MARCH 2019

 Lift-off — We Have a Launch!

After over two years of intense writing, checking, filming, editing, and preparations, our first set of video-based courses are online and open for enrolment at https://dasko.org.

Our initial courses constitute an in-depth overview of the world of missions. If you’ve ever been interested in finding out more about missions, here’s your opportunity! All our courses are free of charge, and you can do the courses at your own pace. Why don’t you try “The Bible and Missions”?

The courses available are:

• How to use Didasko.

• The Bible and Missions.

• Discipling the Nations, consisting of four modules:

  • The Great Cloud of Witnesses.

  • The Remaining Task.

  • Counting the Cost.

  • Missions Strategy.

• Roles in Frontier Missions.

• Prayer Strategy for Life and Ministry.

This is an exciting time for us! There is already interest from individual Christians, churches, and missions training organizations from a number of countries.

If you'd like an evaluator's detail overview of the courses we're launching with, click here: https://dasko.org/evaluator.

Giving Honour Where Honour is Due

Bets and I want to testify how the Lord has been in control of the whole project, in fact, it was His idea in the first place! And He's come through in so many ways — helping us solve intractable technical problems such as all kinds of weird camera issues and server gremlins; not to mention helping us to persevere through some difficult health problems on the way.

Collaboration of the Body of Christ

But it’s not just been us and God, by no means! A number of other people were very involved in the development process. It is exciting to see such a collaboration effort within the Body of Christ. We've had contributors from different church backgrounds, cultures, and languages. They are from countries including South Africa, the USA, New Zealand, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, Australia, South-East Asia, Canada, Singapore and Italy. Their contributions included highly technical help such as setting up the e-mail server, theological and missiological advice, editing of the course material, making illustrations, translating video subtitles into Chinese and Indonesian.

Some testimonies

We asked a group of people from different backgrounds to test the final courses. These included missionaries with 20+ years of field experience, missions mobilizers, and a number of people who had very little missions exposure. The group was a good mix of people from a number of countries.

We have taken some of their comments on the online discussion forums, and put them on our website’s “testimonies” page. You might enjoy reading some of these by clicking here.

No Powerpoints!

(Note Mandarin subtitles on the right)

Each course consists of a series of short (6-12 minute) videos, each followed by a quiz, reflection questions, and an online discussion forum. The courses are self-paced, and the software remembers where you last were. All courses can also be structured for use in facilitated groups.

Non-English speakers can view the translated text scrolling next to the video. The video can be forwarded and rewound by scrolling and clicking on the text. See the picture on the right. We will soon have subtitles in many languages. Initially they will be Google Translated, but eventually human-translated.

We don’t use Powerpoint presentations in our videos, but rather illustrations to explain a story or concept, like these from the Missions Strategy module.

Fun facts

How much effort went into making this first set of courses? Here are some fun facts:

The way forward

We’ve dedicated the last 2.5 years solely to the development of the courses, static website and learning management platform. Now we trust that the Lord will bring the growth in terms of people using our training, with the result that more of the Unreached People Groups being reached effectively. It reminds us of what Winston Churchill said after the battle of El Alamein:

… this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. (Click here to listen on Youtube).

Next, we will start developing courses on specific missions-related topics, starting with support raising and language learning.

One of the greatest difficulties new missionaries face, is to raise enough financial and prayer support for them and their families, therefore our next course will be on how they can tackle this. Once they get to the field, missionaries face the daunting task of language learning, all the way up to ministry-level competence. This is no easy task, especially for undocumented languages. This is the topic of another course.

Please let people know

Please promote Didasko with your friends, colleagues, and other organizations who might benefit from this. Click here to get the promotional material.

Our vision

God gave us a clear vision for Didasko Academy, which is to be a reputable source of excellent training and services, covering all aspects of the task of completing the Great Commission. This training is free of charge, video-based and is being developed in collaboration with the global Christian community.

More on our mission and vision: https://dasko.org/about/mission-and-vision

Quotable quotes

“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat” (quote from a Navy Seal).

Until everyone has heard … Hendrik and Bets