19951210 Brigada Today

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News and Notes about Brigada, Your Gateway to Missions Networking!
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In this issue….

OLD BRIGADA TODAYS NEVER DIE . . . THEY DON’T EVEN FADE AWAY!!!

Some have asked why we only today “remailed” last week’s Brigada Today. In fact one user (I won’t tell you it was that rascal Greg Fritz from Caleb Project) even made the crack that we should start calling it Brigada Last Week! (Funny Greg. Real funny.

) You’ll perhaps recall that last week’s “first send” of Brigada Today never actually arrived. There was a pretty major hub shut-down of CrossConnect‘s (soon to be MAFxc) primary server. For the first time in anyone’s memory, the relay contingency technology (that makes sure no mail is lost when the hub shuts down) apparently slipped and lost a few pieces of mail… and one of those was last week’s Brigada Today. So.. we resent it Monday morning, once we heard from CrossConnect that the queue was apparently empty… or “caught up”. Now, low and behold, the relay machine came to life and sent out the original piece of mail, but dated it today!!!

Sorry for the duplicate mail! (See below re: MAF’s plans for the hub.)

AD2000 INTERNATIONAL OFFICE IS ‘HOOKED’

That’s right! As of this week, the folks at AD2000 in Colorado Springs have full 24-hour access to the INTERNET. Plus, the word on the street is that fully 100% of their International Board are now connected via private secure conferences, with all but 1 of the US support team plugged in as well! 70% of all regional leaders and 100% of all Track/Task Force leaders are in “electronic touch”, so basically, they’ve only got 7 missing regional leaders. Says Pete Holzmann, Interactive Task Force Coordinator, “Pray also as these top level leaders begin to learn how to use new e-mail tools to develop their own electronic community of ongoing working relationships.” Cool.

MAFxc TO ANNOUNCE UPGRADED HUB SERVICES

It won’t be long! Those of us who have been watching the growth of Brigada have also watched the drag on CrossConnect’s current hub, located for now in Columbus, OH. For example, in just the past 7 days alone, Brigada conferences have generated some 325 unique messages, which, when distributed, went out to a combined total of well over 40,000 destinations (not counting the 1500+ destinations from today’s re-sent Brigada Today, by the way). This doesn’t include any of the other hundreds of non-Brigada conferences being handled by CrossConnect on the same server! So that hub is one busy beaver

! MAF has responded by purchasing a super-fast Pentium machine and a T-1 connection to the INTERNET backbone and will soon be relocating the entire service to their headquarters in Redlands, CA. From there, Information Technologists will be able to monitor and maintain the equipment and service much more efficiently. So… if you’re thinking of subscribing to CrossConnect (MAFxc), don’t give up the ship just yet. (And in case you were wondering, I’m not a part of MAF and receive no pay from any service performed for Brigada.) Organizers of the move hope everything will be in place by the end of the year!

GLOBAL GLIMPSE

(Yes you may cut and paste this in your newsletter! Just please credit to John Hanna, and if possible, explain how to subscribe to Brigada.) Five years ago the number of Christians in MONGOLIA could be counted on one hand, but today there are 3,000 to 7,000 believers. There are new Christians in every one of the 21 provinces, and most have organized into simple churches. Some of these “churches” have set up assistance or cooperation programs with fellowships in neighboring provinces. Mongolian believers have even met to consider how their whole country could be reached by the year 2000! Most of the Mongolian Christians are teen-aged girls.
Source: Field report. Name withheld for security reasons.

(Correction from last week: Thanks to my friends in South Africa who pointed out that the language there is Afrikaans, not Africans. My apologies!) John Hanna, Caleb Project, Littleton, CO

FOLLOW UP ON GOSPEL COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

You might have read in last week’s Brigada Today (or this week’s Brigada Last Week) (Funny Greg. Real Funny,

) that GCN had over 2 million visitors at its web page http://www.gospelcom.net/ during October. Guess what! The coordinator of the whole shootin’ match wrote a very kind note later to say that they are now running over 100,000 “hits” daily!!!! Yikes gang. This INTERNET thing is growing!

Thanks for the update, Quentin!

MISSION FEST VANCOUVER READIES THE BIG PICTURE!

Hang onto your hats folks. Mission Fest Vancouver is on its way! Billed as “North America’s largest annual world missions conference which is sponsored by local Christian congregations,” this January 26-28 event will be held at the Vancouver Trade & Convention Centre. The 1996 theme is, “Who Is My Neighbour? Refugees & the Christian Response.” Some 30,000 believers are expected to attend sometime over the 3 day period. They’ll offer youth rallies, plenary sessions, children’s programs, and over 90 seminars! Can you spell B-I-G??? And get this, through special arrangement, Brigada users are going to be allowed to attend at no charge!!!! That’s right — absolutely free! (‘Course, should I mention that they don’t charge anyone??? Naaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!

) For more info., contact the Vancouver office at (604) 524-9944, Fax c/o (604) 524-4690, e-mail mfestvan@ansa.com , browse at http://www.ansa.com/~mfestvan/ or even write them (Ha!!! Imagine!) at 7200 Cariboo Road, Burnaby, BC Canada V3N 4A7

PRAY FOR MISSING MISSIONARY

Would you take a moment just now to pray for Don Cox, a U.S.-sent Nazarene missionary who today remains missing in Ecuador after being abducted in Quito on Sunday by unknown assailants. Nazarene mission headquarters said, “Don Cox, 51, from Illinois, was kidnapped at the regional Nazarene seminary in the northern suburbs of Quito. According to Nazarene officials, he had gone to the seminary on Sunday afternoon to try to sell a car…” Pray that he won’t be harmed, that he’ll be released, and that God will comfort his wife, Cheryl, and their four sons. You can visit the Nazarene’s home page at http://www.nazarene.org/ on the worldwide web. (Thanks to David Hatch of “Speed the Need” Prayer Bulletin for Missionaries, available by sending email to MAILSERV@CRF.CUIS.EDU with only the phrase
SUBSCRIBE STN

in the body of the message text.)

FOLLOW UP ON MISSIONARY MATH 101

One Brigada reader was preparing a presentation for a major mission initiative and needed more information on the “Missionary Math” item from the previous Brigada Today issue (or this week’s, Brigada Last Week, if you please, Greg!) (Funny. Real funny.

). Justin Long, of GEM, was very kind to reply so promptly, “… As of the 1995 IBMR Annual Statistical Table there were 332,000 foreign missionaries, 4,400 foreign mission sending agencies, 23,000 service agencies (incl. those 4,400), 90 global monolith mission agencies, and 4,207,000 national workers (of all denominations).” Can you imagine actually being able to count all those people up!??? I have trouble keeping track of my kids’ soccer game

schedule and these guys can probably just about tell us the number of rocks on the moon!!!

HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER

(or at least the web pages about prayers in October…) Previously, you could find AIMS’ 10/40 Window info. at: http://the700club.org/AIMS/The10-40WindowProject/SubMain.html But that URL has suddenly ceased working. Now, thanks to the sleuthing abilities of Stephen Walker, try http://the700club.org/AIMS/AIMS/The10-40WindowProject/SubMain.html (In other words, the new URL requires an additional “AIMS” in there. I guess maybe that means we need to “take AIMS” with a “double-barrel” browser! [p-dum pah!]

) Congratulations, Stephen. You get this weeks’ “WWW Treasure Hunter” award!

GOT A KID? GET A BOOK!

This book ya gotta’ have. Tracking Your Walk is an Illustrated young person’s Prayer Journal for 9 to 14 year olds; contains nation and people group info to help broaden the young believer’s world view. You can begin at any time of the year. It includes Bible reading plan, information on having “quiet time” and knowing God and even address, map and note sections. Produced by: YWAM Publishing (Yikes — Colorado Springs has all the great resources!

) Catch this! Normal price is $10 — but they’ll give it to Brigada readers for U.S. $7.99 !!! I mean, if we were in Colorado, we would probably be able to write it ourselves, but until then, [I just called and ordered mine; and in case you were wondering, we refuse ‘freebies’ just so people won’t think we’re promoting this stuff to get free copies. I paid my $7.99 just like the rest!]
For specifics, write Paul at wcn@xc.org , or call 1(719)442-6409 or Fax 1(719)380-0936
(WorldChristian News and YWAM Publishing are ministries of Youth With A Mission’s International Communications Network)

GETTING THE WORLD’S TENTMAKERS UNDER ONE ROOF

. . . so to speak. That’s what Tentmakers International Exchange is seeking to do. It links organizations like Intent in the USA, TASK in UK, Korean Association of Tentmakers in Swaziland (just kidding; they’re actually in Korea, but I had to see if you were really reading this;

) in hopes of furthering vision, identification, mobilization, education, cooperation, communication, and relocation of tentmakers. You can get the paper newsletter by joining the association, which will run US $50 annually to
TIE
PO Box 45880
Seattle, WA 98145-0880.

Write ksmith@gati.wa.com for more info. Who knows. If there’s enough interest, maybe they’ll start an online distribution of this newsletter!

CHRISTIAN CHURCHES/CHURCHES OF CHRIST TO GATHER AT PITSTOP

Nearly 50 leaders from well over a dozen churches have committed to sending representatives to the first Envision ’96 “PitStop” in St. Louis, MO, Jan. 5-6. There, they will hammer out preliminary strategies and budgets for their respective PACE projects, through which they hope to reach some of the ‘least reached peoples’ of the world. The concept is simple — each church or relational network of churches takes responsibility for a particular piece of the world — be it a city or a people, perhaps in the 10/40 Window (World “A”). They’ll be putting together plans for Perspectives courses, Prayer Journeys and AD2000 Joshua Project Research trips, Caleb Project Research Expeditions, mobilization tools, and sending full-time teams on-site. They hope to launch the project strategies in time for reporting at Envision ’96, slated for Nov. 1-3 in Lexington, KY. Guests from other groups or streams of churches would welcome to participate as well. (Hey — this is 1995 we’re talkin’!)
For more information or registration, contact Jeff Reed at Kazuza@aol.com or call 314-821-2156. Registration, program costs, housing, and food combined are $56 for the two day event.

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