EMDC Speakers & Presenters
This is a list of people who have presented at previous EMDCs.
Dr Alex Abraham is a Consultant Neurologist, Missiologist and a Bible Teacher based in North India. He has four decades of experience as a consultant neurologist. He is well known for his pioneering spirit and innovations in missiology, based on the firm affirmation of the centrality of the Church in God’s plan. He is an active member of several global church networks and an experienced Bible teacher. Dr Alex Abraham is a highly respected and accomplished consultant neurologist and missiologist with a passion for serving the Church and advancing the field of missiology.
Babu Abraham graduated in Metallurgical Engineering. He has over fifty years of extensive experience in Information Technology and Management Consulting. He is currently a Director of Bridge Connectivity Solutions and Geneza Solutions, technology companies that are involved in facilitating and supporting Scripture translation and Scripture engagement. His current life mission centers around Church Centric Bible Translation and Church Based Theological Education. He is also closely associated with Operation Agape, a network of churches and church planting movements.
Olayiwola is from Ondo State, Nigeria. He has a Bachelor of Technology (Hons) in Microbiology from Federal University of Technology Akure. He is a full-time Missions Mobilizer with a vision to see every believer living a life on mission with God, every church a missional church and all God’s people living a missional lifestyle. He served with the Missions Supporters League (MSL) Nigeria for over 7 years, raising prayers, materials and manpower for missions. He is a member of the National Coordinating Team, Simply Mobilizing (SM) Nigeria and a Training Partner with the Storyweavers Global facilitating Bible-centered Scripture Engagement strategies for Evangelism, Discipleship and Healthy Spirituality and Leadership for Africa.
Erika Andujar currently serves as the Director of Media & Publishing at Bible Media Group, where she oversees the strategy and development of faith-based media to a diverse Global audience. Her expertise in international negotiation and organizational management has proven invaluable in expanding the reach of her organization’s media, publications and promoting their mission worldwide. Her passion for intercultural communication and media has also enabled her to bridge cultural gaps to ensure effective collaboration among teams and partners. She is grateful to be using her skills to help spread the word of God through various forms of media to people groups around the world.
Bob is CEO of Wandering Sheep Productions, a ministry of Reach Beyond NZ (formerly HCJB Global NZ) a 90+ year old global media and healthcare ministry that seeks to engage the digital generation through entertaining and thought-provoking content. Its emphasis is on creating interactive and relationship based tools for sharing the Gospel and growing committed followers of Jesus. Originally from the US, Bob and his wife, Cami, have lived and ministered in New Zealand for over 20 years. Bob’s undergraduate degree was gained from Missouri State University and he has a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. Bob’s work and ministry career has included 30 years as a Pastor, Pastoral Counselor, Chaplain, and chrch planter. Before joining Reach Beyond NZ, Bob worked in the internet industry developing internet service and softward companies as well as providing IT consulting services to emerging or start-up companies.
Art is president of the Comic Bible Society and executive pastor of a large central Florida church. He has memorized the books of Revelation, Romans, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and many key Bible verses. He and his wife, Kelly, have worked extensively with children and teens to help them understand and obey the Scriptures. Art is a prolific writer and producer who has won several awards, including Best TV Movie in Hollywood’s Next Success contest. Through partnerships with VOM, SIL, IMB, Ethnos 360, and several Bible societies, his goal is to make the complete Bible understandable in every language of the earth.
David grew up in Shropshire and studied physics at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. He began working with SIL in the Philippines in 2000 and later worked with SIL in Chad. In 2007, he joined the Language Software Development department of SIL International and is part of that team today. He is passionate about sharing data for the benefit of others. He joined the Natural Language Processing team as it was being formed in October 2019. The team is researching ways to assist Bible translators using state of the art Natural Language Processing techniques. david_baines@sil.org
Steve is an award-winning American filmmaker serving with Create International since 2009. Steve ran his own video production business in New England for several years, specializing in promotional videos for Christian nonprofits and corporations. On a World Vision trip to Africa in 2006, he heard God’s call to become a full-time media missionary. Steve and his wife, Allyson, are now leading the Create International Mobile Production & Training Team, https://createmobile.org, focused on mobile filmmaking training, cross-cultural movie production, and producing more indigenous movies for unreached people groups.
Bibidh has been serving as a training coordinator in South Asia for more than ten years. He helps train Pastors and Leaders of different denominations in evangelism, Discipleship, and Healthy Spirituality in other parts of South Asia. He works with a team of 19 teachers.
Bob Bartz has been serving with Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) in Asia and Africa for more than 30 years. He is currently on loan as a media strategist to MediaWorks, a ministry of Operation Mobilization. His background in engineering, passion for music, and wide-ranging experience in broadcast media led to valuable insights into developing content strategies that impact an audience.
Joost has an extensive track record when it comes to using audio-visual equipment. He has a bachelor’s degree in media technology and has been active for years in recording traditional worship music for radio and television. Joost is happy to share his knowledge to serve God’s kingdom. He is a radio host at a large national secular pop station where he gets to share the gospel in an approachable way. He is media manager at TWR Netherlands and Belgium and internationally involved in various Christian platforms and organizations to train and advise. He has also been involved with EMDC for many years, and you can hear him on stage in the band where he plays the drums.
Ed is the Founder and President of the recently formed Storyweavers Global which partners with others to provide training for Scripture engagement that is personally relevant, always flexible, easily reproducible, and locally sustainable. This training is offered on-line and on-site for oral learners utilizing a conversational biblical storyweaving model that is designed specifically for adaptability to diverse contexts for personal evangelism, personal discipleship, healthy spirituality, and leadership for addiction recovery support. See SWG.world for further info. Prior to this, Ed served as program manager and co-translator for the Maya-Tektitek New Testament, Language Programs Director for SIL Central America, Director of People Group Services for EE International, and Director of Scripture Engagement Services for SIL Americas Area. Ed is a graduate of the University of Illinois (BA Architecture), and Azusa Pacific University (MA Social Sciences, Human Resource Development). Ed’s passion is to empower Christ-followers of every ethnicity and every generation with vision, understanding, skills and opportunities for Scripture engagement through biblical storyweaving in all walks of life.
Together with her husband, Ed, Elenore worked for 27 years with the Maya Tektitek people group in Guatemala. her main focuses were literacy, medical work, discipleship and leadership training. Since finishing the Bible translation project, Elenore and her husband have focused on developing strategies and trained teams to foster engagement with the Scriptures among oral learners. She is the lead developer of Weavers for Evangelism and for Discipleship and ‘Inside Out” for emotionally healthy spirituality. Elenore and Ed have four children, eight grandchildren, and one Standard Poodle. Elenore likes to hike, bike, and do watercolor.
Eberhard is a language software developer with SIL International Language Technology for 20+ years. He has been involved in the development of various products like FieldWorks, Bloom, Language Forge. Most recently he joined the Keyman team where he is responsible for Keyman for Linux. As a native speaker of German he experienced some of the problems that Keyman tries to solve. He lives in Germany with his wife Cornelia.
Toby is Director of Digital Strategy at Bible Society, focused on pathfinding and productising new forms of digital Bible mission. Toby is an experienced digital media entrepreneur across a string of tech startups including Nudge, a social apps agency working for clients like Facebook, Playstation and Unilever, which he sold in 2010; Leaderboarded/Rise.global, a media platform used to gamify social media engagement by UN, PwC and IBM; Running World Cup, a global virtual running tournament hosted by Usain Bolt; and MicroAid, an innovative international development charity. He has appeared on Sky News, 7 News and Channel 4 as a digital media expert and is author of the book Infinite Gamification: how to motivate your team until the end of time, which has been translated into Turkish, Korean and Arabic. He has also worked for UNDP inside the government of Indonesia and as an advisor to the European Commission on Horizon 2020 Research projects.
Kenneth is the CEO and founder of the Digital Bible Society, an organization devoted to the distribution of the Word of God and Christian resources to closed-access countries and biblically impoverished people groups. Since its inception, Digital Bible Society (DBS) has been diligent in pursuing God’s call to meet the pressing global need for free Christian resources. Through its partnerships with hundreds of Christian organizations, DBS has published over a thousand versions of online Bibles and created extensive libraries of Christian materials in some of the world’s most difficult languages.
Aside from heading DBS, Ken has served as a pilot, missionary, conference speaker, technology consultant, author and air-traffic controller (retired). Ken and his wife Deborah have three adult sons who serve with them in ministry.
Peter is a Digital Engagement Specialist serving SIL’s Eurasia Area and beyond from a home in the UK. He has over twenty years of experience working with all things digital in the world of Bible translation, from the early days of the Wycliffe UK website, through the development of blogs, forums, and social media. He has worked with Wycliffe UK, Wycliffe Canada, Wycliffe Global Alliance, and SIL Malaysia. In addition to helping think through the challenges and possibilities of digital engagement, he also serves as a statistics specialist with Wycliffe Global Alliance, and is pioneering exploration into the possibilities offered by games and gamification. Discover more about digital engagement at https://digital2031.wordpress.com; learn more about Peter on his family blog at http://brassingtons.wordpress.com.
With an extensive advertising and digital agency background Andy moved into a ministry role at Christian Vision in 2014. Holding a number of roles including Marketing and Communications Manager, yHi Marketing Manager, and now global Direct Manager, Andy has a wide range of experience in the development and execution of strategy, business growth, and leading digital teams. His current focus is on using automation and AI to help the optimisation of direct activities and lives with his wife and three teenaged children on the Sunshine Coast, Australia.
Rick has a PhD and is a Senior Translation Consultant with SIL International, which he and his wife, Lenore, joined in 1973. He is also a Scripture Engagement Consultant with a focus on Muslim peoples. In that capacity, he helped design the Lives of the Prophets series of audio Bible stories. He produced his first (printed) Scripture diglot in 1986 and found it was very popular. The last few years, Rick has been involved with production of a translation specifically designed for use in a diglot mobile app intended for second-language learning.
Jessie Bruccoleri was born and raised in New Jersey. She is passionate about sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with others and disciplining them to grow in their relationship as well as being a disciple herself. From 2014-1219, she served in Asia sharing the gospel with college students. Then beginning in 2019, she returned to the US to serve in Storyweavers Global: a global organization that focuses on equipping others for scripture engagement in conversations, specifically for oral learners. She is fervent about the things of the Lord and making His glory known.
James and his family live in the UK. He coaches teams around the world in strategy innovation.
Larry has been involved in fruitful practice research for many years. His passion is for the Sahel region of Africa, where he lived and worked for many years. He is currently the Africa Director for Faith Comes By Hearing.
George has been a top rated speaker at the EMDC and other conferences around the world. He has helped numerous ministries discover and fix the user experience bugs that were reducing the effectiveness of their online ministries. He believes that Christians who are suffering under persecution should not also have to suffer on a bad website. His motto is “Make things easy to use so that nobody feels stupid, because most people aren’t.”
Chris is a media-to-dmm practitioner who serves multiple projects in the MENA region. He has been a leading architect in the end-to-end movement system, Disciple Tools, and media-to-dmm trainer with Kingdom Training.
Stephen has a Bachelor of Arts in Communications with an emphasis on Radio/TV/Film 1994 from Biola University. He has 5 years experience in the Film/Television industry in Southern California (Hollywood) working in a variety of production and story development roles. Currently, he is an International Media Consultant with SIL International, in addition to serving as Director of Sabeel Media. Stephen has over 30 years of international media experience primarily focused on the Mediterranean Arabic speaking world.
Calvin and Carol are the Founders and International Coordinators of Create International, focused on producing media and art resources for unreached people. Since 1978, they have served as full-time missionaries, producing hundreds of audio-visual resources and ministering in over sixty-five nations. Calvin and Carol both hold an MA in Intercultural Communication. They serve on several Global networks including Vision 5:9 and 24:14 as media strategy coordinators, and currently help facilitate the ministry of Media4Movements, dedicated to equipping multi-generational movement leaders to produce their own media, arts and technology resources. Together, they also authored the books, Media that Transforms Nations (2019) and The Impossible Dream (2020), both available on Amazon. Since 2009, Carol and Calvin have lived in Chiang Mai, Thailand, leading the Global Communications and Resource Center. Along with their staff on eight worldwide teams, they continue to produce extensive media resources for unreached people groups, train in cross-cultural communication worldwide, and initiate new tools and technology to distribute the message effectively to all peoples.
Alan is the Publishing Services Director for SIL International. He is the husband to Cyndi, father to four grown sons, and Papa to six grandchildren. He is a member of SIL since 1996 and since 2010 also serves on the partnership and credentials committee of ETEN DBL.
Since 2003, David has trained hundreds of nationals and foreign missionaries in CHE (Community Health Evangelism). His career path after receiving a B.A. in psychology was to work in the area of horticulture therapy serving in residential rehabilitation centers in the U.S.A.. His focus changed when he moved to Thailand with his family in 1996. He was attracted to CHE’s integral (wholistic) community development model as a result of seeing the multiple needs of poor agriculture communities while introducing new agriculture technologies to them. Beyond the basic training of how to initiate CHE programs, his training focuses on the specific empowerment skills, strategies and techniques that undergird this development process. Now in his retirement years, he occasionally accepts training and advisory opportunities. His passion of late is to mentor and learn from those who are presently applying CHE regionally.
Richard has been with Christian Vision (CV) for 16 years. He has seen great change in communication and is one of the Asia Pacific Directors involved in developing social media evangelism for the region. Christian Vision with their app called yesHEis is now in 22 countries and 10 major languages with further development on the way. CV also does media training and has a strong commitment to support the local church. Their social media platforms are reaching millions around the world. Before CV, Richard and his wife, Julie, owned several commercial radio stations in Australia, and he had a successful career both on air and in management. He is currently on the board of CMAA (Christian Media Arts Australia), and also the chairman of SALT FM, a local Christian radio station on the Sunshine Coast Australia.
Marijke serves as Global Translation Advisor for the United Bible Society. She has been involved with translation projects in Central Asia.
Valerie is from Bogotá, Colombia. She has a bachelor’s degree in Languages and Cultural Studies. She then studied Bible Translation, Linguistics and Literacy in Peru in and she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Biblical Counseling with Westminster Theological Seminary. Valerie serves full-time with Storyweavers Global facilitating Bible-centered Scripture Engagement strategies for Evangelism, Discipleship, Addiction Recovery, and Healthy Leadership.
Laurens has served the Lord in the Middle East for fourteen years. Two years after his return to the Netherlands, he took part in the first Al Massira training in his country. After leading several groups, he became a trainer of group leaders, and has led the training department of Al Massira International for two years. Laurens continues to reach out to Muslims in various places through AM, as a psychosocial therapist, and through the book Rejected and Loved, which he authored and published under a pen name.
Dr. Larry Dinkins finished his ThM at DTS in 1979 and then went with his wife Paula to Thailand through OMF International and began a church planting ministry with leprosy patients. In 1987 the Dinkins transitioned into a Bible teaching ministry at the Bangkok Bible College. In 1995 Larry finished classwork for a PhD at Biola University allowing him to return to Thailand to start a TEE program in North Thailand. Larry acted as a founding director of the newly formed Chiang Mai Theological Seminary. Dr. Dinkins is the coordinator for both Walk Thru the Bible and Simply the Story in Thailand and teaches orality at Dallas Theological Seminary as an adjunct professor.
David is a 25-year member of Wycliffe Canada and OneBook. His background includes IT, language software support, and a project liaison with National translation partners. He has served on the field in Suriname, Indonesia and The Philippines. More recently, David has returned to Canada and is leading the development of a new cutting-edge computer assisted translation system called The Bible Translator’s Assistant.
Darin has been living and serving in SE Asia for nearly 20 years. He met his wife Staci in Thailand, a fellow American, and their two kids were born in Chiang Mai. Based in Chiang Mai, Darin has been helping lead the Video 1 track at Pre-EMDCs since 2013, and has been the lead trainer since 2016. Darin’s primary work is serving missionaries and ministries throughout South East Asia with video support. Darin has created hundreds of videos that help ministries and missionaries to tell the story of what God is doing, and to help them find ministry partners to fund their work. Darin’s video’s have been seen by thousands of people all over the world and has helped raise millions of dollars to fund the spreading of the Gospel.
Marc Durdin is a member of SIL International and is the team lead for the open source cross-platform Keyman input method project. Keyman runs on all major desktop and mobile operating systems as well the web, and currently supports over 2,200 languages. Marc first became interested in discovering solutions to multilingual keyboard input while living in Laos in the 1990’s and subsequently wrote the first version of Keyman to support Lao. Marc has worked in Australia, Thailand, Laos, Papua New Guinea, and currently lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, working out of the National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia.
Wayne has been a missiology consultant with SIL for nearly 50 years, at first part-time while translating the Bible in Papua New Guinea, and later full-time. Soon after earning a PhD at Fuller Seminary School of Intercultural Studies, Wayne became SIL’s first Scripture Engagement Consultant. He and his wife, Sally, have trained missionaries in many countries in cross-cultural communication, Scripture engagement, and other aspects of missiology. Wayne teaches full time at GIAL (Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics). His current passion is the phenomenal opportunity being provided by the worldwide adoption of smartphones.
Berni is a former Army officer and businessman. Until age 36, he put himself first being hell-bent (literally) on earning and owning as much possible, and on furthering an international IT consulting career. In the midst of a deep personal crisis in 1995, this hard-nosed businessman came to faith in Jesus Christ. It was a radical change. Within a few months, he found himself at Bible college, completing a BMin degree in 2001. During his studies, he became a student volunteer in the media ministry of Christianityworks (previously Back to the Bible), where he unexpectedly discovered that his gift as a communicator was to be used for the glory of God. Just a decade and a half later, radio and television programs he produces are heard by millions of people each week across 160 countries. Berni’s passion is to share God’s Word through media in a way that is both faithful to the Scriptures and intensely relevant to the issues that all people face in life. His desire is for many to experience the forgiveness, victory, peace, joy, and power that are only available in a dynamic, personal relationship with Jesus.
Steven has been involved in church planting, disciple making, and marketing for almost three decades. He is the producer of the award winning film Where Was God? (WhereWasGod.com) and the author of the book Storms of Life. He owns and operates social media channels with more than 6 million followers. When his wife was rendered bedbound by a tragic illness in 2017, he turned his efforts to digital outreach. In 2018, he founded FindingGodOnline.com. During his time in digital missions, Steven has run ads in every country possible on Facebook and many on Google and other platforms. He has served online outreaches in dozens of countries. Now, Steven serves as a Specialized Marketing coach with the Media to Movements team. (mediatomovements.org)
Andreas is an SIL Media consultant and SE consultant. He is passionate about contextualized media such as entertainment-education, which draws on people testimonies to make the Scriptures come alive. After growing up and completing high school in Cameroon, he taught primary school in Switzerland. Andreas studied contextualized theology at Redcliffe College in the UK, and has an MA in literacy program development from Gloucestershire University. He is based in Cameroon, and serves as IMS training director.
Jaap is serving as a strategy consultant with SIL International and has held strategy leadership roles with this organization. He grew up bilingually in the Frisian part of the Netherlands. His wife Morina has a Tamil-Iban-Malaysian background—growing up quitalingual! Together they worked nearly 25 years as translation facilitators among the Tlicho people in subarctic Canada. Jaap is also serving as a translation consultant. He was closely involved with the early development of the Guide for Planning the Future of Our Language and nowadays is part of an inter-organizational team, working on the Scripture Engagement counterpart Taste&See.
Scripture Engagement Specialist and Scripture Engagement Department Head. She was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is married and has one child. She has been working at SIL for the last 11 years. Her passion is to equip people for God’s kingdom. Also, she loves to see minority language groups engaging with scripture using trainings such as Oral Bible Storytelling (OBS), Truly Fruitful, Awareness Raising, SE survey, and Poster/Audio production. She has dedicated her life to invest on people’s live for God’s glory.
Andrew is the North America Director and Director of Global Partnerships for Indigitous. He helps mobilize young I’m leaders to use their giftedness beyond the four church walls. Andrew and his wife served abroad for five years where they adopted their special needs son. Andrew has a heart for the younger generation and continues to mentor them under Indigitous. Andrew holds a ThM and is a Fellow at Dallas Seminary. Prior to ministry, Andrew graduated from USC, interned at Yahoo and consulted for KPMG.
Nathaniel is a trained computer programmer and maths teacher with cross-cultural mission experience. He loves to develop apps and digital resources for Kingdom-building projects. He’s been involved in the development of the web-app GrowSpace from the start.
Amy and her husband, Eric, have served with SIL International and Wycliffe Bible Translators for over 30 years. They are working in an active translation project in West Africa. She has used the Trauma Healing material to equip people to lead Healing Groups and to train others in Africa as well as in the United States and Japan. Amy is a Master Facilitator in both the Adult Classic Trauma Healing and the Oral Story-based Trauma Healing programs. She has two adult sons.
Liz has served with SIL for over 30 years beginning as a teacher at the Primary School in Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea. 27 years ago she moved to Thailand where she has served as a Literacy Specialist and Mother Tongue Education consultant. She lived in a village in Northern Thailand for 5 years and for the past 15 years has been based out of the Payap University Linguistics Institute in Chiang Mai. She partners with Mary Beth Saurman, Senior Ethnoarts Consultant, to train people from around the world to create and use culturally relevant literacy and education materials in their own languages.
After completing a Bachelor of Graphic Design with Honours from Swinburne National School of Design and landing a job at a major children’s book publisher in Melbourne, Australia, Myra gave it all up to follow a call from God to enter into international frontier missions with Create International, YWAM. She’s been a part of Create International ministry for 20 years. In 2018 she pioneered a new team within Create International called ‘Create Seeds’. Her team has a specific focus on unreached children— creating culturally relevant picture books and other illustrated resources to reach unreached children. We also train others to do likewise. She’s married with two kids and is currently residing in Melbourne, Australia.
Craig is an award-winning TV director and documentary filmmaker. He has traveled to 151 countries on six continents producing programs for such clients as CBS, ABC, Discovery Channel, Fox Sports, A&E, Samaritan’s Purse, and Billy Graham. He has covered subjects as diverse as tribal warfare, sex trafficking, and Islamic terrorism. He was also part of the EMMY-winning production team for Season 14 of the American reality television show, The Amazing Race. Craig earned a Doctor of Fine Arts degree in redemptive filmmaking from Kingdom Seminary. He frequently speaks at media conferences about harnessing the power of media production to further the gospel. Craig has served as an adjunct professor of media production at several universities in the US, and is the author of Commando Tactics for Digital Filmmakers and other works.
Matt has worked for the Jesus Film Project for four years, and previously served in Eastern Asia. He has a passion for promoting healthy cross-cultural relationships which suits him well in his partnerships role with the Jesus Film Project. He enjoys cycling and Formula 1, and is always happy to share stories!
Maik is SIL’s Sociolinguistics Coordinator, currently based in the UK. He has previously worked in a Bible translation program in North Africa, and been involved in translation and linguistics training in Kenya and the UK. He currently focuses on the impacts of multilingualism and on how members of minority communities interact with Scripture, with the goal of people being transformed through God’s word.
Anita is a communications designer on the EMDC.guide team. She joined SIL International Media Services in 2020 and has been working as a strategic member of the communications team, facilitating both internal and international networking and resource sharing for the organization. She works remotely based in the northeast United States and enjoys coffee, reading, music and learning new skills.
Lois serves as the Digital Bible Library (DBL) Content Manager and Lead Curator for SIL International, Wycliffe Bible Translators and Wycliffe Global Alliance. She has served with SIL’s Global Publishing Services (GPS) since 2007. During her time with GPS she has worked as both a scripture and academic typesetter, and has also served as the Production Services Director, overseeing both academic and scripture production as well as, for a short time, supervising the mapping and VMS teams. In 2011 Lois was asked to put together a team that would focus on digitizing scripture, uploading it to the DBL and licensing both texts and audio files through the DBL to vetted partners. Her current focus includes training curators from Wycliffe Organizational Units to manage their own projects in the DBL as well as serving as a liaison between the Wycliffe family of organizations and partner organizations in the DBL.
Patrick is the Senior Digital Coordinator at Faith Comes By Hearing. He leads FCBH’s efforts in getting the bible to people by whatever digital means possible. Patrick came on staff at faith comes by hearing during the pandemic, when digital ministry began to have a renewed focus at Faith Comes by Hearing. He also helps to coordinate the digital staff around the world in their efforts. He is married to a lovely wife and has two children.
David coordinated a Bible translation project in Central Asia. He teaches Scripture engagement (SE) and Translation at Moorlands College in the UK, and travels to West Asia, where he consults for several translation projects, both as a translation and an SE consultant. He is currently studying on a PhD programme based at the University of Gloucestershire, UK, on the topic of reverence for ancestors in Ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible.
Nathanael is an Audio Engineer and Media Consultant with SIL Cameroon. He is a second-generation Vernacular Media Specialist and has worked in the media field for 13 years. Although his official work with media started 13 years ago, he has always had a passion for audio recordings and dabbled with his own recordings through high school. He worked with minority language groups in Cameroon and Central Africa for 12 years. Where he did anything from basic audio recordings to training sixty-one people to record audio and dubbing twenty-five films (JESUS film, LUKE film etc.). Now he works as the Film Quality Checker for SIL’s International Media Services. He has been teaching at EMDC since 2018.
Jeff spent 26 years in Asia Pacific working in audio and video production and training with Asia Pacific Media Ministries. Working with both expat workers and national church organizations, his focus was on training and assisting the national church to produce their own media content, from simple teaching/pastoral training on DVD, to radio, television, and full-length narrative film for theatrical release. For the last 10 years, his focus has been on mobile strategies and integration of mobile technology into ministry. He serves with AGWM and is part of the Mobile Ministry Forum leadership team, and the M4M network.
Lars has worked in the Christian media industry for almost 30 years and, up until recently, especially in Christian radio. For his first 9 years in this area (with TWR) he worked and lived in Swaziland Africa and, since 1999 until recently, with TWR Europe in Vienna. For many years, his passion has been to use Mobile Technology for Christian media and, over the last 10 years, he has gradually been making this his full-time focus. In fact, his main focus since almost two years is now on a large Mobile-Technology-for-Christian-media project in West Africa within the Relay Trust (although he does occasionally work on projects for TWR Europe and OM as well).
Gerry grew up in a Zapotec village in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, while her parents translated the New Testament into one of the Zapotec languages. She obtained a medical degree at the UNAM in Mexico City. In 1975, she married her husband, David, before moving to another Zapotec village to start a medical clinic. After 20 years in the village, and raising four children, the Gutierrez moved to Oaxaca City where Gerry began Bible translation, teaching, and authoring books. She and David joined Global Recordings and were directors of the group in Mexico, called Buenas Nuevas, for 20 years. They reopened the GRN work in South America in 1996, and recruited and trained over 100 workers for Latin America. In 2010 they moved to California where Gerry took the position of international Language Tracking Coordinator for GRN. She worked with other evangelical organizations to identify and classify dialects used in oral and written Scripture resources. Since 2015, Gerry has taught Perspectives classes and began an outreach to 50,000 refugees in San Diego. She has visited over 40 countries and more than 500 tribal groups doing language research and outreaches. She is the Editor/Author of “Alcancemos las Etnias de Mexico” and “EthnoLA” which deals with the 80+ diaspora populations in Southern California. Since 2020, she has been working with homeless people close to her home, among them people from at least 10 countries/languages.
Mitch served as a senior pastor in the United States for nearly 30 years before transitioning to the mission field in 2015. He and his wife Teresa make their home in North Africa and serve as an International Liaison and Migration Strategist for the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, USA. Their research seeks to understand the factors influencing diaspora movements between Africa and Europe. Comprehension of the conditions of transnational migration in places of origin, transition, and destination serves to connect missional organizations and educational institutions with the local church in those locations. The ultimate goal of their effort is to assist others to have an enhanced ministry and effective gospel proclamation among diaspora populations.
Christine is serving with both Seed Company and SIL South Sudan. For the last 5 years much of her SE focus has been on 15+ languages within South Sudan, each with diverse and varying needs. The complexities around solving Scripture Impact issues in relevant ways is why she is so excited to be part of Taste&See, an inter-organizational team which touches on many of the issues languages face today. Prior to SIL , Christine spent 20+ years in leadership positions within companies such as Disney, Limited Brands and most recently Cornerstone Brands (a Jack Welch portfolio) where she spent 10+ years leading Marketing, Product Development and overseeing Online/Mobile activities for large global brands.
Koen den Hartogh is a Language Technology Consultant working with SIL-PNG. He’s lived and worked in PNG for the last 17 years. He worked as a literacy worker, before he started the Education for Life team. Having seen the state of education in many rural villages, he was very keen on creating learning materials for these schools, with a focus on multilingual reading and activity books. To get these digital books used in rural schools, he dreamed up the Solar Projector Kit. With these tools he and his team have made a difference in over 150 schools in Papua New Guinea.
Rob has worked for more than 24 years to build leaders and teams that operationalize innovation with a global network of churches and mission agencies. As Entrepreneur in Residence at TWR, he is developing capacity that is creating and strengthening new approaches for digital media ministry. His areas of focus are 1) Research: Mapping people and resources; 2) Education: Sharing learnings and fruitful practices; 3) Innovation: Developing effective methodologies and technologies; 4) Collaboration: Advancing effectiveness for the Great Commission.
Lynley is the SIL International Scripture Engagement Coordinator. She has served with SIL for over twenty years, first in the Russia and Central Asia branch, and then in Scripture Engagement training and consulting. Lynley is part of the development team and a leader in Freedom Ascent, a Bible-based addiction recovery program for oral learners.
John Hatton has been a software developer with SIL International for 25 years. While living in Papua New Guinea and Thailand, he became passionate about enabling minority language communities to stop waiting for outsiders and get started with Literacy, Bible Translation, and Scripture Engagement. He is the designer of HearThis (scripture recording), SayMore (language documentation), WeSay (dictionaries), Bloom (literacy & Scripture Engagement), and was a principal designer of FLEx (dictionaries and morphological analysis). He and his wife Suzanne live in Colorado, USA where their nest of four boys is emptying at an alarming rate.
Aaron is the Mobiles for Literacy Advisor for SIL International. He is also the Project Manager for the Alpha Tiles literacy games app. He is passionate about developing literacy app solutions that can be scaled up to meet the needs of the thousands of minority languages and underserved people groups around the world. He has directed and taught literacy apps workshops for students representing more than 30 languages in Mexico where he has lived since 2012. He has an MBA from Governor’s State University and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Dallas International University.
Thomas Hemphill is a translation consultant and the translation coordinator for SIL Eurasia. He has mentored and trained mother tongue translators to become translation/exegetical advisors and currently runs a community of practice for Exegetes in SIL Eurasia. He lives in Tasmania in Australia with his wife and two teenage children.
Doug experienced God’s call to missions in high school. After graduating college with a Bachelors in Religious Education, he joined Wycliffe Bible translators where he served first as a translator in the Fulfulde language of Mali, and then as a regional language technology trainer. His passion is to equip language technology consultants with the skills to support Bible translation and Scripture engagement globally. He serves now in Michigan as Director of Language Technology Use for SIL International.
Peter is from New Zealand but was privileged as a teenager to live in Tanzania where his parents served with MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship). That experience led him on a long journey towards missions. His wife, Tiinamari, is from Finland and they have two girls who were born in Australia. Peter and his wife served with MAF in Arnhem Land, for several years before moving to Ghana to serve with WEC International. They are involved with using technology as a tool to bring people closer to the truth and hope that is found in Jesus.
Dusty served with SIL in East Africa for 12 years managing and implementing the work of language development, scripture engagement, literacy, and Bible translation. A turning point in his story came when the Ma’di Okollo people tested the Oral Bible Translation (OBT) methodology with Render and decided to apply it to their own translation project. Today, he serves with Seed Company as the OBT Projects Coordinator supporting the development and implementation of OBT projects with the Seed Company field team and partners.
Richard is of both British and French nationality. He works in International Development representing the Global Community Health Evangelism Network and has served overseas for many years. As an international development worker he has helped to equip and train nationals to launch, implement and replicate self-sustainable movements amongst the rural poor and unreached people groups across West Africa and South-East Asia. Richard also works with vulnerable communities on anti-trafficking and trauma recovery initiatives.
Sunny Hong serves as the director of the Global Diaspora Unit at SIL International. The goal of the Global Diaspora Unit is to ascertain that diasporas around the world have access to the Bible in their own language and to work with diaspora communities to translate the Bible into their own language if this has not yet been done. Sunny has worked as a senior intercultural consultant at SIL International. This position also involved teaching at Dallas International University. Both her research and her teaching were and continue to be designed to help missionaries be more effective in their ministry. Currently she serves as a SIL board member. In 1994 she joined Wycliffe and worked as a mobilizer for Koreans in the US and Canada for 12 years. She then went to the Philippines to work as a mobilization consultant for the Wycliffe Asia and Pacific Areas.
Martin has worked with SIL’s Non Roman Script Initiative for 20 years and is involved in all aspects of digital orthography support. Please don’t wait for his seminar to talk with him about your digital orthographic needs and issues!
Saw Soe Moew Htwe Bio
Chris, from North Carolina, USA is Lead Mobile Developer for Language Software Development for SIL, where he has been since 2013. He has worked on porting Scripture App Builder, Reading App Builder, and Dictionary App Builder to Linux and Mac, and leading the team porting the Scripture App Builder template app to iOS. He is currently working on the SIL Scriptoria, a service to enable automated publishing of Android Apps created by Scripture App Builder to the Google Play Store (and in the future Apple App Store). Before joining Wycliffe, Chris spent 18 years in industry and was a Lead Software Engineer for a telecommunications company working on a mobile publishing product for iOS and Android.
Dave Hudson graduated from California State University, Fullerton, with a BA in Art, and has been a professional illustrator for 40 years. He and his wife, Wendy, joined Create International, a ministry of Youth With a Missions (YWAM), in 2008, and pioneered the School of Cartooning and Animation for Missions in Thailand, in 2010. Since 2002, Dave has taught computer graphics courses in YWAM and in the EMDC, covering topics like design, illustration, comics, and animation. Dave and his wife are currently leading a global team called Create International AniMissions based in Taiwan. Their team has produced eight contextualized evangelistic animated short films for unreached people groups throughout Asia.
Jonathan is the Vice President of Global Partnerships and Recordings at Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH), serving at the ministry for over 10 years. He has initiated and led projects such as Virtual Recording, Render (an oral Bible translation tool), and now a flourishing and unique partnership between LUMO and FCBH to create films for thousands of language communities.
Geoffrey went to Ghana with his wife and son in 1970 and worked in the Hanga language for about ten years. There were no Hanga churches and only one Hanga Christian, and the language had not previously been written, so they had to find a way to do it. They were able to start a literacy program and unschooled young people were learning to read and write in about a month. The translation of the NT and the literacy led to the development of churches. In 2009, a group of Hanga people asked for the OT and Geoffrey got involved again, but books were not a sufficient solution to the needs of the people.
AJ Bio
JS has been living and serving in North Africa for 11 years. In that time, she and her team have used media to find seekers and believers, follow-up with them face-to-face, and walk the journey of discipleship and church formation. Their team built ways to share any good thing they found along the way with others through Kingdom.Training, Disciple.Tools, Pray4Movement, and Zume.Training.
Jonah came to Christ through Bill Bright’s “How to be Sure You’re a Christian”. After 14 years, she’s now serving in Indigitous, taking lead in digital engagements and building networks in digital missions. She‘s born, raised, and currently based in the Pearl of the Orient Seas— The Philippines.
Brian James has been involved in church planting work among Muslims since 1995, including 12 years on the field in Central Asia, where he began to see the potential of media and mobiles for ministry. In his current role in his organization, Frontiers, he helps missionaries understand and use their mobile phones and various forms of media as a strategic ministry tools to invite Muslims to follow Jesus. Brian also helps facilitate the Mobile Ministry Forum (missions network): www.mobmin.org and is involved in other media-related initiatives.
Christian Jefferson Bio
AJ is a church planter, urban strategist and missions mobilizer with an emphasis on indigenous church planting using obedience based discipleship methods which catalyze church planting movements. He has been doing church planting for more than 30 years in urban areas of Texas and Kentucky, with the last 18 years serving in East and Southeast Asia working in cities of 6 and 10 million respectively. AJ’s passion and calling is to win the lost, disciple believers and start churches. He currently leads a dedicated team of co-laborers in his city focused on multiple population segments and is implementing a digital engagement strategy to further multiply that Kingdom work for God’s glory.
Dave is currently serving as Director of Client Services for Kalaam Media, helping others publish their digital media products via websites and apps. Previously, Dave spent 13 years producing digital media products such as audio recordings, video dubbings, websites, and apps while working in Ethiopia.
Tim is co-founder of the unfoldingWord project, and works in innovation and strategy with Distant Shores Media. He is part of a team that creates open-licensed biblical content, software tools, and training resources in support of Church-centric Bible translation. Working with the Church around the world, his team helps provide free and unrestricted biblical resources including exegetical and original language resources, open-source tools for checking and publishing, and Bible translation training resources. He can be reached by email at tim.jore@distantshores.org and on Twitter, @timjore.
Tuomas lives in Helsinki, Finland, and works for the Finnish Bible Society as Linguistical Consultant. He received his Ph.D. in 2012 from the University of Helsinki. His academic background is in literary studies. Between his academic career and his current position, he was a freelance journalist, and his first novel was published in 2016.
Rudolf is involved in media for reaching people globally through strategic collaborative media networks. He works with TWR Africa to equip communities via media. Rudolf uses strategic foresight for understanding the future to inspire compelling visions for creative collaboration that result in transformational media strategies. He is network catalyst within the Lausanne Media Engagement Network.
A former environmental geologist turned computer programmer who spent too many long days sitting next to drilling rigs on toxic waste sites staring at nasty chemicals through an uncomfortable respirator mask. Currently involved with pretty much all aspects of the ConnectBox project helping to bring it all together; from coding, case design, testing, circuit board tinkering, team lead, and overall project direction.
Ann has worked for SIL International for 25 years in various capacities, including as a translation consultant. She currently serves with SIL’s Global Trauma Healing Team, helping communities around the world launch and sustain their trauma healing programs. Ann recently completed a Doctor of Intercultural Studies degree at Fuller Theological Seminary, researching the impact of the oral story-based version of the trauma healing program in CAR. Ann and her husband Ray worked in Brazil, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic, and they now live in Michigan in the United States. They have three adult children.
Tom has a passion to tell cross-cultural spiritual stories. As a filmmaker working in many mediums over the years, he most enjoys bringing time-tested storytelling principles to new technologies and audiences. He currently leads a team at 10X Productions developing collaborative productions and training in visual storytelling and media strategies in cross-cultural settings. Current projects include the Foundations of Media Strategy course for MissionMediaU, an on-going series of short films in Arabic for social media campaigns, and short and feature-length dramatic screenplays.
Eugene is a Korean-American SIL Bible translator and Scripture Engagement Consultant-in-Training. He has experience in translating Scripture in different Arabic languages, recording audio, dubbing films, producing videos using scripture images, and distributing and promoting Scripture-based products through social media (Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube). He has a master’s degree in linguistics from the University of Texas, Arlington, and an MDiv degree and ThM degree from Fuller Theological Seminary.
Tim Klassen is a geek for God and enjoys opportunities to blend his passion for Christ and love of technology to reach and disciple people. He and his wife have been working in education and serving the Lord through evangelism and online follow up in the Middle East for over 25 years. Desiring to use data science for Kingdom advance, Tim launched Light of Hope Media (LOHM) in 2016. LOHM’s vision is for the earth to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14).
Alex is the Director of Systems and a trustee of The Relay Trust Ltd. He holds a Master of Theology, is an ordained pastor in the Lutheran Church, and served as a missionary in West Africa from 2009 to 2016. Since 2016, he has been involved in setting up The Relay Trust as an organisation and has been responsible for the development of The Well training system. Alex lives in Oxford but frequently travels to Africa.
Erwin started out in computer vision, but then got drawn into linguistics. He and his family lived in Russia, learned one of the local languages, started a translation project, and saw the full Bible published a couple of years ago. Erwin got a PhD in historical English linguistics and now serves as translation and linguistics consultant, although he’s still involved in computer programming for a Dutch university.
Paul’s work as a project specialist with Cru has given him wide-spread exposure to a variety of approaches in ministry, in many different settings. These experiences, combined with his unique blend of administrative skills and creativity, have often helped him lead people to think “outside the box,” yet in a way that is tied to practical application and getting things done. Paul has a degree in Leadership Communication Studies from the University of Minnesota, has been a lifelong learner of new technologies, and has always been an advocate of the key principles in the “lean start-up.”
Joshy serves with Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH) as their Digital Engagement Coordinator (Asia). His primary focus is to empower the team members and partners in the South Asia region with digital scripture resources, and helping them to make use of regionally popular means for scripture distribution (apps, websites, digital platforms) and scripture promotions (digital marketing, social media) resulting in scripture engagement and establishment of virtual discipleship communities. Before joining FCBH in 2018, he was leading the IT, Communications, and Media teams for a pioneer mission agency in North India for 9 years. He loves attending EMDC (since 2013), and is a part of the Steering Committee (since 2015), facilitates the South Asia Affinity group (since 2014) and has facilitated Digital Engagement & Social Media training track (2016-2018) and EMDC IT support team (2018-2019) in the past. He and his wife, Persis, are based out of Kerala, India and have a one-year old son, Luke.
Jamie surrendered to full-time Christian ministry 21 years ago. He served six years in the US as a youth pastor and then associate pastor. He earned a BA in religion, an MDiv in international church planting, and an MA in intercultural studies. He has served with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention for over 14 years, focusing on a restricted access country in Central Asia. Jamie has a passion for evangelism, discipleship, and placing the Scriptures in the hands of those that desire them. For the last eleven years, he has served as the point person for getting Scriptures and other resources into the restricted access country his team focuses on. At first, this was largely through printed materials. Since 2012, however, his efforts have focused on using, developing, testing, and improving digital technologies so people can access the Scriptures. Though Jamie does not have specialized training in technologies, he does have a passion and calling to get the Word of God into the hands of those that are hungry for it, proving that anyone can do the same.
John Dave holds degrees in nursing, counseling and theology. He pastors a growing church in Southern Philippines. He is the National Coordinator for WEAVERS — the oral learner strategy of EE Philippines, both for leading others to Christ and for discipling new believers. He conducts workshops, serving leaders from 11 different people groups where participants are trained to listen, connect, share and weave Bible stories into their daily conversations, even in hostile environments.
Marina is the Translation Project Management Coordinator for UBS and Project Coordinator for IBT Moscow. She has worked on translation projects in Central Asia.
Jeremy enjoys talking and teaching about movies—probably way too much. He works with Create Mobile’s team of filmmakers/trainers and served as Assistant Director for a feature film they just made in Cambodia. You can typically locate him working from his home in Battle Ground, Washington, where he lives with two teens, one dog, and a very benevolent wife. He was rescued by Jesus in 1995 and given the new purpose to tell stories that can change hearts and minds.
Kathy Law
Kathy Law and her husband, Charlie, joined SIL in 1986. They have spent most of their married life on one side or the other of the Mediterranean. Kathy has been involved with oral approaches since 2016 and is a trainer and story consultant with OneStory and a Scripture engagement consultant with SIL.
Allan has served in Mexico since 1986, mainly in an area in northwest Mexico where diaspora populations of 100 language groups converge. He primarily focuses on developing and promoting Scripture resources for the highly-oral, highly-dispersed Copala Triqui language community. CDs, DVDs, microSD cards, BibleBoxes, Audibibles, a radio program, websites, and a YouTube channel are utilized, plus highly-targeted Facebook ad campaigns to connect Triquis throughout North America with online Scripture resources.
Kyle Lee
Kyle grew up all around the United States and was a missionary kid to Kenya throughout high school. He is a spoken word artist, podcast host, and producer and is now Indigitous US as a Strategy Manager. Kyle’s passion is connecting young adults with marketplace skills to advance missions and the gospel in their everyday life through their passions and talents.
Susie has an MA in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary and consults with Christian non-profits in collaborative partnerships, leadership transformation, and strategic programming. She is currently serving Biblica as the Partnership Liaison for the Digital Training Library (DTL). Susie grew up in Central America as a Wycliffe MK. She and her husband, Bob, served 23 years in leadership with Wycliffe and SIL in Huntington Beach, PNG, Dallas, and Orlando. Her leadership experience and current context, in California surrounded by vineyards, inspired her to create Conversations in the Vineyard – a wine-country retreat for leaders that cultivates a framework for sustainable leadership grounded in metaphors from the vineyard. Susie has three amazing adult children, and four adorable grandkids.
Ron has served with SIL International for nearly 25 years. He led a translation project for about 10 years in Eurasia and now serves as a language technology consultant. Ron helps SIL teams throughout Eurasia with their translation and language software. His expertise is the dictionary and linguistic software called FLEx. He the creator and developer of FLExTrans, a rule-based machine translation program. Ron is working to launch and support the software worldwide. Ron has an MS in Computational Linguistics from the University of Washington. He lives with his wife in Germany.
Pastor Saroj is the Senior Pastor of The Way of Life Church in Kathmandu, Nepal. He is the president of the Himalayan Bible Study Academy, as well as the Executive Editor of www.nayasanchar.com. He is also the President of the Lions Club of Kathmandu Community Peace. In addition to being a lecturer and pastor, he is a husband and father.
Sobhi is a missionary to Muslims, church planter, Sharif Bible translator, and visiting professor of Islamic studies at various seminaries around the world. He is the founder and president of the International Sharif Bible Society. Sobhi is also an author, including
Praying for Muslims, A Guide for Effective Intercession, 1991-2018; The Right Path (17 languages); Islamic Exodus into the Freedom of Christ; My Father (Arabic); The Oil Seller (Arabic); He Loved Me (Arabic); L’Islam: Quel Defi Pour Nous? (French).
Bryan joins EMDC this year with a 10 year history in ministry marketing alongside organizations like Youth for Christ, Greater Europe Mission, Happy Hearts Somalia, WeCare Nairobi, and more. His last campaign branded #WeShowUp, raised over $300,000 to impact at-risk teenagers throughout the Tacoma, Washington area of the USA. In 2016, Bryan founded LAGRAVE Agency and works with 40+ business and nonprofit clients around the world on marketing strategy, campaign development, videography, email marketing, social media, website development, and more: “We are a small marketing firm with incredibly powerful and specialized skills.” Bryan received his B.A. in International Ministries from Moody Bible Institute, holds certifications from DigitalMarketer, and is currently gaining his MBA from University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He lives in Tacoma with his wife Rachel and their fixer-upper home. When not working, he’s usually snowboarding, surfing, traveling in British Columbia with his wife, mountain biking, or watching “Madam Secretary” on Netflix.
Richard is Scripture Engagement Domain Team Leader for SIL Francophone Africa and Scripture Engagement Coordinator for SIL West Africa. He is from London, England. Since 2003, he has been working in West Africa with Bible translation teams to equip local colleagues, train church leaders, and plan strategically for Scripture engagement. Richard has studied both computer science and missiology, and is especially interested in the role of digital technology in mission and Scripture engagement. He is involved in the development of Scripture App Builder (a tool for creating customised apps for smartphones). Several articles by Richard can be found at www.scripture-engagement.org. He and his wife, Jenny, are based in West Africa with their two daughters.
Fouad is an author, lecturer and third generation ordained minister from Beirut Lebanon. Reaching Muslims since 1979, Fouad founded Crescent Project in 1993 to rally the Church in America and beyond to reach Muslims with the Gospel of Christ. Since 1993, Fouad has trained tens of thousands of Christians through the ministry training programs of Crescent Project and has served as a guest instructor at several universities and Christian ministries. He has been featured in numerous publications and appeared on several news outlets.
Fouad has authored 14 books including Outreach Magazine’s 2015 Cross Cultural Resource of the Year Connecting with Muslims: A Guide to Communicating Effectively. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication and an M.A. from Fuller Theological Seminary in Islamic Studies. Fouad lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, with his wife Lisa and their two children.
Ian McQuay has worked in digital forms of publishing since 2010 and for 9 of those years in supporting the popular range of SIL App Builders. Scripture, Reading, Dictionary and Keyboard App Builders. He has had experience as a language field worker in the area of literacy, promotion and distribution. Ian was trained in media for language groups. His knowledge of HTML and CSS from being a webmaster assists in many digital fields. Consults on and does dictionary conversions from various formats. Gives advise and help for users to get diverse data into an app builder. Has checked and added 20+ versions to the Digital Bible Library.
My name is Michael Kofi Mensah. I was born in Ghana and to a Christian parents who are both Christians. I had an encounter with the Lord at age 14 and that was when I accepted Christ as my Lord and Saviour. I am married to Abigail and we have two kids (Daniel & Bryan). I am the Founder and Leader of Vineyard Media & Training services. Vineyard Media is a Christian media organization which is made up of Christian media practitioners who have dedicated themselves to serve the Lord with their skills in the area of recording, editing and mastering in Africa. 20 years ago, after college, the Lord laid on my heart to serve Him with my skills. I started volunteering at Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (Religious department). I started creating content (Audio Bible) to reach out to the Unreached people group in West Africa. So far, I have traveled to over 62 countries to create audio Bibles or dub films in the heart language of unreached people group in over 120 languages. Now, I lead a team of sound engineers to every part of Africa to produce audio Scriptures. This gives me greater joy in contributing to the Kingdom of God. May God be praised!
Johannes is a Senior Anthropology Consultant with SIL International and International Media Services (IMS). He has a PhD in cultural anthropology from Leiden University, the Netherlands, and lectures anthropology at the School of Language and Scripture, Moorlands College (http://www.moorlands.ac.uk/)in Christchurch, UK. His specialized area of interest is film and other media, and especially how they communicate cross-culturally. Johannes and his wife, Sharon, are based in Benin, West Africa, where they have worked since 2002.
Sharon is the Anthropology Coordinator for SIL International and a Senior Anthropology Consultant. She has a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Exeter, UK, and lectures anthropology at the School of Language and Scripture, Moorlands College (http://www.moorlands.ac.uk/) in Christchurch, UK. Her specialized areas of interest include eschatology and human-animal interactions. Sharon and her husband, Johannes, are based in Benin, West Africa, where they have worked since 2002.
Mike Mirabella is an artist, visual designer, and marketing consultant from the United States and serves as a volunteer with Friends of Asia Foundation in Thailand. Through the support of US churches, he and his family have been able to use their time and talents in Thailand. Mike’s love of games and video games has inspired him to pursue ways of building communities and opportunities to make a positive difference in the lives of gamers.
Jeff just connects. Whether it’s bits of information about random topics, or people in ministry around the world, connecting is what Jeff does. He’s been part of Life.Church for 17 years, serving most of that time as a pastor at church locations in south-central US. In 2017, he became a part of the YouVersion team, where he now leads in the area of Strategic Partnerships and Global Expansion. He and his wife, Amy, and their boys, Garrett and Owen, live in Oklahoma City, OK.
Jim and his wife Ginger have been part of the Bible Translation movement for 25 years. Jim has served with SIL as Software development manager, IT domain coordinator and Asia area IT coordinator. He currently is the Director of Product Management for Kalaam Media.
James has worked with Tibetan Buddhists for three decades, primarily as a Bible translator and translation consultant in a cluster project in the Himalayas. He holds an MA from Biola University and a PhD from Columbia International University. James is also involved in developing SE resources, particularly in the digital medium.
Eli lives with his wife and five children in Tbilisi, Georgia where he is launching an arts discipleship hub for frontier workers. A composer, dancer, writer, and filmmaker, he holds a BA in Music, an MA in Intercultural Studies from Biola University, and an MA in Ethnoarts from Dallas International University.
Dr. Eila Romo-Murphy (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4960-6869), is a research associate with H-C-R (www.h-c-r.org), with a PhD at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland in 2014. Her interest includes disaster preparedness of citizens, organizing media campaigns to increase the disaster preparedness skills of vulnerable communities. Her aspiration is to help communities in risk to mitigate climate change, including natural disasters. She believes in the survival capabilities of citizens helping each other as a community, in conjunction with effective communication and collaboration of government, non-government and media stakeholders. Her doctoral dissertation dealt with the evaluation of Aceh community preparedness during the Indian Ocean tsunami, followed by an assessment of media disaster preparedness campaigns in Padang, Indonesia. She has been involved in evaluating the outcomes of First Response Radio, whose purpose is to promote health and survival during natural disasters. One such evaluation was conducted in Bihar, in the aftermath of the 2017 floods.
With more than 20 years of audio work for Galcom.org, TWR.org and others, Pierre-Yves has gained expertise in studio building, recording and audio editing. He has developed tools and processes to help produce excellence in audio quality and level control. He is now part of the EMDC Steering Committee.
Jasmine is the Asia Director for Project Video and has been serving in Thailand for the last 15 years. Project Video is focused on the development of ethnic media teams so they are able to make any videos in their own language needed for evangelism or discipleship. Jasmine holds a Bachelor’s in Graphic Design and an M.A in Intercultural Studies, during which she authored a book on Honor/shame cultures. She is passionate about cultures, creativity and empowering others.
B together with his wife, pastor with NLF within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. B the national coordinator for EE Weavers in India. He has facilitated the Weavers audio translations into 10 Indian languages. The network of house churches which B leads has multiple generations of Weavers trainers leading family, neighbors, friends and co-workers to the Lord as well as discipling new believers. B has also helped to start and follow-up the Weavers ministry in other nations.
Paul is the Director of Language Technology for SIL International in Dallas, Texas. He joined SIL in January 2016 after working at Microsoft for over 17 years. Prior to that, he owned a software company that specialized in Arabic language computing. Paul is passionate about making software work in the languages of the world. He has a BS in information systems from the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Paul has been married to his wife, Anita, for 28 years and has three daughters.
PJ Nguyen is the worship pastor of Elevate Church in Moore, Oklahoma in the United States. He oversee’s the musicians and technology teams and facilitates logistics for all services. He is most passionate about raising up disciples that in turn raise up more disciples. He also serves bi-vocationally as an educator with Moore Public Schools as a music teacher and, most recently, an assistant principal. PJ spends his days pursuing his wife, Jordan, and raising his two sons, Luca and Koa.
Dana O has served in Southeast Asia since 1984 and is part of the team that is supporting over 90 movements. He and his wife are personally coaching a movement that has over 12 generations of small groups.
Ragnar was born in Sweden. During the first 20 years of his life, his parents moved him across Europe, Quebec, Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, exposing him to many language groups, cultures and religious communities. While in Canada studying engineering (B.Sc.F.E), he met and took leadership with a local Navigator campus ministry. As he pursued engineering grad studies (M.Sc.F.E.), and then consulted for the UN FAO in development projects, he and his wife Sue continued to serve their local Navigator university ministry to international students. Ragnar’s software consulting took him to projects in Asia, India, and Spain where he learned to have faith discussions with those holding very different worldviews. In 2015, Ragnar joined Pathfinders to explore online opportunities for the gospel using Google Ad Grants, birthing the GospelOnWeb strategy. GospelOnWeb manages over 45 Google Grants which brings 35,000 visitors every day in dozens of languages to a suite of contextual Gospel websites. Ragnar and Sue live in Fredericton NB, Canada where, with their teenage son, they serve the immigrant and refugee community through ESL Bible discussions.
Francy has 30+ years of experience in teaching, ministering to women and leadership training. She has a passion to equip others to be all that God calls them to be. Francy serves as a member of the CHE (Community Health Evangelism) Service Team and works primarily with member organizations within the CHE network. She has trained all over the globe. Francy and her husband Mike, live in Glendale, Arizona USA and have been married for over 41 years. The daughter, son-in-love and 4 grandchildren live nearby.
Nicholas has served with Faith Comes By Hearing for over 16 years and he currently serves as Country Director for Nigeria. For over a decade he served as a recording technician and trainer for the organization’s Audio Bible recording teams in various nations. Nicholas, who is passionate about Digital Scripture Engagement also leads the FCBH Africa Digital Engagement Team. He is married to Vanessa, from the DRC, and they have six children.
Martin works as educational technologist at Moore Theological College, in Sydney, Australia. His role combines educational technology, educational analytics, and user experience design. He has developed an online educational platform with Moore’s Centre for Global Mission team.
John Ommani serves as Global Scripture Access Services Director with SIL International and also as Scripture Engagement Team Leader for SIL in Anglo-Lusophone Africa. Ommani has with Wycliffe and SIL related ministry in Kenya his home country, Africa and now global since 1992. He has served as a Bible translation, Scripture Engagement consultant, Language Programs manager, and leading Trauma Healing equipping in Africa. Ommani also serves as part of the missions pastoral team in his local church of over 5000 members in Nairobi Kenya. His 2012 Fuller Seminary doctoral dissertation focused on Contextualized language choice in the Church in Kenya. Ommani is married with three children and a grandfather of one. He loves sports, especially long distance cycling with young people.
Tharadjyne Orisma (TJ) is a multimedia specialist with a passion for creative storytelling and innovative technology and several years of media production experience. She is currently a Manager at Bible Media Group, where she facilitates the distribution of her organization’s biblical media resources to their global network of Kingdom partners. TJ holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and Multimedia and is passionate about creating impactful content. She is dedicated to her work and takes pride in stewarding media content that positively impacts people’s lives. Her passion, creativity, and expertise make her a valuable asset to Bible Media Group.
Grace is a global media strategist serving teams with Beyond and the 24:14 Coalition. She works alongside disciple makers from around the world to communicate Scripture using media, technology, and the arts – both online and offline – to multiply disciples. Grace lived and worked across the MENA region for over 20 years producing audio Scripture resources for Arabic speaking Muslims and will return to live in the region again soon.
Since his early teens, Josiah has been passionate about using technology for discipleship, training, and digital Bible distribution. After graduating from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2017 with a degree in Computer Science, Josiah took a web development role at Renew World Outreach exploring innovative ways to spread the Gospel using mobile devices. When he’s not coding, Josiah enjoys playing and writing music and is a worship leader in his local church.
Mark grew up on the mission field, trained in Computer Systems Engineering, and later returned to South Asia to train and work alongside national Bible Translators. He was embedded in a translation project which completed the NT in 2018, and is now half way through the OT. After serving in South Asia for 22 years, Mark and his wife Jo returned to New Zealand in 2020 with their 6 children to continue serving the Bible Translation movement remotely. He enjoys innovating and has helped invent several new tools for translators — the latest being PTXprint. He currently serves in SIL as the Language Technology Coordinator for Asia where he is passionate about helping people make the most of the available technology in order to achieve their own God-given calling.
Frank is a member of the Media2Movements team with Arab World Media, a ministry of Pioneers. Frank and his wife, Linda, have served with Pioneers for 25 years, with Frank serving in the capacity of strategizing the use of media in church planting. Frank has engaged in research projects for religious and private sectors. His PhD research on media use in Jihadi recruitment is being used in curricula in universities and governments. He has written articles and book chapters regarding the use of media in church planting movements, and consults with a broad range of organizations wanting to implement new media strategies in church planting.
Yoke joined FEBC Indonesia in early 2023 as CEO. He has worked as a Senior Vice President at a leading bank in Indonesia where he has worked for 26 years and served as Head of IT System Development. Yoke has also been the CTO in an IT solution provider company for financial institutions for 3 years following his resignation from the bank. Because of his love for God, Yoke has taken a Bachelor of Theology from a seminary in Indonesia to deepen his knowledge of God’s Word and its application in ministry. Currently Yoke’s ministry is as the Financial Director at the Jakarta International Baptist Church.
Miriam and her family have been serving with AIM since October 2010 as part of a partnership team working to see a reproducing church flourishing amongst the Alagwa, a UPG in Tanzania. In 2012, Miriam helped facilitate Muslim Alagwa to craft a set of Chronological Bible stories through the One Story project. She helps teach in the church that has been planted and is involved in community evangelism and discipleship. Having felt the need for more Scripture to be available, the team began translating Luke using OBT with Render methodology in partnership with SIL and the Seed Company. Miriam facilitates one of the translation teams.
Ross facilitates the matching of pre-qualified seeker leads in 60+ languages to organizations and local workers who are reaching people groups through social media pixels. As a commercial office developer in Ontario, Canada, he has a practical orientation to marketing funnels. He served 26 years with the Navigators and founded Pathfinders in 2005, focusing on organic church strategies such as micro church, marketplace ministry, and online outreach. He serves as part of a 3-person workgroup including Ragnar Oborn (Gospel on Web founder), and Jim Klaas (40 Days of Discipleship founder), and is present at this conference with fellow Pathfinders volunteers, Charlie Ritchie (Vietnam focus) and Ken Reimer (Software industry executive).
Jon is a former professor, church-planter, and now business as mission owner of Kavanah Media. Kavanah Media is a team of marketers, creatives, technologists, and project managers who are working with over 20 different mission organizations in over 84 different counties, to help them leverage media and technology to find seekers in their context. Jon is the host of the weekly Christian Media Marketing Podcast and video show and is passionate about making sure that we leverage all possible ways so that everyone has the opportunity to hear of the grace of Jesus. He is the father of 3, and has been married to Amy for 28 years.
Brian is an award winning director, cinematographer, and editor, whose short films and documentaries have been screened around the globe. His first feature-length film, Awakened, was released and distributed by Word Films in 2016. In 2011, Brian became the media director for ITEC. Since joining ITEC, their media presence has grown and now produces content that can be viewed on numerous platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Right Now Media, and the YouVersion Bible App. In 2012, Brian began documenting the recovery of injured missionary Steve Saint through a series of videos entitled The Next Chapter. These award winning videos have been viewed individually and collectively thousands of times online, and shown by countless churches, organizations, and news outlets. In 2014, Brian developed ITEC’s I-FILM training program to equip Christ followers around the world to share the Gospel through film. Brian’s most recent film, Trapped, received the Gold Crown Award for Best Short Film at the International Christian Visual Media Conference, and has been viewed over 4 million times in 229 countries on YouTube. Brian currently resides in central Florida with his wife, Karun, and their two children.
Neil (Studge) works for the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) as Translation and Digital Publishing Advisor. The Bible Society started in 1804. Its first 100 years it had worked in 1,000 languages. It has the largest Bible collection in the world by far. He does technical support for British and foreign translation projects, and tries to revitalize historic translations from the BFBS archives to help communities engage with the Bible.
Joe has been assisting the EMDC.guide team with the recent updates to the website. Joe has been married for 34 years to Donna, and has two sons, Tyler and Austin who have grown and flown. Joe lived in Cameroon, Africa for the past 19 years where he served with SIL Cameroon. For seven of those years, he served as a vernacular media specialist, eight years as the HR Director for the branch, and then as a Regional Director within Cameroon and also a Language Programs Manager. Currently, Joe is based out of Waxhaw, NC as the Director of Resources & Innovations for SIL International Media Services; a role he has been in for a little over a year and half.
SABDA has ministered in Indonesia for almost 30 years in all things Biblical and Digital. It exists at the intersection of Bible, Technology, and ChristianMinistry. SABDA means “Logos” (John 1:1), and is also an Abbreviation that conveys its core purpose/essence :: “Software Alkitab, Biblika, Dan Alat-Alat” (Software Bible, BiblicalResources, And Tools). Most simply expressed, its vision is IT4GOD. Main activities include Biblical Computing and Digital Ministry. SABDA’s philosophy of ministry is :: Freely Receive, Freely Give; and … You can’t do it Alone … !! The following simple mottos capture much of SABDA’s vision, their passion and the work God has entrusted them with :: e-Servants to the Body of Christ. // Every Computer for Christ. // Equipping the Equippers. // Bible Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime. // Opened Bible, Opened Lives. // Ending Biblical Poverty. // Reaching Digital Tribes. // Every Gadget for God. // Digital Word for a Digital World, to Digital Generations!! These are a few highlights of their many too many current/recent projects and initiatives :: #SMARTBible // #AyoPa! // SABDA APPs // BaDeNo // SABDA-Live // Alki-TOP // MLC (Ministry Learning Center) // Digital Media Library // Karaoke Bible // AudioDiglot // ITLs // Alki-PEDIA // Komik.APP+Zone // AYT=Open Bible EcoSystem // SABDA Bible Engine // MySABDA // #unHACK !! AND now SABDA is venturing boldly into AI-4-God, as well as AI-4-Edu and AI-4-Church. As for Max, he is one of the “ghosts in the machine” … 🙂 … TGBTG !!
Jaime Saint is grandson to Christian martyr Nate Saint, a missionary pilot who was speared to death in 1956 by the Waodani Indian tribe in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, South America. Jaime has been serving full time for the last 8 years at I-TEC (Indigenous People’s Technology and Education Center), an organization started by Jaime’s father, Steve. I-TEC’s vision is to equip indigenous Christ-followers in frontier areas with tools and training to share Christ’s love in their communities. Jaime and his wife, Jessica, have 6 daughters and are not only investing themselves internationally, but also locally at their home church in Ocala, FL.
Nolan, the director of the Pattern Platform for creating discipleship apps, has served in full-time ministry for 28 years with the last 12 years focused on unreached people groups throughout Eurasia. While always interested and engaged with technology, it was his work within a closed country that caused the need to create a secure app to facilitate resourcing new believers and home churches. The creation of the app caused a larger dream to emerge; a dream to bring the same type of app within reach for every group pursuing disciple making multiplication.
After 14 years as a software developer, Andrew and his family joined Wycliffe Bible Translators in 2003. The family served for 12 years with SIL in Senegal where Andrew managed the computer department and then took on the role of digital media coordinator. His roles included app and website development, archiving and digital media strategy. After returning to the US in 2018, Andrew and his wife, Cathy, settled in central Oregon. Andrew now splits his time equally between being a member care coordinator for Wycliffe USA and working for SIL Francophone Area as an app builder specialist. Along with that role, he serves on the global app builder support, SAB assist and Scripture Earth admin teams. His heart is that God’s Word can be made available in the languages and media that best serve the needs of people worldwide and result in transformed lives, for God’s glory.
Jo has served with Wycliffe for 64 years and has an MA in Intercultural Studies from Biola University. She did a NT translation in the Philippines, then headed the Anthropology Department of SIL Philippines. She currently works as a Scripture Engagement Consultant for SIL International. Jo co-developed the Culture meets Scripture trainings with Amy West and together they introduce the workshops internationally in varied venues. She is the author of ‘And the Word Came with Power’.
Sheryl is a Senior Anthropology Consultant with SIL International and has worked as a Bible translator in Latin America and the Pacific. She serves on a virtual SIL team working with Relational Research, a UK-based company adapting a tool developed in the UK to measure relationships in Asia. As a multicultural consultant, she facilitates Cultural Self Discovery workshops for various mission organizations. She also teaches Asian culture as an adjunct with Talbot School of Theology in the MDiv and Doctor of Ministry programs. Sheryl received a PhD in intercultural studies from Fuller School of Intercultural Studies. She wrote Biblical Multicultural Teams: Applying Biblical Truth to Cultural Differences (2011), and co-authored Tapestry of Grace: Untangling the Cultural Complexities of Asian American Life and Ministry (2016). She is married to Pete, and they have two married sons and five grandchildren.
Seppo joined the Finnish Bible Society in 1986 as a Sales Assistant. Since then he has been the Bible Shop Manager, a Library Assistant, a University Researcher, a UBS Translation Consultant, and now he work as Translation Consultant at the FiBS. He also participates in developing translation tools for translators, in training them, and has administrative responsibilities for translation work at FiBS.
Seppo has a PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of Helsinki. His speciality is Septuagint studies and Old Testament textual history. He is currently working on editing the Book of Joshua for the Biblia Hebraica Quinta.
Campbell has lived and worked in New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, USA, and the Philippines. His role is to support people and teams as they use various digital technologies to do things together, better, more effectively, and more efficiently. Campbell is a member of various international teams involved in technology, learning, leadership, and ministry.
Carter has been working with SIL since 2013. The focus of his work is digital Scripture distribution and promotion. Carter has run Facebook ads in a number of different languages to promote the availability of Scripture and Scripture-based resources. He has also given digital Scripture use presentations in English and Spanish.
Jim and Janet have worked with the Seed Co. since 2007 doing training and research for Bible storytelling in language groups that need Bible translations. The idea behind the methodology of Oral Bible Storytelling is to help language teams who do not have Bible translations learn to tell Bible stories, and in the process, provoke interest in the community to do Bible translation and learn basic translation principles. They have trained language teams around the world, 66 language groups in all. Prior to their time with the Seed Co, Jim and Janet worked in Vanuatu for 15 years doing literacy projects, sociolinguistics research, translation training for MTTs, and administration with SIL. They were also part of the Strategic Formulation Group, rethinking the decision-making process for translation, literacy, and language development.
Paul is from the USA, but born in Pakistan. He has worked in Sindh since 1989, and for the past 17 years at the Audio Visual Centre in Rattanabad. He and his wife Pat have four children.
Since March of 2020, Tim has served as the Executive Director of Kolo Group, a small technology focused mission whose purpose is to innovatively merge business and technology expertise with missions for transformation of the least reached. Prior to this, he served 30 years overseas with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and PACTEC (Partners in Aviation and Communication Technology) in Lesotho, Albania, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. His ministry and leadership roles have included aviation, IT tools and services, team building, strategic planning, identifying organizational culture issues, and impacting lives in a varied range of circumstances and settings. His mission experience covers 13 countries and multiple languages. He holds a masters in Organizational Leadership and is currently working on his Doctorate in Intercultural Studies with Fuller Seminary. A large portion of his ministry experience has been focused on some of the most unreached countries in the world, working closely with a wide variety of denominations, nationalities, mission organizations and staff of all ages.
Stephen has been teaching people to share their faith, disciple others, and plant churches using Bible storying for the past 20 years. He and his family have lived and ministered in France, Benin, India, and the United Kingdom. He currently lives in the UK and travels around the world training, consulting, and coaching for reproducing church planting strategies using Bible storying. Stephen’s passion is for all believers to have access to the Word of God and for all believers to be equipped to effectively share their faith and disciple others using God’s Word. He believes that Bible storying is the key to seeing this happen among the majority of the world who choose to learn through oral means.
Josh Summers is the owner of Go West Ventures, a media company that reaches tens of millions of people each year through video, podcasts, printed media and websites. In addition to operating his own business and small team, he also invests in other kingdom-minded businesses around the world, acting in both strategic advisor and board member roles. Josh has lived in Asia with his family for over 15 years and has a passion to help those in ministry build sustainable streams of income.
Julian hails from a family of pastors in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. As a university student, he committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ and was actively involved in student ministry. He served with FEBA Radio in India for 11 years, has been ministering with the United Bible Societies since 1991. His responsibilities include the smooth functioning of Bible Society ministries in about 12 countries, and also the global coordination of literacy work. Having completed his PhD in communication studies from Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Julian is passionate about the effective communication of the Gospel through various media. It was his privilege to be the keynote speaker of EMDC in 2012. He teaches Christian communication in a couple of seminaries in Bangalore, and has also written a book titled Audio Based Translation (2000). He is married to Anita and they have two daughters, sons-in-law, and a grandson.
Clyde leads the Visual Story Network (VSN), a community of 550 organizations and 5000 leaders in 95 nations. VSN accelerates the mission of the Church by equipping the generation that will use media, story and innovation to make disciples of all nations. 375 projects, products and partnerships have reached an estimated five million people. Prior to VSN, he oversaw new media development for Jesus Film Project (Magdalena: Released From Shame, Damah Film Festival, JESUS: Fact or Fiction?) and coordinated the campus work of Cru throughout North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Clyde holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maryland/College Park and a Master of Divinity / Missiology degree with honors from Denver Seminary. He speaks English, French and Turkish. To learn more about Clyde, go to www.visualstory.org/tabers.
Shirin is Iranian-American and directs Empower Women Media. She is the author of Muslims Next Door and the co-author of Islam and North America. With a background in cross-cultural training, Shirin assists multiple organizations in media-based initiatives. The Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, NYTimes.com, Christianity Today and Fox News have featured her writing and work among Muslims and Christians alike. With the JESUS Film, she helped produce Magdalena. Additionally, she partners with the International Religious Freedom Roundtable to advance religious freedom and women’s empowerment. Shirin leads an annual film festival, media fellowship and religious freedom learning platform, Live What You Believe. She is a graduate of the University of Washington, has completed two masters degrees, and speaks English, Farsi and French. She is married to Clyde Taber, the director of Visual Story Network, and has three adult children. www.empowerwomen.media
Wendy is currently is training manager in a faith based organization and a training facilitator for Trauma Healing. She has been working in Southwest Asia for the past 20 years. She has been doing training and coaching in CCM, CP and Discipleship program. Her passion is to meet people from different cultures and enjoys food and travelling.
Darrel was born into family of pioneering missionaries working with New Tribes Mission in Brazil. He has degrees in mass communications and philosophy from Tennessee Temple University and the University of Tennessee. He returned to Brazil in 1994 and later helped launch Brazil’s first Christian radio and TV network, Rede Boas Novas. Darrel has been involved in radio and TV production and overseen translation and adaptation of programs into over 30 languages. Ordained to the ministry in 1992, he has been involved with translation and script adaptation work for over 40 years and has been the Portuguese coordinator for the Billy Graham Evangelist Association since 1997. Darrel also serves with MegaVoice as VP of Strategic Partnerships. With the Lord’s blessing, MegaVoice has supplied nearly 3 million audio Bibles directly impacting over an estimated 30 million people worldwide. Darrel and his wife, Deborah, have been married for 31 years and have four grown children.
Reece grew up in Mexico doing Jesus film dubbings alongside of SIL translators with his father. For the last 13 years he has volunteered/worked with MegaVoice in a dozen different locations around the world. Recently he was assigned to India as an audio specialist and quality control technician. His greatest desire is to see oral people engage with God’s Word.
Jacob Tornga serves as the US Regional Leader for International Association for Refugees (www.iafr.org). He has 10+ years of experience working in refugee camps in Africa, particularly in partnering with and supporting the refugee church. His passion is to see the global church connect with the refugee church in mutually supportive, life-giving ways. He also has experience teaching on global refugee realities. Jacob is also a graduate of Calvin Theological Seminary. He currently lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with his wife Jennifer.
Duane’s life was changed by the statement, “500 million people don’t have a verse of Scripture in a language they understand.” Leaving his engineering job, he joined Wycliffe/SIL International. He and his wife served in Cameroon for 18 years, working in language survey, then as part of a leadership team, and finally joining the National Languages Media Services department in 2004 as a Vernacular Media Specialist. In 2010, the Troyers moved to Waxhaw, NC, headquarters for SIL’s International Media Services where Duane serves with the Technology Team. As part of the Glyssen design team (joint SIL/Faith Comes By Hearing project), he hopes to create Scripture recording software to assist translation teams in producing quality multi-voice recordings of newly translated Scripture. His passion is helping minority language communities discover and use the latest media technology to create and distribute Scripture-based resources.
Haeme is a Trainer, Consultant, Speaker & Blogger. He runs the business “haemeulrich.com”. His focus is on digital transformation and multi-channel publishing. He is also a trainer for InDesign and WordPress. He is the founder of the well-known “Publishingblog.de” and a speaker at international business events. He believes that innovation is a matter of the heart.
Rachel is the Director of Training for International Association for Refugees (IAFR), an international missions agency focused on the recovery of forcibly displaced people. She has an undergraduate degree in theology, and master’s degree in immigration history. Rachel has worked with refugees and asylum seekers in Greece, Italy, England, and the USA, and as a consultant for ministries in other regions. In addition to her work with displaced people, Rachel is committed to helping strengthen local churches and is eager to see people equipped and encouraged as they welcome forcibly displaced people in their context. She currently lives in Minnesota, USA, with her husband and daughter.
Bryan has served with SIL International for 30 years. He and his family started out in Nepal and South Asia working for over 23 years to facilitate a translation project among the Eastern Tamang people (completed 2011), and functioning in a variety of other roles. Bryan then served internationally in scripture engagement, and is currently the Global Trauma Healing Services Coordinator for SIL International. He is a Master Facilitator in both the Adult Classic Trauma Healing and the Oral Story-based Trauma Healing programs, as well as an Apprentice Facilitator in the Children’s Trauma Healing program.
Butch is a Bible storyteller with Simply The Story. After serving for over 35 years in Pastoral Ministry, Butch now serves as the Director of International Development for Simply The Story. In the last eleven years, he has traveled to around 50 countries teaching people how to tell engaging, accurate Bible stories that not only teach participants, but actually allows them to experience God’s Word in a fresh and vibrant way. From the hills of war-torn Syria to the beaches of Costa Rica and the beautiful mountains of New Zealand, Butch has seen stories transform the lives of both adults and children.
Richard is a Christian worker and disciple-maker from Melbourne, Australia. Along with his career experience in corporate sales, Richard has a BA specializing in Japanese socio-linguistics, and an MBA focusing on digital marketing in the eLearning industry. Based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Richard is responsible for developing the Crosswired product to fit the needs of mission agencies and churches.
Chris gave his life to Christ shortly after completing his bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012. Since 2014, he has worked as an engineer at Renew World Outreach, which exists to equip the body of Christ with tools, media, and strategies to reach the most remote with the Gospel. You can often find Chris leading evangelism teams, or sharing miracle stories through his YouTube channel 100Miracles.
Klaas is from the Netherlands. He is married to Dineke and they have 3 children. Since 2011, they have been involved in SIL Nepal. He works as an anthropology consultant, and is currently involved in Scripture Engagement research among three different communities in Nepal.
Michael Wan, along with his wife, Josephine, and 3 daughters, have been with Wycliffe Bible Translators, Singapore, and SIL International for over 30 years. Michael was the Scripture Engagement Specialist in the Philippines up to the completion and celebration of the Kagayanen New Testament & Genesis in 2008. He is the SE Coordinator/Consultant for SIL Malaysia, and has been involved in Trauma Healing since 2017. He is a Training Facilitator in the Adult Classic, and with a team is working on the translation of the TH handbook into Bahasa Malaysia.
Leslie is the developer and coordinator of the Strengthening Christian Families Program International. She has lived in SE Asia for 33 yeaars. She is an educator and has done graduate work in linguistics. Leslie spent several years teaching elementary students at an international school in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The switch to drug prevention through Scripture engagement began 8 years ago in response to the overwhelming need expressed by local people in the context of mainland SE Asia.
Glenys worked for 42 years with SIL (1975-2017) in literacy and Scripture use, as a Literacy, Education, and Training Consultant, and in various administration roles. Her work experiences have been in the North of Australia (Djinang people), Papua New Guinea (including working with the Takia people), the Solomon Islands, and on staff at the SIL training institute in Australia where she served both as a lecturer and as principal. In her retirement, she enjoys continued engagement with various literacy and SE projects around family and holiday commitments.
Jon Watts is the CEO of Khalibre a technology professional with more than 25 years in investment banking and business as mission. Jon started working with missions to lead a project delivering global personnel, mobilization, member care and development solutions for an international mission agency. As a result of this and the million dollars of efficiencies and savings accomplished, we asked ourselves the question, how could we help other mission organizations? And so the Khalibre BAM was formed. Crosswired is our platform for private, secure e-learning and collaborative spaces and is currently implemented in about 60 countries. Our hope is to share our experiences and bring the benefits achieved with a few mission organizations to many more.
Amy currently serves as a Senior Scripture Engagement Consultant for SIL International. Over her 34 years of service with SIL International, she has been an assistant in SIL’s Anthropology Department in the Philippines and then a Scripture Engagement Consultant with SIL International. Her Intercultural Studies PhD dissertation was on “Response to Death: The Powerful Influence of Assumptions, Relationships and Ritual on the Balangao Christians in the Philippines.” She co-developed the Culture meets Scripture training with Joanne Shetler. They have led trainings in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and the Pacific.
Keegan West leads Create Labs, helping to foster innovation, research and new initiatives focused on more effectively reaching the unreached. Create International instructors from Create Mobile, Create AniMissions and Create Seeds will also showcase their training and resources with students from around the world.
Kristin Westbrook’s passion is to see communities around the world come to know Christ by gaining access to the Bible in their heart languages – especially sign languages. Kristin is currently an Account Executive at Avodah, Inc., and she spent three years working in sign language Bible translation before joining the Avodah team. She also spent time serving in Ecuador, Zambia, and Uganda. Kristin has a BA in sign language linguistics from the University of New Mexico, and she is currently pursuing an MBA.
Alan is the Senior Director of Global Partnerships at Biblica. He is tasked with working with existing and new partners to meet their Bible needs for engagement in print, audio, electronic and video format. While Alan is based in Philadelphia, he hails from Belfast in Northern Ireland. He has been married to Cheryl for 38 years. He is more than happy to talk about his two great loves for many hours. His Grandson and Liverpool Football Club.
Daniel is a PhD-trained data scientist with over ten years of experience working on ML/AI applications in industry and academia. Currently, he is working with SIL International on a variety of AI and data related projects to improve access for minority language speakers and quantify remaining Bible translation needs. Daniel also co-hosts the Practical AI podcast, helps organize Code for the Kingdom and FaithTech events, teaches data science at Purdue University, and speaks at conferences around the world (Applied Machine Learning Days, PyCon, DataEngConf, QCon AI, GopherCon, and more).
Keith helps lead the Mobile Ministry Forum and is the director of Mobile Advance (www.mobileadvance.org), an initiative of WEC International. Keith has assisted in the implementation of mobile ministry initiatives in more than 30 countries and has helped in the development, testing and promotion of various digital ministry initiatives. Prior to taking on this role Keith served for ten years as a missionary and team leader in the Arab world. In his spare time Keith enjoys getting out to hike and run in the woods.
Kirk is director of global ICT architecture for OM International. He has served with OM for 14 years and has a passion for seeing vibrant communities of Jesus followers among the least reached. With degrees in both electrical engineering and computer science, he strives to see mobile technology used to enable everyone to see and hear the Gospel. Having co-developed technologies for distributing evangelistic, theological training, and educational material for mobile devices off the grid, Kirk strives to see these materials made available to all ministries and people. He presently lives in the USA after having served 9 years in the UK.
Tony has worked with the IMB for the past 11 years. He and his wife live in Southeast Asia with their 2 daughters. They served as team leaders in India for seven years before moving to Southeast Asia. Currently, Tony works to help provide Scripture resources to assist field workers in reaching their people.
Mark, originally from the UK, is currently based in Washington State in the US, and is part of an SIL team seeking to make the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) available to minority language communities. Current projects include developing the AQuA (Augmented Quality Assessment for Bible translations) API, and exploring possibilities for AI chatbots to facilitate Scripture engagement in 100+ languages. Mark has served with SIL since 2004, mostly in Tanzania, where he was Country Director from 2019-2022. He holds an MA in Bible and Mission, which focused on the benefits of vernacular Scripture engagement within multilingual communities.
Nick serves with Indigitous US as the Content Producer. He also helps lead young adults and students in digital missions projects. He also has a passion for telling stories for the missions world through videos. He is currently an MA student at Dallas Seminary.
Since joining SIL in 1999, Peter has worked in a variety of administrative and support roles in both Chad and Mexico. Recently, he has been involved with digital distribution of Bible Translation products. In 2018, he saw a need for a replacement for the BibleBox WiFi distribution device. He ported the BibleBox code to the Raspberry Pi platform which offered greatly increased performance and capacity. This has led to insights into new ways to present BT materials to those who need them.
Scripture Engagement Specialist and Translation Advisor. She was born in Ethiopia. She serves in Ethiopia with SIL Ethiopia. Her role involves organizing and teaching the OBS, Truly Fruitful, and Ethnomusicology/arts workshops with minority language people groups. She has a heart for the Bible-less people of Ethiopia, and she loves to see people receive the Bible in their own mother-tongue.