In this issue…

  1. THANKS FOR THE PARTNERSHIP!
  2. HELP SUPPORT BRIGADA; GET A BOOK ON EFFECTIVE SHORT-TERM MISSIONS!
  3. ONE OF THE CHEAPEST COUNTRY-TO-COUNTRY RATES
  4. LEARN A PRACTICAL SKILL FOR MISSIONS
  5. SAVE 50% ON COPIES OF “SEND ME!”
  6. ADDITIONAL WORKERS NEEDED TO OVERCOME AIDS IN AFRICA
  7. NEW LEVEL OF RESEARCH AVAILABLE TO BRIGADA READERS
  8. WORLD CHRISTIAN DATABASE ONLINE!
  9. MORE GOOD NEWS! BETHANY UNREACHED PROFILES STILL REACHABLE
  10. DICTIONARY OF THEOLOGICAL TERMS IN SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH
  11. TO BOUNCE MESSAGES TO SPAMMERS, OR NOT
  12. TEACHING ENGLISH
  13. SHORT TERM MISSION LEADERS TRAINING SEMINAR
  14. TAKING THE ‘EX’ OUT OF ‘EX-MISSIONARY’
  15. LAST CHANCE FOR YOUR DISCOUNT ON THE CD RESEARCH TOOL
  16. CLOSING STUFF
  1. THANKS FOR THE PARTNERSHIP! — We are once again blessed with a few new partners, all of whom are mentioned at https://brigada.org (click on “Sponsor“). Some want to increase the likelihood that their item will appear sooner rather than later. (We currently have over 30 items we’re queuing up for future Brigada Todays. We are *never* able to get everything in the current edition. I’ll be perfectly honest: we indeed feel a debt of gratitude to those who partner with us to sponsor our Brigada Secretary, so … admittedly, those folks do get preferential treatment.) Sponsors also get *human* help in navigating the waters of changing their subscription information. :-) But still others are anonymous. Their only apparent motive is to help provide that Brigada Secretary for the whole Brigada family, as well as holding out the hope that Brigada can always be free and on *time*! :-) One wrote this past week, “And thanks again for all your hard work to keep BT going. I certainly appreciate it and I know many others do too, even if they don’t say so.” Thankfully, some have indeed understood and “said so.” Another ministry wrote, “We have mailed Team Expansion this morning a contribution to the support of a secretary for Brigada. You all are providing such a tremendous service to the missionary community. It is a privilege for us to help your ministry in this small way. Thank you so much for having periodically posted our announcements over this last year. We appreciate this service so very much. We would like to help again in the future as the Lord provides.” Yahoooooo! :-) And the Wycliffe people keep raising the bar… “I have been reading Brigada since 1997 or so and always find great stuff. Thanks for your ministry from another Wycliffe mobilizer!” May God bless Wycliffe! :-)
  2. HELP SUPPORT BRIGADA; GET A BOOK ON EFFECTIVE SHORT-TERM MISSIONS! – – Place an order for 20 (or more) copies of the 2003/4 Edition of Into All the World Magazine, entitled SHORT-TERM MISSIONS TODAY (STMT), and $15 will go to support Brigada, plus you receive a FREE copy of the new book “Maximum Impact Short-Term Missions” (a $20 value). Copies of STMT come for $2/copy for the first 20 copies, and just $1/copy for all copies over twenty, plus modest S&H costs. Contact Bill Berry, Publisher at intomorecopies@aol.com . An invoice will be enclosed with your shipment. Sorry: this offer applies ONLY to shipments to US & Canadian addresses. (Thanks for the thought, Bill! Let’s hope they all like your magazine! :-) These and all other such funds will be used to provide a Brigada Secretary, with the hopes that we can keep Brigada free, and on *time*!)
  3. ONE OF THE CHEAPEST COUNTRY-TO-COUNTRY RATES — Try an international calling service that reportedly has one of the cheapest country-to-country phone rates. Learn more at https://brigada.org/phone.html (Our thanks to UWT for the promise of sponsorship, if folks sign up. Please let us know about your experience with this service. Thanks!)
  4. LEARN A PRACTICAL SKILL FOR MISSIONS — Simplified dental care can open many doors to evangelism and relationship building among the unreached peoples of the world. No extractions, injections, drills, electricity, or sophisticated equipment are involved- only simple hand instruments, a compassionate heart, and two weeks of your time are needed. Now you can bring greatly needed dental care to your community. Courses offered monthly in Texas. Learn more at http://www.dentaltrainingformissions.com or write dentaltrainingformissions@att.net . (And thanks much for the partnership in producing Brigada!)
  5. SAVE 50% ON COPIES OF “SEND ME!” — 10 case lots of SEND ME! Your Journey to the Nations,” by Steve Hoke & Bill Taylor, are available at a 50% Discount (just $4/copy instead of the list price of $8). 38 copies to a case. $152/case + UPS or Postal Charges. We will be glad to invoice you. Plus, $25 donation goes to support Brigada for each case ordered from this notice. Contact Bill Berry at Bberry4215@aol.com . Mention “Brigada offer.” Valid only on shipments to US & Canadian addresses. (Again, Bill, our “hats off” to you for this thought!)
  6. ADDITIONAL WORKERS NEEDED TO OVERCOME AIDS IN AFRICA — Thanks to “ACTION“, who took action to send a $50 sponsorship this past week! They wrote, “Thank you again for Brigada! We will continue to mention this need to enable readers to give on a regular basis. You do so much for us, we need to be aware of your financial needs.” ACTION is has a current major focus on the problem of AIDS in Africa. “We are trusting for 30 additional missionaries to serve in Malawi, Uganda and Zambia. It is estimated that 6300 Africans die daily from AIDS; 11,000 persons are newly infected daily. ACTION is making a special effort through our AIDS and Orphan Crisis Care and Evangelism Ministry to reach as many as possible with the gospel and compassionate care.” More ACTION workers are needed. Learn more. “Please pray with us about this,” they wrote. (Thanks again!)
  7. NEW LEVEL OF RESEARCH AVAILABLE TO BRIGADA READERS — Okay… the truth is, it’s available to all Internet browsers, but here’s what you’ve got to ask yourselves: where did you *hear* about it first? :-) the “it” in this case is the online World Christian Database (WCD), brought to you by some of the same folks who brought you the World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE)! Todd Johnson, co-author of the WCE, is one of the driving forces behind the new Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. The WCD represents the core of the data supporting the World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE) and World Christian Trends (WCT). The online WCD includes detailed information on 34,000 Christian denominations and on religions in every country of the world. In addition, extensive data is available on 238 countries and 13,000 ethnolinguistic peoples, as well as data on 7,000 cities and 3,000 provinces. Statistics in the online WCD represent a significant update of the data published in WCE/WCT in 2001. Now here’s the most amazing part of all: It’s all available to you at absolutely no charge! Nada! Free! Honestly, I don’t get it. (Read on for more info.)
  8. WORLD CHRISTIAN DATABASE ONLINE! — Back in the days of the research and publication of the World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE), I remember researchers quipping that David Barrett would never share much of his “inside info” (even though these researchers shared their data with him! :-) ). Reportedly, he was always afraid that, once shared, nobody would buy his books! Well guess what: somehow, he (or his partner), has managed to “open up the store”! And what a great store it is. I love the simple search engine, and that’s the way I believe you should try to access your information. Just put in the name of the people group (or country, or province, or just about anything else connected with a religion) you’re researching, click, and see the information pop up in front of you. This is the kind of thing we dreamed about trying to produce in 1995. And it’s real-time, not just a collection of PDFs. Oh… and I almost forgot: you’ll need the URL! :-) You can get there either one of two ways. You can go via Todd Johnsion’s personal web page: http://www.globalchristianity.org Or directly through the WCD link itself: http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org
    (Note: At “presstime”, this link was unavailable; but keep trying. It’ll come back “alive” again, I’m convinced.)
    Set a link, because I guarantee you you’ll want to come back here to check something. I already have. Here’s what I wrote to Todd this past week, when he informed us it was finally “live” (he’s been letting us beta test it since early October, but by agreement, I couldn’t tell you about it yet): “It’s great, Todd. No… it’s fantastic. What a tremendous service to release it *free*. It’s *so* digestible… *so* much easier to find the data… *so* quick . It let me zero in on a people group from Cote d’Ivoire lickety-split. Perhaps the most useful evangelization research page on the entire web. Thanks for your tireless work!” So there you have it… literally! And to David Barrett… and now Todd Johnson, we’re all incredibly grateful. May God help you figure out how to make ends meet, so this information will always be available to Brigada readers… and more!
  9. MORE GOOD NEWS! BETHANY UNREACHED PROFILES STILL REACHABLE — Thanks to the half dozen or so readers who did their homework and located the Bethany Profiles on Unreached Peoples. You all are great helpers! http://www.ksafe.com/profiles/home.html (Thanks Dwane, Lynda, Henry
  10. DICTIONARY OF THEOLOGICAL TERMS IN SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH — Both the Dictionary of Theological Terms in Simplified English and the accompanying Student Workbook have the potential to be very valuable tools for their intended audiences (international students and pastors who have a reasonable command of English and English-speaking lay people). The Dictionary itself is easy to use and contains many useful features in addition to its definitions such as guide words, cross references, biblical references, and original language references. The definitions give a balanced look at the meaning of the words often presenting several contrasting views. We asked for input from the new Training Director at Team Expansion, Glen Gibson. (He has 17 years experience training church leaders and pastors, and he will probably have his Ph.D. from Fuller before Christmas.) He thought about the courses he had offered among those who use English as a second language and observed, “I would have loved for all of them to have this tool by their side as they sat in class or did their assignments.” He went on to tell me, “The Student Workbook is also a good tool to help accomplish its stated purpose of equipping the “intermediate level English student to negotiate through a theological dictionary and eventually, theological writings.” In fact all English speakers would likely benefits from working through the exercises in this book. Helpful methods of using dictionaries, studying theological terms, and learning vocabulary are laid out in well-designed exercises.” He wasn’t quite as excited about the accompanying workbook, however. “The Dictionary is simple enough to use that a person with a reasonable command of English will be able to use it without taking the time to study the Student Workbook.” At the same time, he judged that the added investment wouldn’t be for naught. “Anyone who takes the time to study through the workbook will benefit greatly by expanding their ability to not just use the Dictionary, but also study other theological writings.” (Thanks for your “take” on these, Glen!) These books should be available from Amazon.com or your favorite Bible bookstore.
  11. TO BOUNCE MESSAGES TO SPAMMERS, OR NOT — The debate continues. Chris, a Brigada participant from World Harvest Mission, wrote recently, “You’ve opened up a very interesting topic, discussing the ethics of sending bounce messages to spammers. Here’s my two cents worth. General Principle: It is not unethical to use deception against the enemy in times of warfare. Application to the use of bounce messages against spammers: This is warfare and spammers are the enemy.” I see Chris’ point. Yet, due to the parallel factor (that spammers rarely give their real return addresses anyway), I still have disabled my “bounce” capability in MailWasher, especially since I found out that it forges the “postmaster” line to make it look like your ISP postmaster sent the bounce-a-gram. :-( Not a pleasant thought, for those of us who want to be honest in the small things in life. :-( (But again, maybe it’s “war”! :-) Thanks anyway, Chris!)
  12. TEACHING ENGLISH — Christians resident in N America, Australia or New Zealand can find TEFL opportunities at ESL-Jobs.com: http://esljobs.gospelcom.net/ (Thanks Tony!)
  13. SHORT TERM MISSION LEADERS TRAINING SEMINAR — Commit Ministries is offering two, high quality, low-cost, 3-day seminars; one in sunny Tampa Florida in the Winter (February 5-7, 2004), and another in Honolulu Hawaii (oh, my! :-) ), April 22-24, 2004. This seminar is a comprehensive, cutting-edge, intensive program designed to prepare Christians to lead short term ministry teams worldwide. Each participant will acquire everything necessary to develop or augment a thorough short term ministry program for their respective church or mission agency and gain the skills/knowledge necessary to effectively lead short-term ministry teams. For registration information, contact COMMIT Ministries, info@commitministries.org , or visit their website at www.commitministries.org
  14. TAKING THE ‘EX’ OUT OF ‘EX-MISSIONARY’ — Any former missionary who has returned home for any reason can still have an outreach ministry to their country of service. The Web provides one avenue for outreach. But there is also much scope for creating a simple and cheap literature program from home – read how Jane and Beryl were led into this ministry for Fula dialects and Swahili: http://www.gospelcom.net/guide/resources/missionary.php
  15. LAST CHANCE FOR YOUR DISCOUNT ON THE CD RESEARCH TOOL — Don’t forget that if you’ve been pondering that CD, with all the great maps, profiles, and other research, better stop pondering and start clicking. Less than a handful of days remain, if you intend to get the special Brigada discount (until the end of October). The “Countries and Peoples of the World” CD-ROM, a Brigada sponsor, makes a great source for mission fairs, faith-promise rallies, and tons more. It’ll help you pray, recruit, send, train, and motivate. The graphics are great. The interface is simple. Get it at: http://www.ywam.org/books/countries_and_peoples.htm
    If you wait beyond next Friday, expect to pay quite a bit more.
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