About

Contact me:
Email justinlong@gmail.com
Skype justindlong, Office/Cell 757-395-0075
Me on Google+
JustinDLong on Twitter

About Me:

I am not the actor. Neither am I Chinese, although my last name is apparently a fairly common one in certain circles of China (and ironically means “dragon”).

I am a missionary researcher who investigates global and regional trends and statistics and places them in the context of Christ, Christianity, the Church, and the Gospel. I advocate for new missionaries and have a long-time interest in unreached peoples and decentralized networks.

I have been involved in missions since 1989. I first worked withAIMS. One night I was waiting for a backup of a server to be completed (to tape, no less–remember those days?). Bored, I was poking through a filing cabinet. I began reading about these groups called “unreached peoples”–something I had never heard before. The filing cabinet was filled with “unreached people profiles.” Suddenly, however, something deeper happened. I was sitting there, and I felt as if I were looking through the filing cabinet at dozens–hundreds–thousands–of peoples. I could hear “a great babbling” of languages. I could see faces. It was a moment in time where I was no longer reading–I was experiencing. God had given me vision to see, and that moment marked my life.

In 1995 my lovely wife Heidi and I got married and moved to Richmond to join the World Christian Encyclopedia project, where we learned a lot about research and managing missions information. We worked there four years and then returned to the Tidewater area to work on the Network for Strategic Missions and its website, http://www.strategicnetwork.org, intended to be a large missions portal. In 2003 we felt that “something was changing” and God was calling us overseas. In 2004 we relocated to Southeast Asia and worked with the Ethne conference and several regional networks, where we learned more about the trials of working in a cross-cultural setting (culture shock!), met lots of new friends, and began to learn about swarming or decentralized networks or micro-missions, which would come to add more depth to what we did. Finally in 2008 we were called back home (reverse culture shock!), and have begun the transition into something new.

Over the years, I have been discovering more and more each year the specific gifting and calling God has given me as an advocate for unreached peoples. There have been times I wished he’d called me to focus on one specific group, but he hasn’t. Instead, I have four specific focuses:

  • I research unreached peoples, global trends, futuristics, and the like. I try to build as comprehensive a knowledgebase as possible to help the church understand and engage the challenges.
  • I advocate for unreached peoples. I speak out to keep the face of the unreached–the “hidden, ignored, forgotten” peoples–in front of the church.
  • I motivate and mobilize new workers. I often find myself like Caleb in Numbers 13, insisting that it is possible for us to go up and “possess the land”–that we are “blessed to be a blessing.”
  • I provide training through my articles, podcasts and webinars at http://www.justinlong.org and through the videos recorded at http://www.missionmanual.org.

While we were abroad in Southeast Asia we launched an online magazine called Momentum. Though we no longer publish Momentum (we learned a lot about what a few people can and cannot do in terms of time), its spirit continues in our blog, published at http://www.justinlong.org. We build momentum in people in six key areas:

  • Drive: to follow a path with passion
  • Energy: the capacity to act
  • Effort: actions that lead to the reaching of the unreached
  • Inspiration: the spark of life, the motivation to act
  • Power: self-discipline, accountability, focus, resisting personal distractions
  • Strength: resistance to outside attack/distraction, ability to keep to the path.

Today, I am the Information & Team Mobilization Strategist with Mission to Unreached Peoples. Thanks for taking the time to visiting me and learning a little more about us. We appreciate your support and are encouraged by your work on behalf of the unreached.