19951203 Brigada Today

Now with 1520 Participants!
News and Notes about Brigada, Your Gateway to Missions Networking!
[Pass this issue to a friend! To subscribe, see instructions at end.]

In this issue….

BRIGADA OPENS TECH SUPPORT FORUM

Okay. So you’re out there in the middle of the Zambezi River Valley… or wherever. You’re sure you put the manual to your brand new A2Z-9000 Solar Collector Water Heater somewhere before you packed up, but for the life of you, you can’t lay your hands on it. This A2Z-9000 must have 200 crazy little pieces to put together and you can’t even imagine where to begin! Who ya gonna’ call? Forget Ghostbusters. That’s last year’s news.

Try Brigada-techsupport!

Larry Bentley LarryB@xc.org and company are ready to come to your rescue. I’m tellin’ ya! These are the guys that witness to the Maytag repairmen!

I mean, Larry alone has worked as a building engineer (electrical systems) for the local phone company 17 years, and now for Sprint. He’s a flight instructor, a ham radio operator, he’s made short term mission trips, he reads Appropriate Technology Sourcebook micro-fiche instead of looking at Baywatch reruns, he’s wired transfer switches, buildings, lights and phones, installed well pumps, solar water heaters (See? I wasn’t making all that up about the… uh… what was that model number again?)

, directed building crews, repaired washers, dryers, ovens, refrigerators, generators, installed base and mobile VHF radios & antennas and even driven a school bus down to Nicaragua. (I was concerned until I got to the school bus thing. I mean, any guy that can drive a school bus through Central America has got to be in line for the next Indiana Jones movie!)

The welcome screen for Brigada-techsupport says that Larry and the bunch “seek to provide these answers from stateside technically oriented individuals and other missionaries’ field experience to solve some of the problems that consume a great deal of the field persons’ time, such as appliance repair, construction questions, electrical systems (including generators/battery storage, solar), radio/telephone systems, and any other general technical areas where direct on-site review is not required. Also included will be questions regarding how to use email, email conferences, and INTERNET groups (Brigada in particular).” (Let’s sing the Doxology! These people are even going to help with Brigada tech support!!!) So remember, just send your email Maytag repair question to brigada-techsupport@xc.org — but first send an email to hub@xc.org with only the line,
subscribe brigada-techsupport

Welcome Larry and crew!!!

GCN WEB PAGE SEES 2,078,344 “HITS” IN OCTOBER

Yep! You read that right! Over 2 million accesses were recorded for Gospel Communication’s web page month before last. That’s a lot of stopper-bys. Check it out at http://www.gospelcom.net/ and join the crowd!

ISLAM’S HIDDEN HALF

Just completed a few weeks ago, this eight-minute video (also available in PAL video format) gives a fun but substantive introduction to Islam. Hosted by two British children, it is informative and encourages prayer for Muslims. Viewers will also meet two Muslim children (in Pakistan and in North Africa), 10-year old Hadisha, and Aziz, a shepherd boy. Produced by: Procla-Media Productions, it is available at COST to Brigada subscribers: U.S. $11.00 (regular price: $13.49) For specifics, write Paul at wcn@xc.org , or call 1(719) 442-6409 You can also ask Paul for a short list of his Christmas-gift suggestions of quality books.
(WorldChristian News and Procla-Media Productions are ministries of Youth With A Mission’s International Communications Network.)

DECEMBER ADVANCE READY FOR DOWNLOADING!

Here’s a look at what you’ll find in this month’s Advance! Thanks, Mark for another job well done!

THE GOSPEL FOR EVERY PEOPLE — Pushing back the darkness in India. 10 millionth Bible published in China. House churches continue to grow rapidly in Beijing. Movements of God’s spirit among tribal peoples of Vietnam. First contact with nomadic tribe in Indonesia. 50,000 letters each month from Hindus in India. Coca-Cola vows “a Coke in the hand of every person by the year 2000.” Praying Through the Window III in October 1997.

THE PERSECUTED CHURCH — Gunmen murder Pakistani believer. Pakistani believer dies in police custody. Muslim extremists kill French religious worker in Algiers. Chinese Christian doctor sentenced to three years labor. Believers arrested in Jiangxi. Lay missionary murdered in Brazil.

SPIRITUAL FORCES OF DARKNESS — UN report condemns slavery, forced labor in southern Sudan. Unprecedented crime wave in China. Girls oppressed among India’s Banchcara people. Children in south Asia’s carpet industry sweatshops. Dutch appeals court drops murder charge in infanticide.

REJOICE! — Muslim efforts to discredit Christianity backfire. Jesus film shown in Middle East mosques. Open-air meeting in India’s Gujarat state results in 5,000 decisions for Christ. 15,000 Africans accept Christ each day south of the Sahara.

PROFILES:
Achenese
Baghdad
Sudan

NETWORKING — Joshua Project 2000. Research resources sought. 30 days of prayer for Muslims. Involving children in prayer walks. 20-minute Islam video. Unreached people group resources. Video seminar trains missions leaders. Explore ’96. Strategically evangelizing cities. The Religion or Belief Information Network. On-line subscription to Mission Frontiers. Rescuing baby girls from Chinese orphanages.

FRONT LINES: The captivity of discontent

TO RETRIEVE THIS MONTH’S ADVANCE, simply send email to hub@xc.org with only the following line in the body of the text:
get brigada advance.9512

[The word “get” is the command, “brigada” is the file area, and “advance.9512” is the file name. Make sure you observe case. (Case is significant when handling file names!)]

JOSHUA PROJECT DATABASE EXECUTABLE IN PROCESS

Get this! Here’s a guy who gets this list of Joshua Project 2000 Least Evangelized People , right? 1685 people groups in all. So what’s he do? He writes a database application to run it! Honest! And what’s more, it looks like he’s willing to share it for free! Now keep in mind, it’s “in process”. But he’s written it to run on the “least common denominator” computer — a 286. He sent me a copy and it’s pretty cool. If you’re looking for a way to quickly find data on the 1685 peoples, write Bob Whitney at bobw5@ix.netcom.com and ask for a copy. But the greatest part is Bob’s attitude. He just wants these people to know, that’s all!

“AOLGOLD” VIRUS STILL MAKING THE ROUNDS

Thanks to Mike Stevens mstevens@algonet.se who continues to track this trojan horse virus called AOLGOLD. Remember, it functions as an attachment to an email message. So if someone mails you a message with a file attachment that is an executable, make sure you test it first. (Okay — I’ll admit it; I virus checked Bob’s Joshua Project database executable first. Sorry Bob.

And probably a better approach is to just not execute attached executable files (those ending in *.exe or *.com or *.bat) unless you know the person who sent them! AOLGOLD only does something minor like erase most of your hard drive. No big deal.

GLOBAL GLIMPSE

MORE ON PRAYING THROUGH THE WINDOW II — The 100 Gateway Cities, October, 1995, was the largest prayer event in the history of the Church. The results are beginning to be tallied and the following participation has been documented: At least 30 million people from at least 166 countries, A confirmed 1,010,632 churches, including 90,000 Brazilian churches. 405+ teams made 644 prayer journeys to the 100 cities. The October prayer calendar was probably the most duplicated sheet of paper in the history of the world, distributed in English, Spanish, Chinese, Africans, German, Korean, Indonesian, Greek and others.
(Source: Beverly Pegues, Christian Information Network, 11025 Hwy 83, Colorado Springs, CO 80921-3623) John Hanna, Caleb Project, Littleton, CO

MISSIONARY MATH 101

Okay. So grab the calculator. Let’s say we’ve got 10,000 people groups in the world, . . . just to pick a round number, okay? And our buddy Justin Long says we’re way low on our missionary body count. He says minimum 200,000 — maybe 400,000. So let’s go with his low number. [punch punch click click] So I get 20 per group. What do you get? So let’s say 1685 of those groups are the “least reached”. They tell us that half of those groups don’t have a single missionary working among them from any persuasion. Justin says to me, Doug — they’re not just under 5% evangelical! They’re under 5% Christian — where Christian is the broadest definition you can muster. Now just for good measure, add in the churches (congregations) in your town. I live in Cincinnati. We’ve got … let’s see… 369 million, I think. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but you get the idea. Hey, even if we were all Communists, this idea would never fly. We’d have to spread some ideology around to make things even out. Hmmmm.. How can we sleep at nights!

PEOPLE OF THE WEEK

Let’s remember the Tujia of China, with 6.1 million members. They are less than 0.4% Christian. Barely a third have heard the Gospel, and over 4 million have not. Though they do not have a JESUS film in their own language, an overwhelming majority speak southwestern Mandarin and have access to Christian resources in that language. Virtually all are animists. There is some work among them, but much remains to be done! (Thanks to Justin Long, GEM, Richmond, VA.)

Have a great week!

TO SUBSCRIBE TO BRIGADA TODAY, send email to hub@xc.orgwith only the following message:
subscribe brigada

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BRIGADA TODAY IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE FOLLOWING TEAM OF REGULAR VOLUNTEERS:

Global Glimpses: John Hanna, Caleb Project, jhanna@cproject.com
People of the Week: Justin Long, GEM/Barrett Office, JDavidLong@aol.com
ADVANCE: Mark A. Kelley, Kainos Press, 70420.1057@compuserve.com
Web Wizard: Bob Mayhew, Brigada Volunteer, mayhew@xc.org
Web Art: Patti Mayhew, pmayhew@discover.net
Technical Development: Jonathan Marsden, MAFxc jonathan@xc.org
Communications: Revis Ann Massey, rmassey@post.cis.smu.edu
Compiler: Doug Lucas, Team Expansion & Brigada, DLucas@TeamExpansion.org
and many other occasional contributors too numerous to mention! But thanks for working together! That’s the dream of Brigada!