter
• Evangelism Toolbox – find resources for outreach/discipleship in many different categories and languages
• Evangelistic video directory
• Mission Review – articles from publications such as EMQ
• Christian Missions – searchable resources from SIM
• The Mission Station – searchable categories
• Brigada Today – essential weekly newsletter on all things mission-related
• Mission Frontiers – mobilizers/researchers who publish Mission Frontiers magazine
• Institute for Missions and Evangelism – Abilene Christian University – many papers and links
• Missions Mobilizer – Howard Cuthbertson – professor of missions and world evangelism
• Operation World – updates and extra resources from the definitive handbook
• Church Planting Movements – the incredible free booklet from IMB
• Mission Network News – daily email mission focus – can also syndicate into your own site
• World Christians – multi-language training in mission studies
• Easy English resources – free commentary/scripture downloads for adaptation and translation in cross-cultural situations
• DramaShare – scripts for cross-cultural drama
• Mission Finder – directory of mission opportunities
• Global Mission – WEA Missions Commission including calendar, vacancies and projects
• Mission Resources on the Web – about 300 mission and secular links compiled by Jenny Collins
• Evangelical Missions Quarterly – some articles are archived
• World maps | World Embassies
• Moneybookers – cheap method of transferring funds from country to country
  

One-stop total mission resource site proposal
There are thousands of Christian mission-related websites or individual pages on specific topics. In addition there are thousands more useful secular pages relating to ethnography, culture, geography, linguistics, translation, communication, politics, medicine, health, development, software support, and much else.

Material which would once take days to track down in reference libraries is now available in a few seconds – if only you know where to look. Of course, Google has become a remarkable search tool. But there is no one-stop website where all these different pages can be brought together within in a single site. There are many excellent sites which achieve part of this function – and some are listed above. Some site have attempted to be in part an entry point for the full range of mission and secular sites.

But the task of researching and maintaining such an overall database would be too much for one person. This is why Yahoo as a directory is no longer a detailed resource for the Web – they found that a limited number of paid editors could not achieve the global coverage needed. The definitive directory now is The Open Director Project (ODP/DMoz) which provides directory listings for many other search engines as well as Google. The strength of ODP is its vast army of 7000 volunteer editors. Each looks after one or a small number of individual sections within the directory which relate to their own experience. They vet and accept new submissions, and add choices of their own where appropriate.

I would therefore like to propose a pan-mission directory website similar in style to ODP. The following observations and properties might apply:

• One technically-minding person could run it, in co-operation with a range of volunteer editors.
• Volunteer editors (accepted after a screening procedure) would only need to spend a short time each week assessing new links, or adding those they themselves found, using a password interface.
• A budget would be needed, both to support the full-time web person and pay for equipment/site charges etc.
• This implies a co-operation between several large missions who see the need for such a site and would be prepared to fund it and/or provide an office location.
• It would be important that the missions community recognised this as the definitive mission resource, rather than just another site.
• All missions should be prepared to link to the site, even if they do not usually have a policy of linking outside their own organisation.
• It could even be syndicated or co-branded directly into other mission sites.
• Like ODP or Yahoo, it would contain a hierarchical directory which people could drill down into. There would be as many main subject areas and subdivisions to as many levels as needed, with the ability to create more when needed.
• It would link to appropriate secular sites as well as Christian sites.
• It would be possible to set up a search system with e.g. Atomz.com which (for a fee) will spider through as many designated URLs as are selected. Thus a single search box on the mission-resource main page could search all pages within all sites listed in the entire directory. Users could therefore do a single global search of all sites in the directory, or alternatively browse through individual subject areas. Additionally, it would be possible to offer a separate search option which merely searched the titles of all the sites listed and/or displayed the names of individual directories within the site which related to the search word.
• One prominent category would be recruitment – with missions able to submit their 'vacancy' pages.

The site would therefore not seek to do what others are already doing, but to draw together all existing work and ministry into a single framework. No criticism is implied of the excellent resources which are already available. Please send your feedback on this proposal.

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