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

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In this issue….

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JOSHUA PROJECT PREMIERS!!!

This past week, we asked the Director of Communications to tell us about the AD2000 & Beyond effort being dubbed, “Joshua Project 2000” and the associated “Launch” scheduled for the end of this month. Just yesterday, he sent this Brigada exclusive:
[The following article is by Media and Communications Director for the AD2000 & Beyond Movement based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Thanks for taking time to write, David!]

“The cat is finally out of the bag. The AD2000 and Beyond Movement introduces Joshua Project 2000, an inter-agency, inter-denominational, inter-church, step by step plan to see at a minimum, a pioneer church planting movement within every ethno-linguistic people of over 10,000 individuals by December 31, 2000. A 55 page Joshua Project 2000 handbook has been written that is now available in the November-December Mission Frontiers Bulletin. You can receive MF electronically here on Brigada or you can request a copy from the AD2000 and Beyond International Office for the cost of postage. (E-mail Lauri@ad2000.org or call (719) 576-2000.) This handbook contains the priority list of 1,685 least reached peoples that Joshua Project 2000 seeks to produce prayer profiles for, facilitate church adoptions for, send prayer teams to during the October 1997 Praying Through the Window III and ultimately see a church planting movement among these peoples by the year 2000. Joshua Project 2000 is the outworkings of GCOWE ’95 and is the implementation strategy toward the greater goal of a church for every people and the Gospel for every person by AD2000.”

“Pray for the Joshua Project 2000 “Launch” meetings to be held the last week of this month in Colorado Springs where AD2000 and Beyond core leadership has been invited to come together to see how the AD2000 tracks/networks and the national initiatives can all take their share of Joshua Project 2000. Currently 210 AD2000 leaders will be attending from 83 different countries. Won’t it be great to see Koreans networking with Brazilians to assure that a church planting movement is established among the 850,000 Qashqai nomads of Iran, where there in not one known believer, no Scripture translation, no Christian radio, nor even a Gospel tract. Joshua Project 2000 mobilization conferences are being scheduled in 1997 in Hawaii, Brazil and South Africa which Brigada readers might want to attend. More details later.”

As David shared above, the priority list of peoples is about to be released at the “Launch”, near the end of this month. However, because you’re “in the know” and you are a Brigada participant, you can get it today!!! Simply send email to hub@xc.org (you guessed that part, right?) with only the following 2 lines in the body of the message text:
get brigada joshua-list-a
get brigada joshua-list-b

You’ll receive 2 ascii files (about 40k or 13 pages each, depending on the font you assign of course) in what’s called “comma delimited” format. If you simply open them in your word processor, you’ll be able to read them just fine. But if you’ve got any popular spreadsheet or database, such as Excel or dBase, you’ll be able to import or load them as is and see the data organized by fields. Naturally, you should append them to see the big picture, since list-a includes countries which begin with the letters a-k, with the remainder appearing in list-b. Included are fields for country, people group name, population, number of Christians, language, and population in the homeland country. Thanks to Luis Bush and Dan Scribner of AD2000 & Beyond as well as Matt Benjamin and Ron Rowland (PIN) for their help in arranging this unique “sneak peak” for Brigada readers.

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WANNA’ CHANGE A CITY???

Get Viv Grigg’s new book! His fourth and completely updated 120 page spiral-bound Transforming Cities: An Urban Leadership Guide, Viv Grigg, Ed., is now available. It has been developed as a comprehensive manual for city leadership teams through AD2000 cities consultations with several hundred leaders over the past four years. Included are in-city processes, such as prayer movements, building a city leadership team, events and networks, city strategy congresses, AD2000 City Network info, adopt-a-city materials, models of global networks and in-city processes etc. If you want to change a city, order it. An essential tool for anyone seeking to give leadership to a city. Available from

Urban Leadership
127 N. Madison Ave
Pasadena, CA91101

or

83/2 Glendale Rd
Glen Eden, Auckland
New Zealand

for $20 for the cost of the book, postage & handling and taxes.

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GIVE RAMADAN NEW MEANING! – 30 DAYS MUSLIM PRAYER FOCUS

From January 21 to Feb 19, 1996, Muslims around the world will be holding their annual fasting month known as Ramadan. Now you can participate in a worldwide movement that seeks to help followers of Christ pray for, learn about, and reach out to the Muslim peoples of the world, so that they may come to know God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ. This third annual international mobilization is an excellent follow-up to the “Praying Through the Window II” project during the past month of October. Want materials? They’re ready to order. You can get a newly-edited 50-page illustrated Prayer Guide booklet (with a full-color cover, available both in adult and children’s versions) as well as a special Video on the Islamic world (approx. 10 minutes, revised and available in Nov., again, available in both an adult and children’s version). Last year during this same period, a quarter million Muslim Prayer Guides were in use around the world. You can get a reproducible flyer by contacting WORLDCHRISTIAN NEWS at wcn@xc.org or by writing old-fashioned letters to

PO Box 26479
Colorado Springs, CO 80936
USA.
Tel: 1(719) 442-6409

And get this, if you want to judge the book by its cover (I didn’t think you were allowed to do that!) they’ve even got a web page at http://www.ywam.org/icn.html And guess what Canadians! They’ve even remember you! Canadian residents, please contact:

30 Days Prayer Focus
PO Box 30024
Westbank, BC V4T 2G7
Canada.

Quebec residents will have to use the Canadian address . . . at least for now. :-)

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HELP US GROW

Some will recall Jonathan Marsden (the technical wizard behind the hardware and software that makes Brigada possible) saying previously that he wouldn’t consider Brigada to have “arrived” until we had 10,000 participants. This past week he reminded us, as we crossed the 1280 barrier, that we were “1/8th the way to my 10000 target :-) :-) “. Maybe if we reach 10,000 users he’ll do something out of the ordinary like, . . . take a day off??? :-) Want to help? You know what to do! Share this Brigada Today with someone else! Thanks for making it possible for us to avoid advertising costs . . . and keep this a free service! :-)
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CMDNet: BRIGADA DOWN UNDER

One of the latest conferences to be set up under the Brigada banner is the New Zealand-based CMDNet (the facilitating “organisation” (NZ spelling :-) ) is the entre for ission irection). According to Bob Hall, CMDNet’s moderator, the purpose of the conference is “to facilitate networking and the spread of relevant missions information among those in New Zealand (and hopefully in due course Australia and the South Pacific) who are interested in or involved in cross-cultural missions.” Members of CMDNet will be encouraged:
  1. to share information on mission resources they have found to be useful;
  2. raise mission-related questions and share answers or responses to those questions;
  3. share testimonies or news items that relate to world missions; and
  4. download files from CMDNet and make use of the information.

Any readers of Brigada Today in New Zealand, Australia or the South Pacific who think this might be of interest are encouraged to check it out. The subscription list stands at 25 already (and includes a couple of Americans!) To “join up” simply send an internet message to Hub@Xc.Org with the text:
subscribe brigada-orgs-cmdnet

Thanks to moderator BobHall@Xc.Org for the vision and leadership!!!

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FOR ALL YOU RICE LOVERS (WHO ALSO READ BIBLES)

Jubilee Tech International has recently announced the release of the popular Logos Bible Software in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Each Asian version has the same full range of features contained in English Logos products and can be used to generate Scripture portions and sermon outlines, as well as for foreign language and TESOL training. For more information concerning these valuable mission resources contact Mark Bowers at mbowers000@aol.com Asia Networking & Resource Services, Tel/Fax: 610-918-9393. By the way, you have to make the rice yourself. :-)
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GLOBAL GLIMPSE: CHINA REVIVAL

“The fire of the gospel is burning in this village, and following heavy persecution, every single person has become a Christian.” “Now, when we go on the street, people drop everything to take part. Many shout while we preach ‘We have never heard of such good news. Why didn’t anyone tell us before?’ They forget everything and listen for hours.” “In Xinyang district, the number of believers increased from 1,000 to 10,000 in one month.” … We have far too few Bibles and are too weak to train all the new believers”
Source: DAWN Europa Friday Fax, 39-95
John Hanna, Caleb Project, Littleton, CO
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PEOPLE OF THE WEEK

Thanks to Justin Long JDavidLong@aol.com for his regular contributions to Brigada-Peoples. He recently began sharing news about a “People of the Week” (that’s a group, not that magazine!) For example, this past week he shared: “Let’s pray for the Hunanese of China. They have nearly 43 million people, but less than 2% Christian. They don’t have a Jesus film in their own language, although the Jesus film is available in Mandarin which many of the Hunanese speak. Most don’t belong to any particular religion. There are several denominations and mission agencies working among them. They are precious in the Lord’s sight!” Want to see more? Join Brigada-Peoples by sending email to hub@xc.org with only the following line as the text of the message:
subscribe brigada-peoples
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NOVEMBER ADVANCE READY FOR RETRIEVAL

Thanks again to Mark Kelly for a job well done on the November Advance! You can get the Advance by sending email to hub@xc.org with only the following line in the text of the message:
get brigada advance.9511

In this month’s issue, you’ll find:

THE GOSPEL FOR EVERY PEOPLE— Dramatic gospel advances in India’s Andhra Pradesh state, Meghalaya state and at Varanasi. Cambodian churches multiply 30-fold in five years. Buddhist advances in Mongolia. Government resistance to the gospel in Uzbekistan. “Cracks in the wall of Islam.”
THE PERSECUTED CHURCH — 18 believers murdered in Egypt. Extremist Muslims blew up a publishing house in Bangladesh. Anti-Christian bias in U.S. immigration, trade offices. Muslim extremists on trial for death of Pakistani Christian. Pastor, assistant murdered in Chiapas, Mexico.
SPIRITUAL FORCES OF DARKNESS –Algerian elections Nov. 16. Priests, lay worker murdered in Burundi. Indonesian city bans church bells, hymn singing. Religious prostitution in India.
REJOICE! — God protects expatriates who serve him in dangerous places. Miraculous healing of Muslim village leader opens door for gospel.
PROFILES

NETWORKING — Fund established for release of 11 believers charged with illegally proselytizing Hindus. “World Press Review” article details horrors of China’s “dying rooms.” Resources for missions networking, intercession. New book shares 12 stories from World A Christian leaders.
FRONT LINES — God’s army does not often assault the gates of hell because it has been attacked and conquered on its own ground. The church will never rise up in victory until believers choose to honor God with their minds.

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AND YOU THOUGHT YOUR TAXES WERE HIGH!!!

This past week, in the Brigada-peoples-kazakh conference, the moderator there shared a note he had recently picked up pointing out that a new tax in Kazakhstan was now forcing expatriates to pay a full 40% of their income to the Kazakh government! For more information, join by …. you know what to do… send email to hub@xc.org with only the following line in the text of the message:
subscribe brigada-peoples-kazakh

And next time you have to send in that tax payment, remember our friends serving in Central Asia!!!

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Have a great week!

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

TO UNSUBSCRIBE (At least will you admit that our subscription prices are the lowest in town??? [free!]), send email to hub@xc.orgwith this line in the text:
unsubscribe brigada

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