20010513 Brigada Today

In this issue….

SPECIAL PRICES ON SPECIAL BOOKS

Bill Berry is pulling out the stops to offer some partially dated stock at rock bottom pricing. Get “Send Me! Your Journey to the Nations”, by Steve Hoke and Bill Taylor, for half-price in case lots of 38 copies for just $4.00/copy + shipping charges. “The Short-Term Mission Handbook” (288 pages, 1992 edition, $10 cover price) has dropped to $1/copy, plus UPS charges (same as above). Get Into All The World, 2001 Edition in case lots of 50 copies for $25/case (includes UPS charges). For more information, write Bill Bberry4215@aol.com or call 626-798-8582 or fax 626-798-2712.

CONTEXTUALIZATION

“What Color Is Jesus? How Can We Present Jesus to a New Culture without Bringing Our Own?” is a key article from David Learner, published in Mission Frontiers: http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.asp?loc=kb&id=5299 (Thanks Tony!)

PRAYER FOR SOUTH ASIAN HINDUS & MUSLIMS IN NORTH AMERICA

On June 15 and 16, 2001 in the Twin Cities (MN) South Asian Resources will host its first Prayer Conference for South Asian Hindus and Muslims in North America and the unreached peoples of South Asia. All believers burdened for these peoples are welcome. With increasingly large numbers of South Asian professionals, immigrants, students and tourists coming to North America we need to pray for the Lord to open their minds to His light and to open the hearts of the North American church to welcome them. No registration fee but please register with Prayer@SouthAsianResources.com. For details call 651-426-4687 (Central Time).

WANT TO IMPACT THE WORLD?

If you speak standard native English, you are already equipped with the skills needed to teach English all over the world. All you need in addition to those skills is a love for people of other cultures, a little appetite for adventure, a measure of flexibility, and a short, six-week course to train you in teaching methodology. Then you can effectively help others learn English or improve their English ability. Try out the Tesol School from June 15- July 27th, 2001, Henan Province, China. Click to: http://www.tesoltraining.com or email tesol2001@hotmail.com.

LEARN HOW TO RIDE THE TECHNOLOGY TIDE

Just as a surfer needs to learn to read the waves, we need to learn to read the ‘waves’ God sends our way. In the providence of God, we are in the midst of a huge technology wave that may come roaring down on top of us if we are not prepared. Bob L has prepared and article about “Globalization and Its Challenges for Christian Media” You can read it now on http://www.newWway.org or download it to read on your PalmOs platform! (There are also three more free books for your PDA on newWway.org)

WHAT TO DO IF YOUR WALLET IS STOLEN

Traveling overseas seems to “up the odds” that you’ll be pick-pocketed. What do you do if your wallet is stolen? As everyone always advises, cancel your credit cards immediately. To do that, you’ll need all those toll free numbers and your card numbers. So write them down somewhere in advance — and not just in your wallet, silly.

File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where it was stolen, so you can prove to credit providers that you were diligent. If you’re from the USA, call (or have someone in the USA call) the three national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and SS# — to keep your credit clean. The numbers for the credit bureaus are: Equifax 800-525-6285; Experian (formerly TRW) 888-397-3742; Trans Union 800-680-7289. Again, if you’re from the USA, you might also call the Social Security Administration at 800-269-0271. (Thanks Alan!)

GLOBAL EVANGELISM TRAINING

A two-month full-time missions school will be conducted from July 9th-August 31st in Hampton, Virginia. USA. The sixteen courses include Cross-Cultural Communications & Church Planting; Urban Missions; Animism; Missions Strategy; Cultural Anthropology; Servant Evangelism and World Religions. Learn from experienced missionaries and leaders how to fulfill your mission call both around the block and around the world. For more information phone Greg Baust at Global Ministry Teams on 757-868-1269 or by e-mail at gregbaust@hotmail.com.

FRENCH LANGUAGE MISSIONS TRAINING

A bilingual French English Discipleship Training School is being offered September 23rd 2001 to February 22nd 2002 by Youth With a Mission in Dunham, Quebec. Experience French culture and language during the 3-month intensive lecture phase followed by two months of international outreach. You will be exposed to French language speakers from a variety of backgrounds — Europe, Quebec and Africa. Experience ‘missionary’ meals too! Cost is $3000 Cdn, not including airfare. (Approximately $2000US depending on current rate of exchange). For more information contact jemdunham@endirect.qc.ca or check it out on the web at: http://iquebec.ifrance.com/jemnet/.

CHRISTIAN PHOTOJOURNAL

“Worldscope from the field” offers a free monthly e-zine dedicated to showing people “a window into the church around the world.” Don’t miss this month’s coverage of MAF is Lesotho. Visit Worldscope’s web site at http://www.wspublications.com to subscribe and to find out how to contribute articles and/or photos to share a story from your corner of the globe. You may also subscribe by sending an e-mail entitled “subscribe” to wsfromthefield@aol.com. Please note that you will receive the free monthly e-zine as an attachment of about 0.9 M.

FREE SPANISH NEW TESTAMENT IN AUDIO

Now the Spanish NT is available for free on the internet! An audio recording of the Spanish New Testament has been released on the internet at http://www.audiobiblia.org in the popular mp3 audio format. The narration was recorded and donated to the net by Bethel Temple Assembly of God in Hampton, Virginia. The audio files of the Reina Valera edicion 2000 can be freely copied and distributed for non-commercial use. The site plans to offer the entire Spanish Bible in mp3 audio and windows media formats by early next year.

EXPATRIATE MINISTRY

Dan is doing a doctoral project on ministry to English-speaking expatriates living abroad. He is also the pastor of the International Christian Fellowship of Caracas. It seems that little has been written about this strategic ministry in the mega cities of the world. If you have any leads on books or articles on the subject, contact him at icfmission@cantv.net. He’ll put together a report to distribute as an autoresponder from Brigada.

THE BACKPAGE – SILENT SPRING: WHERE HAS ALL THE HOOPLA GONE?

Is it just my imagination, or is the silence beginning to roar? Maybe I’m not as “plugged in” as I need to be. (That’s hard to imagine with the quantity of emails I receive.) Maybe this is just a “lull” before more storms. Either way, it just doesn’t seem that there is as much mobilization for missions going on these days. Where are the big prayer pushes, … the big promotions, … the new books on unreached peoples. Yes… there’s an occasional CD, and… Operation World is coming… but for now,… if I’m not mistaken, we seem to be in a strange kind of muted silence, don’t we? Maybe that’s okay. Maybe 1995 – 2000 was actually too much glitz and glamour. Maybe the better part of valor is the discretion of pulling together new mission teams through patient and intentional step-by-step efforts. Time will tell. As for our own mission, I’ll have to admit — we have the biggest response ever to our summer internship program (80 summer interns compared to a previous “high” of 50 or so annually since 1984). So … I shouldn’t complain. Still… it’s silent enough to make me wonder… Was it just the new millennium… or did we just experience a ripple in the mobilization sine wave?

What’s happening where you sit? Send us your opinion. Write DLucas@TeamExpansion.org — with subject line: ” SILENT SPRING ”

TO SUBSCRIBE — To subscribe to BRIGADA TODAY, send email to brigada-today-subscribe@egroups.com.

TO UNSUBSCRIBE — Send email to brigada-today-unsubscribe@egroups.com. (Subject and text are ignored.)
IF IT DOESN’T WORK — Write Don & Judy, our Customer Services Managers at help@brigada.org. Yahooooo for volunteers!!!

COPYRIGHT — This issue of Brigada Today is Copyrighted © 2001. However, permission is granted to freely redistribute these materials, including those available through email autoresponders, provided that such redistribution is to those who will help the Good News of Christianity to reach the unreached. But please include this phrase: “For a free subscription of Brigada‘s weekly missions publication, write <brigada-today-subscribe@egroups.com>.”
IMPORTANT: To copy or reproduce Brigada Today for any other reason is illegal and is not permitted.

DISCLAIMER — Please note that there’s no way we can possibly screen all the text on all the web sites or items we recommend. We try to check them out first… but if we miss something, please don’t assume that the opinions on those sites are identical to those of the Brigada family of networks. “Eat the corn, leave the cob!”
For subscription questions or problems, write help@brigada.org.

SUBMITTING CONTENT — To submit content or ideas to Brigada Today, first please get a copy of “Guidelines for submitting items to Brigada” Then, once you’ve composed your item in keeping with those guidelines, send your item for Brigada Today to DLucas@teamexpansion.org.
Thanks to for hosting the Brigada mailing list.
Emphasis is placed on items relating to unreached peoples and challenges faced by those reaching them cross-culturally.

PLEASE DON’T SUBSCRIBE US TO YOUR LIST — It’s always better to ask before manually force-adding anyone to your list-serve or mailing list. Recently, tons of well-meaning people have been subscribing Doug to their lists. Since he often travels overseas, he doesn’t join many of those, for obvious reasons (like being charged big-time for overseas access). So as a general rule, please don’t bulk-mail us! See the note above if you’d like to submit items for Brigada Today. Thanks for understanding. Bottom line: We will never create Brigada Today items from bulk mail. Bulk mail gets deleted immediately — sorry. Nothing personal. We suggest you apply the same standard to everyone. Ask first!

WARNING ABOUT FORWARDING EMAILS — Please, before forwarding any kind of request (even if it says “please send this to all your friends”), please check to make sure it has a VERIFIABLE ORIGIN, a VERIFIABLE PURPOSE, and a VERIFIABLE CLOSURE (OPC). By following this simple approach, many “email viruses” could be nipped in the bud… at least in the Brigada family. More information about the full Brigada OPC protocol is available. Thank you.

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!