BRIGADA TODAY -- 17 of March, 1995
News and Notes about Brigada
Compiled by DLucas@TeamExpansion.org
IN THIS ISSUE....
*NAVIGATION MAP -- Two conferences reach the "100 zone"!
*FTF CONFERENCES SHOW THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME --
*WORDS FROM A NEW USER -- N. (name withheld by request) , from the Cities Network
*"FAMOUS PARTICIPANTS" -- Look who just subscribed...
*IDEA DEPARTMENT -- In-Quoting effectively
*TOOL OF THE WEEK -- "Who" and DMIS's Dave the Answer-Pointer-Man!
*FILES OF THE WEEK -- New People Profiles on line!
*INTERVIEW WITH BOB AND STEVE -- Who or What is "Dag"?
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NAVIGATION MAP -- From 58 two weeks ago, to 76 last week, to 95 today... Brigada (the top level conference) continues to serve additional missionaries, mission executives, mission educators, church leaders and World Christians. We're now in the final stages of testing, ready to actually 'announce' the service publicly early next week. Probably on Monday, faxes will be sent to some 450 key leaders with the hopes of establishing all the more linkages via Brigada. Below is a chart to point to the conferences established thus far. 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" and, of course, drop the numbers in parentheses that follow the conferences below).
CONFERENCE (#PARTICIPANTS)
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Brigada (95)
|-albania-durres (17)
|-albania-durres-ftf (4)
|-argentina-laplata (14)
|-colombia-bogota (3)
|-ecuador-guayaquil (5)
|-orgs-missionmobilizers (20)
|-teamex (100)
|-peoples-arab (2)
|-kazakh (4)
|-latam (7)
|-prayer-mobilizers (13)
|-prayer-requests (2)
|-projects-brigada (13)
|-cells (5)
|-lex96 (15)
|-security (5)
|-pubs-globalprayerdigest (15)
|-missionfrontiers (11)
|-ukraine-kharkov (9)
|-ukraine-kharkov-ftf (11)
|-uruguay-montevideo (20)
FTF CONFERENCES SHOW THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME -- This past week, participants in two conferences (for Durres, Albania and Kharkov, Ukraine) simultaneously came to the conclusion that they really needed two different conferences (each). One would serve the general public, to exchange prayer requests, reports, and 'public' releases. The other, the "Field Task Force" conference, would serve a much narrower audience and would, for the most part, be a private "invitation only" conference specifically geared for solving field issues that were more sensitive in nature. On these latter conferences, only the overseeing church and/or mission leaders would be invited on board. The new conferences were launched and are already in use by the leadership of these two innovative fields. Thanks for the 'user feedback'! Now that we've seen Kharkov and Durres conferences at work, we figure that many new "adoptions" will probably prefer a similar setup.
WORDS FROM A NEW USER -- N. (name withheld by request) works with Viv Grigg on the Cities Resource Network for AD2000 & Beyond. He wrote this week, "I'm glad for the contact and the warm welcome and the insights that will come from more than one head trying to think about how to be strategic in the 10/40 window. I'm thinking that the way that Brigada could be most helpful to me is to be sounding board for new ideas and strategic thinking. This could be a brainstorming, logistics testing ground for especially rapid deployment of resources to fast openings that happen in politically difficult countries that are termed "Creative Access Countries". My thing is to do God's thing at whatever the cost, realizing that we are in a war and that casualties are a normal part of the attrition of gaining the victory for the Kingdom. But I don't want to always move unilaterally, without the confirmation of the other parts of the body of Christ represented in the parachurch movements and the local and denominational churches arrayed over the vastness of our planet. The second important aspect of that which is needed form Brigada is the research to move wisely and forth rightly into the territory that isn't always controlled by our King Jesus. Thirdly, is the continued communications support to report and infuse the church with up to date information that shows the advances and attrition rates and the call up of new recruits and resources to further the perimeter of gain for Christ. These are my quick thoughts and if they could be aired to see if others also see it this way I'd appreciate that. Yours in Christ and pressing on, N. (name withheld by request) " Thanks Norm!!!
"FAMOUS PARTICIPANTS" -- I know, I know... we're all the same in God's eyes. But there's just something exciting about seeing some of the names in the "who" list for Brigada (for more info., see "Tool of the Week" below). For example, does the name "Kaleb Jansen" ring a bell? [Hint: Go check your coffee table for the most innovative and colorful cartographic missions masterpiece money can buy!] Or how 'bout "Eddie Smith" [a la US Prayer Track Leader fame...]? And don't forget Michael Jaffarian [who works each day beside David Barrett, author of a humble little volume known simply as _The World Christian Encyclopedia_], Mark Wilson and Bev Pegues [Co-Coordinators of the "Praying Through the Window II" campaign], Leonard Tuggy [with merely a few decades of mission leadership behind him]. There are others... but that's probably enough for now. After all, we're all the same in God's eyes. :-)
IDEA DEPARTMENT -- "In-quoting" can be a helpful process when returning email replies, especially on Brigada conferences. The trick is knowing how much to quote! If your email software doesn't have an automatic quoting function, you might have to use the mouse to select the message, copy it to the clipboard, then paste it into the body of your reply. Insert something like a double brace "<<" at the beginning and end of the comment you're quoting ">>". That way other readers in the conference will know the difference between the original message and your reply. Be sure to try to leave the original writer's name in a "From:" line somewhere at the top. Many automatic in-quoters insert a line such as "You wrote" or "You said:". If you're replying to a message with multiple requests or questions, you might want to separate the message into sections, dividing each by the << >> braces mentioned above. IMPORTANT: Those paying for the message by the byte (especially the overseas users) will appreciate it if you quote =only= the portion of the original message necessary to give the context of the original question... no more, no less. Users all over the world =dread= seeing a stack of three or four in-quoted messages, copied lock, stock and barrel into the next reply! :-)
TOOL OF THE WEEK -- Want to get a list of the individuals on your conference? Just send email to hub@xc.org, fill in the subject with whatever you want, then enclose two words in the body of the message: "who brigada" (without the quotation marks). In a few minutes, the hub computer will send you back a complete list of your co-conference participants!
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There's another tool we'd like to mention this week and that tool is actually a person. He's David Nesmith, who works the Directory of Mission Information Services, founded by Global Mapping as a kind of "point-to-the-right-answer-desk". Dave is very forthright about the fact that he won't always know all the answers... but that's really not his job anyway. His job is to know where you can =find= the answers! So try him out. Next time you're trying to figure out where the Yalunka live, or how to get in touch with so-and-so who wrote such-and-such, or where to go to find what-cha-ma-call-it, send Dave email at dmis@gmi.org. From personal experience, I can tell you you'll be glad you did! He has yet to come up empty-handed with my own queries! :-)
FILES OF THE WEEK -- Thanks to Marvin Grooms, of the CC/CC Missions Resource Center in Cincinnati, Ohio! He's heading up a committee charged with posting People Profiles on Brigada and he's been at work this week. Take a look at the following profiles now posted in the Brigada conference section (top level):
peoples-india-bhumiji
peoples-india-magahibihari
peoples-iran-qashqa'i
peoples-ivorycoast-jula
peoples-mozambique-ndau
(To retrieve a copy for yourself, send email to hub@xc.org, then fill in the subject with whatever, then, in the body of the message text, write "get brigada peoples-mozambique-ndau", substituting the file name for the profile you desire, without the quotation marks. Note that you must have already subscribed to Brigada for this function to take effect.) As time permits, Marvin and his growing team of volunteers would like to post dozens... or maybe hundreds :-) of profiles for worldwide use. They can be refreshed with updated information from anywhere in the world, and new insights can be appended to the info. that Marvin has already posted. Be patient as formats and spacing issues are resolved... but you can start enjoying instant-access to the peoples of the world from your own keyboard today! Thanks to the Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse for unselfishly making these and other profiles available to the missions community at large!
INTERVIEW WITH BOB AND STEVE -- You've heard about CrossConnect, but who is MorningStar? Well this past week, we climbed in our van and made the trip to Columbus, Ohio, to find out! (Actually, I had to preach about 10 minutes from the MorningStar office and it was on the way! :-) ) We were able to interview two of the technicians who do the 'hands-on' maintenance of the computer hub (or 'server', which they affectionately refer to as, "Dag") that Brigada uses for its magic. Bob Sutterfield and Steve Neruda, along with their friend Karl, work for MorningStar Technologies in Columbus. (Note that Dag itself is owned by CrossConnect, an organization based in Colorado; but because of the unique connection offered by MorningStar, CrossConnect actually bases "him" [Dag] in Columbus. Thus, CrossConnect workers 'telecommute' to work everyday from Colorado!) Thanks to the courtesy of Bob's management team and company ownership, MorningStar makes available Dag's hardwired connection directly into the spine of the INTERNET at state-of-the-art speed ... and they do it free of charge! We all owe a big thanks to the folks at MorningStar [subliminal commercial disclaimer: If your college or agency ever needs equipment for hooking into the INTERNET, Bob and Steve can talk to the management at MorningStar and get you great prices on the hottest stuff on the market. -- end commercial :-)]. I asked Bob about possible limits to Dag's capabilities, if Brigada continued to grow. He replied with a wry smile that we weren't even beginning to tax the system yet. When I explained that someday there might be literally hundreds of church networks, communicating with majority world believers from around the globe who had come alongside them to reach unreached cities and peoples, he just kept on smiling. "See, that's why we, along with CrossConnect, have been trying to prepare this capability all along! All this equipment is just a bunch of wiring unless there are real people like you all who come along and find a use for it! You all are the reason we're here!" Bob and Steve work long hours for MorningStar, then stay even longer to do volunteer work to maintain "Dag". When there are inevitable hardware failures, special software jumps in to spool Brigada messages to alternative servers at other sites. Once Steve and Bob get Dag back on line, the computers at the other sites begin unloading back to Dag the messages they've been storing up. In this fashion, even if there are problems, we suffer little if any, data loss. Getting all this equipment to work together is truly a ministry for Steve and Bob (and Karl, whom I didn't meet personally). God has gifted us with a wonderful bunch of colleagues... ready for action, finding fulfillment in helping us accomplish the visions God has imparted to us. So when you pray later today, please lift them up and ask God to give them extra strength! We're counting on them to help us with future expansion!!! :-) One last question -- a kind of contest. As we mentioned above, the Morningstar gang and the CrossConnect crew all refer to the server as, "Dag". We'll give extra points to the first Brigada participant who can figure out where they got that term... Just send your best guesses to DLucas@TeamExpansion.org. And Bob and Steve... no fair giving out hints. "Neither the employees of Morningstar nor CrossConnect, nor their families can participate in the contest." :-)
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