Just in case you missed some of our more interesting, exciting or just plain helpful blogs, here’s a review of some of Syzygy’s epic blog moments of 2011.

We introduced the new Syzygy corporate identity as the fifth emergency service, and launched the Syzygy Prayer Network.  We were given two new cars for our popular car loan service.  We started a new Devotional feature which included thoughts on God’s provision for our financial support, our motivation for loving, the power of the timid prayer, and the significance of Harvest Festival.

Our For Your Information feature covered such diverse topics as the Arab Spring (and the lack of a Bamboo Spring), the Eurozone crisis, the implications of Islamic Democracy, the legal situation of UK Christians and why London’s Burning.

Our Featured Missions included ICF, Project Gateway, Urban Neighbours of Hope and OscarActive and our Guest Bloggers talked about How To Write a Good Newsletter, the challenge of being counter-cultural, whether ‘failure’ at short-term mission is necessarily a bad thing, and the impact of change on a TCK.

We reviewed Rob Bell’s controversial new book, considered the state of church planting in Europe, and reflected on the heritage of non-conformism.  We thought about the reason for doing short-term mission and gave quite a bit of space to dealing with stress, in particular thinking about tools for self-analysis, how we can say ‘no’ more often, and ‘unpacking‘ our experiences.

Tech notes introduced us to new technologies such as Google+ and Dropbox, explained why we need to be using social media, and helped us clean out our computer and develop strong passwords – which gave rise to my favourite quote of the year: Treat your password like your toothbrush!

We hope you have enjoyed the experience of reading our blogs.  If you have, please recommend this site to your friends, so that more people can find out about the valuable ministry Syzygy exercises in supporting mission workers worldwide!

With every blessing for fruitful ministry in the New Year,

Tim Herbert

Director of Operations

(with respectful acknowledgements to the AA)

Earlier this year I was at a conference where the speaker tried an icebreaker.  ‘If your organisation were an animal’, he asked, ‘what would sort of animal would it be?’ Everyone around my table was studiously avoiding eye contact, trying hard not to go first.  I was muttering to myself ‘I hate things like this.  I’m just not creative enough for this’ when he asked his second icebreaker: ‘If your organisation were a car, what sort of car would it be?’

And it instantly hit me – Syzygy is an AA van*.  We help broken down mission workers.  We fix the problem.  We get you where you’re going.  And though you might only see one person when you deal with Syzygy, there’s a whole team of experts behind him.

Within a matter of minutes I had refined this image further, to detail the types of services we provide:

Roadside assistance: We’re there for you when you break down.  Advice on stress, debriefing, mentoring and hospitality can help get you back on the road.

Relay: Wherever you’re going, we’ll help get you there!  We provide practical  support, from lending you a car to advice on preparing for re-entry, with online guides to missions on our website.

Homestart: When things start going wrong in the field, we can help by providing pastoral visits, problem solving, crisis management and relief staffing.

As a result of that revelation, we are changing our image.  We think that this imagery fully encapsulates our ethos of help, support and practical problem solving.  In future we’ll be using a photo of a flashing orange light as our logo, and we’ve adopted a new tagline:

THE SUPPORT SERVICE FOR MISSION WORKERS

I did think that ‘rescue service’ or ‘emergency service’ sounded more punchy, but on reflection we decided that this doesn’t accurately reflect the fact that much of what we do is not done in a crisis, but is about preventing a crisis happening.

A new image, but the same service – striving to keep mission workers in good physical, emotional and spiritual condition so that they are able to at carrying out their God-given mandate.  Our new flyer is out this week.  Click on the image to the left to read it.  If you’d like some copies to display at church or in your workplace, please email tim@syzygy.org.uk

*Other breakdown services are available.  Actually I should have chosen RAC because at least they’re orange like Syzygy.

Syzygy is very happy to announce the arrival of a second loan car available to mission workers on HA in Britain.  Thanks to the generosity of one of our friends we’ve been given a Ford Fiesta, an ideal complement to the Toyota Estima we were also given a couple of years ago.

Between them, these vehicles will now be able to help meet the transport needs of single mission workers and couples as well as the large families which we have helped in the past.  We’re very grateful for the donations that make this ministry possible, though insuring and servicing two vehicles will stretch Syzygy’s finances, so we’d really appreciate donations to help us with this expense.  One recent beneficiary of this service commented:

“Sorting a car is probably the biggest worry and hassle of HA.  I can’t express what a blessing this is.”

For more information on the Syzygy cars, click here.

My host for my week-long trip to Ndola was my good friend Lene Pedersen, who many will know following her speaking tour in Britain last year, and it was great to spend time with her, get to know her fiancé Dale, and help them prepare for their wedding next month.  Lene continues to be one of the three directors at Lifeline in Zambia – a ministry which we featured last August which provides home-based care and support for people suffering from AIDS/HIV.  LiZ continues to develop and it was an encouragement to visit premises which I had not been to before and see how well suited they are to managing the work and training the volunteers.  There is also a commitment to take on more highly qualified staff which is already having benefits for the work.

I returned for the first time in seven years to Kaniki Bible College, which trains church leaders for the Apostolic Church in Zambia.  There has been a lot of staff turnover since then, and only the Zambian workers whom I knew remain there.  All the overseas staff have changed, and the college is led by a new Zambian Principal supported by two other African faculty members.  There are currently 55 students and there is also a new BA course.  There are plans to build a new classroom block to meet the increased number of students.

Also on the Kaniki campus is African Quest, a missions training and discipleship programme for young people with which I have been involved since its beginning 15 years ago.  Many fine young people have been through this programme and gone on to be involved in missions in a variety of ways, and AQ is currently led by two of its former students, Tim & Gemma Mills.  This six month gap course is currently recruiting for next year and I will feature it in more detail later this summer.

I also spent some time with the new leaders of School Mission for Christ International This fantastic ministry employs Zambian pastors to go into schools and preach the gospel.  Thousands of students have met Jesus in this way, and teachers testify to the return of stolen property, decline in the use of drugs, and falling pregnancy rates as a result.  This powerful witness leads many teachers also to give their lives to Christ.  SMFCI is looking to expand both within Zambia and to neighbouring countries.

Near to Kaniki is Jabulani Children’s Village, where Tom & Ruth Dufke took over an abandoned farm 13 years ago with a view to developing a home for needy children.  There are currently 18 children living at the site, in small, ‘family’-type cottages.  With a view to maintaining financial independence, the village is partly funded by a huge sawmill operation, which now employs 65 local people, thereby keeping them out of poverty and providing food and education for their children.  There are also training facilities for the community on site, such as a sewing college, and there is a clinic to meet the needs of the local community.

While visiting these various ministries and catching up with old friends, I was able to spend a lot of time encouraging mission workers, helping them understand the causes of stress in their lives, and planning how Syzygy can help to support them.  Like many overseas mission workers, they have a number of challenges to face, and it was a joy to be able to help them find ways of dealing with them.

Building the church?

Last month (see ‘Researching Mission in Europe’) we told you about the Report on Missional Church Planting in Europe which Syzygy is producing for Eurochurch.net, and today Syzygy is  proud to release the Interim report.

Nearly 400 people involved in church planting, leading mission agencies, churches and  networks, and working academically in universities and bible colleges have participated in our research.  They work in 35 European countries and represent all the major churches, and are ministering in a wide variety of contexts both within their home cultures and as cross-cultural mission workers.  It is believed that this is the largest study of its type carried out in Europe, and we hope it will be highly influential in linking together and supporting church planting individuals and networks.  One notable academic commented that we have succeeded in identifying and involving all the key church planting individuals in his country.

The report contains overviews of the missional environment in each country covered by our research, and a directory of the 318 participating individuals working in those countries who did not ask us to keep their details confidential for reasons of confidentiality and security.  It brings together practical church planters and academic missiologists and will hopefully stimulate discussion and help people working in different roles to network together more effectively and further develop church planting activity throughout the continent.

The overall impression gained is of an immense variety of activities being carried out by a large number of denominations and networks, who do not always seem to be linking together and networking effectively.  One story that emerged in the process of gathering information concerned some church planters who felt called to go to a particular city to prayer walk, and did it for a month before bumping into people from a different organisation doing exactly the same thing.  We hope that our work will be able to reduce such instances of duplication and promote co-operation.

97 of the respondents to our survey are working in the UK, which is understandable since the existing networks we used to start our research are primarily based here, and we hope in future to be able to increase the number of participants in the several countries where we have few contacts.  The other countries where we had a good response are Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland.

Following the formal release of the Interim Report at the Hope II conference in Budapest this week, Eurochurch.net will be organising consultations in various European countries to promote co-operation between church planters and to investigate the potential for future networking.  The final report will be delivered following these consultations.

The final report will be released by October this year so it’s still not too late to be included.  People involved in Missional Church Planting in Europe can participate in our research by completing a short survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/eurochurch or by contacting info@syzygy.org.uk.

Syzygy produced this report in partnership with Nova Research Centre and Springdale College: Together in Mission, and the research is being sponsored by the McLellan Foundation.

It’s coming up for a year since Syzygy relaunched it’s website.   We’ve already had a lot of feedback and there are some things I’ve been encouraged by, and others which I’ve found a bit disappointing.

First of all, the highlights.   According to the latest statistics, the site has been viewed by people in 82 different countries!   I’m thrilled that our impact has spread, largely by word of mouth, to so many places.  Over half the people who view us come back again, and on average they look at 3.5 pages and stay on the site for a massive 3:30 minutes, which is an awfully long time in cyberworld.

I’m disappointed that we haven’t generated more discussion online, as I’d like this to be a place for people working out new ideas together.   I’m also disappointed that some two thirds of our viewers are in Britain and the USA.   If that’s you, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t love you, but the prime purpose of this site is to meet the needs of people involved in overseas mission, and I’m guessing that most of you, even if involved in mission, are on the home front.

So we’re going to have a rethink about our objectives and strategies, and we’d like to invite you to participate.  Please visit our (very short) questionnaire at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZBPVZHT which will ask you some questions and invite your feedback.   It’s anonymous so please feel free to be honest!

This will help us tailor our web presence to your needs more effectively.   You can also keep in touch with us more frequently by following us on Facebook and Twitter.  And please invite your friends and colleagues to follow us as well – the more people who know about our ministry, the more chance we have of making a difference where it really counts!

Welcome to the revamped Syzygy website and blog!  I’m Tim, and I’m one of the directors of Syzygy.  One way or another, I’ve been involved in supporting missionaries for 15 years, since I realised that too many of them are either coming home for entirely avoidable reasons, or heroically labouring on under difficult circumstances.  Syzygy is resolved to do what we can to  support such people, help them continue in their mission, and become more effective.  And more importantly, we hope to encourage their sending churches and organisations to get behind them to do in the long term what Syzygy’s doing in the short term.

I hope that through this blog we will be able to stimulate discussion around various issues concerning cross-cultural workers, and draw more people into our ever-expanding network of volunteer supporters.  Whether you go, pray, encourage, finance, or support, I hope you’ll find something here for you.

Syzygy’s directors all have first-hand missions experience, between us having served short-, medium- and long-term in four continents, and although we’re all now based in England, we all continue to be involved in our own ministries to support missions overseas.  Our mission draws its name from our belief that global mission is a task whose burden should not fall exclusively on those who go, but should be shared by the whole church.  The word Syzygy – Greek for “yoked together” – conveys the image of oxen ploughing together, and the more oxen there are in a team, the easier it gets.

Join us!

For information on how to get involved with us, go to the CONTACT US page.

Our aim is to help improve the support that missions workers worldwide receive.  One of the prime reasons for discouraged and burnt-out workers returning home in defeat is lack of adequate support.

Our vision is to develop a network of people who are prepared to contribute something of their experience, expertise or time, and to direct them to where they can make a real difference in spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world.

The aim of Syzygy is to assist in the work of people on the mission field by helping to provide moral or practical support which they may need and which isn’t provided by their church or sending organisation.  We don’t want to duplicate something that someone else does, or tread on any toes, but where there are needs, we want to match them with solutions!

In the longer term we aim to help churches and sending agencies to develop and maintain strategies to equip them to support their own co-workers in cross-cultural situations.  The areas in which we are able to provide or arrange support include: logistics, member care, mission kids, pastoral support, publicity, temporary staffing and training.  Click on Services We Provide for more details.

MISSIONS PARTNERS
HOW CAN WE HELP SUPPORT YOU?

SORRY  - SYZYGY IS UNABLE TO PROVIDE FUNDING THOUGH WE MAY BE ABLE TO HELP YOU RAISE IT

SYZYGY IS REGISTERED IN ENGLAND AS A CHARITY (REGISTERED NO: 1115354)
AND AS A COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE (REGISTERED NO: 5195272)