In This Issue: Korean Pen Pals for Kids!
- OPPORTUNITY: Get Your Kid a Korean Pen Pal
- CAMPAIGN: SVM2 Calls for and Equips Global Prayer Teams
- TEXTBOOK: Encountering the World of Islam
- DEVOTIONAL BOOK: Voices of the Faithful
- COMPUTER SOFTWARE: Google Earth
- WEB SITE: The Latest from Urbana.org
Missions Catalyst is a free, weekly electronic digest of mission news and resources designed to inspire and equip Christians worldwide for global ministry. Use it to fuel your prayers, find tips and opportunities, and stay in touch with how God is building his kingdom all over the world. Please forward it freely!
Resource Reviews, edited by Marti Smith, are published once a month.
OPPORTUNITY: Get Your Kid a Korean Pen Pal
From: Dan Wooding, ASSIST News Service
Club English, a new Korean/English magazine for children between the ages of 8 and 13, was launched in July in Seoul, Korea. Sixty percent of the magazine will be published in English. The magazine promises to be both entertaining and educational.
The publication also hopes to link its readers with E-pal partners in other countries. It is searching for reputable organizations with databases of native English-speaking kids who are interested in communicating with Korean children.
Korea is regarded as the most ‘wired’ society in the world. Korean children are very interested in reaching out to other children in the world through the Internet and communicating with them in English. Club English is excited at the opportunity to combine services with other organizations which are searching for E-pal partnerships.
If you are interested in partnering with Club English, please contact Steve Wachter.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Teachers and parents, isn’t an international pen pal something that could bring the reality of the nations home to your kids?
CAMPAIGN: SVM2 Calls for and Equips Global Prayer Teams
From: Student Volunteer Movement 2 (SVM2) – August 18, 2005
The Student Volunteer Movement 2 (SVM2) is a grassroots student mission movement made up of serious young adults (18-28 years old) from many organizational and denominational backgrounds in churches and on college campuses. SVM2 is calling for 50,000 Global Prayer Teams (small groups of young adults praying together on at least a weekly basis) to be raised up around the world. The purpose of these teams is to help build spiritual momentum towards seeing the nations reached for Christ in our lifetime, and for this generation to be involved in this glorious endeavor.
We have sat on the sideline for too long allowing the youth culture globally to minimize the call of God to devoted and fervent corporate prayer for God’s kingdom to be established around the world.
For more information and to launch a Global Prayer Team in your community of believers, visit
SVM2 or send an e-mail to join the growing Global Prayer Team network.
A Global Prayer Team Guide, which gives tons of practical ideas and examples to help anyone launch and sustain a committed, effective, and vibrant Global Prayer Team, is available for a suggested donation of $3 (including shipping) here.
TEXTBOOK: Encountering the World of Islam
Encountering the World of Islam
Keith Swartley, Editor
This positive and hopeful 600-page book explores the Muslim world and God’s plan for Muslims. Writings from more than 80 different practitioners introduce the multi-faceted world of Islam. The book includes writings about the life of Muhammad, the history of Islamic civilization, Islamic beliefs, and everyday lives of Muslims today. Gain insight into diverse Muslim cultures and worldviews, our response to Islam, Christian outreach toward Muslims, and prayer for the Muslim world.
This book is used as the textbook for the semester-long Encountering the World of Islam course. Part of the Perspectives Family of courses, Encountering the World of Islam has been endorsed by many mission agencies working among Muslims.
“This is the most significant training tool of its kind that I have ever seen. All of us who love Muslims will want to study it and try to give the course and the book wider circulation. All of God’s people need exposure to this great research and challenge.” – George Verwer, Founder, Operation Mobilization
“The course Encountering the World of Islam combines valuable information about Muslim belief and practice with practical approaches to communicating God’s love. It is the best introduction to Islam I know. I highly recommend it!” – Dr. Rick Love, International Director, Frontiers
Learn more about the course and buy the book here, or contact us by e-mail.
DEVOTIONAL BOOK: Voices of the Faithful
From: Allie Martin, AgapePress News Briefs – August 8, 2005
A new daily devotional book encourages Christians to pray fervently for missionaries overseas.
In Voices of the Faithful, Beth Moore and missionary Kim Davis share stories of nearly 300 Southern Baptist missionaries worldwide. Davis says many Christians in America do not think about the trials and daily struggles faced by missionaries in foreign countries. “We need to find out what God is doing in our generation, and we’re to join him in praying for the nations,” Davis says. “I think that once the average person in the church sees that there is a great big world out there, and they begin praying for that lost world, then they won’t have a tendency to be self-absorbed.”
The book, says the co-author, is realistic, thought-provoking, and challenging. “It doesn’t put the missionary up on this high plateau, like we like to do,” she explains, “but it puts the missionary down on our level where we can understand their pains and the suffering and the challenges that they go through; but that yet they are challenged to stay in the work that God’s called them to do.”
The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention has developed a year-long prayer emphasis to go along with the book.
“By the time you finish the book, you will have traveled the entire world with missionaries. I dare you not to fall in love,” Moore writes in the introduction. “Whether you are called to pray, called to give, called to go on short-term mission trips, two-year mission stints or surrender entirely to career missions, you are all called to the nations.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Voices of the Faithful is available at local retailers and from the International Mission Board.
COMPUTER SOFTWARE: Google Earth
From: Google Earth
Explore, search, and discover. Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps, and the power of Google Search to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips.
Google Earth streams the world over wired and wireless networks, enabling users to virtually go anywhere on the planet and see places in photographic detail. This is not like any map you have ever seen. This is a 3D model of the real world, based on real satellite images combined with maps. You can zoom from space to street level instantly and then pan or jump from place to place, city to city, and country to country.
Google Earth puts a planet’s worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your computer screen. View exotic locales, points of interest, and even guides to restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, and more.
The program is offered as a free download (Beta version) from Google. Advanced options are available for a paid subscription. The application requires a fairly new Windows-based computer with broadband Internet.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This will be of interest to missionaries, strategy coordinators, short-term mission leaders, and the curious.
WEB SITE: The Latest from Urbana.org
If you attended one of InterVarsity’s Urbana conferences in recent years, and they have not lost track of you in this ever-changing world, you may have been receiving e-mail from Urbana.org. If not, you can still sign up, or read the postings on-line at Urbana.org. The more-or-less weekly mailings, which come in html format only, include links back to many resources found on the ministry’s web site.
Five or six regular columns may be of interest to many besides the college-aged Americans they target. These columns include: “Great Cloud of Witnesses” – short biographies of modern and ancient role models; “Ask Jack” – a place where readers can ask tough questions about faith and missions; “MSearch” – a place to find jobs, schools, and mission agencies; and “Whirled View Blog,” which looks at the world through biblical lenses. Additional free and helpful resources on the Urbana site include downloadable Bible studies and articles.
By the way, the next Urbana Student Mission Convention will take place December 27-31, 2006 at its new location in St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Questions? Problems? Submissions? Contact publisher/managing editor Marti Smith.