Brigada Today
17 of January, 1997
Now with 4449 Participants!
News and Notes about Brigada, Your Gateway to Missions Networking!
[Pass this issue to a friend! To subscribe, see instructions at end.]
In this issue....
LATIN AMERICANS SAY "SI" TO WORLD EVANGELIZATION
From December 27-30,
Panama City, Panama was host to Christian leaders and university students
for LatinoAmerica 2000, a conference on world evangelization sponsored
jointly by AD2000 and Beyond Movement and Campus Crusade for Christ. Over
3600 people from nearly every country in Latin America heard the challenge
to take a vital role in world evangelization from well-known speakers like
Bill Bright, Josh McDowell, Luis Bush, and Loren Cunningham. In the end,
all delegates stood and then knelt to consecrate themselves to go and do
whatever God might ask to bring "a church for every people and the gospel
to every person by the year 2000."
Is this goal possible? "According to your faith be it unto you,"
challenged Dr. Bright.
Latin America has 60 million evangelical Christians, with thousands of
seminaries and megachurches. Many speakers emphasized their gifts of
passion, of creativity, of cultural diversity, and of faces which can pass
as Middle Eastern, assets which bring strong enabling for cross cultural
witness. Speaker Peter Wagner noted the spiritual maturity of Latin
American intercessors able to support the work of missions.
Three hundred delegates put feet to their commitment right away, and agreed
to stay on in Panama for three weeks in order to take the Jesus Film to
every area of the country.
(Thanks to Debbie Wood, of the AD2000 & Beyond International Office staff,
for submitting this summary and her daily updates to Brigada!)
For a daily journal or a more complete press release about LA2000, go to
http://www.ad2000.org or Email
Debbie@AD2000.org. To get
a copy of the
complete text of the conference "Declaration," send email to
hub@xc.org 
with only this line in the text of the message:
get brigada la2000dec
Make sure you send this message to hub@xc.org and not to brigada@brigada.org!
THE BEST INTERNATIONAL NEWS . . . FOR FREE!!!
We continue to be very
impressed by Mercury News and its free feed to email inboxes! For more
information, write
NEWS@MERC.COM or visit their web site at
http://www.merc.com. The summaries can be selected by region... so you
get only the focus you want, and each little "Brigada-like" summary
paragraph has a URL to click on to get the entire new story. All for free!
Incredible bargain. If you're taking cable just to watch CNN, I bet you'll
unsubscribe after you start reading this!
AN APPEAL FOR SECURITY PROTOCOLS
Do you have a one-page summary on
security protocols for your organization, church, or project? I'm talking
about ideas like, "Don't ever use the 'M' word in email to us. Instead,
call us 'on-site workers' or anything else. Avoid asking questions
like...." Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated. Send your
security recommendations to
DLucas@TeamExpansion.org with subject, "PROTOCOL" and
we'll assemble a copy for all Brigada readers. Thanks to Bev (a Project
Coordinator for an adopt-a-people project) for the request!!! (Bev, we'll
make sure you get a copy!)
"LOOK OUT! THE HEAD HUNTERS ARE COMING!"
Thanks to Paul & Joy
Hattaway, who recently shared the following story on the Brigada-Peoples
conference: "Look out! The head hunters are coming! Until recently, this
was the cry of countless inhabitants of the mountains of northern Burma and
southern China, who lived in utter terror of the Wa minority group.
Amongst all the tribes of Asia, the Wa are one of the most bound and
desperately needy. ... The Wa are well-known for their practice of
head-hunting, which is rumored to still continue today in some of the
remote parts of Myanmar's Shan State. For centuries the Wa head-hunted for
the purpose of ensuring a good harvest. The demons that grip them demand
the sacrifice of humans to assure the crops will not fail. ... But God
looked down from heaven and prepared the hearts of the Wa to receive the
Gospel of His Son. An amazing testimony of God's love and power took place
in northern Burma in 1906. ... At that time a witch-doctor in a certain Wa
village owned three white donkeys. He laid his hands on the middle donkey
and told the village elders, "If you follow this donkey, it will lead you
to the True God." For weeks the elders followed the donkey for a distance
of 200 miles across remote terrain. One day it stopped outside the house
of William Young, an American Baptist missionary who was working amongst
the Lahu tribe. Young became the first to take the Gospel message to the
Wa. Salvation swept many areas as hundreds of hearts already prepared by
the Holy Spirit converted to Christ." Thanks Paul! (Paul Harvey eat your
heart out!)
RADIO-EMAIL FROM SOUTH AFRICA FOR FREE!
That's right! Have you heard
about the guy in South Africa that has set up a ham radio station that is
somehow linked to the Internet to receive email, convert it to ham radio
signals, then send it out into the air waves for the intended receiver to
pick up, re-transmit back into email text??? What a system! To use this
system, you'd need a ham radio license (which means you'd have to learn
morse code and theory/laws), the ham radio rig (nice antenna and
transmitter/receiver can cost $1000+), and the time to get it all figured
out... but once you were up and running, imagine how great it would be if
you're, say, out in Northern Luzon, beyond the end of a telephone's reach!
That's exactly the way it is for one missionary who is serving there in the
Philippines, receiving email from his father-in-law on a regular basis!
So... if you're interested, check out the South African ham operator's web
site at
http://goofy.iafrica.com/~joost or, if you don't have web access
and if you're absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt interested in using
the service and you have a ham license and an antenna/receiver, you could
so write the South African guy's direct email address at
joost@iafrica.com. But please be sensitive and don't just write him with
mere chit-chat. The guy is doing a tremendous service and we don't want to
take him away from his ministry! For more information about how the service
works in practical ways (yes - it really works!), write the father-in-law
(Dale Leathead, of World Team, in Warrington, PA, at
102626.3217@CompuServe.COM ). Remember, you heard it first on Brigada!
Thanks for the tip, Dale!!!
BUSINESS ON THE NET . . . FOR HIS GLORY
Have you heard about the
Business Executives Consultation that's going to happen in Pretoria next
summer (in conjunction with GCOWE 97)? Check out their new web site at
http://www.iccc.net/ad2000. "As believers in the marketplace, many of us
are burning to take the Gospel to the nations, using our businesses as the
vehicle, or if you like, as a weapon in God's hands. 'Beat your plowshares
into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, 'I am
strong!' Come quickly, all you nations from every side, and assemble there.
Bring down your warriors, O Lord!' Joel 3:10-11." Thanks to James Lockett,
Vice President of the International Christian Chamber of Commerce! (See
their site at
http://www.iccc.net. )
GET READY FOR THE "NIGHT OF POWER" (PRAYER FOR MUSLIM FRIENDS)
Have
you heard about Day 27 of Ramadan (approx. Feb. 5), which apparently is a
special night for Muslims? They evidently consider this a "Night of
Power"? Anyway, one Brigada participant suggested that we organize prayer
vigils that evening in hopes that Muslim friends would learn about the
power of the Christ, the true Messiah. For more information about the
possibilities for Feb. 5th, write Missionary Action/FLAME (Fund for Latin
Americans in Muslim Evangelism)
maflame@juno.com. Thanks Lee!
WANT TO HELP WITH URBANA FOLLOW-UP?
You can!!! ... via the web! Phil
& Teri Barker, of Word International Net Services
wordintl@xc.org, are
brainstorming about options that should be placed on the Urbana follow-up
web pages. Wow
... they're first class. See the ACTION follow-up page at
http://www.gospelcom.net/iv/urbana/action.html and the RESOURCES
follow-up at
http://www.gospelcom.net/iv/urbana/resources.html. Great
book list, good articles, and tremendous job taking it into html! Good
work, Phil and Teri! Anyway, if you have some ideas to send them, or would
like to volunteer, join by sending email to
hub@xc.org with only the
message command:
subscribe urbana96-www
Make sure you send this message to hub@xc.org and not to brigada@brigada.org!
WANT TO KNOW WHERE'S THE NEAREST PERSPECTIVES CLASS???
Now you can find out. Just send an email message to
hub@xc.org with only this line in the
text of the message:
get brigada perspectives
A full list/schedule will automatically be mailed to you within moments.
Make sure you send this message to hub@xc.org and not to brigada@brigada.org!
Thanks Steve!
GLOBAL GLIMPSE FROM MONGOLIA
Not long ago, some very strangely
dressed people burst into a Christian meeting in the Mongolian capital
Ulan Bator. It turned out that they were from the Gobi Altai, a region
hardly reached by the gospel. They had once seen the "Jesus Film" and since
then had been meeting in one of the village leaders' houses to read the
Bible. The question, that they made the long journey to ask, was: when can
someone come to start a church?
(Source: DAWN Friday Fax, 49-96, © DAWN
Europe; WWW:
http://www.jesus.org.uk/dawn/ for more info.)
Global Glimpse is compiled each week by John Hanna, Caleb Project, Littleton, CO.
CALLING ALL TRAVEL AGENTS FROM EUROPE!
A recent participant to
brigada-travel-bids remarked, "... I live in Croatia, I was willing to
travel to Germany or Austria, or Italy for departure, but no bids. Perhaps
we could recruit agents in Europe???" Amen! Let's put the word out.
Travel Agents in Europe please write to
hub@xc.org with only this line of
text in the message:
subscribe brigada-travel-bids
By the looks of it, this has been the most active of all Brigada
conferences so far this month, with some 173 messages! Only travel agents
need join. All others just mail their RFQ "request for a quote" to
brigada-travel-bids@xc.org. Travel agents, please be ready for business!
HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT "PRAY USA"?
April of 1997 has been designated
PrayUSA!, 30 days of prayer and fasting for the United States. PrayUSA! is
a partnership of national prayer ministries, churches, parachurch groups,
and denominations seeking to mobilize prayer and fasting throughout the
whole Church for revival and spiritual awakening in the United States.
PrayUSA! is a Mission America prayer initiative chaired by Steve Bell,
Concerts of Prayer International; and coordinated by Eddie Smith, of the
U.S. PRAYER TRACK. For more information or to volunteer to help, write
104224.3107@compuserve.com. Maybe you'd like to organize a "Pray___!"
campaign for your own country??? I'm sure they'd give you ideas!
RAMADAN... THE FREE POSTER
Just a few days ago, I was meeting with
friends in a small restaurant in N. Africa as the news started traveling
the streets of the city we were visiting. The Muslim cleric in charge of
the country had seen the moon in just the right position... Ramadan had
begun. Sirens wailed, and soon the call to prayer mustered the citizens to
begin their 30-day fast. We joined them throughout their first day of
Ramadan... and many have been praying for them ever since as a part of the
fifth annual international "30 Days Muslim Prayer Focus" (Jan 10 to Feb 8).
Over 30,000 adult Prayer Guides (and 5,000 "Just for Kids" booklets) have
been distributed during the last few weeks within North America alone! To
further promote prayer for the Muslim world, the North American office for
the "30 Days" is now offering illustrated two-color posters for postage &
handling charges only (a $7 value)-over 1,000 are available. U.S. $1 for
the USA, Canada and Mexico; U.S. $2 for the rest of the world. To get your
14 x 22 inch poster, send your request with the postage cost to:
WorldChristian News & Books
PO Box 26479
Colorado Springs
CO 80936, USA
And don't forget to pray for your Muslim friends throughout the world!
WEBWATCH
Have you checked out
http://www.xc.org/helpintl/mrd.htm,
http://www.sim.org, and
http://www.gmi.org/research/websites.htm? They
all offer some good links to cross-cultural ministry. Thanks Bob! And
thanks for your page at
http://www.xc.org/world-christian.html Also,
check out
http://www.bible.org for "The Net Bible." Thanks Terry!
MAYBE ASK ONE QUESTION AT A TIME?
We get mail. Boy do we get mail.
We recently received this request: "Could you send me information on Manila
Philippines, Mexico City, Bogota Colombia, and Sao Paulo Brazil? I would
also appreciate up-to-date information on Rwanda, Zambia, Ethiopia and
Mozambique? The information I really need is the situation with the
evangelical church, number of missionaries, etc." I mean, why don't we
just broaden the question a bit... "Define the universe; be brief, be
precise. Give examples." Tip of the week: If you write a volunteer for
help, ask a specific question to get a specific answer. Brigada volunteers
can come up with some great help - but they aren't miracle workers! So -
the best place to ask questions about specific people groups or cities is
in brigada-peoples and brigada-cities. To join those conferences, send
email to
hub@xc.org with only these two lines in the text of the message:
subscribe brigada-peoples
subscribe brigada-cities
Make sure you send this message to hub@xc.org and not to brigada@brigada.org!
Read the welcome messages. They will explain how to get more help and how
to use the system. You can unsubscribe at any time. And . . . yes... if
you send a message to the brigada-peoples conference, there are hundreds of
volunteers there ready to try to help you get information on a specific
people group (probably better than hitting "reply" to
this copy of Brigada Today). But even to the hundreds of volunteers in brigada-peoples, maybe
you still ought to just try one question at a time???
DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE FREE MOBILE HOME Brigada IS GIVING AWAY?
(I'm
not kidding, sort of.) It's true. Overheard on the
brigada-medicine-for-poor conference, . . . "A relative of mine has a
mobile home 12X68 that he is willing to donate to a charity. ...This unit
is available for donation to a charity. ... Merry Christmas ... Robert
Jaquiss
robertj@teleport.COM "
Merry Christmas indeed! The ultimate stocking stuffer - a mobile home! ![[ ]](../../images/mobilehome.gif)
Try wrapping that baby under the tree for junior!
How 'bout that for
marketing giveaways... "Brigada - the people who give away mobile homes!"
(Actually, it was a Brigada participant giving it away, . . . but when
you have no marketing department, you have to take advantage of any
possible angle you can get, right?) So... if you're interested in a mobile
home for your charity, just write Robert. Hope you're not too late! And
yes, you probably would have to move it from its current site in Oregon.
(that's like saying, "batteries not included,"
right?
)
WANT A GREAT CD ENCYCLOPEDIA FOR $79?
![[][]](../../images/encyclopedia.gif)
Greg Parsons, Exec. Dir. of
the US Center for World Missions, recommends that you run (don't walk) to
call (in the USA) 800-747-2194. (If you live overseas, ask a friend in the
USA to call for you.) The normal price for the Encyclopedia Britannica is
$800 - but for a limited time, try getting the on-line CD for $79!!!
Shipping should be about $8. And they even have a MAC version! Windows req.
on a PC. This is a great deal... with perhaps 10 times as much info. as
other CD encyclopedias on the market. They say it has the entire text of
the written version!!! I just ordered my copy!!! Still $79 instead of
$800! Thanks for the tip, Greg!
"DID YOU KNOW?" - FROM OUR UKRAINIAN CORRESPONDENT
From a reader
living in Ukraine we begin a regular 4-line column called, "Did you Know?"
These are the kinds of lines that I'm sure will make their way onto the
wall beside your desk. They're the items that you'll ponder all day long.
Why, I wouldn't be surprised if board rooms of agencies and churches across
America become so involved with conversation on these issues that we see a
complete doubling of mission efforts within the coming 12 months. (
Actually, maybe we'll smile once and awhile and it'll help take our minds
off the problems we're facing??????
)
This week's "Did you know?"
[drum roll please]:
Did you know that 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
[Are you excited or what!!!
Thanks to Chris in the Ukraine! You win
this week's prize for the most amazing "Did You Know?" item. Your
subscription to Brigada Today has been extended for a full year
absolutely free!!!]
HUB-CAPS (Recaps about computing with Brigada)
Brigada is a system
of email "conferences" (some people refer to these as "list servers", but
we prefer the word conference, in most cases, since it better illustrates
that there are dozens of people working together to solve problems and
address needs). It is run totally by volunteers. There is no "office".
(You can't "dial Brigada.") There is no budget. There is no marketing
division. The "hub" email computer is located in Columbus, Ohio, and where
it is operated by
MAFxc, a division of
MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship -
the people with the airplanes). The MAF people who run it are actually
located in Redlands, CA. They are very much partners in the work,
especially as it relates to developing technical wizardry that we can all
use. But at the same time, they would be the first to admit that Brigada
doesn't belong to them, per se (they host 937 such conferences in all, some
quite busy!). They're the hardware/software/connectivity providers - and
each of them has a passion for world evangelism! This is their ministry! A
couple of us in the Brigada network voluntarily pitch in the money to pay
them the $160/year for the web page - and conference-moderators pitch in
$52/year for their xc.org addresses. Every once-and-awhile, we'll pitch in
$80 to 'hire' them to develop some new conference capability. E.g., it was
the Brigada family who pitched in the cost to help offset the time to
develop the "get" and "put" commands.
There are several conferences that have experienced significant growth.
Brigada-peoples has 281 participants,
brigada-job-shop has 301,
brigada-orgs-missionmobilizers is next with 307,
brigada-pubs-gcowenews has
354 and
brigada-pubs-globalprayerdigest tops that with 634!
Brigada-us-prayertrack now has grown to 870 participants, and
Brigada-pubs-missionfrontiers is the second largest group with 1625
subscribers.
And this conference (which is actually more like a
list-server, I suppose) is the conduit for Brigada Today (the publication
you're reading), which attempts to tie together the "family of conferences"
below it in the hierarchy. There are currently 4449 readers each weekend.
If we were to mail this news bulletin via the postal service to 4449
readers within one particular country (say, the USA), we estimate that the
cost would be around $1000/week just for postage alone. Add in paper and
printing cost and before long, you're talkin' some major bucks!
Subscription would run you around $25/year if there were no salaries
involved, but there'd be tons more work doing the printing, labeling,
sorting, grouping, and posting. All together, over $100,000/year would be
required to keep it running, and that's just for the top level of Brigada
alone! Try multiplying that times the zillions of messages being exchanged
in every conference in the Brigada family and before long, it makes you ask...
Assuming we already have email access, how is it we can get all this
practically for free?
(Okay - I'll admit; they charge us $52/year for the xc.org address and the
ability to create conferences. But with that $52, we're mailing to
thousands of people
every week!!!) Whoever said computers didn't save
us money? Thanks to the visionaries who started MAFxc! (If you'd like to
invest in MAF and/or start your own email conference for your mission or
project, write
helpdesk@xc.org. And by the way, we are not employed by
MAF nor do we get our xc.org address at a discount for bragging on them.
We just like what they've created!!!
Oh and by the way - did we tell
you about their web page hosting ability?
)
For a complete list of MAFxc conferences, send an email message to
hub@xc.org with only this line in the text of the message:
conferences
Make sure you send this message to hub@xc.org and not brigada@brigada.org!
Thanks to all those moderators who are working to make the Briagda family
of networks a reality!!! We appreciate you! Thanks, too, to all the
contributors who send in items for Brigada Today (esp. Mark Kelly, John
Hanna, Kerstin Hack, and the AD2000 IO), to volunteers Bob Mayhew (for the
amazingly consistent volunteer work on the web page) and Revis Ann Massey
(for her tireless volunteer ministry as the Customer Service Manager for this "top
level" conference, the one that sent you this message), and to all the
others that make Brigada a reality!
TO SUBSCRIBE TO BRIGADA TODAY, send email to
hub@xc.org
with only the following message:
subscribe brigada
TO UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to
hub@xc.org with this line in the text:
unsubscribe brigada
BRIGADA TODAY IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE FOLLOWING TEAM OF REGULAR VOLUNTEERS:
Global Glimpses: John Hanna, Caleb Project,
jhanna@cproject.com
ADVANCE: Mark A. Kelley, Kainos Press,
70420.1057@compuserve.com- Brigada Website: Bob Mayhew, Brigada Volunteer,
mayhew@xc.org
- Technical Development: Jonathan Marsden, MAFxc
jonathan@xc.org
- Brigada
Customer Service Manager: Revis Ann Massey,
RevisAnnMassey@xc.org
- Brigada
Coordinator: Doug Lucas, Team Expansion & Brigada,
DLucas@TeamExpansion.org
- and many other occasional contributors too
numerous to mention!
- But thanks for working together! That's the dream of Brigada!
17 of January, 1997
| "If you've been asked to lead, you've been asked to serve." |
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| Doug Lucas DLucas@TeamExpansion.org
| Phone: +1 (513) 244 8149
|
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| FAX: +1 (513) 244 8430 |
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| Organization: Team Expansion |