Vida Nueva B.C. in Arequipa, has not only become a Global Focus model church in Peru, but 3 of the pastors of the church are Global Focus facilitators. They just had their 3rd Global Celebration in which they brought in missionaries from all over in order to continue to mobilize their own people even more. The theme of this years Global Celebration was “Súmate” which means “Join in”.
Pastor Paul Vargas has done an excellent job modeling the concept that “The pastor is the key mobilizer”, not only does he and his family personally participate in missions as the pastor, he actively engages his people to do the same.
Pastor Paul Vargas has done an excellent job modeling the concept that “The pastor is the key mobilizer”, not only does he and his family personally participate in missions as the pastor, he actively engages his people to do the same. The purpose of celebrating missions does 2 important things:
1. It establishes that missions is the priority of the church; we celebrate our priorities,
2. It personalizes missions to every church member.
By bringing in the missionaries, it gives everyone the opportunity to hear what God is doing around the world. It also gives them the opportunity to join in on what He is doing by; intentionally praying, financially giving, and personally going.
Last week I wrote that the goal of mobilization is to impact the lostness of the nations. I want to continue to show you how that is happening in Latin America. Mobilization is not the goal, mobilization is the vehicle that takes us the real goal, which is God being glorified by His Kingdom being expanded to all peoples. When we help mobilize churches in Latin America, we are always working towards the same end game. We want to help them to glorify God, by expanding His Kingdom in their own Jerusalem, and all the way to the unreached people groups on the other side of the world. This does not happen with a single event, but this only happens through an intentional process. We help churches align around God’s mission, then organize and mobilize their people to execute that mission. Then the final step is to celebrate what God is doing around the world, and see even more opportunities to engage with Him.
I have started back mentoring some churches, and preaching. This past weekend I was able to mentor our Hispanic church here in Woodstock, Nuevo Horizonte. We started the Global Focus missional process several months ago with nearly 70 leaders from the Hispanic conjuration.
This weekend we again had a great group of the leaders of the church and were able to help the church develop it’s missions statement, integrate missions into every ministry of the church, and develop a strategic prayer strategy for global missions.
This model is designed to help align the church around the reason the church exits; to be Christ’s instrument to fulfill His mission locally and globally. I was also able to preach on Sunday at the church on “The Gospel is our identity and provides our life mission.” Some of the leaders of the church will be going with us in the Spring of next year to personally participate in a project in Central Asia. God is being glorified!
We rejoice at what God is doing in Latin America, and how He is mobilizing His church to the nations!
This past week pastor Mario Cano, Pastor of Getsemani B.C. in Puebla, Mexico (a Global Focus church, and facilitator) preached the Global Celebration for FBC Tecate, Mexico. He did a wonderful job at challenging the church to participate personally in what God is doing around the world.
The theme of the Celebration was “His Mission is Our Mission”. Pastor Isai Morelos has done a great at keeping the church aligned around the mission of God and getting his people to own the mission. This was their 3rd. Global Celebration, the church is now participating personally in missions trips and supporting Latin American workers in North Africa and Central Asia. They had over a dozen missionaries at their Celebration and the church was able to raise over $300,000 pesos (nearly $20,000.00 U.S. dollars) for global missions! God is being glorified!
Mobilization is not an event, it is a process that has a purpose. If the end result of mobilization is not God being glorified by more people hearing the Gospel and following Christ, then we are just spinning our wheels. The end result of missions mobilization should be the sending of new missionaries and them taking the Gospel to those who have never heard. Then some of those who have never heard, coming to faith, follow Christ, and establish His Church where there was not church. In this update and next weeks update I am going to write about different stages of this mobilization process.
The Unreached are Responding to the Gospel and Following Christ!
We began to mentor the Venezuelan Baptist Convention 6 years ago, and help them send our cross cultural workers to the unreached. J.R. is one of those workers we helped to send out from Venezuela to West Africa 5 yrs ago. J.R. is a baker and has used baking bread as his platform to carry the Gospel to the unreached. He has not only planted churches where there were no churches, the unreached are now following Christ and publicly identifying with Him. This is the end result of local church mobilization; God being glorified where He was not glorified!
This past week Xochitl and I were able to participate in the Every Church Every Nation conference that the IMB held at our church here in Woodstock. I was asked to teach on the challenges of mobilizing your members to missions.I was able to teach them 6 reasons church members are not personally involved in missions: 1. Compartmentalization of missions, 2. Lack of Personalization,
3. Professionalization of missions, 4. Pastors delegating missions mobilization to their missions staff, 5. Tension between local and global, 6. A lack of informed intercession for missions and missionaries. We had a wonderful time teaching, also it was a great conference, and a time of great connections.
3. Professionalization of missions, 4. Pastors delegating missions mobilization to their missions staff, 5. Tension between local and global, 6. A lack of informed intercession for missions and missionaries. We had a wonderful time teaching, also it was a great conference, and a time of great connections.
Pastor Yovanny is mentoring the Iglesia Bautista Fe, Esperanza y Amor are in the 3rd Module of our missional process. In this module the church learns how to develop not only a strategy to reach both locally and globally, they learn how to engage their own church members and form their Global Teams in order to fulfill that missional task.
Yovanny is a dynamic young pastor that has implemented this same process in his own church, and seen first hand the challenge and impact it makes in his own congregation. So when he reaches, he is not teaching theoretically, he is teaching practically, something he has implemented in his own church.
Yovanny is a dynamic young pastor that has implemented this same process in his own church, and seen first hand the challenge and impact it makes in his own congregation. So when he reaches, he is not teaching theoretically, he is teaching practically, something he has implemented in his own church.
CIMA is an Urbana like youth conference in Latin America that is challenging thousands of teenagers and college students to consider personally participating in Missions. Several years ago they asked me to share our material with them. Every year for the last several years, I have been one of the main speakers in their different youth conferences in Latin America, and we have seen many young people surrender their lives to the cause of Christ and His mission. Many of these young people are now serving around th world.
Because of our mutual partnership; they use the first four lessons of Global Focus during the year when they are recruiting students and churches to participate in the the conference’s.
Because of our mutual partnership; they use the first four lessons of Global Focus during the year when they are recruiting students and churches to participate in the the conference’s.
All over Latin America they have CIMA DAY – GLOBAL FOCUS 1 day work shop’s. Now several of our Latin American facilitators are the ones doing the teaching. This past week, Jose Villanueva, one of our Central
American facilitators was able to teach at the 1 day conference in El Salvador. In Nov. I will be teaching at the one in Bogota, Colombia. Because of this partnership with CIMA, it has exposed Global Focus to many new churches.
Many think that the local church’s responsibility in global missions is to just financially supporting missions, and sometimes pray for the missionaries. But not in the Global Focus missional paradigm.
We teach that it is not only the local church’s responsibility to send out it’s own people, and financially support them, but also personally participate in what God is doing around the world.
We teach that it is not only the local church’s responsibility to send out it’s own people, and financially support them, but also personally participate in what God is doing around the world.For that reason, one of our non negotiable principals is that churches take missions trips, that they personally go, and explore the field for themselves, and work along side field workers and see how they can personally engage.
In Latin America, churches are more used to receiving teams than sending them out. This week 4 Peruvian pastors, all of whom are pastors of churches that we have mentored, and all 4 are Global Focus facilitators.
These pastors are in North Africa and the Middle East this week visiting some of the same workers they have sent from their own churches.For the majority, this is the first time they have ever been able to travel to this part of the world. They are totally overwhelmed with how God is already working and using Latin American workers in this part of the world.
This is an exploratory trip so that later they can take some of their own people and participate in projects with some of the field workers.