GI Overview

Global Integration
A Framework for Connecting and Contributing
Staying Current and Relevant

Kelly and Michele O’Donnell (update February 2025)
See the list of our GI Publications and Presentations (2011-2024)

1. Over the last 12 years we have been shaping our work in member care/mission and across sectors, in light of “global integration” (GI). We have found that GI is a key grid and strategy to open up new opportunities, thinking, relationships, and resources for member care/mission and the efforts towards wellbeing for all people and the planet. It also fits well with the Missio Dei Model of Global Member Care (e.g., Sphere 7 “Humanity-Creation Care”).

2. GI is a framework for actively and responsibly engaging in our world–collaborating locally to globally. It emphasizes connecting relationally and contributing relevantly on behalf of human wellbeing and the issues facing humanity, in light of our integrity, commitments, and core values (e.g., ethical, humanitarian, human rights, faith-based). GI encourages a variety of people to be at the “global tables and in the global trenches and everything in-between” in order to help research, shape, and monitor agendas, policies, and action for all people and the planet. It intentionally links being the people we need with building the world we need. As people of “faith, hope and love,” practicing Christian spirituality, a foundational motive for GI is to seek God’s glory in all we do. We believe the GI framework and principles are crucial for a) member care/mission practice and direction; b) colleagues working in different sectors and settings;  and c) all those who endeavor to live as global citizens (i.e. our common sense of belonging, identity, and mutual responsibility as humans)—-people of good will committed to find common ground for the common good. 

3. GI recognizes that our globalizing world community must prioritize wellbeing for all people, lasting peace, justice, prosperity, and the enduring protection of the planet. As Christians, our global involvement includes the central mandate (duty—desire–delight) to share the good news and our good works with all people and all people groups. Further, we see the foundation that underlies GI’s emphasis on “common ground for the common good” as being the historical person of Jesus Christ. We thus also acknowledge the underlying reality of God and His redemptive purposes in Jesus Christ in dealing with the undermining reality of evil and human sin (see Faith-Based Foundations—Christian Worldview, 2015).

4. Our work in GI is especially influenced by a) the multi-sectoral and international efforts to promote wellbeing for all people and the planet (e.g., the United Nations’ Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015)–see the the SDG Progress Reports (most recent from 2024)–as well as the UN Pact for the Future (final version prepared for the UN Summit of the Future in September 2024); and b) the underlying commitment to support the church-mission community’s work among the least-reached people groups (LPGs). We also increasingly include “global integrity” in our GI work—integrity at the individual-institutional-international levels—and see them as inseparable (e.g., see our 2018 presentation, Global Integration-Global Integrity: Applications for Christians in Leadership and our foundational articles, A Summons to a Global Integrity Movement (2018) and Following Jesus Globally–Engaging the World through Global Integration (2020).

5. Global integration is not about instigating and imposing a system of global governance, neutralizing national sovereignty, and ushering in an authoritarian world order. Rather it is about fostering cooperation and good governance at all levels, from the local to the global. Nor is global integration about pushing for human homogeneity, cultural conformity, or ethical relativism. Rather it is about embracing our common humanity, prizing our rich variations, and engendering responsible lifestyles. Global integration is a framework to help us invest ourselves in fellow humans in every sphere of influence in which we live.

6. Our GI work as psychologists, for example, is based in Geneva and focuses on global member care, global mental health, and promoting integrity/confronting corruption globally. It includes regular interactions with personnel/events in the United Nations, World Health Organization, international NGOs, and faith-based organizations—and hence there are several materials, perspectives, and news items that we review to inform our work and regularly share with colleagues. In addition to the Member Care Updates, we regularly send Global Integration Updates to over 1400 colleagues.

7. So we support human efforts to do good—whether it be alleviating poverty among the one billion urban slum dwellers or protecting the 1.5 billion people living in settings exposed to violence and conflict, for example. We see these efforts as the imago Dei at work within the missio Dei, regardless of whether one believes in these things or not. Humans do good. However we think humans do better when they include and honor God in the process. And more specifically we think we can do much better at “transforming our world” if God is included and honored in our efforts and if we start with transformation in our own hearts. The world will not be a sustainably better, transformed place unless better, transformed people make it so.

8. We believe it is important to further develop GI by organizing new coalitions of colleagues who are committed to GI and crossing sectors on behalf of specific areas such as member care and/or mental health (global integrators).  Specifically in regards to member care/mission, the time is clearly here, from our vantage point, to develop new entities and emphases that reflect global realities (issues, responsibilities and opportunities), while still staying true to the member care/mission core: for example, focusing on the wellbeing and effectiveness of the diversity of mission workers and their sending groups. For more perspectives—reflections, research, and resources–see the 25 entries on Global Integrators (2015) and the 25 entries on Global Integrity (2016) featured on our CORE member Care weblog.

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Note from January 2023
Celebrating 100 issues and 10 years of our Global Integration Updates

GI is a grid to guide and goad our journeys into the all-encompassing scope of sharing the good news and good works among all persons and peoples, all places and spaces—into the missio Dei—as co-workers with God in restoring all creation to “shalom” in Jesus Christ-–“instaurare omnia in Christo” (Ephesians 1:10). In our daily practice of Christian spirituality as people of faith, hope and love, GI is neither distracting nor discouraging (although it can be disturbing at times!): We focus on Groomsday not doomsday.