Holger’s weblog

OM’s International Forum

August 26th, 2006

Every couple of years, OM (the organization I work with) invites its longterm workers to a gathering, where we can have a few days of fellowship and teaching and are brought up to speed on the latest developments in the various ministries and so on. So I spent the last week at OM’s “International Forum” in a holiday park in the west of Germany, together with about 900 others who came together from all the ends of the earth. It was a great time and a truly international meeting – I really enjoyed seeing people again that I met in places like India and the US and of course a number of my colleagues from our office in the UK that I’m officially working with.

We had some great teaching by Dr. Steve Brady from the UK, who took us on a three part journey through Nehemiah 1 – 6 and did so in a remarkably funny and at the same time very profound way. There was also teaching on the first day by our founder and former director, George Verwer, and on the last day by our current director, Peter Maiden. I think Peter’s message was really good, but I had a headache and some difficulty following what he was saying… I guess I’ll have to listen to the recording to find out more.

After the teaching, we also had “business sessions”, in which the OM leadership presented the most pressing issues in the future of OM. I cannot go into detail here, so let me just say that we talked about the transformation of communities, the transformation of our marketing and the transformation of OM. I had expected the business part to be rather boring, but in fact it was very exciting and informative and I went back home with a much better understanding of where we are headed in the future.

The afternoons usually offered a choice of different sessions that I often didn’t go to… I instead used the time to read two books and relax a bit before we had another session in the evening in which we focused on various groups that OM works with. We talked about unreached majority groups, the marginalized, secular Europe, the next generation… there was more, but that’s what I can think of right now. Those sessions were very encouraging with lots of presentations by people actually involved in the work sharing their experience with us.

What else happened… well, the most significant thing probably was that we got hit by lightning on Sunday afternoon. Our internet bus (an internet cafe in a bus) was hit and suffered some damage, the most damage was to our TV truck, though, where quite a bit of expensive equipment was severely damaged. But at least nobody was injured and there was enough spare equipment to keep the conference going, even though the A/V team certainly had a busy afternoon replacing the sound desk and loads of cabling.

Now I’m back home, working from my living room office and already looking forward to meeting people again at the System Administrator training in Belgium in October… always one of the highlights of the year.

Technorati : International Forum, OM, christian, missions, people groups

Entry Filed under: News