News and Updates

Two years ago pastor Luiggi and a couple of his leaders attended a Enfoque Global (Global Focus) training that I did at our home church FBCW, they caught a vision of what God could do in their own congregations. Even though they doubted some of the numbers and results that we talked about, they thought if God could do just half of that, we would be happy. Over the last year and a half I have had the opportunity to mentor their church; Primera Iglesia Bautista (the Hispanic ministry of FBC) of Woodbridge, VA. This is a congregation of about 300 Hispanics from varias parts of Latin America. Up until that point they had just a handful of leaders that were doing everything in the church. After they learned, and put into practice the Global Focus Missional Process in their church, God began to add to those that were participating. For their first every Global Celebration, literally over half of the congregation personally participated in the preparation of this huge event!.

We started the Global Celebration on Thursday pm. Almost the entire congregation was present for the opening service, they were ready, they received the missionaries with cheers, balloons, signs, and most of all with Latin American enthusiasm!

The missionaries were overwhelmed as they felt the emotion of the moment of how this church was honoring them and their calling. I was able to finish out the evening preaching on the subject of “Events and Circumstances change, but God’s Mission never changes.” On Friday evening the entire church divided up to spend time listening to each missionary in home fellowships. They were supposed to last only 2 hours, but most lasted at least 3 hours, because the people had so many questions they asked the missionaries. On Saturday we had different events where each missionary spent time with the teenagers and children of the church. Then in the evening we had they International Banquet and then the missionary forum, where each missionary was able to tell their own story of how they went from siting in the pews to serving on the field. After I spoke, we had the “Life Commitment” service where hundreds of people responded to not only pray for missions, but to personally go this next year on a their first missions trip.

On Sunday we all came together to celebrate all God had done that week, and I was able to challenge them to give sacrificially to their Faith Promise. The largest missions offering they had reviewed to that date was $15,000.00.

So the leaders had set a goal of $38,000.00, but they did not tell the congregation, they wanted to see what God had been doing in that year and a half long process of mentoring, and what God had been doing in their lives that week. We we totaled the commitment cards, the pastor and the leaders wept as they realized what God had done in the lives of their people. They had committed over $116,000.00 for their first Faith Promise Missions Offering. The majority committed to giving this offering month above and beyond their own tithe, one family even donated their car to be sold!

Results like this do not happen in a vacuum. Some might think that it is because of the very organized Missions Fair, or the promotional material or some might even think it happened because of pressure to give. But the truth is that this happened because of a missional process that engages the entire congregation and every ministry of the church to align around the overarching purpose of the church: God’s Mission. When missions is personalized, then people participate and give sacrificially.

“God is doing something in my heart that He has never done before, I am thinking and considering going to unreached people groups for the first time in my life…” ” I feel God calling me to His Mission in Southeast Asia”…” “Now I understand why God saved me from a life of drug addiction, in order to start a missional project right here in Lima working with drug addicts and leading them to Jesus…” “I want to take my first missions trip to Central Asia…”

These are some of the several quotes by leaders of the 2 churches I mentored this weekend in Lima, Peru. I spent 20 hours teaching the leadership of Bible Baptist and Bread of Life Church through the 2nd and 3rd modules of Global Focus. These churches are in the process of aligning their churches around the original purpose of the church; His Mission, local and global.

And now start to build a structure that intentionally and strategically tries to reach their own Jerusalem all the way to the Ends of the Earth. Both pastors are thrilled as they see their own leaders as the lights started to come on and start to think of how they can live missionally locally and around the world. They have realized that their own local church is in reality a missions force for the Kingdom of God!

Not only did I spend time teaching and mentoring these 2 churches, I was also able to meet with David and Elizabeth Flynn from the Center for Missions Mobilization, and the Latin American Perspectives course

We had a great time discussing mobilization strategies and were very enthused to see not only the churches in Lima participation in missions, but their pastors! They were also able to meet several of Connect Global’s future candidates to the unreached. One is called to Southeast Asia, one to the Middle East, and 2 to Central Asia. Please pray for these future candidates as they prepare themselves, and God prepares their church to send them to the field. Latin America is truly an emerging missions force, and Global Focus is helping churches embrace that reality!

Last week I wrote about our Latin American Facilitators meeting in San Salvador. We are now multiplying our efforts to mobilize Latin American churches and sending Latin American missionaries to the unreached.

One of our Latin American Facilitators is Josue Villanueva, who served in Turkey on a one year project, and is now missions pastor of Oasis de Gracia Church in Santa Ana, El Salvador.He was able to last week meet with the denominational leader of one of the largest denominations in Nicaragua, the Assemblies of God. They asked him to come and explain the Global Focus Missional Process to their pastors.

They gave him several hours to teach, and afterwards they said, “This is exactly what we have been looking for!” Immediately 5 pastors invited him to come and teach the seminar, and start mentoring their churches. He as able to go and teach the leadership of those churches this past week. One of the countries that I personally have always wanted to work in was Nicaragua, but God never opened the for me personally.

But I am so excited that one of our facilitators is not only working in Nicaragua, but in one of the largest evangelical denominations their. Please pray for Josue as he mentors them, and for the churches, as they mobilize their own people locally and globally to the nations.

Ever since I have started mentoring churches in Latin America in the Global Focus Missional Process I have been totally overwhelmed by the demand to mentor even more churches. Global Focus has made a huge impact on those churches that have implemented the process into the life of their church. The only way to expand this missional process in Latin America was to train more leaders to mentor even more churches. So one of the things I am most excited about in our ministry is the meeting we had last week in San Salvador at Miramonte Baptist Church.

“Ten men from Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, El Salvador and the U.S. came together for 48 hours of training, all of the whom except one, are pastors of very successful churches that have implemented Global Focus in their own churches and are now starting to mentor other churches in this same process. We spent 4 days, 12 hours a day, in a conference room, learning how to mentor churches churches in the same process that has made an indelible impact in their own ministries. Not only was I able to teach them how to mentor churches and groups of pastors, but we were also able to make many contextual corrections in the seminar, and the 6 implementation modules. This was a long and arduous process, but it needed to be men who had implemented Global Focus in their own churches, and understood the objectives of each one of the modules.

“So what are the real implications to having now having more men mentor churches in the Global Focus Missional Process?

“It is to multiply exponentially a missional process that has already mobilized: Tens of thousands of more people involved in missions through their own local churches, both locally and globally.

Churches in Latin America are now taking missions trips on their own, to ethnic groups within Latin America, and unreached people groups in the 10/40 Window. A comprehensi-ve prayer strategy has been implemented in hundreds of churches. where they are praying every service for missions and missionaries.We are able to help facilitate sending even more missionaries from Latin America to the unreached and now it is almost entirely funded by those same churches in Latin America. Now with more men helping to implement Global Focus in even more church, we expect to see a greatly multiplication this great movement of God.

I would also personally like to express my gratitude to those that helped some of the pastors attend, especially the Venezuelan pastors whose economy has been decimated. Without your partnership, this monumental meeting could not have taken place. Thank you!