How has Global Church Research Helped OC Ministries?

A classic example of how OC uses global church research is in the Philippines’ DAWN movement (Discipling A Whole Nation). “We’ve used strategic information greatly to see many, hundreds and thousands, of un-churched villages targeted for church planting,” says Dave W, worker in the Philippines. “Our researchers gather data on villages with churches, villages without churches. We put them on maps, we gather pastors together, we present these maps and give a challenge of adoption for an un-churched village for church planting. And by using this information, we’ve seen thousands of un-churched villages targeted and churches planted in these places because of this information that was shared.” This model has been repeated in Guatemala, Brazil, Romania and many other nations in the world. Currently, OC is helping serve the Mongolian Evangelical Alliance with a similar research project.

Another exciting project happened in South Africa to determine the needs of leadership development. “It’s been about a three-year project that we’ve been working on to assess the training needs that the pastors across South Africa are facing. We’ve interviewed almost 1,000 leaders across SA, particularly in 75 communities that have been selected,” says Karl T, OC South Africa’s field leader. “The hopes of this data, the information we are going to give to those who are doing training, and the formal and non-formal training of leader … we trust will help them to be more effective.”

OC Global Research Team is also currently involved in exciting projects with other organizations in multiple locations around the world. Larry K., the Director of OC's Global Research team, says: “We’ve also seen how good information can be used to assist global partnerships to make decisions about how they can be even more effective partners for the accomplishment of the Great Commission in many different regions and worldwide.”