If you’re in a part of the world that just turned the calendar from 2019-2020, it’s a good time to take a look back at the last year, take stock of what God did during that time, and look forward to the future.
Looking back at the last 12 months, God has done incredible things through the Indigitous movement, though admittedly most of what He did went unseen by me. One blog post can’t do justice to what happened over the last year, but here is a brief glimpse of some of what I was able to observe from my vantage point in Orlando, Florida.
Indigitous Events
From January 30 to March 13, for the second time we held Indigitous STEPS, a six-week virtual program designed to provide pathways and community to the digital specialist who desires to use his/her unique digital skills for God. Participants took part in the collaborative sessions, discussing topics on Slack while reading educational content and joining live webinars. If you missed Indigitous STEPS but are interested in the content, you can join the email series based on the previous year of Indigitous STEPS here.
For the fourth consecutive year, more than a thousand technologists, artists, missionaries, and creatives met for Indigitous #HACK, the largest global missional hackathon. This year, for the first time, the event was split up over several weekends, with most of the events taking place October 4-6 or October 11-13.
Indigitous #HACK 2019 saw approximately 1,100 people in 37 cities collaborate on 100 projects of missional importance. “God showed that He is still the one bringing people together to fulfill the mission,” says #HACK Iloilo city lead Jonah Jala.
December 6-8, nearly two hundred digital missionaries gathered in Nigeria for Indigitous Lagos, the first Indigitous Classic conference since Indigitous Nairobi in July 2018. Delegates from Togo, Ghana, Liberia, and throughout Nigeria joined the conference to learn about using new technology to make Jesus known in Africa. Speakers like Cederview Technologies CEO Wale Owoeye talked about the great technological achievements that Africa has to offer the rest of the world, encouraging those in attendance to lead others in the church. Attendees of the event have already gone on to hold several Indigitous meetups in their own hometowns to share the vision.
Exciting Indigitous Projects
Indigitous is a global community advancing God’s Kingdom through technology. One of the ways of doing that is by creating tools and strategies that can have a missional impact. Through #HACK, meetups, and other initiatives, the Indigitous communities worked on several exciting projects in 2019. Here are a few highlights:
Migrant X Me app: There are nearly one million migrant workers in Singapore who come on work visas. Many work in hazardous jobs where they are exploited be employers, lawyers, and others and unable to receive their legally entitled compensation for medical bills incurred from workplace injuries. The Indigitous community in Singapore created an app to simplify the claim filing process, making it easier for foreign workers to receive medical compensation.
Bible Karaoke: People can’t read the Bible if they can’t read. Participants at Indigitous #HACK Chiang Mai created a video that highlights each word of the Bible as it is spoken by the audio track. Through repetition, those who use Bible Karaoke can learn to read the Bible on their own.
No More Orphans: The Indigitous movement in Iloilo, Philippines took on the challenge of eliminating orphans from the city. At the hackathon, they created a platform that connects orphans with foster parents and adoptive parents.
GoSend: Hackers in Melbourne, Australia saw a need for more supported missionaries in order to close the missional gap, bringing the Gospel to every tongue, tribe, and nation. To help with that, the Indigitous #HACK Melbourne participants created a platform that matches donors with missionaries serving unreached areas.
Bankuet: During the hackathon in London, participants created an API-driven food bank inventory system in order to help food banks receive and manage the donations they need.
The future of Indigitous
I’m not one for making New Year’s Resolutions, but I do think it’s important to take time to look ahead to the future. Technology continues to evolve and advance at an increasingly rapid rate and the global church must do so as well in order to increase effectiveness. In 2020, Indigitous is committed to helping equip and mobilize digital missionaries and will do so through some new initiatives, one of which is the upcoming first-ever #DigitalMissions Summit. Thank you for being Indigitous and for being a part of what God is doing around the world. I look forward to seeing what God will do this year.