At the Bangalore 2009 Vision 5:9 Network Assembly, Fruitful Practice Research again reinforced our two primary roles as we serve this network:
- helping to instil habits of “reflective practice” among field workers and their agencies, and
- developing relational connectivity to encourage the exchange of knowledge.
We believe these will make all of us more effective in our common calling of establishing churches, faith communities who follow Jesus, among Muslim peoples.
The key Fruitful Practice Research resources are now available to everyone in your agency at www.fruitfulpractice.org. Contact your Vision 5:9 representative for the login credentials for your agency, or write to [email protected]. Here’s what you’ll find on the site:
- Fruitful Practices: A Descriptive List (2009). Offers short explanations of the current practices that our research has shown to be helpful in producing fruit.
- Team Assessment Tool. Seven questionnaires that focus on various aspects of a team’s ministry. Based on the Fruitful Practices List, this tool can help teams interact with fruitful practices in an insightful way. Includes simple instructions for facilitators.
- Narratives. True stories that illustrate clusters of fruitful practices among real MBB communities. Discussion guides provided.
- Training. Curricula we can provide to the training department of your agency to help your teams refect on their practices and share their knowledge, leading to fruitfulness.
- Publications. Materials published in 2008-2009 about fruitful practices, including “Seven Themes of Fruitfulness.” Soon we will include a number of podcasts on topics relating to Fruitful Practice, including our presentation at Bangalore for those who could not attend.
The Fruitful Practice Taskforce is now poised to begin a new cycle of research to identify practices that promote the emergence, vitality, and multiplication of fellowships of Jesus followers in a Muslim context. The Survey and Interview project were unveiled at the Bangalore meeting, and we gathered significant input from representatives which we will review and integrate as applicable in the next few months.
There was significant conviction and consensus at the meeting that the Survey should be translated into a few strategic languages, a view we agreed with but was currently beyond the capacity of our team. Recognizing this, representatives offered to do quality translation for the Survey into Arabic, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Tamil. We delayed the launch of both the Survey and Interview project until March 2010, allowing time for these translations to be completed.
In close cooperation with the new Mobilization and Training Task Force, led by Niyi GBade, we will distribute training resources on reflective practice and fruitful practices. These resources, described on our website, will not only train field practitioners and their overseers, but are designed to increase relational connectivity in our network. In 2010, we also hope to launch our first Vision 5:9 Community of Practice, which will focus on orality.
We greatly appreciate the involvement of Vision 5:9 representatives in many Fruitful Practice Research activities, including researchers, resource developers, writers for narratives, and lead authors for journal articles. Representatives at the Bangalore conference identified and offered the services in kind of additional staff and resources to further the work of the Fruitful Practice Research which contributes to our common calling. This is just one reflection of building relational connectivity within the Vision 5:9 network.
Thank you again for your support, encouragement, and input. May our activities together allow Muslims to experience the blessing promised to Abraham and found in Jesus.