This is when the church sends out its own members, not just to participate on a project, but to help expand the Kingdom of God in other areas. This month a Global Focus church in Venezuela is sending a couple to East Asia using their profession as a platform to expand God’s Kingdom. They will be working with a veteran team that is focused on church planting among that unreached people group.
Connect Global was able to help send out another young man from Bolivia to West Africa to work with a team of Latin American workers who are planting churches in that part of the world. So, going from a mission field to a mission force is viable, but there does need to be an intentional process to help take churches and people there. Please continue to pray for Global Focus Latin America and the facilitators who are teaching, mentoring and challenging churches all over Latin America to become that missions force.
When missions is the main mission of the church, when the church has a structure and a strategy to mobilize its own congregation across the street and around the world, then they celebrate is what God is doing all over the world. Just this past 2 weeks we have had several Global Focus alumni churches have their Global Celebrations. A Hispanic church in Atlanta, in Cd. Valles, Mexico, 2 churches in Mexico City. Why do we teach this? Because we always celebrate our priorities. If God’s Mission is the priority of the church, then we elevate that priority by celebrate what He is doing locally and around the world through our church’s impact.
FBC Tecate, Mexico, is a Global Focus model church, we took them through our entire process 3 years ago. This week, pastor Isai Morellos (also president of the Baja California Baptist Convention) and a team from his church are in the southern Philippine Islands. The area they are in is a mslm stronghold. They have taken medical professionals and medicine, and use that as a platform to share Christ with the unreached. Why would a church in northern Mexico go all the way around the world to personally preach the Gospel to mslms? Their purpose statement says : “FBC Tecate exists to glorify God by making disciples that love, serve and evangelize from the heart of Baja California to the ends of the world.”
This past week, myself and several of our Latin American facilitators where able to teach the 2nd and 3rd modules of our missional process.
Some were in El Salvador, some in Peru, some in Chile. I was in Bogota, and Zipaquira, Colombia this past week. In these modules we help the leaders understand that the church exists for the purpose of being the Instrument by which God desires to fulfill His Mission and establish His Kingdom in every nation. We help every church develop their own Missional Purpose Statement, and align every ministry around that singular mission.
Rick Warren says that trying to lead a church without a clearly defined purpose, is like driving a car in dense fog… it is easy to drift out of your lane. Many churches begin to drift from the original intent that God established for His church in the book of Acts. By looking to Christ and defining why He started His church, and then developing a purpose statement that declares His purpose for our church, and aligning around that mission, helps keep a church from drifting into other lanes. We also help the church to develop a structure and strategy to mobilize its own members in their own Jerusalem and all the way to the ends of the earth.
This is one of the purpose statements developed this past week: “Vida en Accion (Life Action Church) exists for the Glory of God, by being and making disciples that establish His Kingdom from our families to all the nations of the earth.”
It is much more than teaching or preaching lessons or sermons about missions or about unreached people groups. It has to do more with an intentional process to take churches from where they are to another level of engagement. That is exactly what we are doing in Global Focus in Latin America. Different facilitators are going from church to church helping them realize their potential impact in God’s Kingdom. Then also helping to take them through an intentional missional process in which the end result is that their church is much more engaged, sending out their own people to their own city, in their own country and among the unreached, all at the same time.
E.H. and his family have been serving in the Middle East for 6 years. They have been able to learn the local language and to share their faith, preach and teach. God has been using this family from Mexico in an extraordinary way where they are serving. They are helping disciple house church pastors, starting house churches, discipling new believers. Now they are discipling believers from small villages that have come to faith, helping them start house churches in their area.
Literally every week we are receiving reports from Latin American families from churches that we have mentored, and helped to send to the field, of mslms coming to faith in Christ, publicly identifying with Christ in baptism, new house churches being birthed. The church is emerging where there was no church! Why? Because there should always be a traceable link between our mobilization efforts and expanding the Kingdom of God.
We launched Global Focus in Chile this year. The pastores in Chile told me once they saw how Global Focus could mobilize their own people; “Our church is not the only church that needs this missional process, other churches need the same transformation.” This past week pastor Elias was able to meet with 35 local pastors, from his own denomination and other denominations, to teach them that the local church is God’s instrument to extend His Kingdom, not only in Chile, but to all nations. He was able to present what Global Focus is doing in his own church, and how it can help their churches as well. We are working personally with pastor Elias, so he can help lead the efforts to mobilize local churches in Chile and thus expand God’s Kingdom to all peoples.
There should always be a traceable link between our mobilization efforts and the Kingdom of God expanding to all peoples. Many of the new pastors who we are mentoring in Global Focus are seeing the tremendous value of mobilizing their own people to be on mission with God locally in their own communities and globally among the unreached people groups. Because of the missional alignment that comes to their church as they implement our missional process, they are now launching out new families to extend God’s Kingdom to where it was not before. Now, many of these same pastors are now helping their own denomination and other churches experience the same innovation. They have realized that the way to extend God’s Kingdom to all peoples is to mobilize the greatest missions force that has ever existed; the local church.
Global Focus in Guatemala
I started mentoring several Amigos (Friends) churches in Guatemala a little over a year ago. The Amigos churches were started by the Quakers nearly 150 years ago. Now for the first time this denomination is sending Guatemalan believers cross culturally to Southeast Asia! They have sent 2 families long term, and nearly a dozen short term workers, mostly medical professionals. The unreached people group they are engaging, many have embraced the Gospel and come to faith in Christ, the church has been planted and is growing. Since these churches have experienced such a dramatic transformation, pastors Maudiel and Rolando are now beginning to mentor nearly 80 pastors from their own denomination in the same missional process. God is mobilizing Guatemalan Amigos to impact the Nations!
Because of their obedience (the churches, and the family’s) now people in this unreached people group have access to the Gospel, some are responding, and former mslms are coming to faith in Christ, and publicly identifying with Him.