Recommended Viewing: Global Discipleship Webinars

Earlier this year, Discipleship Ministries hosted a series of six Global Discipleship Webinars featuring United Methodist leaders from around the world talking about ministry in their contexts. Videos from several of those webinars are available on Discipleship Ministries' website. In particular, videos from the following webinars are available:

Discipleship and Community Engagement in a Post-Christian Society with Rev. Barry Sloan

This webinar talks about Rev. Sloan's work in Germany

Discipleship Among Immigrant and Diaspora Communities with Rev. Jonavern Lungub

This webinar talks about Rev. Lungub's work with Filipino and African immigrant communities in the Gulf States of the Middle East.

Discipleship and Evangelism in a Christian-Minority Country with Rev. Lun Sophy and Rev. Andrew Lee

This webinar talks about Methodism in Cambodia, which is a fruit of joint ministry by The United Methodist Church, the Korean Methodist Church, the Methodist Church of Singapore, and the World Federation of Chinese Methodist Churches.

It is hoped that Discipleship Ministries will post the other webinar videos as well.

I found the conversation about immigrant groups in the Middle East particularly interesting, since it represents a growing area of United Methodism, but one that is beyond the experience and outside the information streams of most United Methodists in the United States.

Recommended Viewing: Fresh Expressions Webinars

Discipleship Ministries is sponsoring a year-long series of monthly webinars on Fresh Expressions, the movement to start new forms of church in new places for new people. According to the description, "Fresh Expressions UM is a distinctly Wesleyan Spirit-led movement of new Christian communities that serve the present age. We are seeking to cultivate inclusive, accessible, transformative, and connectional communities of love and grace for people currently neglected by the church."

The announcement notes, "The structure of the symposium is a series of free live-streamed events using Zoom. Each speaker will consider a core theological distinction that needs to be reappropriated to “serve the present age,” and then respond live to your questions. The recordings from these conversations will be made available with a study guide for your teams to work through together."

The webinars will occur the first Thursday of each month. The first webinar will be Nov. 3, featuring Michael Beck talking about "The new 'field preaching': Intercultural hermeneutics and dialogical preaching" and Brian Russell talking about "Idolatherapy: Reading Scripture for Deep Formation in the Love of God, Neighbor, and Self." Registration for the entire series can be found here.

Recommended Reading: Global Church Planting Report

Discipleship Ministries' Path 1 has recently released its Global Church Planting 2020 Report. The report includes data on church planting both in the United States and in the UMC central conferences, though the central conference data is incomplete due to limited reporting. While the data come from 2019, the report includes reflections on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted church planting in the last two years. The report also includes a list of definitions of various types of church plants in the United States, and the contextual nature of that list is acknowledged, which is nice to see. There is only so much a 12-page report can do, but by bringing together data from the United States, Africa, Europe, and the Philippines, by acknowledging the contextual nature of church planting strategies, and by identifying forces that cut across contexts (such as the pandemic), this report points towards an intercultural dialogue about the work of church planting that it would be helpful for the UMC to have.

Recommended Listening: African Women in Mission

Both United Methodist Women (UMW) and Discipleship Ministries have recently released interviews with African United Methodist women about their mission and ministry with other African women. Both interviews show the amazing work that United Methodist women do as part of God's mission and are well worth a listen. They show how important the principles of empowerment, listening, and "ministry with" are in African women's missiology.

As part of their Faith Talks series, UMW hosted a podcast in which Jennifer R. Farmer interviewed UMW regional missionaries Finda Quiwa of Sierra Leone and Dr. Catherine Akale of Cameroon about "International Women in Mission." The conversation focused especially on women's work in empowering other women, especially empowering younger women through education. The podcast episode runs about 48 minutes.

As part of its Global Conversations on Discipleship series, Discipleship Ministries hosted a podcast in which Mighty Rasing interviewed Rev. Betty Kazadi Musau of the North Katanga Episcopal Area in the Democratic Republic of Congo about "Women Empowerment and Discipleship in the DR Congo." This conversation also touched on women's work in empowering other women, including through education, and it explored women's work in reconciliation between Bantu and Twa/Pygmy peoples. The podcast episode runs about 24 minutes.

Recommended Listening: Global Conversations on Discipleship Podcast

Over the past two months, Might Rasing, Director of Central Conference Relationships for Discipleship Ministries, has begun a new podcast entitled "Global Conversations on Discipleship." Using Discipleship Ministries' world-wide network, Rasing interviews pastors from around the UMC connection on a wide variety of topics having to do with the contours of United Methodist life in those particular contexts. The episodes, which run from 45 minutes to an hour, provide an interesting glimpse into the life of United Methodists in various spots around the world. As of this post, there are five episodes in the series:

Discipleship and Church Life in the Time of COVID-19: Responses from Africa, Europe, and the Philippines with Rev. Alan Masima Gurupira from Zimbabwe, Rev. Ande Emmanuel from Nigeria,  Mr. Phileas Jusu from Sierra Leone, Rev. Anne Detjen from Germany, and Ms. Earlie Pasion-Bautista from the Philippines

Evangelism, Discipleship, and Publishing in Zimbabwe with Rev. Gift Kudakwashe Machinga, Pastor-in-Charge of Cranborne UMC in Zimbabwe, Chair of the Board of Discipleship in the Zimbabwe East Annual Conference, and leader of the Discipleship Resources International (DRI) - Publishing Team in the Zimbabwe Episcopal Area

Discipleship and Community Engagement in Germany with Rev. Dr. Barry Sloan, director of evangelism of the Germany Central Conference and co-founder of Inspire Chemnitz

Young People's Ministry in Sierra Leone with Senesie Timothy Aruna Rogers, a United Methodist youth leader in Sierra Leone

Ministry with Children and Parents in Denmark with Rev. Maria Thaarup from Aarhus and Rev. Anne K. Thompson from Vejle

Recommended Viewing: Evangelism Videos

Both the Methodist Church in Britain and Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church have come out with videos recently about evangelism.

The video from the Methodist Church in Britain, entitled "Stepping Out in Evangelism and Growth" is a nice, 8-minute long introduction to the MCB's approach to evangelism and the importance of evangelism in the life of the church. It comes out of a recent MCB focus on evangelism and growth.

The video series from Discipleship Ministries is part of their See All the People campaign. While there is a series of 19 videos (and counting), the two videos "What is 'See All the People'?" and
"#SEEALLTHEPEOPLE" provide the best overview of the approach to evangelism embodied in this initiative.