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Yovanny has now resigned as the pastor of his church (First Baptist Church of Turen, a model Global Focus church) and is now working full time for Global Focus. Every single week he is criss crossing all over Venezuela mentoring churches in our missional process.This past week he was in Maracaibo, Venezuela mentoring the Lirio de los Valles (Lilly of the Valley) Baptist Church. In our 2nd Module we help to align the church around the single mission that the church has; to make disciples, locally and globally, but helping them develop their missional purpose statement. This is the purpose statement that the church leaders developed: “Lilly of the Valley exists so that all nations worship God, and making Him known where He was not known, by making disciples from Maracaibo all the way to the ends of the earth.”This church has now sent a young couple to East Asia to make disciples in a very different and difficulty context. Why, that is the reason their church exists…..

Pastor Luis Marti is has started the Global Focus with a new church in El Salvador; Iglesia Accion Cristiana (Christian Accion Church) with their leaders. The reason they sought out Global Focus is because their desire is to impact their own community, their country, and the nations with the Gospel of Christ.Their leaders started our missional process last week with Module 1 in which Luis showed them the Biblical basis for missions, how to see the world through God’s perspective, why the church exists, and how each person individually can participate. This church is excited about the Global Focus process! Not only did Luis begin the process with this smaller church, he continues to mentor several larger churches in El Salvador as well.

Sometimes in the day to day grind of mobilization it is easy to loose perspective of why mobilization is not only important, but necessary for the church. Almost on a daily basis, spending 8-10 hours teaching leaders in different churches, in different countries about missions is not the end vision or the goal. The goal is for churches in Latin America to mobilize their own people locally in missions and be able to send out their own workers to unreached. The goal is that the unreached have access to the Gospel and respond, the church be planted where there was no church before. Rev. 7:9  where all people from all tribes, tongues, nations are dressed in white robes before our God and the Lamb, praising Him! That is the end vision! 

But there has to be a plan to move people, that is where intentional, structured mobilization comes in. Not just teaching about missions, but helping regular church members take their next step into becoming an instrument God’s mission both locally and globally. That is what we do every single week in Global Focus, in multiple areas of Latin America, mobilizing churches and individuals, and now God is being glorified in multiple areas of the world! 

Six years ago we helped form an alliance with Mission Hill Church in Tampa and Bible Baptist Church of Callao in order to send Dr. V.T. to the Middle East, where she has been serving as a gynecology. God is using her greatly not only in her field of medicine, but as His testimony to a people who did not have a personal witness. This past month another local doctor said :“No doctor would work under these conditions and for such a small salary” to which she answered, “I do”. That in turn led to a conversation about her motives, which quickly turned spiritual in nature. Now this very same doctor is asking more questions, and having deeper conversations about Jesus and the Bible. Dr. V.T. has seen several of her patients and personal friends come to faith in Christ, and is leading a Bible Study with them. She is also working with the youth in a local house church. Peruvians are impacting the nations wit the Gospel! 

Vida Nueva La Molina is a baptist church in Lima that we have been mentoring in Global Focus missional process. Their leadership is excited about the way that we have helped them to implement several of the Global Focus paradigms in their church. Church members are not only participating locally in starting their own missional projects, but are going to the nations as well!In our fourth and fifth modules we help the church prepare for its Global Celebration. 

They bring in global missionaries, and local missions projects with the objective of mobilizing the entire church to personally participate in missions by strategically praying, sacrificially giving, and personally going. Then on Sunday, I was able to preach all three (identical) Sunday services at the church, and on Sunday evening I finished up preaching at Bible Baptist Church of Callao before flying all night back to Atlanta. 

Our last module in our Global Focus process is “Where do I fit in?” In this module, every church member learns that missions is not only for missionaries, that God has a mission (outside the walls of the church) for every single Christ follower. They learn that God has been working in our individual lives, forming our character, giving us different spiritual gifts, allowing us to have different life experiences, all preparing us for the Kingdom assignment He desires for us to accomplish. I was able to take  the leaders of Bible Baptist Church of Callao in Lima through this module last week. Pastor Oscar and the leaders are very excited to take the rest of the church membership to go through this module. This is the way that missions personalization works, every church member, personally engaged in God’s mission. This church is now sending new workers to Central Asia, and the Middle East! 

God has been doing an incredible work in Peru, and we in Global Focus are excited to be a small part of what He is doing. God is waking up Peruvian churches, and Peruvian Christians that missions is not something just for North Americans, but it is for South Americans as well. Missions is not just about missionaries taking the Gospel to far away and dangerous places, but it is about regular church members taking the Gospel to their own Jerusalem as well and there are many ways to personally participate in God’s global mission. So, now churches we are mentoring in our Global Focus process, have not only had hundreds of church members begin to personally participate in missions locally and nationally, but now are sending their own people to the nations. Places in the war torn Middle East, in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, in Europe reaching mslm immigrants and North Africa. There is a list of new candidates too long to even mention all the places God is calling young Peruvian professionals to plant their lives. Why? Because churches of Peru are intentionally learning how to personally participate in God’s global mission. 

Global Focus is mentoring hundreds of churches in different Latin American  countries and our goal is to expand even farther. This year we are launching in Argentina (where I just was a 2 weeks ago) and now into Honduras.  Last year the Honduran Baptist Convention approached me about being  their key note speaker, but also teaching their pastors about how Global Focus is mobilizing churches, and helping them to send their own missionaries.

This week I was able to preach and teach 7 different times at the convention and help then see how they could mobilize  their own churches and they are capable of sending their own workers to the unreached. Praise the Lord, they actually have one Honduran family serving in Southeast Asia, but their desire is that by 2020 they could have at least 5 new families serving among the unreached. 

Either myself or some of our other Latin American facilitators help mentor these initial churches through our 18 month process, then they will have the necessary tools to continue mentoring the rest of the churches of their denomination.

We did exactly the same process with the Venezuelan Baptist Convention.  We started mentoring some of their key churches and pastors but now, literally every single week, Venezuelan Global Focus facilitators are mentoring over 100 churches and because of that, the Venezuelan churches are sending more missionaries than ever! Please pray for this new alliance, our ultimate goal is that the churches assume their proper role in the Great Commission, send workers to the fields, and more unreached have the opportunity to hear and respond to the Gospel of our great God! 

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After preaching the convention, I was invited to preach Sunday at 48th anniversary of FBC Betania in Progreso, Honduras. It was great speaking at the packed services of this great church that God has blessed these last 48 years. They believe that God can extend their imprint beyond Honduras and to the nations. So they are more excited about the future than the past.

Their leadership wants them  to become one of the initial Global Focus model churches in Honduras. I was also able to meet Sunday with A.G. a young lady that my good friend Paul Purvis connected me with, she is the secretary for Word of Life Honduras, but desires to be able to go on an exploratory trip with us to the Middle East that we have to serve with refugee’s. 

Venezuela in constantly in the news because of daily events, that are happing in this country. But something that does not make the national news, is something that God is doing in the churches of Venezuela. Our Global Focus director Yovanny Alvarez is mentoring churches, and building a team of facilitators that is making an huge impact in the churches in Venezuela. When people hear about Venezuela, they immediately think, there is not much the churches there can do for missions. But they would be totally wrong, God is doing something incredible in Venezuela.

The churches are personally participating in missions, their members are engaged and involved. Even though thousands of Venezuelans are having to leave their country, many are doing so in conjunction with God’s mission. In other words, they are choosing instead of coming the U.S. or other Latin American countries, they are intentionally going to countries that need the Gospel. They are intentionally migrating to areas that need the Gospel! Why would they do this? Because mobilization is about movement. We desire to move and expand the boundaries of God’s Kingdom! 

We have been mentoring the E.F.C. of Sao Paulo for a little over a year now. Pastor Frido, and his leaders have been implementing all of the paradigm changes, and strategies that we teach in our process, and it is making an impact on the church. Church members are personally participating in missions locally in their own area, in ways they never imagined before. This last week while I was there preaching in the church and mentoring their leaders, one of their leaders was in Haiti on a 20 day mission trip, others church members are helping in a church planting initiative in the northern part of Brazil. But also on Sunday we were able to commission from their church a young lady that has been in all of our mentoring sessions, and now God has spoken to her about foreign missions. This Sunday the pastors and I were able to pray over Johana who will now be serving with OM Brasil, preparing herself for her future assignment in missions. Mobilization is about movement.