Overseas Missionary Fellowship ("OMF") is a missionary outreach to East Asia. It's the ongoing work of Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission. OMF Diaspora Ministries is focused on Chinese, Japanese, Philippino and Thai people living outside their home country. It's becoming a bigger focus in OMF’s ministry world-wide. At the moment there are about 40 OMF members working among these people groups in the US, UK, Europe and Australia/NZ.
Diaspora ministry isn't the same as third culture kids. It's ministry to their parents. The ones who come to a new country, and have to learn a new language, new culture etc. The ones who, in an effort to preserve their cultural identity, become hyper-conservatively traditional. And give their kids a headache. For SBM to reach this group, we're gonna have to think cross-culturally. Even though we're both subcontinentals.
It's interesting that there are so many people in this category that OMF have decided to deliberately co-ordinate their efforts. Just goes to show that we don't have to go overseas - they're coming to us!
For more on the OMF Diaspora ministries, see:
http://www.youtube.com/OMFInternational
http://omf.org/omf/uk/omf_at_work/omf_at_work_in_the_uk/about_diaspora_ministries
The Nones Project is an ongoing study into the belief systems of people who call themselves non-religious. A few weeks ago one of the project leaders, Ryan Burge of Washington University, posted some really interesting preliminary results on his Substack. 1. We've probably heard of people who are spiritual but not religious (SBNRs). SBNRs were "the largest group of nones" in the sample. They believe in the supernatural realm but not necessarily in "a God." They are "deeply skeptical of religion but highly interested in spirituality," therefore individualistic and anti-institutional. 2. But this study differentiated SBNRs from people they called Nones In Name Only, NiNos. They different to SBNRs by being religious about their spiritual. They believe not just in the supernatural but in "God." And they tend to engage in traditional communal religious practices while SBNRs practice individualised eclectic bespoke spiritual practices. The s...
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