19980816 Brigada Today

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News and Notes about Brigada, Your Gateway to Missions Networking!
On the WorldWide Web, browse https://brigada.org or http://www.eGroups.com/list/brigada-today
Brigada Today is “the missionary helper newsletter!”
Compiled by Doug Lucas <DLucas@teamexpansion.org>, Louisville, KY
[Pass this issue to a friend! To subscribe, see instructions at end.]

In this issue….

NEW VIDEO: “A HOPE AND A FUTURE FOR BOSNIA”

This one’s brand new. In fact, it won’t even premier until the Antioch Network’s “Gathering” in Phoenix, AZ, on August 29th, at a special main session on Bosnia. But even if you aren’t coming to Phoenix . . . and even if your mission work is directed at a completely different part of the world, Bosnia is a cauldron of conscience — one that we can and should all lift up to the Father right now in prayer. You won’t regret ordering this video, organized in 5 major sections (in case you want to use it across 5 different meetings): Introduction, History, Situation, Challenge, and Testimony. I give you my word — with this one video and the tons of actual on-site footage gathered over the past 60 days in Bosnia, you’ll finally figure out what has happened there and how desperately that we need to pray. The producer, Dave Dunlap, worked in audio and video for NBC television for over 10 years. He still freelances regularly for CNN and documentaries like 20/20 and 60 Minutes. And every inch of this video is digitally processed from start to finish… top quality for viewing or projecting to your family, at your local church, or in your mission office, regardless of continent or color. The price more accurately reflects Dave’s mission vision than it does the literally hundreds of hours he has invested on this project. He and his wife personally traveled to Bosnia last month to help lead a prayer journey there as a step in preparing it. They did so at their own expense. He could have easily priced this 15-minute video at $45 or $60, but instead, he is asking only $17 so that ANY church or mission or missions mobilizer will be able to afford to make it a part of a “toolbox” toward understanding one of the most desperate pressure cookers on our globe today. It’s packed with sound bytes from on-site workers (though on-site workers are relatively few in this unreached land), actual footage from 10 different Bosnian cities and, practical approaches to making a long-term difference. Much of the script was inspired by text from Dick Alexander, a Senior Minister from Cincinnati, Ohio, who writes out of his own quest to figure out the dilemma that is Bosnia. So… if you’ve only got a $20 budget for videos in 1998, I hope you haven’t already spent all of it, because this one’s a keeper. For more information, write Dave at 104165.2242@compuserve.com or simply send a check or money order payable to
Team Expansion
attn: Dave Dunlap
3700 Hopewell Rd.
Louisville, KY 40299
Tel. 1-800-447-0800
Fax 502-297-9823
(Dave says no credit cards on this one, please.) If you’re ordering the tape for a particular showing, please note your deadline. Don’t forget to add $3 shipping (unless you can pick up the tape in person). If ordering from within the state of Kentucky, add $1.02 sales tax. Now let’s pray that God will use Dave’s work to help make a long-term difference in Bosnia! Thanks Dave!

FOCUS ON MISSIONS TRIPS FOR FAMILIES

A Writer of AD2000 & Beyond urgently needs a list of mission agencies which organize short-term mission trips for whole families for an article in a major Christian magazine. (edited)

GET-AWAY TO THE GATEWAY TO THE NATIONS: HAWAII

Finally, a great reason to have to make the trip to the Hawaiian Islands — an ACMC Conference! The theme is “Hawaii, Gateway To The Nations” and it’s scheduled for November 20-21, 1998 at the Kalihi Union Church, Honolulu. Speakers include Danny Lehmann (YWAM Hawaiian Islands Director), Manny Fernandez (Director of Sefovan Seminary in Madrid), and Woody Phillips (United World Mission, Union Mills, NC). With tons of workshops . . . it’s designed to help church leadership mobilize their churches to grow His church locally and globally. For more information and/or brochures for your church, kindly contact:
Greg Crawford
P O Box 2384
87-141 Maipalaoa Rd
Waianae Hawaii 96792
Tel of fax: 808-668-6569
email commit@juno.com

WORLD CUP MINISTRY HAILED AS GRAND SUCCESS

Michael Wozniak mwozniak@rbc.org has hailed the 1998 Olympics ministry, “The More Than Gold World Cup event” ministry a great success. “It showed us the great evangelism potential that sports has. No testimony was more powerful in reaching the kids than seeing their soccer heroes testifying to their faith in Jesus Christ.” —Leader in Jordan. Some brief ministry highlights:

15 resources were created and distributed in over 100 countries in over 22 languages.
Tens of thousands of people made a decision to receive Christ, and many, many hundreds of thousands of seeds were planted as a result of the many ministry efforts.
Brazilian players Taffarel and Sampio were exalted by God with their outstanding performances, providing opportunities to share their testimonies through the media to a worldwide audience. In fact, Taffarel was the lead story on FIFA’s (football’s governing agency) web site July 8.
The World Cup ministry was one of the largest cooperative outreach efforts of French churches in recent decades.
More than 113,000 “JESUS: Special Sports Edition” videos were handed out around the world during the 6-week event— over 80,000 in France alone!
Many of the national teams received copies of the “JESUS: Special Sports Edition” video.
More than 500,000 copies of “To Be The Best” booklets were distributed around the world.
For the first time people around the world could learn about the resources available for event ministry through a global medium– the http://www.sportsoutreach.org Internet site.
The event resulted in tremendous cooperation and unity in the body. It was evident in the way agencies and individuals came together when developing the resources, distributing them, and sharing them with the unchurched. And God blessed the efforts.
A final update report by country is listed on the web site http://www.sportsoutreach.org

The report, which seems like a modern-day chapter in the Book of Acts, can be downloaded and printed for your files.

LYRIS: WINDS OF CHANGE FOR MAFXC

If you’re been listening, you know that Lyris is coming. MAFxc has been working night and day all weekend to switch over all Brigada email conferences to this new, more powerful, web-enabled format. For more information, send an email message to this address: lyris-user-email-commands@xc.org

The subject and message are irrelevant. Watch for more information later as to how this new format can help you be more effective at participating in on-line discussions.

GLOBAL GLIMPSE FROM INDIA

Prasad Shiva, a well-known Indian artist and Hindu, had agreed to illustrate Mark’s gospel for a children’s Bible. While reading the text, he was so gripped by the message that he decided to become a Christian. Despite the anger of some family members over his decision, his mother and two brothers have also decided to become Christians. They are now working together to illustrate the gospel.
(Source: Advance Newsletter 8/98, Kairos Press https://brigada.org)
Global Glimpse is compiled each week by John Hanna, Caleb Project, Littleton, CO.

COMICAL RESOURCES

Want to learn more about Christian comics? Here are sites and resources discovered by Mark Snowden Mark.Snowden(at)imb(dot)org (replace (at) with @ and (dot) with ..

“The Picture Bible” by Iva Hoth and illustrated by Andre Le Blanc, 1993. This is drawn with biblically accurate comic book-style art. The full-illustrated Bible exists in Spanish and English. NT version exist in Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak and German. Prices for the English and Spanish OT/NT Bibles are $19.99. (English stock may be out of print!) The NTs are $8.99. Missionaries qualify for quantity discounts: 4-10=15%, 11-20=20%, 21-30=30% and 30+=40%. Contact
Cook Communications International
4050 Lee Vance View
Colorado Springs, CO 80918
email ccmintl@ccmi.org

Nate Butler ChriCom@aol.com (Christian Comics) said several comics can be ordered from
United Bible Society
1865 Broadway
New York, NY 10023
Tel 212-408-1200
Check ’em out!

LENGTHY LIST OF LANGUAGES

Have you caught the lengthy list of languages, along with what is available in that language at the web site listed below (in this paragraph)? If you have contact with a speaker of a little known language you can check if Gospel Recordings has it (and what type of tape) or World Missionary Press or Multi-Language Media, etc. A GOOD resource!! Website is Directory of Foreign Language Literature for Fundamental Baptists http://wayoflife.org/~dcloud/language/languages.htm

Note: For some reason, I had to start at the http://wayoflife.org/~dcloud and drill my way down to languages, pointing and clicking.

EMAILERS WITH WINWORD: PLEASE TURN ME OFF!

If you regularly use WinWord to compose text, then copy and paste it into an email client and send it out to friends, you might want to disable all the special publishers’ symbols that WinWord defaults to inserting. A week or two ago, a couple of those symbols escaped my editing, throwing my email client into a high-end publishing emailer — creating tons of weird codes for you to sort through. So . . . if you regularly write others who have ASCII-only readers… or even incompatible readers, just go to “Tools|Options” then click on the “Autoformat” tab. Click the four checkboxes in the “Replace as you type” group (erasing the checkmarks in each one) so nothing will be replaced with these non-readable characters. You’ll also have to deal with yet another liberty that WinWord takes with email composers. Under “Tools|Autocorrect”, there’s a slew of “replace as you type” options and this time, the ellipsis is among those who take a hit with publisher’s characters. If I were you, I’d scroll down ’til I find the ellipsis character, then delete it from the options all together. Smiley faces and other options are there for you to delete too. As an alternative, you COULD just assign new keystrokes to that replacement, . . for example, use /:-) for the publisher’s replacement smiley face and :-) for the more common ASCII version when emailing. If you don’t want to mess with ANY of these changes, just click the box beside “Replace as you type” on that dialogue box and you’ll be fine. It’ll disable ALL that sort of thing. And I, for one, would be grateful.

WEB-WATCH: RESOURCE FOR GRIEVING SURFERS

If you’re in the middle of suffering through some kind of grief, and you have access to the web, check out the International Bible Society’s online the booklet, Deeper Still. It incorporates music, scripture and graphics at http://www.grieving.org

PPTP: NO FREE LUNCH FOR ENCRYPTION

Art’s probably right . . . there’s probably no free lunch for those of us who were hoping Microsoft’s Point-to-point tunneling protocol would be THE answer to secure email. View the thread at (get ready for a VERY long URL that you might have to paste to your browser in more than one “copy” action): http://www.dejanews.com/=zzz_maf/dnquery.xp?search=thread&svcclass=dnserver&recn

BOOK-BYTE: MISSIONS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Okay . . . who will try out Tom Telford’s new book, Missions in the 21st Century? Directed at the mission enthusiast/mission committee member, the publisher has promised special pricing for Brigada participants at $7.50 including the postage to USA addresses.(That’s $1.50 less than the cheapest I can find!) Make check payable to UWM and mail to
UWM
PO Box 430
Lederach PA 19450

ENGLISH: TEACH . . . OR BLEACH!!!

Millions of people all over the world want to learn English! Who will teach them: Christians or the secular world? Here’s a TESOL course (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), with a 6 weeks of certificate-level training course which includes a two week English teaching practicum. Learn how to teach English, build relationships, which will lead people to Christ. Course held at the University of the Nations, Kona, Hawaii. Courses held Jan 5-Feb. 17, 1999 (with optional 5-6 week outreach to China). Also July 1-August 11, 1999 (with possible optional outreach). Contact Vicky and David Scott vscott@kona.net for more info.

WATCH YOUR KIDS AND THEIR WEB-WATCHING

As computers become more and more accessible, more kids get caught up in certain parts of the web. Keith wrote this past week to warn us that we should probably watch those “banner ads” . . . since they aren’t being filtered! Some, according to Keith, are suggestive.

NEED DEBRIEFING FROM A PACIFIC RIM MISSION ASSIGNMENT?

Don’t forget Greg Crawford, Commit Ministries tel. or FAX 808-668-6569, email commit@juno.com. We’re hearing some VERY encouraging testimonies of his debriefing and reentry counseling work.

THE PLACE TO GO FOR PRAYING ABOUT A PLACE

Here’s a book that Vaughn Collins says we ought to read if we want to learn about “praying for a particular place.” Entitled, Territorial Spirits And World Evangelization, by Chuck Lowe 1998, Christian Focus Publications, 170 pp. It can be ordered from
OMF Books
10 W. Dry Creek Circle
Littleton, CO 80120-4413, USA
email, Mike Fish mfish@cproject.com.

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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
Brigada Website: Bob Mayhew, WebServant@brigada.org
Brigada Customer Service Manager: help@brigada.org
Brigada Coordinator: 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!