History
History:
It was in the summer of 1987 when Tim Salmonson, the founder of IGN first experienced what it was like to leave the comforts of middle-class America to volunteer on a week-long serving project in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee.
After college, Tim served in a church in Plymouth, England for some time, traveled throughout Europe and then moved to Florida to lead the youth program at a dynamic, very rapidly growing church. This was the most formative time in Tim’s life, a time when he came to realize the transformative power of serving others. In 1999 Tim moved to Mexico to pursue a life-long dream of immersing himself into another culture, experiencing new customs and learning another language. It was a wonderful experience, but there was still the question of vocation. It was only months later that Tim was attending a training program at Willow Creek Community Church in S. Barrington, IL where he met the Willow Extension Ministry staff. Conversation would eventually lead to interviews and interviews led to a staff position as the Teams Coordinator in the Dominican Republic. Three years later that program would be, “downsized” leaving Tim to ask the question, “O.K. God, what’s next?” After almost four years of living overseas, travels to dozens of countries and having seen both the positive and negative effects of short-term missions, missionary work and development and relief programs, it was time to start thinking about a new paradigm of engaging people in social issues. In October of 2004, Invision Global Network (IGN) began to take shape. A board was formed and efforts to design an effective strategy to help people develop a lifestyle of inner reflection which would then be translated into outward acts of service. Today, IGN continues to develop partnerships and serve people throughout the world through training programs, seminars, service-learning trips and mentoring programs. Our desire is that every individual would come to understand his or her unique value and purpose in hopes that they could live the highest possible quality of life, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and leave a lasting legacy for generations to come.
