In This Issue:
Today we welcome a bunch of new subscribers who signed up through Perspectives classes in several cities. Glad you could join us!
Sources: Deidox, Moving Works, and Prayercast
While many of the resources we feature here are designed to inspire and equip you (and those you might mobilize) for global service, today I want to share some great videos about showing love closer to home.
Turns out the principles are much the same. We still have internal resistance, issues with our priorities, and other barriers to overcome if we want to be obedient and make a difference in the lives of others.
Jay has been challenged to love his neighbors, but he can’t do it if he doesn’t know them. Watch as this Austin, Texas man and his wife wrestle with finding the time and then take a small but simple step. Love Your Neighbors—A Simple Step is part one in a series of three short videos from Deidox. The others will be out within the next two weeks. This first video, at just over four minutes long, might easily be folded into a presentation.
Moving Works has also released a new short video (5.5 minutes) about someone who has a conversation with God that leads her to reach out to love and serve a neglected population close to home. Watch Bettie Goes to Jail. Download a simple discussion guide for small groups.
Finally, our friends at Prayercast are part of an interesting campaign to raise up prayer for a city. They’re mobilizing praying for every one of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods. Each day between September 8 and November 23, a prayer video for another neighborhood will be released. Check out Chicago77.
What would it look like to pray systematically for every inch of your city?
Source: SAT-7
Working with people who speak other languages? SAT-7 has free apps available for Apple and Android devices with streaming gospel content from each of their broadcast channels. These could be a great resource for anyone who knows a refugee or immigrant speaker of Arabic, Farsi, Dari, or Turkish. Use them as a witnessing tool, conversation starter, or resource for discipleship.
» Also check out TWR360, the multi-lingual media resources from TWR, accessible via the web or a free mobile app.
Source: GMI and Grow2Serve
The book Crossing Cultures with Ruth: Lessons on Thriving in Mission offers Kingdom workers encouragement and inspiration as they discern and work out God’s call in their lives. The book also provides practical insights based on James Nelson’s years of Fruitful Practice research into the best means and methods of missionary outreach.
Now available is a six-week online course that will enhance your learning and growth through purposeful interaction in a community with the book, author, a course facilitation team, and other learners.
Included in your course fee is a download of Crossing Cultures with Ruth and Crossing Cultures with Ruth: Study Guide for Christian Workers.
(Ring a bell? We highlighted the book and study guide when they were published earlier, and I, Marti, co-authored the study guide).
» Learn more or register for the course.
» See also an affordable, 25-hour online course called Evangelism: Abundantly Sowing the Seed (with World Team) and an 8-10-hour course in Animism and Folk Religion (with SEND International).
Source: The Jesus Accounts
Several years back we published a review of The Jesus Accounts: Fact or Fiction?, a high-quality, half-hour documentary designed to explain the reliability of the Bible and answer the most common objections or misunderstandings in a positive and respectful way. You can watch or share it online in Arabic, Russian, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Tajik, Turkmen, Uzbek, Bengali, Turkish, Chinese (several versions), and Urdu, as well as English, or get it on DVD for a reasonable price.
Now, a second documentary of the same length addresses and attempts to clarify what it means when we say Jesus is the son of God. Jesus, Son of God? was filmed in Turkey and the UK and has been dubbed into Arabic, Russian, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Uzbek, and Bengali; there’s also an English version with simplified Chinese subtitles.
Though these videos are designed primarily with a Muslim audience in mind, Islam is not mentioned in either one. I think you will find them useful with secular or Christian friends as well. A third video dealing with the historicity of the crucifixion is currently in production.
» Preview both films and their trailers in English on YouTube or go to each film’s website to learn much more about these projects or buy DVDs.
Source: Missions Catalyst Events Calendar
October 3 to February 12, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement Course (online). Provided on a regular basis by the Perspectives Study Program.
October 5 to November 30, Mobilizer Equipping School (Chiang Mai, Thailand). Provided by Student Volunteer Movement 2.
October 7-8, Missions Fest Seattle (Bellevue, WA, USA). Free, annual community-wide event.
October 8, Costly Call: Following Jesus in a Hostile World (Lynnfield, MA, USA). One-day event sponsored by New England Perspectives Study Program and the J. Christy Wilson, Jr. Center for World Missions.
October 10-11, Support Raising Bootcamp (Tulsa, OK, USA). Provided by Support Raising Solutions.
October 11-14, Support Raising Leaders Conference (Tulsa, OK, USA). Provided by Support Raising Solutions (and partners).
October 11 to November 8, Expand Your Mission Through Media (for Women) (online). Mission Media U course to develop a media project plan.
October 13, Protecting Your Ministry from Sexual Identity and Gender Issues (online). Webinar provided by Missio Nexus.
October 13-15, Open B4T Expo (Chicago, IL, USA). Transforming nations through business.
October 14-15, People Raising Conference (Oak Brook, IL, USA). Be equipped for raising personal support.
October 14-16, Evangelical Missiological Society (Dallas, TX, USA). Annual meeting, this time focused on “Missions and the Local Church.”
October 16-19 and 20-23, Thrive Retreats (Cape Town, South Africa). For North American women serving cross-culturally.
October 16-21, ABIDE (Joplin, MO, USA). Re-entry and debriefing for singles, couples, and families provided by TRAIN International.
October 17-19, Excellerate Conference (Alpharetta, GA, USA). A mission conference for church leaders. Hosted by North Point Ministries.
October 19, Set Apart: Connecting the Local Church to God’s Work (online). Free webinar from Sixteen:Fifteen.
» View the calendar, with some big events coming up in November as well. Planning a mission event for December (or any other time down the road)? Please let me know!
Missions Catalyst News Briefs 9.21.16
Greetings,
I came across the testimony of former atheist David Wood a while back. It was so disturbing I didn’t get past the eight-minute mark. (For a shorter version, see the CBN piece Psychopathic Atheist Turns to Jesus.) I recently discovered that this same man led Muslim-born apologist and author Nabeel Qureshi to Christ (see below). That was enough to motivate me to take another look at Wood’s story.
As I’ve urged my husband many times, don’t quit a movie at the darkest part and deny yourself the “good stuff” to come (assuming the movie was recommended by a trusted source).
This week’s news is kind of like that: things we don’t like to hear, but that may open the way for later stories of redemption. Please read on.
Waiting with you for the rest of the story,
Pat
Need something to lift you right now? Watch Revelation Song in 14 Languages (from TeenStreet 2016, OM’s international youth congress). It provides a glimpse of the united diversity that awaits us in Heaven.
Source: World Watch Monitor, September 20, 2016
A 16-year-old Christian boy has been accused of committing blasphemy by “liking” and sharing a post on Facebook which “defamed and disrespected” the Kaaba in Mecca, the building at the center of Islam’s most sacred mosque.
Most of the Christians in the boy’s village have since fled their homes for fear of an angry backlash against them.
At around 3pm on Sunday [September 18], several police vans raided Nabeel Masih’s house in Dina Nath village, in the Kasur district of Punjab province, 30 miles southwest of Lahore. There are at least 300 Christian homes in the village.
The complainant, Akhtar Ali, filed this accusation at the nearby Phoolnagar Police Station: “On September 18, I was with my friends Bakht Khan and Saddam… We took our friend Waqar’s mobile phone and started seeing pictures of his various friends on Facebook. But when we opened Nabeel Masih’s profile, there was a picture posted in which the Kaaba is defamed and disrespected. Seeing that picture, our religious feelings were hurt.”
» For another (even more heartbreaking) story of a teen victim, see Morocco: Teenage Girl Sets Herself on Fire in Response to Rape and Injustice (GodReports).
Source: Christian Post, September 8, 2016
Nabeel Qureshi, an author, global speaker, and prominent Christian convert from Islam who was once part of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, announced in a post on his Facebook page last week that he has been diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer and explained that the prognosis was “quite grim.”
In a ten-minute video posted to YouTube [September 7], Qureshi expanded on the details of his diagnosis, revealing that he has stage four stomach cancer. According to statistics from the American Cancer Society, the five-year survival rate for individuals with stage four stomach cancer is four percent.
» Full story with pictures. You can also follow his journey and pray with others at Praying for Nabeel Qureshi Facebook page.
» Editor’s note: I just finished Nabeel’s book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus and found the apologetic/friendly debates between Nabeel and David Wood most useful in my dialogues with atheists as well. It is all a bit philosophical; perhaps too much so, for some. If you want some less heady tips on talking to Muslims (and others), check out this conversation or find a Halal food court and start a conversation of your own.
Source: Voice of the Martyrs, September 9, 2016
Three Sudanese Christian leaders and a Czech aid worker are currently on trial in Sudan, facing charges that carry a potential death penalty. The trial began in Khartoum on August 21 for Rev. Hassan Abdelrahim Kodi, Rev. Kuwa Shemaal, Christian leader Abdelmoneim Abdelmoula, and Czech national Petr Jasek. After their arrest in December, all four were accused of conducting intelligence activities and providing material support for rebels in Sudan’s South Kordofan region. Pray for a just verdict and their immediate release.
» See full story with prayers and pictures as well as a longer related story (updated September 20).
» Please also pray for Iranian Christian prisoner Maryam Naghash Zargaran, who has been returned to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison after a medical leave was cancelled, and rejoice with us that a Canadian missionary has been released from a two-year detention in China.