Alliance’s presence at the Arise Asia mission conference

Photo: Alliance's Asia-Pacific Area and SIL Asia joint team

The Arise Asia mission conference in Bangkok 25-29 July brought together 1,844 young adults from 37 Asian countries to listen to God's voice through worship, prayer, Bible exposition, plenary sessions, workshops and testimonies. The Arise Asia is an ongoing mission mobilisation movement to inspire the next generation to take the gospel throughout Asia and to the world.

Many are already called and they came here to discern where the Lord will lead them to. On day four, 229 young adults committed to long-term cross-cultural missions and 364 pledged at least one year of their life to missions internships.

The Alliance’s Asia-Pacific Area co-sponsored a booth with SIL Asia and the collaboration was meaningful and impactful. The joint booth was themed “The Pathway of Life Transformation”, which appealed to many as it provided a framework to understand the big picture of the language-related ministry. The workshops on trauma healing, and holistic development through literacy and education were fully subscribed to with at least 150 attendants each. The presentation at the booth on Bible Translation and other ministries engaged many visitors.

A banner showing the latest Scripture access statistics drew the attention of a group of young Christians from South Asia. Photo: Alliance's Asia-Pacific Area and SIL Asia joint team

At least 100 people signed up at the booth to show their interest to know more about internship opportunities. The joint team is finding ways to build a relational, mentoring-based internship programme that will help these young people. For example, they are sharing online spreadsheets with intern opportunities in different countries. Wycliffe Hong Kong has called a gathering for those interested attendees from the city.

As the conference came to an end, the joint team members reflected on the experience. Here are two of them:

"It was awesome that so many young people came together from Asia representing (various) nations, languages, and ministries. They are the next gen of God's workers who will be called forth to serve in a criss-crossing world. It is wonderful to have this partnership between SIL and Wycliffe Global Alliance combining forces to engage this generation for God's mission."

“It was such a blessing to be involved in some small ways with God’s journey for these young kingdom workers to pursue translation, ethnoarts, and lang-tech paths to utilise their talents. I look forward with joy to our ongoing mentoring and moulding activities. Now the hard work begins of guiding them down pathways to join us on the mission field!”

Story: Alliance's Asia-Pacific Area and SIL Asia joint team