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This past week after launching Global Focus in Corrientes, Argentina, I was able to preach and teach 8 times at the CIMA Youth Missions Conference. It has been my honor and privilege to be the main speaker at this youth missions conference for the last 5 years. This year I was able to spend a lot of time with the nearly 600 young people at this conference, teaching on subjects like; Missions in the Middle East; Understanding Islm; How can I help mobilize my own church; Now that God has called me, what are the next steps, and many other related subjects. On Wednesday evening, which is the evening service in which the young people can make a public decision to God’s call on their lives, I spoke on the sunbelt of “One Task – One Mission”. At the end of the service nearly 300 college students, without any music, silently got up out of their sears, and came to an alter, where many stayed for over 45 minutes.

On Thursday again I was preaching and teaching, and they asked Pablo from southern Argentina to give his testimony. I remember Pablo very well, I met him 4 years ago when he attended CIMA. That CIMA, Pablo did the same thing, he surrendered his life publicly to mission, and for the last several years has been serving in Southeast Asia. Mobilization is about movement. 

Mobilization is about movement; getting people to embrace a new paradigm and engage in new activities joining in with God in what He is doing in our world. That is exactly what Global Focus in Latin America is doing, church members from the churches we are mentoring are embracing and engaging personally in God’s work in their own cities, and among the unreached around the world. Many times when we think of a missions minded church, it is a church that the pastor is going on missions trips (this is great!), but that is not necessarily a missions minded church, it is a missions minded pastor, (which is greatly needed today). A missional church is a church in which the leadership and the membership alike are personally engaged and participating in God’s mission; locally and globally, short term and long term.That is our overall goal in Global Focus, to help align churches around a single mission; the Mission of Christ, and every single member participate in that single mission. Everyone participates in different ways, with different frequency, and in different geografical areas, but all participating in that one mission.Mobilization is about creating movement. 

There is only one way to Finish the Task that Jesus gave us is to send more people to those that have never had access to the Gospel. It is not an easy task, to the contrary; it is quit difficult because of the location of these unreached people groups, because of dangers in taking the Gospel to these areas. But still the fact remains, that in order to obey the Great Commission, we need to take the Gospel and make disciples among every people group, even the difficult ones. Even in these difficult areas, when they have access to the Gospel, some respond, believers begin to meet in groups, churches are formed, others begin to be discipled, and God is glorified.

So, where do we get the new workers to go to these areas, where do we recruit from? We have more than enough workers to take the Gospel to the unreached, but the problem is they are bunched up in one place.What we do in Global Focus, is help the local church to realize that it’s purpose is not just to hold weekend services, or build building, but it is the main instrument that God has chosen to take the Gospel to the Ends of the Earth! The church is God’s Missions Agency! 

We believe that Latin America is pivotal in reaching the nations for Christ. Latin American are culturally and physically suited to fit into many of these cultures.(Now, that does not mean that the U.S. no longer needs to send missionaries, we need to send even more). But Latin American churches do need to be mobilized. Many churches in Latin America still view themselves as the mission field, not as a missions force. Our job is to help churches (ie; church leaders, and church members) understand that God has blessed Latin America, so we can bless the nations! The only way this takes place is withintentional mobilization. 

That is exactly what we are doing with nearly 450 churches we are mentoring in Latin America. These churches are now sending their own people to the unreached! But yet, there is still a huge need for more workers in the fields. The only way to get more workers to the fields, is by mobilizing more churches, and more missionaries and we have a very unique opportunity to do exactly that. God has exponentially blesses our mobilization efforts, and given us more opportunities than we are able to take. At the same time, He is raising up more mobilizers to help facilitate Global Focus in even more churches. 

Just this last month we received news from a doctor that was sent from a church we mentored in El Salvador, how he is sharing the Gospel with mslms inside of a war torn country in the Middle East, and how they are responding. God is using this young Salvadorian doctor, not only to meet the physical needs, but to expand the Kingdom of God to a very dangerous area of unreached peoples. 

Xochitl and I have been back in Mexico since last week. I started mentoring 2 new churches in Villahermosa Tabasco, Mexico this past weekend. One is a Baptist Church and the other is a Church of God. Both churches came together for the first module and we had 90 leaders present! I was also able to speak in both churches on Sunday, and we had many decisions. The leaders from both churches are very excited about this process and the impact that it will make in their churches, their communities and in the nations. 

This weekend I am in Saltillo, Mexico beginning our process with Berea Baptist Church, then on Tuesday Xochitl and I fly home for Christmas. Please continue to pray for that we can reach our goal for the End of the Year Giving Campaign that will help us send out even more Latin American missionaries to the unreached, you are helping us to multiply the mobilization. 

Pastor Pablo Carhuachin is our GF Director in Peru. He now has a team of 5 Global Focus Facilitators, all of whom are doing excellent jobs mobilizing churches. Pablo was able to travel to Bolivia and is now working with the Bolivian Baptist Convention to help them learn how to mobilize their churches, and in the end, send out more Bolivian missionaries to the nations. 

Pablo also had the opportunity to continue to mentor a church that I began with, Ingenerias Bible Baptist Church in Lima, He was able to take them through our second module, help them develop their Purpose Statement, Missions Mentality and Prayer Strategy for missions. 

Last week Pastor Paul Vargas preached the Global Celebration for Bible Baptist Church in Lima. Paul is pastor of Vida Nueva, and also a GF Facilitator. He did a wonderful job at challenging the church to go even farther in missions. This church not only had Dr. V.T. on the field, but is now sending S.G. to Central Asia and supporting M.M. in Southeast Asia. 

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Pastor Yovanny Alvarez is not only mentoring dozens of churches in Venezuela, helping to send new missionaries to the field, he is also training pastors who have implemented Global Focus in their own church to mobilize other churches. Now he has trained pastor Javier Zurita, who is now mentoring churches in our missional process. 

Yovanny is leading our team in Venezuela, and now they have 4 facilitators mentoring different churches.Yovanny is also the director for World Missions for the Venezuelan Baptist Convention, (the majority of the churches he is mentoring are baptist churches).

But now he is multiplying the mobilization beginning to mentor Church of God churches in Venezuela as well. He was able to meet with their leadership, and talk about partnering with them to help them develop missional churches as well. They have been very impressed with the progress baptist churches have made in missions, and want to implement the same process in their churches as well. 

FBC Guanare had their Global Celebration a few weeks ago, and they are multiplying the mobilization by sending even more of their families to the unreached. When I first began working with this church, they did not have a cross cultural family on the field. 

Now they have one family in Central Asia serving, and they have at least 2 more that will be going to North Africa and East Asia soon. They also pray for and support several families we have sent, and connected them with.

In their Global Celebration they raised almost $2,000.00 for Global Missions. This may not seem like much, but remember this is a country in economic collapse, and the average salary in Venezuela is less than $50.00 monthly. So this would be the same at $200,000 anywhere else! 

How do we get to the ultimate goal of all people groups having access to the Gospel? How to we send missionaries not just from the U.S. but from the Global South to impact nations? How to we engage the largest missions force that exists, the local church? You do it by multiplying the mobilization efforts. In other words, when we multiply the mobilization, we multiply the number of people personally engaged in missions, the number of missionaries sent, the prayer network, the financial support, new churches (or house churches) planted, and more people coming to faith in Christ, and glorifying our great God! We praise God that today we have now have 14 Latin American facilitators mentoring churches in our Global Focus missional process, thus multiplying the mobilization!

There was hardly a dry eye in the church as they watched their friends they have gone to church with for years, their own children respond to God’s calling on their lives to serve full time as missionaries. It was one of the most moving services I have ever been a part of as they realized the people they were looking at standing in front of them would no longer be sitting in their pews, but serving on the mission field. This was the closing “Life Commitment” service of the Global Celebration at the 2 Amigos (Friends) churches in Guatemala.

We began to mentor the Amigos churches a year and a half ago, and they had their first ever Global Celebration, I preached both of the Celebrations at the same time. During the opening celebration both churches were filled to capacity as They cheered as their missionaries came in, some locally and some from all the way from Cambodia. Every day and every evening they had multiple opportunities to personally hear about what  God is doing in their field, and how the church can engage with them. Then we came to Sunday, they day of commitments.

On Sunday morning (at 8:30 at one church and then 10:30 at the other) we had our Financial Commitment. The first church committed over $30,000 US Dollars to missions, (the more than tripled their previos missions commitment) and the second church committed nearly $20,000 (which was almost four times their previous commitment)!

Then on Sunday afternoon and evening we had two separate “Life Commitment” services in which hundreds committed to pray for the missionaries, participate in their missions teams, and go and help them with specific projects. Then I asked those who God had spoken to specifically and was calling to be the future missionaries to go from their church to help expand God’s Kingdom in other areas to stand with the current missionaries. God did an incredible work in calling out those He is sending out!

We held our Missional Church conference around the Global Celebration of Miramonte Baptista Church. In a time when many churches are moving away from doing a large Missions Celebration and bringing in missionaries to personalize missions, Miramonte had a packed house on Wednesday night. I wish you could have seen the enthusiasm of the people as they arrived early in order to walk through and personally interact with the missionaries at the Missions Fair. Then I wish you could have felt the palpable energy as the service started and they welcome their missionaries and missional projects to the platform. (This year they had to enlarge their platform significantly in order to fit everyone on the stage). That same energy continued through the rest of the week as each missionary met with small groups in order to share what God is doing in their projects, and how the people can engage with them.

Then on Sunday the challenge was given to Sacrifice for the sake of the Gospel, and the church responded with a commitment of $122,000.00 and many hundreds responded to he life commitment service Sunday evening.Our pastor Johnny Hunt, and Doug Ripley were visible moved at so many people from Miramonte personally engaged in missions. That is the whole purpose of Global Focus. It is not to teach a church on how to do their Global Celebration, but to engage every member in the church missionally. 

This past week Global Focus and Miramonte Baptist Church held a Missional Church conference in which we were able to teach how to leverage your church in order to impact the nations. We had nearly 200 pastors and leaders come from Chile, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and El Salvador. Our pastor Dr. Johnny Hunt did an outstanding  job at challenging the pastors to use their role as pastor in order mobilize the people to God’s mission. Dr. Doug Ripley taught very biblical lessons on how to raise funds that can finance the mission.

Then pastor Luis Marti showed everyone how to integrate missions into every ministry of the church, so that missions is not a separate department of the church, but the main reason for its existence. Pastor Mauricio Castellon taught how to develop missional teams with lay people in order to give away missions tot the congregation. I was able to teach on the barriers to mobilizing our people for God’s mission. We believe that the answer to world wide missions, to the need of unreached people groups, is the local church. The church has to understand and own its singular mission.