Josue Villanueva, one of our Central American facilitators was able to start the Global Focus process in a new church, FBC Ahuachapan. He and OM facilitator where able to teach the Global Focus initial seminar to all of their leaders. This helped to wake the church up as far as it’s global responsibility.
The reality is that the more facilitators that are mobilizing local churches through our missional process, the more missionaries that will be able to be sent from those churches. If you read our ministry update last week, you realized that this movement is not just about teaching missional lessons or even about mobilizing churches, but at our core, we are about the sending of new Latin American missionaries to unreached people groups.
We have now helped to send 60 units from Latin America. But, how can we send even more Latin American missionaries to the unreached? It’s not as much about mobilizing the candidate, as it is about mobilizing the church.We can mobilize people to go, but if they are not sent by local missional churches, then their process to get to the field becomes too difficult, and many give up in frustration. So in order to help facilitate a sustainable missional movement in Latin America, we are intentionally training more Global Focus facilitators this year.
This week I was able to lead the first of 4 major training events in order to multiply the number of mobilizers – facilitators in Global Focus in Puebla, Mexico, at Getsemani Baptist Church (a church that is in the Global Focus missional process, that God is doing some incredible things). For 3 days, 17 men came from all over Mexico to learn how to not only mobilize their own churches, but to mobilize other churches.
The amazing thing about our training was that I did not have to do all of the training, several of our facilitators helped out in the teaching, like Luis Marti from El Salvador, Pablo Carhuachin from Peru, Alejandro Sicilia, Victor Velezquez, Hazael Hernandez and Mario Cano, from Mexico. All were not only prepared to teach our material, but they also gave real examples of how Global Focus helped to mobilize the members of their churches, and how they have been able to make an impact in the nations!
During our training event there were many questions, and these pastors were able to share their own experiences. One of the unique concepts of our missional process is that it empowers the pastors themselves to become the major missions mobilizer in their own church. Our next training event is next month in Lima, Peru, we already have 27 registered for this training event. Then in the fall, we will have 2 more, one in Atlanta, and the other in El Salvador. Please pray for these training events, and for our intentional multiplication effort these next 2 years. Remember: Multiplying mobilizers = multiplying missionaries sent to the fields.
I mentor the “Amigos” denomination in Guatemala. A few weeks ago I wrote about their first every cross cultural trip to Southeast Asia. Now, the pastors and leaders that I am mentoring, are now mentoring other pastors and leaders from their denomination. They want their entire denomination to go through our missional process. Please pray for pastor Maudiel, and Edgar who are now mentoring other churches from their denomination.
This past weekend my wife and I were at Mt. Pleasant B.C. in Carrolton, GA. I was asked to preach their Global Impact Celebration. This is a great Global Focus church, impacting locally and the nations for Christ. We were overwhelmed at their Wednesday night attendance and their palpable enthusiasm as they started their GIC. On Sunday after I challenged the church, we had 6 of their members publicly walk forward to surrender their lives to cross cultural missions.
Luis Marti was able to represent Enfoque Global (Global Focus) at the COMCA meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica, this is the Central American organization of COMIBAM. Several hundred pastors, missiologist, missionaries, missions agencies, and organizations meet together for several days of encouragement, training and partnership. Pastor Luis was able to teach about the impact that Global Focus is having on hundreds of churches all over Latin America. He came away very encouraged as now churches in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and more churches in El Salvador, Guatemala and Panama are interested in Global Focus helping their churches.
Also D. and D. (Connect Global candidates to Central Asia) who just returned from their trip with us, were at the same meeting and able to speak about their experience in a total closed country in Central Asia, and what God is doing. Then Pastor Luis was able to connect the dots for many of the pastors and missions agencies; D. and D. are the product of Global Focus in Venezuela, now their church is sending them to Central Asia as workers. Pastor Luis said, “This is what Global Focus is producing, more missionaries are going to the field of the unreached because of the mobilization efforts in their own local churches.” Just like D. and D. we now have over 60 Latin American units on the field serving in some of the most closed countries, and remote people groups in the 10/40 Window!
Last week I returned from Brazil, where I continued to mentor the Evangelical Free Church of Sao Paulo. Pastor Frithold Kruger and his congregation were able to share all of their new missional projects. Not only are their people involved in local missional projects are reaching the lost locally, but also in difficult and remote areas of Brazil, and around the world. They were able to send a young lady to work in Haiti with their denomination, and now she is going to go to the Logos Hope ship of OM and their plan is to send her to the mission field.
The members of the church are very excited about what God is doing in their church and now their denomination. I spent 7 hours helping them to begin to prepare for their first ever Global Celebration. I wish you could have seen their faces when the 30 leaders that were at the training realized that in the Global Focus paradigm, it is the members that organize, help prepare, and even execute the Global Celebration!
In most churches, the only way that the members participate is by attending the services, but not so in the Global Focus paradigm. Why is this?
Because of some of our core values in Global Focus:
1. The main purpose of the church is missions
2. Missions is not just for missionaries, but for every single church member
3. Missions is both local and global at the same time.
The Evangelical Free church of Brazil is a German denomination. Now other churches and missionaries are noticing what is happening in Sao Paulo. I have been contacted by other German missionaries from their denomination that are interested in learning more about Global Focus in order to teach the rest of their churches in Brazil. Our prayer is that the Evangelical Free Church of Brazil, becomes a major sending force to the nations!
Last year I spent almost an entire week training the OM (Operation Mobilization) staff in Brazil in our missional process. I also had our new Global Focus material translated into Portuguese so that we could begin to mentor churches in Brazil. Fabio Torres, who is the director of OM Brazil, has started to mentor Baptist and Nazarene churches in Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro.
We are very excited to be partnering with OM Brazil and pray that God will continue to mobilize His church in Brazil, and call even more missionaries to the unreached.
I am just now finishing up in Lima, Peru. After spending 2 nights with nearly 100 leaders of Vida Nueva, La Molina in Lima. We focused on our third module in developing the Global Teams, and missional projects that impulse the church outside of it’s own four walls. The laypeople presented 8 new missional projects that they themselves have developed. The strategy that they are developing, their passion, their intentionality was just incredible! Not only that, the have made major paradigm shifts, now they have adopted out philosophy of “Every member, Every week in Every Service and small group, praying strategically for missions and missionaries” God is raising up Vida Nueva to be one of Peru’s great missional model churches.
The same week I was in Chile and Peru, pastor Pablo Carhuachin, one of our leading Global Focus Latin American facilitators launched with churches from the Peruvian Baptist Convention in Piura (the northern part of Peru) and Independent Baptist churches in Chiclayo. He is now mentoring over 20 churches personally and doing a fantastic job mobilizing Peruvian churches.
I was also able to spend time with Pastor Oscar Loyola, whose church we mentored, and is now a facilitator. He just returned from Mexico from teaching missions for 3 weeks at Word of Life (Palabra de Vida Mexico). His church is know because through our process he is now sending his members not only to the ethnic indigenous areas of Peru, but also to the Middle East and Central Asia. I was also able to spend all afternoon with one of my very good friends, Fransisco Linares from Miramonte. He is the director of a very strategic Wycliff project in Peru, training new Bible translators from Latin America.
Also I was able to catch up with M.M who we sent to Southeast Asia for 3 months, and will be returning long term at the end of this year.
Like I said before, God is doing some incredible things here in South America. He is using His church to accomplish His purpose. Churches are awaking to their missional purpose and members are personally engaging in the mission. Please continue to pray for this movement of God, and all that He is doing.
Last January I preached the CIMA youth congress in Antofagasta, Chile. (I partner every year with this organization and preach their missions call message at their youth congresses in South America). While I was there I was asked to speak about how Global Focus is impacting the missional movement of local churches in Latin America. A group of independent baptist churches asked me to launch Global Focus with them. After finishing in Bolivia I was able to fly to Santiago, Chile, to launch Global Focus with this group of baptist, evangelical, and one Assembly of God pastor. I wish you could have personally heard the testimonies of the church leaders after going through our initial seminar.
They said, “Global Focus has challenged us like nothing ever before, it has opened our eyes to why our church exists and what our responsibility is to the nations.” The leaders and pastors were so palpably excited to participate in this transformational process. The main church we are mentoring now wants to send one of their families to China to serve the Lord. Pray that Global Focus can help these churches to maximize their Global Impact.
I personally mentor 2 churches in Bolivia, Karos La Paz, and Kairos Santa Cruz. We just finished our personalization module with over 150 leaders from both churches, teaching a total of nearly 20 hours. The purpose of this module is to help everyone in the church to find their unique missional purpose in God’s Kingdom. After teaching the leaders how to use our material, they in turn will teach the same personalization module in small groups, so that each person in the church is able to find where they fit into God’s Global Mission. Why do we do this? Because missions in not just about missionaries, missions is the purpose for the life of each follower of Christ.
How are they implementing this in their church and their lives? Kairos has started missional projects with laypeople that are reaching marginalized street children, prostitutes, marginalized areas, not only that, they are taking the Gospel to indigenous areas of their own country, they have engaged the Mennonite population with the Gospel, and they just returned with us last month from a Bible distribution project in Central Asia. Another team returned last month from Angola, Africa, they also have teams working in the Middle East and in totally closed countries of Asia.
Not only was I able to teach their leaders, but also a group of 12 young professionals that feel a special call of God on their lives to cross cultural missions. These young professionals are passionate about taking God’s glory to the nations and becoming future missionaries.
