Leadership Transitions
Global Creatives Collective is an online community of videographers, photographers, social media managers, writers and other artists who are actively working to use their creative skills within a Christian missions capacity. It originally started under the leadership of Tim Cowley in 2015 when it was known as Expat Media Pro.
Since that time, Expat Media Pro (hosted under a U.S. based non-profit umbrella org, Visions Made Viable) has continued on as a way for U.S. citizens to raise non-profit funding to support their Christian media ministries.
Global Creatives Collective spun off in late 2019 as a way to foster more of a global community that can also include hobbyists or other enthusiasts who might not feel that they fall into the “professional” capacity, many of whom are also not expats as they choose to remain within their nations of birth in order to fulfill their media ministry callings.
In early 2022, Tim began discussions with Joshua Chew based in the Philippines about taking over as Managing Director. Sharing similar philosophy and vision, Joshua is well versed in media within a missions capacity as he and his team at Ablaze work tirelessly to motivate the Filipino church to engage in sharing the gospel especially among the unreached.
Originally from Malaysia, Joshua has been involved with local missions as a pre-teen and with international missions for the past 13 years, allowing him to serve in 10 nations. He acts as a missions awareness trainer (mobilizer), missions strategist, missions consultant, and missions coach. To this end, he co-founded Project Ablaze as a mobilization network in Asia, focusing on helping and guiding Asian believers and churches to be involved in global missions. His heart and vision is to see a whole generation of young people rise up to be involved with the Great Commission.
He is also a photographer, videographer and media producer, providing technical and media support to missionaries and ministries working especially with unreached groups who are yet to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
As leader of Ablaze Media Productions, a media mobilization movement, Joshua and his team are seeking to form an inter-agency media production team that will provide quality media productions to cross-cultural workers and sending agencies.
Tim will act as Director at Large, but will not be involved in most of the ongoing work to engage and build community with missions-focused creatives as he shifts to engaging in more local work within Portland, Oregon where he and his family have been based since 2016.
GCC utilizes several online platforms including Facebook, Signal, Discord and EMDC.online. The annual EMDC Conference has become a main rallying point for in-person meetups. In the near future, the GCC website will undergo a redesign to come under Reliant Creative, a U.S.-based non-profit that handles donor funding. Zachary Leighton, Director of Reliant Creative, is excited to work with Josh as they collaborate together in Reliant’s mission to share the story of what God is doing around the world.
