News and Notes about Brigada, Your Gateway to Missions Networking!
Compiled by DLucas@TeamExpansion.org
Brigada is free (though you still have to pay your normal email charges, of course).]
IN THIS ISSUE....
*WE'RE GROWING! ... & GOD IS AT WORK AROUND OUR WORLD
*NAVIGATION MAP
*CONFERENCES
*NEW CONFERENCES SPAWNING
*CHRISTIAN INFORMATION NETWORK SHIPPING NEW BOOK
*INPUT NEEDED FOR MEETING WITH GLOBAL MAPPING AND ADOPT-A-PEOPLE
*WHAT'S THE WORLDWIDE WEB
*BRIGADA LAUNCHES EXPERIMENTAL WORLDWIDE WEB HOMEPAGE!
*NEED A FREE EMAIL COMPUTER?
*NEW PEOPLE GROUP PROFILE POSTED
*ARABIC PEOPLE CONFERENCE READY FOR BUSINESS
WE'RE GROWING! ... & GOD IS AT WORK AROUND OUR WORLD -- It's plain to see the Spirit is at work around the globe! He is awakening us all of the need for prayer, personal renewal, and cooperation in finishing the task! Brigada is only a symptom of a much greater movement... but look at the growth. Below is a chart with the number of 'subscribers' to the top level of Brigada (this Brigada Today update).
4 weeks ago: 58
3 weeks ago: 76
2 weeks ago: 95
1 week ago: 106
Tuesday: 135
Today: 234!!!
234 people -- missionaries, church leaders, mission agencies, mission executives, mobilizers, anthropologists, professors, world Christians! Thanks for being a part of this network.
NAVIGATION MAP -- Below is a chart to point to the conferences established thus far. Each line represents an entirely different conference, with an entirely different set of participants. You can be a member of more than one conference, but to do so, you must subscribe to each conference individually. Subscribing to the top level Brigada conference does =not= automatically get you mail from each of the subgroups. (If it did, you'd go crazy with mail!!! [grin]) Remember that you can determine the name of any conference by starting at the top and left and working over. To subscribe to any of the conferences below, just send email to hub@xc.org with the word "subscribe" followed by the conference name (include the hyphens in the conference name, but lose the quotes in "subscribe"). For example, to subscribe to the first subconference listed, your message to hub@xc.org would read,
subscribe brigada-albania-durres
CONFERENCES
--------------------------
Brigada (234 have subscribed to this top level conference, "Brigada")
|-albania-durres
|-albania-durres-ftf
|-argentina-laplata
|-colombia-bogota
|-ecuador-guayaquil
|-orgs-missionmobilizers
|-teamex
|-peoples-arab
|-kazakh
|-latam
|-prayer-mobilizers
|-prayer-requests
|-projects-brigada
|-cells
|-lex96
|-security
|-pubs-globalprayerdigest
|-missionfrontiers
|-ukraine-kharkov
|-ukraine-kharkov-ftf
|-uruguay-montevideo
NEW CONFERENCES SPAWNING -- ... as fast as we can produce them! During the coming week, we hope to launch requested conferences for...
*** Turkik peoples, with George Livingston and Dan Davis
*** The national publication, _Prayer Alert_, by Eddie Smith
*** Crimean Tatars (and the work in Simferopol, Ukraine, itself), featuring on-site missionaries in Simferopol, Ukraine)
*** Makua People of Tanzania and Mozambique
CHRISTIAN INFORMATION NETWORK SHIPPING NEW BOOK -- They're working around the clock... three brave souls who are putting the needs of 100 Gateway Cities above their own! Thanks to the staff at CIN, thousands of new _WindoWatchman_ books are being shipped out this very minute to points around the globe. The new 240-page volume profiles the life and times of the people of the 100 Gateway Cities, making it immensely easier for us to pray informedly for the people we're learning to love, even though few of us have met them yet! If you haven't already ordered one, contact CIN at
11025 State Highway 83
Colorado Springs, CO 80921
Tel: 719-522-1040 Fax: 719-548-9000
Tell them you heard about it in Brigada! Copies are $10 in the USA.
INPUT NEEDED FOR MEETING WITH GLOBAL MAPPING AND ADOPT-A-PEOPLE -- One week from today (on April 7th at 3pm), a Brigada representative will meet with a VP from Global Mapping and staff from the Adopt-a-people Clearinghouse to brainstorm about how we would propose to make People Profiles and City Profiles available online via Brigada. We need your help in determining what would be the most useful approach. Send email to DLucas@TeamExpansion.org with your ideas. Pray for Bill Dickson of GMI, Eric Derry of Brigada, Bob Binkley, and hopefully others from the AAP Clearinghouse, along with others who can attend the brainstorming session at the AAP Clearinghouse's office in Colorado Springs. As of today we were also hoping for someone from the Christian Information Network to help give input regarding the 100 Gateway Cities "Praying through the Window II" Campaign. [Example...
***a) Should we go ahead and set up a conference for each of the 100 Gateway Cities, in anticipation of awakenings in interest for each, or should we wait until someone =asks= for creation of such a conference?
***b) Should we focus on developing the People/City profiles in ascii text only, or should we prepare Microsoft Word for Windows versions and post them as well?
***c) If Marv Bowers has his way (and we all pray to God that the Spirit will empower him to do so! :-)), there could conceivably be "200+ profiles prepared by mid-May." [By the way, let's all pray that God will empower Marv to be able to pull this off -- scanning, OCRing, and cleaning up those thousands of pages will =not= be an easy task.] Should these profiles all be listed under the top level "Brigada" subdirectory/conference, or should a special "peoples" conference be created as a file storage area?
WHAT'S THE WORLDWIDE WEB -- To understand the item below, we probably all need to be caught up to speed on the worldwide web, or WWW. The WWW is a kind of graphical user interface to what we're already doing on Brigada. Right now, to get a copy of the new profile on the Ishilhayn people of Morocco, you send a [fairly exact] command to a [fairly unforgiving] hub computer on the INTERNET, then wait a few minutes for the profile to arrive back in your email box. For some, this might be all the service ever needed. Others, meanwhile, are longing for a graphical way of doing things... in much the same way that Windows has provided buttons to click for those old cryptic DOS commands. Well the WWW automates the process of getting files, sharing maps, drawings, and photos, and navigating conferences and forums. All it takes is a click of the mouse and you could jump from a people profile index over to Morocco then over to the Ishilhayn. No commands to type. No email to wait for. The downside is you need something called a WWW browser (like Mosaic, Netscape, or NetCruiser). Right now, it appears that relatively =few= people among our 234 Brigada participants have the capability to use the WWW. However, that's about to change. =Very= soon, America OnLine will add that service to its list of menu choices, and Compuserve will follow shortly thereafter. In addition, when Windows 95 becomes available (in August of this year ... or next :-)), =everyone= will have a browser =built in= to the operating system!!! By =then=, Brigada wants to be ready to automate much of what might seem difficult to some users, a hassle to others. So read on to the following item!
BRIGADA LAUNCHES EXPERIMENTAL WORLDWIDE WEB HOMEPAGE! -- Just ten days after formally "opening its doors" on the INTERNET, Brigada has now launched its own WorldWide Web page. Though still in development (we have a hunch it will =always= be developing!), it is already functional. However, uses should note that ponters and the actual site address could change as we continue to develop the concepts and the best approaches. For now, point your WWW browser to http://www.xc.org/Brigada/brigada.html and look to the future! [Thanks =loads= to Bob Sutterfield, the folks at Morning Star Technologies and CrossConnect for their help in launching this project. Like many others, I'm convinced God has prepared Bob "for just such a time as this".] Watch for future development on how this www page could help you get people and city profiles, networking information, and conferencing capabilities. If you have ideas on what this page should contain, email DLucas@TeamExpansion.org.
NEED A FREE EMAIL COMPUTER? -- Send a message to James Thornberry at jimt@golden.ncw.net and ask for information about Computers for Missions Int'l. They are a ministry which specializes in gathering by donation computers, parts, and software to put together systems to give to missionaries in the field free of charge. They are currently asking for any used, new, or "spare" pc's to use in the work of the ministry. In addition, they would like the names of missionaries that might have a need that we can help with. [Thanks to Ron at MissionNet for this item!]
NEW PEOPLE GROUP PROFILE POSTED -- Add the Ishilhayn to the list of people profiles that can be electronically downloaded via Brigada. Thanks to the Adopt-a-people Clearinghouse for making these available. To retrieve this new profile, (assuming you're already subscribed to Brigada) email hub@xc.org with only the following line in the body of the message:
get brigada peoples-morocco-ishilhayn
Thanks to Marvin Grooms at the CC/CC Missions Resource Center for keying in this and the other People Groups we have posted as sample electronic copies.
ARABIC PEOPLE CONFERENCE READY FOR BUSINESS -- Bill Kelly's goal is manyfold. He wants to see an exchange of information sources, as well as information itself. He wants to share/learn where are the good ftp sites, lists, etc, that will help us learn more about Arabic peoples. In addition, he would like to see mission agencies discuss their various philosphies about showing God's love, launching new thrusts, and how those thrusts integrate with Arabic peoples' visions of who they are and where they're going. Bill says, "The Biggest question for me personally is how can individuals "plug in" in
an active way, rather than just passively reading prayer newsletters? What sort of innovative ideas are being used to moblize the resources of the laity?" To learn and share with Bill, join Brigada-peoples-arab by sending email to hub@xc.org with only the following line in the body of the message:
subscribe Brigada-peoples-arab
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