When Endings Lead to Opportunities: Lessons from the Closing of Global Mapping International

by Jon Hirst

The words “The End” immediately conjure up the last page of a book we simply haven’t been able to put down. There is nothing that comes after “The End.” It falls of the page into the unknown and so we avoid thinking about endings much.

“The word ‘ending’ speaks of closure and finality. However, if you add the letter ‘s’ the meaning changes.
Ending becomes sending.” —Dean Carlson, President of OC International 

The words “The End” immediately conjure up the last page of a book we simply haven’t been able to put down. There is nothing that comes after “The End.” It falls of the page into the unknown and so we avoid thinking about endings much. 

But what if endings were not to be avoided, but instead new and rich fields of opportunity? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow describes endings as an art form to be mastered, “Great is the art of the beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” Or as Henry Cloud says in his recent book Necessary Endings, “Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.” 

In recent days, I have learned a thing or two about endings. It has been my job to help GMI (Global Mapping International) navigate its way through the ending of its ministry. It’s not the task I imagined for myself, but I have come to learn that it is a noble and worthy task that is now birthing more opportunity than I could have ever imagined. 

Most of you reading this will know of GMI, but for those who don’t, GMI is the missions movement’s oldest independent research entity. It was set up 34 years ago in response to the dawn of the digital age and the new awareness of the role information could play in the Great Commission. 

But for many reasons which we won’t detail here, GMI’s time has come to an end. When we came to that decision as a board and leadership team, it seemed very final. We had worked sacrificially for many years to try and turn the tide, but in the end we had not succeeded. What was there to be excited about? All we could see ahead was the painful process of falling off the cliff of closure. 

What changed everything was a simple decision that God put in front of us. We decided to close just as we were operating—living our cause. We had adopted the cause of Knowledge Stewardship: the Spirit-led process of acquiring and insightfully using information for God’s glory and according to his purpose. 

That one small decision changed everything. 

God made it clear that we were responsible to steward the staff, ministries, and knowledge gained through the process. So with that mandate clearly in view, I began to speak to our donors, staff, and board about investing in our closure. With their willing participation, we turned the ending of GMI into a dynamic and intentional time of ministry . . . a time of sending.

As Dean Carlson said so powerfully at the GMI Celebration event held in June, the intentional effort to add the “s” turned our ending into sending. That small change has made all the difference. But what did we do? Here are a few things we did to turn the closure of an institution into a time of rich ministry impact: 

Helping Embed our People

From the moment we made the decision to close, we recognized that our people were the most and valuable resources that needed to be stewarded. With that recognition in mind, we jointly brainstormed, advocated, and networked to see our people placed in new ministry settings. I’m happy to report that most of our staff have a new ministry home where they will practice their valuable skills for the kingdom. 

Empowering Key Partners

GMI has always thrived in partnership with others. When we decided to close, we had three opportunities to negotiate acquisitions of GMI products and services by the partners we were already working with in an intentional way. Through this process, we were able to strengthen their efforts and see the work we had been doing together continue. Calvin Edwards & Company took on our Research Services Division, Intervarsity Press took on our publishing efforts on behalf of Operation World, and SIL International took on our World Language Mapping System and related geographic datasets. 

Generously Granting Resources

We recognized that we didn’t know how God might steward the GMI ministries best. Admitting we didn’t have all the answers led us to try something very creative. We took most of GMI’s key intellectual property and put it into suites of resources that we offered up as grants. Ministries from around the world had a window where they could apply to receive a suite of resources. 

We received almost one hundred applications and went through a process with the staff and board of discerning who would be the best stewards of these ministries. The result was that GMI’s ministry has been spread widely into the missions community in ways we could never have planned or orchestrated. Visit
www.gmi.org to see a directory of those receiving grants.

Stewarding Knowledge

Throughout the extended decision-making process that led to our closure and then the process of the closing down itself, there were many things we were learning about God, ministry, and the dynamics of being a nonprofit service provider. We decided to take the stewarding of that knowledge as seriously as we were taking the closure process. We held webinars, spoke to leaders, did interviews for Christian and secular media, and communicated with our community regularly in an effort to see the insights we were learning passed on for the benefit of others.

Celebrating God at Work

Finally, we chose to see the ending as a celebration rather than a funeral. Our founding organization, OC International, helped us to do that by hosting a celebration event for the organization. But the celebration went well beyond the event. We chose to laugh, dream, and seize each day as one more opportunity to make an impact for the Kingdom of God. That doesn’t mean that this wasn’t the hardest thing most of us had ever done. The tears were real. The long hours of work were sacrificial. But at the end of the day, God allowed us to learn, grow, change, and celebrate! And that choice more than anything has transformed this ending into a powerful sending. 

. . . .

Jon Hirst is the president/CEO of GMI (Global Mapping International). Jon has a background in mission innovation, publishing, and leadership. He worked with One Hope on early interactive web evangelism portals and then served Bible organizations as an innovation consultant to the Forum of Bible Agencies. He helped develop the very first digital version of EMQ and World Pulse. Jon also served as the executive director of communications for HCJB Global (now Reach Beyond). Jon is author of The Calling of the Knowledge Steward, co-author (with Marlene Legaspi-Munar) of Our Anchor in a World Adrift, co-author (with Mindy Hirst and Paul Hiebert) of Through the River: Understanding Assumptions about Truth, and co-editor (with Jim Reapsome) of Innovation in Mission. 

EMQ, Vol. 53, No. 4. Copyright  © 2017 Billy Graham Center for Evangelism.  All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMQ editors.

Comments are closed.