Preparing my anual report for the Global Focus board of directors, I was asked to list the churches that we have and are mentoring in Latin America and what the impact on these churches has been. It wasn’t until I actually made up a list that I realized how much Global Focus is impacting Latin American churches, and helping them to not only to mobilize their own people to reach locally, but that reach extends all the way across the globe to the unreached. I was shocked to see the list of over 300 churches that myself and our Global Focus Latin American team are have mentored, are currently mentoring and will be be mentoring in 2017, plus several major denominations! But the real test is what are these churches doing, how have they been impacted, and what is the impact they are now making?
I wish I go go down the list one by one and tell you individual stories of members of churches in Latin America that are now personally involved in missions locally and globally, but I will give you just a few short examples. A church in Venezuela has now the majority of their members serving in missional projects, and every year would baptize an average of 25-30, this last year they baptized over 200!
Why, because of so many people involved in “outside the walls” missional projects in their own Jerusalem. Another church in El Salvador, over 100 members of their church have now started missional projects in the local schools, reaching thousands of young people, another group from the church started a ministry reaching the local prostitutes for Christ! But the impact of Global Focus is not only felt locally in their Jerusalem, but among the unreached as well. In the last 3 Global Celebrations we have had in the last month, over 70 people surrendered to full time missions. These churches are now sending out their own missionaries to some of the most difficult areas to reach with the Gospel of Christ. The churches of Venezuela have sent a family to one of the most closed countries in the entire world. Mexican and Salvadorian churches have sent field units to work with the refugee’s in the Middle East, and are seeing the Church planted where their was not church. Peruvian churches are now sending workers to North Africa, and Central Asia. Another group of Venezuelan churches we mentor were able to send workers to West Africa, one of those workers just had an Evangelistic meeting in which 20 mslms came to faith in Christ! The churches that we are mentoring are not just reaching out into their own local communities, and counties but they have taken the command of Christ to make disciples of all nations very seriously. These churches partnering with Connect Global have been able to send out 46 new units to unreached peoples!
How can you be involved and help?
We ask you to take seriously praying for our ministry, and for Latin American workers who are serving in dark areas of the world. But there is a tangible way you can help as well; We are hosting our yearly Global Focus Intensive Training in San Salvador at Miramonte Baptist Church, and have dozens of pastor from all over Latin America who are purchasing their own airline tickets to attend.
We try to help them with a scholarship for food and housing of $150.00 each for the week. We are lacking about 40 scholarship still, and if you could prayerfully consider helping to sponcer a Latin American pastor. If you can help with one scholarship or several, it will greatly impact churches in Latin America and thus impact the reaching of unreached people groups, and we can expedite the impact we are already seeing.