Nolan Sanders for Innovation Fund Recipient Video

Speaker: Nolan Sanders, Pattern Platform Lead, Assemblies of God World Missions

Nolan Sanders: with the new AI tools, I hope more people will say, I can do this. That's the shift we're aiming for. We're creating a discipleship app just isn't intimidating, even for someone with no tech background.

Nolan Sanders: My name is Nolan and I'm with the pattern Platform from Assembly of God World Missions, and it is such an incredible honor to have been named one of the 2025 Innovation Award winners by Missionexis, and uh we just want to say thank you first of all to Missionexis and to all the donors uh who made this kind of support possible. It is just so deeply affirming to our team. To know that others believe in the vision that God has given us to use the gift of technology to accelerate disciple making around the world. We're just so humbled.

Nolan Sanders: Our project is called Pattern Platform, and it helps missionaries, church leaders, and small group movements. Uh, that are working among the unreached create custom discipleship apps in their local languages, even minority dialects. Apps that are designed for their local culture, their language, as I said, their context, the app and all its content is fully theirs. It's not uh them translating our materials. It's, it's you people getting to to create for yourselves. And with this grant, we're expanding pattern to include powerful AI tools that can make that app creation faster, more accessible, and we hope more culturally uh relevant.

Nolan Sanders: AI is everywhere, but uh we are not looking to use AI to pretend to be human and create gospel content. A gospel outreach and discipleship is a person to person and go to person endeavor. Uh, we want to use AI to assist. We're getting started and putting your existing discipleship and scripture resources in an app can just simply feel overwhelming. Uh, in the design process, things like picking out colors, icons, layouts, it's just a huge effort. Uh, but AI can help generate a full first draft of things like that, the app interface text or even icons in the general direction, so that the this team doesn't have to start from scratch. It can even do automated translation of some sample content, helping a team leader to Create a simple app real quick to cast vision, inspire others, and suddenly it just doesn't feel impossible anymore. It feels doable no matter the size or ability of the team. AI can help with creating audio where no locals are willing to assist for safety reasons, perhaps. So an AI assist can quickly and more easily come alongside the work of God's spirit and God's faithful workers in a project like this.

Nolan Sanders: With pattern platform and especially with the new AI tools, I hope more people will say, I can do this. That's the shift we're aiming for. We're creating a discipleship app just isn't intimidating, even for someone with no tech background. Practically, it means lowering the time investment, cutting the cost of development, and speeding up how quickly apps can get into the hands of real people. It also makes a whole process much more sustainable, especially for missionaries and local leaders working in low resource areas. Uh, most of all, I hope it makes a difference for the person who opens that app in their language on their phone when they look at it, they say, this looks like us, this looks like me, it sounds like me. Maybe they've never heard the gospel in their own language. Maybe they're a part of a small church trying to grow, or maybe they're isolated, and this act, this app can connect them to a disciple making movement. That's the type of impact we're praying for as a team. Uh, more people equipped to create and more people invited to follow Jesus, who then invite others to follow Jesus. We're excited and we're grateful, and we can't wait to see and share what God does next.