Brigada – 2024-04-14

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This past week, a friend referred me to a blog entry by a Missions Pastor who was seemingly attempting to pull attention away from unreached people groups (thanks for the note, Jon). I’m sure the blogger did his best. But – bless his heart – he used the old argument that “unreached people group thinking was no longer relevant in a fast-paced, urbanizing world.” (Yawn.) Exactly 6.7 miles (a 15-min. drive) from his church, I found a mosque. The community there isn’t just Muslim. They all come from the same Central Asian country. And in fact, they aren’t just from that same country. They come from a particular ethnic group within that land — an ethnic group that has kept its identity AND its exclusivity. Until I made the intentional effort to park, walk up to their door, and knock, I had never met anyone from (or even HEARD of) this particular people group before. I asked if it might be possible for the imam to come meet with several members of my local church so we could learn more about Islam. The imam, bless his heart too, has lived here for years — but he doesn’t speak 50 words in English. They gladly sent 4 men. We talked for two hours with 20 people from our church (all through interpreters that they sent with the imam). They loved it too — and they’ve invited all of us to their mosque for a big feast. It was an amazing night. Even if they aren’t ready to drop Islam at this point (by any means), at least these 20 members from our church have now overcome SOOO many cultural and ethnic assumptions they won’t make ever again.

Now here’s my point: The missions pastor who wrote this blog entry (remember — he offices exactly 6.7 miles from that mosque). I called him today to ask if he had ever heard of this people group. Unfortunately, he wasn’t available. The problem is — that’s been the problem with the church… all along. They’ve been unavailable for this people group. And until somebody MAKES an effort, these people — 6.7 miles from his church — will never have a clue about the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Unreached people group thinking isn’t a fad that is going to go away. It’s a known-effective strategy… a tool that enables us to see the world the way it exists — whether that’s an ethnic group from Central Asia, living 6.7 miles from my back door, or in Central Asia itself. This mosque holds 5 services per day, all of which are conducted, not in English (the dominant language of their urban area), but in their particular strain of the language of their native Central Asian land. The mosque has been there for years. No church had ever invited them to visit before. The imam doesn’t even speak English. Until some church approaches this city with people group eyes, they will, according to scripture, have no other hope for eternity than Hell.

When Jesus told the story about leaving the 99 in search of the one lost sheep (Luke 15), he wasn’t telling a joke. He wasn’t being funny. He was serious: A good shepherd would actually leave the 99 sheep in the green grass of the high country to risk his life on the cliff to search for the one lost sheep. If this guy’s article is read by even one more person, I feel just one click sorrier for the one lost sheep, who will be ignored one more time.

It’s time we gave some attention to the one lost sheep.

Bottom line: It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. We have to find a way to keep the 99 sheep faithful while we engage the 1 lost. Or in our case, keep the 1/3 of the world faithful (as believers) while we tell (many of whom will be hearing for the first time) the 1/3 unreached part of the world about the Good News.

Please — lose the arguments against the unreached. And let’s start doing the Great Commission well — making disciples of ALL nations, even this unheard-of group from Central Asia that lives in this mission pastor’s back door.

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Copyright — This issue of _Brigada Today_ is Copyrighted 2016. However, permission is granted to freely redistribute these materials, including those available on the Brigada website, provided that such redistribution is to those who will help the Good News of Jesus Christ to reach the unreached. To copy or reproduce Brigada Today for any other reason is illegal and is not permitted.

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Compiled/Edited by Doug Lucas and Tina McCormick, Team Expansion. Your gift to Brigada will help get motivation, resources, and news/trends out to thousands of Christian workers throughout the globe on a weekly basis. Search over 2 decades of weekly Brigadas using the search box below.

 

In this issue…
1) New Curriculum Designed to Lift Communities out of Poverty
2) Our Favorite Bible Study App With a Free Bible Study Package
3) Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead (in under 5 minutes)
4) Get “Five Levels of Movement Leadership” for Free
5) Last Chance To Get Safety/Security Training Before Travel Season
6) Your Experience with “The Camel Rider’s Journey” ???
7) Salvation Revealed: God’s Surprise to the Nations! (Legacy 2016)
8) On The Hunt For New Missions
9) Locate a hard-to-find book at BookFinder
10) TESOL Training in Chiang Mai, Thailand
11) SHARE Educational Testing in Europe
12) Horizons International will Train You to Share with Muslims
13) We’re Grateful …
14) The BackPage: The More we read the Last Mission Frontiers Issue…
15) Closing Stuff

The BOKS (Building Others Through Knowledge & Service) curriculum attempts to pool the cumulative knowledge of doctors, nutritionists and agricultural experts, who have worked among the world’s poor, into a single, practical and easy-to-use video curriculum in any of 10 languages (so far).

https://brigada.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/community_dev_boks_course.jpg

Now you can get the curriculum for 50% off with Promo Code: 50_off at

http://www.winministries.org/store/

For more information, you can also see our earlier review at…

https://brigada.org/2013/05

Check out this free bundle from Olive Tree. Get their “Bible Study Bundle,” which includes, English Standard Version (ESV), King James Version (KJV), Olive Tree KJV Concordance, Matthew Henry’s Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible, Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary, Easton’s Bible Dictionary, Olive Tree One Year Daily Devotional, Olive Tree Bible Maps, and Naves Topical Bible Index — all for ZERO dollars. It’s free! We’re supposed to send you to…

https://www.edifyhub.com/resources/for-missionaries/

where you pick the fifth item down. Either way, it’s free. It’s the Bible we use here at Brigada. Add other versions as you wish.

In the “this is another great video” department, check out this cool video which, in under 5 minutes flat, attempts to present the best, most concise way to share that, “yes, I really do believe that Jesus rose from the dead.”

resurrection proofs

What do you get when you put Nathan and Kari Shank’s “Four Fields of Kingdom Growth: Starting and Releasing Healthy Churches” (2014) book together with Steve Addison’s “Pioneering Movements: Leadership that Multiplies Disciples and Churches” (2015)? Easy. You get this:

http://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/5-levels-of-movement-leadership

In this article by Nathan Shank, you’ll get a concise presentation of five levels of movement leadership. If we could just understand these five levels, we’re convinced that there truly would be no place left where the Good News about Jesus had not yet traveled.

Morton Security is offering their 3 day Target Hardening and Resiliency Seminar on May 19-21 in Tucson Arizona. This training has been critical in keeping international travelers out of crisis situations while traveling abroad. The last class graduated about 30 students, one of whom was detained in Russia by FSB and promptly released, perhaps, in part, because of his new training. Sign up at:

http://www.mortonsecure.com/#!thars/c72c

We love learning whether or not these approaches have worked in the real world. Have you used “The Camel Rider’s Journey?”

http://worldchristian.com/productdetails.php?product_id=35455

If you have, would you please comment as to how it worked for you? What did you have to change, if anything? How would you do it differently in the future? What’s your “real-world” take on it?