Since DECIBEL’s (formally The Relay Trust) foundation, we have been interested in working with many different Christian organisations, institutions, and churches. We have a common goal, a common task. Maybe we do not always agree on the details, maybe we use different paths to achieve the same goal, but the important thing is that we are on a common mission to spread the Kingdom of God in word and deed. It is a joint relay race. We each contribute to the race so that we gradually get closer to the goal. Therefore, DECIBEL is not tied to one denomination. We work with many churches and networks with the Bible as the solid foundation for our mission. Our Statement of Faith, which can be found on our new website, invites many denominations to participate in the relay race.

It is important that we do not waste our resources on reinventing the wheel. Therefore, our departments are constantly working on investigating what is already in the field, both when it comes to content and technology or existing institutions and networks. There is no reason for us to develop our own materials if there are already good resources available for us to tailor and adapt for our audience. This has been the vision behind the collaboration we have now entered with Timothy Leadership Training Program (TLT), an organisation which is part of Raise Up (https://www.raiseupglobal.org/leadership/tlt). In close collaboration with the TLT team, we are working on adapting their materials so that they can serve our partners and clients and be delivered in a digital format. We are currently investigating entering into a similar collaboration with another partner, SEAN International (https://www.seaninternational.org/). We would like to see their materials adapted to a digital format and made available on our digital platform, The Well, which we expect to launch later this year.

George Whitefield College (GWC) in Cape Town is another new partner. We have been in dialogue with GWC for a long time about their distance course, Explore. The material is already used in many places across Africa, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented travelling, GWC realized that it is necessary to supplement traditional teaching with a digital strategy to enable the learning process to continue even when a facilitator is unable to be physically present. Together with GWC, we hope to create a digital platform for Explore and help share the materials to various parts of Africa. We are in the process of investigating what this new collaboration will look like.

After several months of ongoing dialogue, we have also entered a partnership with Word Online. We have had a lot of conversations with Martin Charlesworth, who is behind their large video project covering the entire life of Jesus in 180 videos. For those who may not have access to the internet, or where the internet is too slow to download large amounts of data, we want to make available this huge library and training resource on the Well. We look forward to further explore the collaboration with Martin Charlesworth and see how other resources to train future church leaders could be made available on our platform.

We are from different denominations, but we serve the same Lord. We take different paths, but we share the same goal. Whenever we enter fruitful collaborations, it brings us closer to the one goal, which is to carry the Word of God to the ends of the world.