News and Updates

Pastor Yovanny is mentoring the Iglesia Bautista Fe, Esperanza y Amor are in the 3rd Module of our missional process. In this module the church learns how to develop not only a strategy to reach both locally and globally, they learn how to engage their own church members and form their Global Teams in order to fulfill that missional task.

Yovanny is a dynamic young pastor that has implemented this same process in his own church, and seen first hand the challenge and impact it makes in his own congregation. So when he reaches, he is not teaching theoretically, he is teaching practically, something he has implemented in his own church.

CIMA is an Urbana like youth conference in Latin America that is challenging thousands of teenagers and college students to consider personally participating in Missions. Several years ago they asked me to share our material with them. Every year for the last several years, I have been one of the main speakers in their different youth conferences in Latin America, and we have seen many young people surrender their lives to the cause of Christ and His mission. Many of these young people are now serving around th world.

Because of our mutual partnership; they use the first four lessons of Global Focus during the year when they are recruiting students and churches to participate in the the conference’s.

All over Latin America they have CIMA DAY – GLOBAL FOCUS 1 day work shop’s. Now several of our Latin American facilitators are the ones doing the teaching. This past week, Jose Villanueva, one of our Central

American facilitators was able to teach at the 1 day conference in El Salvador. In Nov. I will be teaching at the one in Bogota, Colombia. Because of this partnership with CIMA, it has exposed Global Focus to many new churches.

Many think that the local church’s responsibility in global missions is to just financially supporting missions, and sometimes pray for the missionaries. But not in the Global Focus missional paradigm.

We teach that it is not only the local church’s responsibility to send out it’s own people, and financially support them, but also personally participate in what God is doing around the world.

For that reason, one of our non negotiable principals is that churches take missions trips, that they personally go, and explore the field for themselves, and work along side field workers and see how they can personally engage.

In Latin America, churches are more used to receiving teams than sending them out. This week 4 Peruvian pastors, all of whom are pastors of churches that we have mentored, and all 4 are Global Focus facilitators.

These pastors are in North Africa and the Middle East this week visiting some of the same workers they have sent from their own churches.For the majority, this is the first time they have ever been able to travel to this part of the world. They are totally overwhelmed with how God is already working and using Latin American workers in this part of the world.

This is an exploratory trip so that later they can take some of their own people and participate in projects with some of the field workers.

Our Global Focus process is challenging churches all ove Latin America to embrace a new way of thinking about the church. What dominates the mindset of many churches are their weekend services, their own installations, their members, their staff and their programs. What should dominate our mindset is the mission of the church; to make disciples locally and globally. To extend the Kingdom of God to all peoples and nations. When we segment missions into a department or a select few individuals (ie: missionaries only, or missions committee members) then missions is not the mission of the church. Global Focus helps churches return to the reason that the church was formed, as the primary instrument of fulfilling God’s mission in the entire world.

Churches all over Latin America are being challenged in this paradigm.Not only the hundreds of churches that we are already working with, but the new churches that our facilitators are launching with are getting it from the inception. Listen to what one pastor from Peru said right after they had 6 hours of the initial Global Focus seminar in their church:

“We just finished the initial Global Focus seminar, it was a day of blessing and arduous work for each and every member of our church. Today we are challenged to be a local – global church and fulfill God’s vision for the entire world. We will assume our role with passion and love for our God!” Pastor Marco Antonio Ayala of Bible Baptist Church of Peralvillo, Peru.

Pablo Caruachin, our Peru Director has launched with several new churches in Peru, this is just a sample of one of the new churches he is mentoring.

Mauricio Tejada and Paul Vargas Global Focus facilitators and pastors of a Global Focus model church in Arequipa, Peru. They have launched Global Focus in the northern part of Chile at First Baptist Church of Arica, Chile. The pastor of  this church attended the Global Celebration in Arequipa,  and wanted the same passion for missions they saw there for their own church.

They are also mentoring another church in their own city. Vida Abundante B.C. is in Arequipa, Peru, and they just did the 2nd Module, where they help align their entire church around the singular mission of God. Pray for these new churches as they have started a process that will end up mobilizing their entire church, and hopefully one day sending out their own workers to the fields.

I have been mentoring the “Amigos” (Quaker) denomination in Guatemala for over a year. I was supposed to teach the 5 module this past week. This is the last module before the Global Celebration. Pastor Luis was able to take my place and teach this module and share with the church not only Miramonte’s experience in their now 5 Global Celebrations, but since Luis is a favorite preacher for many of the Global Celebrations in Latin America. He was able to share what many other churches are doing, and how the entire church celebrated God’s Mission. The Amigo’s churches area very excited about having their first ever Global Celebration the last week of November. They have already sent their first teams to Southeast Asia and will continue to send even more teams next year! God is doing something incredible in these churches.

Pastor Luis Marti (former pastor of Miramonte Baptist Church) who is now the director of Central America and Mexico for Global Focus was able to begin the Global Focus process with Central Church, which is the oldest evangelical church in El Salvador. Last year the leadership of the church came to our Global Focus training at the Global Celebration of Miramonte Baptist Church and were convinced that was exactly what their church needed. This is a large historic church in El Salvador, that God is breathing new life into because of their passion for missions. Pastor Luis is doing an excellent job of mentoring this church in our process, and sharing his own experiences as a pastor who implemented Global Focus.

Luis helped them develop their Mission Statement :

“In Central Church we are committed to glorify God, being and making disciples of Christ in our own community, in El Salvador, and to the Ends of the Earth.”

I was able to launch Global Focus in Chile a few months ago, but because of the surgery, I was not able to continue with the following module, so I was able to send our Venezuelan director to Chile to continue mentoring the churches there. Yovanny did a great job not just teaching our material, but sharing his own experience as a pastor of a church of 800 members and sending his own people to the nations.

He was able to mentor the leadership of Bible Baptist Church of Valledor in Santiago, Chile. This is a church that the pastor has already declared that he wants his church to become the Global Focus model church for Chile, and he wants to be able to mentor other churches.They had over 40 of their leaders go through the second module where we help to ailing the church around God’s Mission.

From there pastor Yovanny  traveled farther south to Concepcion, Chile where he was able to mentor Renuevo Church (Renew) in the first module. This is a church of a different denomination, but is very interested in forming an Acts 1:8 church, that is engaging it’s members both locally and globally.

Pastor Mauricio Castellon, pastor of Miramonte Baptist Church in San Salvador (Global Focus model church in Central America). This is the church that pastor Luis Marti pastored for over 25 years. Mauricio has kept the exact same missional emphasis in the church and he is also a Global Focus facilitator. Last week he was able to go to Tapachula, Mexico, and begin the Global Focus process in one of their mission churches. He and Rafael Huezo (the Ends of the Earth leader in Miramonte) were able to take all of the leadership through our initial seminar, and will be returning to continue to implementation process in this church.

Vida Abundante (Abundant Life) Baptist Church has seen how God is moving in Vida Nueva. Last June, I held a training event for Global Focus in Lima, Peru, we had 30 pastors and leaders attend 4 days of in intensive training. The pastor of Vida Abundante said, “That is exactly what I need to mobilize my own people”. This past week, pastor Mauricio Tejada (one of the pastors of Vida Nueva, and the director of Pioneers Peru) started mentoring this church in the same missional process that has brought such transformation to their own church. He was able to take all of the leaders through the initial seminar, teaching them that the Biblical basis for missions is not the need, but the Glory of God. God desires to be glorified among all peoples. He also taught them of the great need that exists, especially among the unreached, and how the church was formed in order to fulfill that mission. He finished by teaching them, that God desires for every follower of Christ to fulfill His mission for their lives, and His mission is Him being glorified among all peoples.

Vida Nueva (New Life) Baptist Church of Arequipa is one of our Global Focus model churches in Peru. All 3 of their pastors are Global Focus facilitators, mentoring other churches in our missional process. This past Sunday they commissioned their second family to the nations, a family to be “tent making” missionaries in Spain. Jose is a lawyer, who will be studying his doctoral degree, and Gabriela plays in the symphonic orchestra, and will be playing in Spain as well. It was during the last Global Celebration of their church last year that they spoke with me about their desire to move to the other side of the world, and leverage their careers to reach the unreached. Where they will be serving in Spain, not only are there hundreds of thousands of mslms that need to have contact with the Gospel of Christ, but it is also the gateway to North Africa. While in Spain, they plan on helping some of the Latin American families serving in North Africa. Please pray for the Ricalde – Caruachin family as they prepare to move to Spain, on Mission with Christ.