Letter from ION Executive Director - April 1, 2015
Letter from David Swarr, ION Executive Director
Since its inception God’s faithfulness has been abundantly evident as ION has grown and flourished under the excellent leadership of Avery Willis and Samuel Chiang. The foundations of the movement are well laid, the awareness and understanding of orality has increased in the Church, orality has moved to the forefront of mission discussion and practice, and has begun to influence thought leaders and institutions.
As I take up the responsibility of Executive Director I am sobered by the reminder that we are stewards in the King’s household and vineyard who will account for our management of what has been entrusted into our hands. Therefore the questions we must ask ourselves are – what is the Lord’s vision for ION in the next five to ten years? And how do we best position ourselves as a network for maximum effectiveness and fruitfulness in making disciples of oral learners?
In this new season, I am calling the network to an extended season of prayer and listening in which we ask the Lord to give us fresh vision and insight into what He wants to do with and through the network in the next few years. Between now and Pentecost you will receive communiques from the ION prayer leadership. Please join me in prayer and thoughtful listening to the Lord Jesus and to those throughout our network constituency. I will be also seek out potential stakeholders who may not yet be part of the network, but have a desire to be connected. I’d like us to focus our listening on hearing the dreams, visions and aspirations you and others have for the movement, exploring the felt needs that the network should be serving, and discovering how a broader circle of those from around the globe would like to contribute.
There are tremendous demographic shifts taking place in the Church globally. At current rates of growth it will not be long before there will be more Chinese Christians than American. By 2050 one in three Christians will be African. The fastest growing mission sending nations are in Asia and Latin America. There is a massive and as yet untapped missionary workforce in the global southeast to be mobilized and equipped to reach oral learners. I would like to see the network extended to a broader base internationally with much greater participation and influence from the Church in the majority world. Making disciples of all oral learners will require a synergy between the west and the global southeast that maximizes the strengths of each.
As we look to the future, the potential of the orality movement lies within the next generation. These young people contain a plethora of creativity which can be channeled into great effectiveness in all the disciplines of orality thereby strengthening our collective influence and impact in every sphere of society. We must focus on enabling engagement from a younger demographic so that the ION workforce of the future is fueled anew by the 20 to 40 year olds, supplemented by the contributions of those both older and younger.
Kingdom movements are fostered by prayer and the flow of information. I hope to see ION better connected with all forms of media outlets so that the stories from around the world and wealth of knowledge bubbling up globally can be more rapidly and broadly disseminated. We need to prayerfully and strategically consider how the network can see this facilitated.
We all know that obedience to the Word of God is the essence of discipleship and key to life transformation. As followers of Christ and ION stewards we are entrusted with a responsibility to maintain the centrality of the Word of God in all we do as we focus on making disciples of oral learners. Whether in our training, theological education, leadership development, social action, or any of the other domains of life in which the disciplines of orality are exercised, we must make the Word of God the foundation and core of our orality practices.
Now as we look ahead in this Easter season leading up to Pentecost when God’s Word was proclaimed in the heart language of all who heard, let us celebrate what the Lord has accomplished in past years and look expectantly at what He will yet do through ION. Join me in prayer that the network can serve the Church with increasing effectiveness, fostering and encouraging a global orality movement to disciple all oral learners.
ION Pentecost Prayer Initiative
ION Pentecost Prayer Initiative
50 days... Easter to Pentecost 7 weeks / 7 topics
Lord, Teach Us To Pray -- Lord, Teach Us To Finish Well:
Celebrating the Resurrection & Looking to the Spirit of Pentecost
Week 1 (April 5-11) -- Listening Afresh -- Asking the Lord to give us fresh vision and insight into what He wants to do with and through the network in the next few years.
- To listen afresh alludes that we are in the habit of listening. Are you in need of a fresh ability to listen? Looking back at the background for Pentecost: After the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples remained for 40 days, instructing, encouraging and waiting as instructed to be witnesses throughout the world (Acts 1:3,1:8). Afterwards, he ascended into heaven and about 120 of his followers remained in Jerusalem in anticipation, praying and encouraging each other (Acts 1:4, 1:8).
As we begin our 50 day journey to Pentecost... Pentecost, falls on the Sunday 50 days after Passover, or after our Lord’s crucifixion. This year it will be on May 24th. Pentecost is not the coming of the Holy Spirit for the Holy Spirit made His first appearance in Genesis 1:2. Pentecost is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on human flesh to give birth to the Church. Pentecost – marks the Holy Spirit descending for the empowerment of Jesus’ followers – is the birthday of the Christian Church
(Acts 2).
The 120 who were assembled to wait did not know what to expect. How could they? Pentecost was nothing like anything that had ever happened before that time. Nothing could have prepared them for what was to come. They knew His Story, they waited together. In that 50 days they found themselves at a different place. Moving from being a frightened, rag-tag group of men and women, to being a group focused in their purpose, in prayer and having expectant hearts. Some had lived with the Lord and some had simply heard the amazing witness accounts of His life and His resurrection. They all believed, and were waiting obediently. On the eve of Pentecost they were filled with expectation, no one was thinking this was the birthing of the Church and the true Global Positioning for the body of Christ that would set the pace into the future of going after the Harvest.
In the early days of the Church their GPS coordinates were quite different than what we find today. The shifting and movement of the Church has set the pace and will continue to set the pace, for the body of Christ. What is our global positioning for ION?
We are asking everyone to LISTEN AFRESH -- Let us pray: Lord to give us fresh vision and insight into what He wants to do with and through the network in the next few years. As in Acts 1:8, may we be aware and receive the power of the Holy Spirit to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Lord unfold to us individually and as a corporate group our global positioning as the International Orality Network #makingdisciples. In Jesus name. Amen
[*Please note: This information for the 7 week Pentecost Prayer Initiative will be posted in the ION Blog section of the ION website http://orality.net/blog]