Brigada

“Brigada: Since 1995… Buckets full of Resources, Trends, Challenges — all in a weekly e-zine & website…”Compiled by Doug Lucas, Team Expansion, Louisville, KY(Almost caught up!) In this issue… 1) Welcome To The Ultimate Catch-Up Brigada 2) Some Of The Most Talked-About Brigada Items Of 2008 3) “Cool Tools For Travel” 4) Switching To “The [...]

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Thanks for your patience as we caught up during the Brigada Today Marathon 2008! Resolution for 2009: [drum roll] Try our best to stay on time. (Those that have been on board since 1995 are saying, “Yeah right.” :-) )

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Honest… we’re not trying to be self-serving. It’s more like… “Remember back when…” The truth is, during the next couple of days, you’ll see so many “top ten lists” about 2008, you’ll become as tired of hearing about them as you will about hearing over-used words in 2008… like “not so much” and “economy.” Either [...]

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Without a doubt, the Brigada story that seemed to garner the most interest was the series we did on “Cool Tools” for traveling missionaries. See it by clicking “Cool Tools” in the tag cloud on the left side of the page, or just click to: http://www.brigada.org/search/label/Cool%20Tools The “Cool Tools” that seemed to draw the most [...]

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2008 was the year we finally switched formats… from the text-heavy web page, more-or-less built with simple HTML code, to the more graphical and tool-assisted format you find now at… http://www.brigada.org/ (If you haven’t stopped by lately, please do check it out. We think you’ll like what we’ve done to the place.) Never mind that [...]

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Medical, developmental, urban, and job-wise… Brigada participants in 2008 yearned for real change in people. Whenever we would mention church planting, folks would be glad. (51 “tags” for 2008.) But when we mentioned some kind of outreach to the poor… to those less fortunate (*hundreds* of tags), that’s when people saw the church (and Brigada) [...]

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Some 200 items dealing with technology (VPNs, for example), Facebook, webinars, another couple of hundred on training, dozens more on software, … the list goes on. The missionary enterprise (and Brigada in particular) seem keen on “gearing up” for missions. In the end, however, we realize the entire process is a work of the Spirit. [...]

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Business as Missions (and tentmaking) are definitely at the top of the heap of topics these days. The previous nice-and-neat little titles and “boxes” that helped us divide “Missions” from “secular jobs” suddenly dissolved in 2008. Now, everything is so muddy… it’s hard to tell where our secular job ends and mission begins.

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Storytelling has been around long before Jesus walked through the gates of Jerusalem. It was just that… in 2008… the rest of the church seemed to pick up on the fact that storytelling (“Orality”) made sense in and of itself — as a tool for evangelism.

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We saw the Chinese exemplify unity of thought & motion like never before. (Remember all those “refrigerator boxes?”) Sure, there was some degree of discussion as to *why* the team was so good. But overall, we were sure impressed with their understanding of togetherness.

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Before we totally step away from this reflective mood, don’t forget to by honest with yourself about did *not* happen in 2008 Brigada-world.*** We didn’t go out of business or cease operations*** We didn’t resort to “subscriptions” (You can still get it free)*** In the end, we didn’t miss a single issue (though some were, [...]

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For the first year ever, Brigada will more than likely make it out of 2008 *exactly* on budget, thanks to many kind-hearted people… and a great campaign idea (unsolicited, by the way) from Justin Long. We received a check today for $15 from a great friend in Virginia (Thanks!), $25 from a friend with recently-retired [...]

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Based on the fact that we only need 5 more donations of $100 (or any combination making up that amount), we have once again this year decided to extent the 2008 gift-threshold long enough to see if there are any gifts that come in via the post. At this point, we’re guessing that we should [...]

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