Photo: Craig and Cassiano (Director or SEPAL Brazil and Pres. of Evangelical Fellowship of Brazil)
May was a full month. Our OCGA Guidance Team and Hub Team met together in Brazil. We met in São Paulo for a week before some of us traveled to Natal to explore options for next year’s OCGA Global Leadership Gathering. I believe we found an excellent location, and I’m grateful for the local partners who are eager to help with hosting and planning.
During our time together in Brazil, I had the opportunity to share a report on the Collaboration Hub's work this past year. As a new team, filling a new role in the Global Alliance, we are starting to see a lot of impact. Here are a few highlights from the past year:
- We have recruited three new members to the hub team.
- We digested all of the vision renewal data from our gathering in Guatemala last year and articulated it into seven corporate outcomes for the Alliance.
- We have been working with team leaders to incorporate our new outcomes into their regional strategic ministry plans.
- We completely redesigned our annual ministry reporting tools and process for the Annual Ministry Report.
- We conducted a special research project on OCGA personnel trends around the world, identifying important information about ages, genders, ministry focus, and roles.
- We launched a brand-new “Stepping Up” process to develop future leaders for our local teams and international leadership.
- We have developed an online OCGA orientation course that can be used by all of our teams around the world to help train new missionary recruits.
- We expanded the new OCGlobalAlliance.org website.
- We are working on new partnerships between several of our Mobilization Centers.
- We were able to provide senior leadership coaching and support to several of our global leaders, at their request.
Fundraising continues to be one of my greatest challenges, both for personal support and for several important initiatives we are launching, including the development of emerging leaders from the Majority World. Many of these leaders will need financial assistance to participate, so your partnership has a very real and lasting impact in equipping, encouraging, and connecting the next generation of global ministry leaders.