Damaris Norway – A strategic hub
Damaris Norway is a strategic hub for networking, cultural apologetics, and community engagement. It offers worldview analysis of cultural stories and products, in order to develop resources for churches, schools and the wider society with double listening to the Word and the world as a characteristic feature.
Background story
Damaris Norway was originally launched in 2003 as a development project, which five years later led to Damaris being established in 2008 as a non-profit company (“Damaris Norge AS”, registration number in Norway: 992 532 343).
The three founding partners were Gimlekollen School of Journalism and Communication (merged with NLA University Collegein 2013), NKSS (the Norwegian IFES movement), and Familie & Medier (now: Tro & Medier / Faith & Media), an evangelical umbrella organization for media engagement). The company is now fully owned by Tro & Medier.
Community engagement
Damaris Norway is recognized as an externally based activity (“randsonevirksomhet”) of the Communication, Worldviews and Christian Apologetics Programme at the NLA University College campus (“Gimlekollen”) in Kristiansand, Norway. Through this uniquely combined arrangement, Damaris Norway is exceptionally well situated as a strategic platform for NLA’s wider community engagement in this whole field of cultural apologetics and media engagement.
Four arenas
Damaris Norway operates on four arenas:
- Damaris Menighet (Damaris Church)
Through key websites such as snakkomtro.no and konfirmantonline.no Damaris Norway is serving individual Christians, churches, youth ministries, and mission organizations in Norway with key media engagement and apologetic resources. This is supplemented with lectures, workshops, and seminars, and the podcast channel damarisnorge.podbean.com/.
- Damaris Skole (Damaris School)
Through the web portals damaris-skole-grs.no/ and damaris-skole-vgs.no/, Damaris serves private Christian schools in Norway (75 junior high schools and 35 senior high schools) with key educational and apologetic resources. This is supplemented with lectures, workshops, and seminars.
- Damaris Samfunn (Damaris Society)
Through the website snakkomgud.no Damaris offers key educational and apologetic resources of public interest related to The God Question Series. In addition, the Damaris team publishes regularly in various publications in Norway.
- Damaris Support
In addition to serving Church, School, and Society in Norway with key resources, Damaris Norway also functions as a support ministry for (i) the Lausanne Europe 20/21 initiative, (ii) the Lausanne Media Engagement Network, and (iii) the Nordic academic journal Theofilos.