If you were unable to attend Indigitous Bangalore, you missed seeing God do amazing things. There were 85 attendees – from college students to CEOs – from 16 cities in 6 countries. The number of delegates, however, isn’t as important as having the right people in attendance. Among those in attendance, there was a clear passion for reaching the unreached using mobile technology, which resulted in great networking, exciting projects, and creative plans for the future of digital evangelism in India. Though it’s impossible to truly capture the experience in a blog post, here is a brief recap of Indigitous Bangalore for those who were unable to attend.
The Speakers
Internationally renowned musician (and Bangalore native) Benny Prasad from Youth With a Mission began the conference with his innovative music and an impassioned testimony about how God took him from an unhealthy child who felt useless and contemplated suicide to someone who uses his art to teach people about the love of Christ. Benny called on Christians to excel at what they do so people can look to us rather than the world for inspiration.
Saturday featured a Keynote speech from Janakan, CEO of a tech company in Hong Kong. Among the many great insights that Janakan shared was the concept that Christian evangelists are all either “bubbles” or “bridges.” Most Christian evangelists live their lives inside a bubble where most of their friends are also Christian. That means they face little rejection when sharing their faith online, but it also means they have only a minor impact. Some other Christians are bridges, where many of their friends and colleagues are non-believers. These Christians face great rejection when sharing their faith but have a greater possible impact with non-believers. “The easier it is to share your faith, the smaller your impact will be,” Janakan said. Therefore, it is essential for the “bubbles” to bring more non-believers into their social circles and empower the “bridges.”
Also on Saturday there were three Live Learning sessions. Christopher Bailey, a filmmaker from Campus Crusade for Christ Australia, shared his short evangelistic film The Parting Gift and talked about how to use film to engage in Gospel presentations. Matthew Watts from Cru shared about WatchThinkChat and how to use the platform to create pathways for spiritual growth in various cultural and language contexts. Mark Raja, a Senior Visual Designer with NepApp, spoke about personas and the need to do the proper research to create representatives of the people you are trying to reach with your digital evangelism strategies. Using his marketing experience from a corporate context, Mark laid out strategy for maximizing your reach as an evangelist for Christ.
On Sunday, Sujit , delivered a Keynote speech on bringing online discipleship offline. He talked about the power of using SMS messaging and missed calls in order to reach those who don’t use smartphones or want to pay for data plans. Sujit also shared valuable insight regarding online habits of urban and rural Indians as well as how to use the OTIS (Observe, Tipping Point, Individualize, Scale) framework for your digital strategies. Throughout his presentation, Sujit repeatedly called for more in-person interaction in our discipleship, noting that you can accomplish more with a talk over a cup of coffee than with a dozen informative articles or videos.
Sunday also featured three powerful Live Learning sessions. Ben Scales, the South Asia Manager of Christian Vision, talked about YesHEis, a website and app that makes it easy to share evangelistic media online. Particularly exciting is the new Groups feature that attempts to connect those non-believers to the local church. A representative from Jesus Film Media shared about how his organization has gone from presenting the Jesus film with large projectors, with little to leave behind for the new believers, to bringing the content to people in a lasting way with apps, SD cards, and more. Six attendees under the age of 25 also shared their plans for how to reach their generation, bringing the Gospel to the youth of India.
Ken Cochrum, Vice President of Global Digital Strategies at Cru, then made an inspiring call to action using the book of Habakkuk. Ken asked the delegates to, like the prophet, be honest with the Lord about their complaints, and then to take their stand at the watchpost, and through Indigitous, to do their part to fulfill God’s prophesy that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Hab 2:14). In the end, Indigitous Bangalore wasn’t about technology at all. Indigitous is about doing only one thing: making disciples.
The Projects
Over six hours during the two days, attendees of Indigitous Bangalore worked on Create Projects. These projects were about solving real problems faced in the ministry. Attendees had an opportunity to pitch problems and ask for help solving them. Everyone then got into groups based on their interests and skills and worked on creating solutions.
Overall, attendees worked on 8 different projects, which included practical things such as creating a website to share the Gospel with Indian Muslim college students, creating short films to aid Gospel presentations, correcting a response and distribution problem that resulted in thousands of interested people being unable to receive the evangelistic material that they requested, and more.
Watch one of the short films:
The Future
Indigitous Bangalore didn’t end on February 15. Though the conference is over, the movement in India is just beginning. Delegates were encouraged to host Indigitous # events throughout India, stay connected through Meet Up groups and the Indigitous Facebook group, continue working on projects together, and do whatever else necessary to help fulfill the prophesy given to Habakkuk. Janakan Arulkumarasan also decided to invest in the youth present at the conference, announcing a grant opportunity available to those 25 years of age or younger, encouraging them to “do something awesome.” God was clearly at work during Indigitous Bangalore and we are excited to see the lasting fruits of His blessing on India.