In This Issue: What Are My Rights?
- Crisis and Trauma Resources
- WEB SITE: El Consultor Regional para la Movilizacion Misionera
- What Else Could I Be Reading?
- WEB SITE: Rightnow Campaign’s Opportunity
- EVENT: Global Consultation on Music and Missions
- Book Questions ‘My Rights’
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.
Crisis and Trauma Resources
From: Marti Smith, Caleb Resources
The pastor of the church I attend recently returned from a trip to South India where he did more grief counseling than he has in years. Yet one need not go so far to see that life is not short on tragedy. Do you, or the missionaries with which you are connected, have opportunities to reach out to those in great crisis? Perhaps recent global disasters are stirring your heart to seek opportunities to help with relief and development efforts.
The Member Care Task Force has compiled lists of helpful resources for pastors, counselors, and others who may find themselves dealing with those in crisis. For more information, see Member Care’s Crisis and Trauma Resources. Also see their general collection of Current Reviews on missionary care related materials.
WEB SITE: El Consultor Regional para la Movilizacion Misionera
From: Marti Smith via Consultor Regional para la Movilizaciln Misionera
“In our work as Consultants for Regional Missions Mobilization for Middle America and the Caribbean with the International Mission Board (IMB),” writes Missions Catalyst reader Lloyd Mann, “we have developed a web site that offers many Spanish-language resources in the area of mission mobilization …”
1. Missionary bibliographies list many books that a missions candidate or pastor can read for encouragement and inspiration.
2. A church evaluation, which reveals a church’s mission profile.
3. A collection of sermon examples contains mission illustrations and explanations from which pastors and teachers can borrow for their talks.
4. Support materials include missionary games, dramas, and fund-raising helps.
5. Graphics, statistics, and maps can assist anyone creating presentations.
6. Prayer resources offer the reader a variety of links to different sites to find reasons to pray and general information on missions.
7. Letters, requests, and service opportunities – the ministry handles more than 1800 resumes of Latin American professionals from more than 220 countries around the world.
For other Spanish-language mobilization resources, your Missions Catalyst editor recommends the Cooperacion Misionera Iberoamericana (COMIBAM) and Pueblos. A sister periodical of ours, Brigada Today, which promotes as many as 20 resources each week, is also published in Spanish as Brigada Hoy.
What other Spanish-language resources have you found particularly helpful? Let us know.
What Else Could I Be Reading?
From: Marti Smith
Missions Catalyst is far from unique, although we do have several distinctives in what we cover and how we cover it. Are you hungry for more news, though, or more resource reviews, or more great articles and practical mobilization helps? One thing you can do is to follow the links that we include in Missions Catalyst. Another is to subscribe to some of the services yourself.
To find some of our favorite resources and the ones we most recommend, take a look at the collection of most recent versions of resource lists Caleb Project has compiled over the years. You can download a PDF file on our page of Free Resources. Besides the list of top mission news sources, lists include agencies that can send you to the unreached, recommended books, guidance for people-group ‘adoption,’ Bible studies and curriculum, and our favorite resources on prayer.
A few disclaimers: These lists are largely designed for North American churches, and they are not meant to be exhaustive. We also distribute these lists at Perspectives on the World Christian Movement courses, and try to keep them relatively brief. Also, at 333 KB, the file may be too large for some readers to easily access. There may be something on the list, however, that is just what you are looking for. Please let us know if you see errors or obvious omissions!
WEB SITE: Rightnow Campaign’s Opportunity Clearinghouse
From: Marti Smith via Justin Forman
Here’s a follow-up to our report last month on mission opportunity databases which highlighted Mission Network News’ Short-Term Missions Database and made brief mention of the search engine for mission trips at ShortTermMissions.com.
Our friend Justin Forman at the Rightnow Campaign wrote to make us aware of a similar search feature, called “Connect to the World,” on their home page. He writes, “Over the past five years it has become the top place for 20- and 30-somethings to get involved. It has close to 3,000 opportunities from 80 different organizations that can be searched by time frame, location, and skills.
“We also make sure that our team of coaches follows up with people when they submit information to make sure they get encouraged, coached, and connected to the opportunity that fits them best. It’s similar to a clearinghouse.”
Get involved at Rightnow.org.
A few months ago we promoted the FUSION event – launched by the Rightnow Campaign for 20- and 30-somethings. There have also been articles about the conference in Christianity Today, Charisma, and the Dallas Morning News, etc. Read what others are saying at FUSION.
EVENT: Global Consultation on Music and Missions
From: International Council of Ethnodoxologists (ICE)
Ethnodoxology: the theological and anthropological study, and application, of how every people group might use their culture’s unique and diverse artistic expressions appropriately to worship the God of the Bible.
The International Council of Ethnodoxologists (ICE) is an association of believers who come together to explore just that. They are helping put together the second Global Consultation on Music and Missions (GCoMM 2006), which will be held on the campus of Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA on July 12-15, 2006.
At GCoMM 2006 you will have the opportunity to worship and fellowship with like-minded people from ministries around the world. Plenary sessions, seminars, and panels will explore topics related to music and the arts, missions, and indigenous worship world-wide.
For more details, go to GCoMM 2006.
The web site for ICE also contains articles, book reviews, training opportunities, and more – a great resource for the musician you know who is sensing God’s call.
Book Questions ‘My Rights’
From: Student Mission Resource Newsletter – April 28, 2004
Do you want to “claim your rights” to a comfortable life, or are you willing to serve God if he should call you into something different? As Robin Wells says in this book, My Rights? My God?, it may be into something “far more satisfying.”
This book is a searching read, and it doesn’t shrink from talking of suffering or the idea of sacrifice. It has an audio CD with it – including tracks from John Stott, George Verwer, Paul Borthwick, and Patrick Johnstone.
The book covers a range of practical issues and is very readable. It also has a list of useful web sites at the back.
Littleton, Colorado: OMF International. Order here.
Questions? Problems? Submissions? Contact publisher/managing editor Marti Smith.