IT/Missions networking groups

I've been revising the list of links on the right of my blog. One (a mission tech wiki) is defunct and I've added two more. So I thought I'd write about the two new ones and a reminder about another one.

(Global) Community of Mission Information Workers "We work with information and we want to see that information bless the world and contribute to the growth of God’s Kingdom."

itconnect.info  "has been set up to connect Christian organizations providing Information Technology (IT) support to the field. It helps these organizations in providing IT Support to field entities who have:

• Limited IT Personnel
• Limited equipment
• Limited IT Infrastructure"

oscar.org.uk "If you're involved or interested in world mission or Christian work around the world, OSCAR is your gateway to useful information, advice and resources."

Mission Information

I met someone at lunchtime today who told me about a couple of projects of interest to those involved in missions and information:

The Harvest Information System is a cooperative effort of several organizations who share a desire to facilitate the task of taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the peoples of the world. HIS assists mission sending groups in fulfilling their portion of the task, by improving the sharing of information through the standardizing of categories and codes.

It has a rather bizarrely arranged website, which for some pages requires you to download .mht files, a Microsoft archived web page format file. However anything that helps missions work together better is a good thing in my book.

The second project is Open Petra. This is a project arising out of OM's need to develop a system to manage their office information. There's an interesting history on their website including an abortive attempt to use Delphi. They've since started work on an open source solution they hope will be of use to other non-profit organisations.Something worth watching.

OSCAR's 10th birthday

I don't carry any advertising on this blog, but I am happy to promote, for free, OSCAR, with a badge on the bottom right of the page. OSCAR is "the UK information service for world mission". (It's just occurred to me that I don't know why it's called OSCAR, maybe I'll find out today.) This is a very useful website if you are a missionary or a mission agency based in the UK, packed full of all sort of information. It's their 10th birthday today and they are having a virtual party. Why not drop by and say hello!

As well as the main website they also have an interactive community hosted by ning.com: OSCARactive, with the usual social networking facilities - groups, chat etc.

A wiki of Christian networks

More of a bookmark for me, but in case it's useful for you:
A wiki of Christian networks.

Cows and Colonialism

I recently heard a paper which had been delivered previously at the Global Connections Thinking Mission Forum

Here is a summary of the paper given by Rogelio Prieto (summarised by an unknown author), along with another one given by someone else. It's a sustained metaphor on how "the British church (standing here for all Western ‘sending’ countries and their mission agencies) is a COW".

It's best to read the summary, rather than hear my summary of the summary, but here are some quotes to get you interested. (Bear in mind these are the unknown author's quotes from the original talks.)

Indeed if you are in need and as long as you look from a distance, the British church looks very cow-like – big and fat and promising, with irresistibly tender eyes.

If you’re in need and find a cow, you don’t study it...you milk it.

New mission IT blogger

Paul Shaddick, who created the ETP website, and now works for AIM International, has a blog.

The strapline is terrible - "consider IT pure joy".
via Eddie

iTIM - Information Technology in Mission

I'm on a mailing list for a group called Information Technology in Mission (maybe it should be ITiM?). It's a very quiet list, maybe because not enough people know about it. So now you do, and maybe things will liven up if you join.

tags: mission

Andrew Walls visiting

Andrew Walls, a "Historian ahead of his time", according to Christianity Today magazine, is coming to visit.

According to them, "American church historian Mark Noll says that 'no one has written with greater wisdom about what it means for the Western Christian religion to become the global Christian religion than Andrew Walls.'"

He's going to be joined by Dr Lamin Sanneh. If you're interested in missiology, then this should be really interesting.

tags: missiology
mission
Wycliffe

Oscar blogging section

Oscar, the UK information service for world mission, has started a blogging section, with a directory and the latest items from the blogs in the directory. Before they started it they invited various blogs to take part, and asked for blogging tips. I searched around and didn't find a good list, though there are certainly many out there. So I came up with my own and they ended up using my blogging tips on the site.