News and Updates

The Central American Mission was one of the first Evangelical denominations in El Salvador. The Central Church is the mother church to most of the Central American denomination churches in El Salvador, and is over 120 years old. Last year, the pastor and 4 of the elders where able to participate in our Global Focus intensive at Miramonte at their Global Celebration. They have decided that they want their church to become a Globally Focused church, and pastor Luis Marti has started to mentor them. This past week he met with over 120 leaders and taught them the Global Focus initial seminar. They feel that Global Focus is going to breath new life into this historical church. 

We are also mentoring the Church of God denomination in El Salvador. This is a denomination of thousands of churches. Our Global Focus team (Luis Marti; Josue Villanueva, and Fransisco Caceres) have been going through the modules with about 40 different missions leaders of their denomination. They started the process last year, and continue to mobilize this denomination for global missions. We are very excited about all the advancements Global Focus is making in El Salvador, and in Central America.

God is building a team in Latin America to help mobilize even more churches and thus missionaries to the field. We have been very intentional about new facilitator training this year. We believe that if we can mobilize more churches, we can send more missionaries! This past week I finished up teaching and preaching the Missions Conference at SETECA Seminary in Guatemala. I was not only able to teach and preach nearly 5 times daily  in and in the evenings mentor the Amigos denomination, but also meet with the Guatemalan Baptist Convention and talk about beginning the Global Focus Missional Process with them later in Aug.

We are very excited about this new partnership, as they have already several missionary candidates they would like for us to help send.  Luis Marti was able to join me on Friday and Saturday of the conference, and teach, and share his own experience with Global Focus. Luis is becoming a louder voice in our missional movement in Latin America!

On Saturday after teaching all morning until almost noon, I flew back to Atlanta, and then on to Dallas, TX. I was able to preach the Mission Sunday at Lavon Drive Baptist Church in Garland. This church has a great legacy with    their founding pastor, Dr. Gary Coleman, and has passed that legacy on to new and visionary leadership to to Robby Green. I was able to teach and preach 3 times last Sunday, and challenge the church more in the direction of what a missional church really is. Their desire is to reach all the nations that God is sovereignly brining into the DFW metroplex area and also the nations on the other side of the world. 

I was able to spend about 2 of the evenings here in Guatemala mentoring the Amigos churches I have been mentoring. We are helping them develop their first every Global Celebration. We are teaching them how to engage their own lay people to develop, organize, and lead their Global Celebration. They have developed several very innovative local missional projects, and will also be bringing in missionaries from the unreached. Please pray as these pastors continue to impact, not only their local churches, but their entire denomination here in Guatemala.

This week I have been able to preach and teach at the Missions Conference at SETECA seminary in Guatemala. This is one of the oldest, and the largest evangelical seminaries in Latin America. I believe that every seminary should be a launching pad for a new generation of missionaries to the nations. The first day I was able to challenge the students and faculty on the subject that “The church is not the goal, the Kingdom of God is the goal, the church is the instrument”. Many times students graduate from seminaries and feel that their job is to build their church. That is not the commission, the commission is to build His Kingdom, and the church is the instrument by which we build His Kingdom in all nations. 

The second day I was able to speak on “Turning our churches into Houses of Prayer for all Nations”, the third day; “Seeing the world from God’s Perspective”, how many churches just see the world from a local perspective and not a global perspective. Then today I was able to finish up the conferences by preaching on “Mobilizing every member to God’s Mission”; how our mobilization efforts should mobilize everyone to participate in His Mission / His Kingdom. I am convinced that if we can impact the seminaries, and challenge them to develop missional pastors that will mobilize their own people both locally and globally, we can make a much greater impact upon the nations. 

I also lead a “Missions Dialogue’’ with the students and faculty answering their questions about missions, but also showing them how God is already mobilizing dozens of Latin American missionaries and using them among the nations. I want them to think outside the traditional box, and imagine all God could do. God is already touching the hearts of many of these students, and we would love to help send some of them to the nations. Saturday Luis Marti and I will lead conferences with the Saturday students, and more local pastors, teaching them many of the principals of Global Focus.

I am excited about different opportunities God is creating for our ministry, that is why I am spending the next 2 years intentionally multiplying the number of Global Focus facilitators we have in Latin America. The only hope to continue to send this new wave, this new generation of missionaries to the unreached, is by multiplying the number of missional churches willing to send them. 

Josue Villanueva, one of our Central American facilitators was able to start the Global Focus process in a new church, FBC Ahuachapan. He and OM facilitator where able to teach the Global Focus initial seminar to all of their leaders. This helped to wake the church up as far as it’s global responsibility.

The reality is that the more facilitators that are mobilizing local churches through our missional process, the more missionaries that will be able to be sent from those churches. If you read our ministry update last week, you realized that this movement is not just about teaching missional lessons or even about mobilizing churches, but at our core, we are about the sending of new Latin American missionaries to unreached people groups.

We have now helped to send 60 units from Latin America. But, how can we send even more Latin American missionaries to the unreached? It’s not as much about mobilizing the candidate, as it is about mobilizing the church.We can mobilize people to go, but if they are not sent by local missional churches, then their process to get to the field becomes too difficult, and many give up in frustration. So in order to help facilitate a sustainable missional movement in Latin America, we are intentionally training more Global Focus facilitators this year. 

This week I was able to lead the first of 4 major training events in order to multiply the number of mobilizers – facilitators in Global Focus in Puebla, Mexico, at Getsemani Baptist Church (a church that is in the Global Focus missional process, that God is doing some incredible things). For 3 days, 17 men came from all over Mexico to learn how to not only mobilize their own churches, but to mobilize other churches.

The amazing thing about our training was that I did not have to do all of the training,  several of our facilitators helped out in the teaching, like Luis Marti from El Salvador, Pablo Carhuachin from Peru, Alejandro Sicilia, Victor Velezquez, Hazael Hernandez and Mario Cano, from Mexico. All were not only prepared to teach our material, but they also gave real examples of how Global Focus helped to mobilize the members of their churches, and how they have been able to make an impact in the nations!

During our training event there were many questions, and these pastors were able to share their own experiences. One of the unique concepts of our missional process is that it empowers the pastors themselves to become the major missions mobilizer in their own church. Our next training event is next month in Lima, Peru, we already have 27 registered for this training event. Then in the fall, we will have 2 more, one in Atlanta, and the other in El Salvador. Please pray for these training events, and for our intentional multiplication effort these next 2 years. Remember: Multiplying mobilizers = multiplying missionaries sent to the fields. 

I mentor the “Amigos” denomination in Guatemala. A few weeks ago I wrote about their first every cross cultural trip to Southeast Asia. Now, the pastors and leaders that I am mentoring, are now mentoring other pastors and leaders from their denomination. They want their entire denomination to go through our missional process. Please pray for pastor Maudiel, and Edgar who are now mentoring other churches from their denomination. 

This past weekend my wife and I were at Mt. Pleasant B.C. in Carrolton, GA. I was asked to preach their Global Impact Celebration. This is a great Global Focus church, impacting locally and the nations for Christ. We were overwhelmed at their Wednesday night attendance and their palpable enthusiasm as they started their GIC. On Sunday after I challenged the church, we had 6 of their members publicly walk forward to surrender their lives to cross cultural missions. 

Luis Marti was able to represent Enfoque Global (Global Focus) at the COMCA meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica, this is the Central American organization of COMIBAM. Several hundred pastors, missiologist, missionaries, missions agencies, and organizations meet together for several days of encouragement, training and partnership. Pastor Luis was able to teach about the impact that Global Focus is having on hundreds of churches all over Latin America. He came away very encouraged as now churches in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and more churches in El Salvador, Guatemala and Panama are interested in Global Focus helping their churches. 

Also D. and D. (Connect Global candidates to Central Asia) who just returned from their trip with us, were at the same meeting and able to speak about their experience in a total closed country in Central Asia, and what God is doing. Then Pastor Luis was able to connect the dots for many of the pastors and missions agencies; D. and D. are the product of Global Focus in Venezuela, now their church is sending them to Central Asia as workers. Pastor Luis said, “This is what Global Focus is producing, more missionaries are going to the field of the unreached because of the mobilization efforts in their own local churches.”  Just like D. and D. we now have over 60 Latin American units on the field serving in some of the most closed countries, and remote people groups in the 10/40 Window! 

Last week I returned from Brazil, where I continued to mentor the Evangelical Free Church of Sao Paulo. Pastor Frithold Kruger and his congregation were able to share all of their new missional projects. Not only are their people involved in local missional projects are reaching the lost locally, but also in difficult and remote areas of Brazil, and around the world. They were able to send a young lady to work in Haiti with their denomination, and now she is going to go to the Logos Hope ship of OM and their plan is to send her to the mission field.

The members of the church are very excited about what God is doing in their church and now their denomination. I spent 7 hours helping them to begin to prepare for their first ever Global Celebration. I wish you could have seen their faces when the 30 leaders that were at the training realized that in the Global Focus paradigm, it is the members that organize, help prepare, and even execute the Global Celebration!

In most churches, the only way that the members participate is by attending the services,  but not so in the Global Focus paradigm. Why is this? 

Because of some of our core values in Global Focus:

1. The main purpose of the church is missions

2. Missions is not just for missionaries, but for every single church member

3. Missions is both local and global at the same time. 

The Evangelical Free church of Brazil is a German denomination. Now other churches and missionaries are noticing what is happening in Sao Paulo. I have been contacted by other German missionaries from their denomination that are interested in learning more about Global Focus in order to teach the rest of their churches in Brazil. Our prayer is that the Evangelical Free Church of Brazil, becomes a major sending force to the nations! 

Last year I spent almost an entire week training the OM (Operation Mobilization) staff in Brazil in our missional process. I also had our new Global Focus material translated into Portuguese so that we could begin to mentor churches in Brazil. Fabio Torres, who is the director of OM Brazil, has started to mentor Baptist and Nazarene churches in Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro.

We are very excited to be partnering with OM Brazil and pray that God will continue to mobilize His church in Brazil, and call even more missionaries to the unreached.