Missions Catalyst 12.14.11 – Practical Mobilization

In This Issue: Missions Catalyst Christmas Lists

• LIST #1: Gifts That Just Might Mobilize
• LIST #2: Gifts for Mobilizers
• CONCLUSION: Your Ideas?
• SUBVERSIVE MOBILIZATION: Prayer Virus

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!

Greetings!

This is one of my favorite editions of the year. Not only because it provides me a chance to dream about what I’d get you if I had a million dollars, but it also gives us all a chance to lighten up and think about how we might pass on some of the helpful blessings God has poured into our lives.

As usual, this year we’ll have two lists: One consisting of gifts you might give a normal person with the intention of furthering (maybe jumpstarting?) their concern for the world. The second is made up of gifts I think might bless, help, intrigue, or enable the mobilizer in your life. If you begin to sense it’s a list of things I personally would like to see under the Bennett Christmas tree, you’re not far off! Enjoy.

Cheers,

Shane

LIST #1: Gifts That Just Might Mobilize

Note: Please consider “Will the recipient like this?” a higher value than “Will it mobilize?” If it is not first liked, it will not mobilize. It may, in fact, unmobilize. This may preclude giving someone the artful display of desiccated marine specimens you were given by the unreached sea-coastal tribe your mission team visited over summer break.

1. Perspectives Gift Certificate

Hundreds of Perspectives on the World Christian Movement courses will start up this coming year, and many begin in mid-January. Was your world rocked by Perspectives? Want to give that experience to a friend? Give this gift certificate, then connect your friend with the coordinator of the class in their area. (Gift tip: Go along to the first class. They’ll appreciate it.)

Are there other mobilizing experiences you could pay for, for a good friend?

2. “I Gave a Gift in Your Name” Gifts

Although I wouldn’t recommend these gifts for a seven-year-old – or someone likely to act like a seven-year-old – we have numerous opportunities to give a gift in a friend’s name to someone truly in need. So instead of giving Aunt Madge a box of candy, you give someone in Nepal a goat (Food for the Hungry calls it a “four-legged poverty-reducing machine”!). It could be that everyone wins in this scenario, depending on how hip your Aunt Madge is (relative to her fondness for candy).

Here is a – let me say it loudly – NONEXHAUSTIVE list of giving opportunities.

Oxfam: I know very little about Oxfam, so do your research. They make this list because I appreciate cheekiness and totally loved the ad I saw in the Seattle/Tacoma airport.

Gospel for Asia: Our buds at GFA give you a chance to choose a category for your gift. You can purchase a gift “from the stable” (that goat for Aunt Madge?), gifts for the poor, gifts of outreach, and gifts for missionaries.

Campus Crusade for Christ: Here’s a way to give Bibles to believers in the Middle East and Africa.

Wycliffe has a cool selection of projects you can give to; check out their video. (I totally love Wycliffe; if I were about four times smarter than I am, I might just try to join them!)

Finally, Forafriend allows you to give the gift of investing in a cross-cultural worker. Suppose you have a friend who prays for Cyprus, and another who is interested in medical missions. Pick a worker who matches their interests and give a practical gift to them in your friend’s name. The worker gets the gift, your friend gets the appreciation, and you helped make it happen.

3. Books

A kind Missions Catalyst reader recommends “two superb books that I have recently read: Heidi Baker’s Compelled by Love and Lilias Trotter’s Parables of the Cross.” (Note: As of this writing, the Kindle version is free!)

TransWorld Radio’s Global Development Liaison, Barbara Shantz, recommends Acton Institute “and its myriad of books, workshops, and studies that model whole-life stewardship by combining economics, theology, justice, and sometimes politics. For the business person on your Christmas list, check out Lester DeKoster’s Work: The Meaning of Your Life. It’s only US$6.00 but packs a thought-provoking read.”

Perhaps the best mobilization book south of the Bible is Operation World by Jason Mandryk and his team. You might also want to check out OW father Patrick Johnstone’s brand-new book, The Future of the Global Church.

What else should go on this list?

LIST #2: Gifts for Mobilizers

Let’s face it: Mobilizers, people who get joy in sharing their passion for God’s global purposes, are a strange lot. Some of us are even strange to the rest of us! That means a mobilizer friend might be the one thrilled to receive your artful display of desiccated marine specimens from the unreached sea-coastal tribe your mission team visited over summer break!

1. Soccer Ball

What is more global than soccer? (Yes, I know, everyone but Americans calls it football.) Buy your mobilizer bud a ball and teach her to kick a bit. This could open some doors. If your mobilizer’s going overseas for a trip in the next few months, think about buying a dozen to send along. They could open a bunch of doors!

2. Vlogging Gear

Video blogging, like regular typed-out blogging, is often limited by the fact that the blogger has nothing to say. The vlog can be saved if the vlogger has some cool visual or audio skill, like he can make a noise that will drive your dog crazy or she can put her entire fist into her mouth.

But let’s say your mobilizer friend actually has something to say (and we all think we do, don’t we?). Video may be the way to go. One of my sharp kids pointed out the Vlogbrothers, who have more than 600,000 people subscribed to their vlog channel on YouTube. Wow! That’s more than 100 times as many subscribers as Missions Catalyst has! (We’re thankful for each and every one of you.)

Back to your mobilizer bud: Buy them a cheapish camera, a nice-ish mic, and a little instruction in how to use them and edit the results. They’ll feel hip and edgy, and they just might get some helpful stuff out to the rest of us.

3. Poetry: The Cheapest Gift on the List (and Possibly Most Enduring)

When was the last time you wrote a poem for someone? Maybe it was in sixth grade when an epic ode to love spilled off your pen in adoration of a young beauty. Or maybe you never have. Well, now’s the time to emulate the Dutch and compose Christmas verse for a mobilizer friend (or your beloved!). Since some of the oddest collections of words pass for poetry these days, don’t worry: you’ll do fine. Remember, “mobilize” rhymes nicely with both “globalize” and “terrorize”!

4. Weight Loss Help

How do I put this gingerly? Some of us would do well to carry around, well, less of us. Perhaps you’d help your mobilizer bud by giving them a membership at a local gym. Maybe a pair of running shoes or a vegetarian cookbook. Or maybe load up a flash drive with obesity PSAs! (In which case, maybe you’d want to be wearing the running shoes!)

5. Full Funding

On a more serious note, if your mobilizer bud raises personal support for her ministry, she’d be rather pleased if her Christmas present from you was a card promising to fill in her support up to 100%. If that’s a little dear, what about one of these options:

Buy her a copy of Myles Wilson’s book Funding the Family Business. Barbara from TWR says, “It’s the best advice I’ve seen for raising personal support – that is, from a fund development person’s viewpoint. It has to be ordered from the UK … soon to be in time for Christmas.”

Pay for him to attend Kingdom Come Training or Steve Shadrach’s Personal Support Raising Boot Camp.

If the problem is on the outflow end of the equation, maybe you’d bless them by signing them up for a walk through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University.

CONCLUSION: Your Ideas?

You surely have more to add to these lists. Please help the rest of us out by logging your great ideas in the comments on our website. If you’d like some of these gifts to drift your way, forward this email to a friend (in the guise of sharing ministry tips!). For more Christmas ideas, check out our 2010 Christmas list edition or the ones from 2009 and 2008.

As we ponder how to bless the ones we love, may God give us grace to keep in mind the brilliant, elemental ways in which we’ve been blessed. May our hearts ring in resonance with Simeon, “My eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2: 30-32).

Merry, merry Christmas to you.

SUBVERSIVE MOBILIZATION: Prayer Virus

It’s long been my conviction that we fail to pray for the world not because we think it’s a bad idea, but because we don’t remember. Most of us are so wrapped up in the things right around us that we tend to overlook the rest of the whole wide world. Which, as it turns out, is rather in need of prayer.

I like to think about what will help people remember to pray.  One of the coolest ideas I’ve thought up, er, I mean, heard of, has been called the Luke 10:2 prayer virus. Here’s the idea in a nutshell (which is really all it takes, being a simple idea and all). Set a repeating alarm on your phone (or watch?!) for 10:02 a.m. Call it “laborers” or something. When the alarm goes off each morning (I have mine turned off for Sunday morning), pray what Jesus said to pray in Luke 10:2: “Father, send out workers into your harvest.” That’s it. No biggie, but a great daily reminder to join in with Jesus’ basic purposes.

Personally I can’t wait until, wherever I am on a given midmorning, 10 a.m. comes with a chorus of beeps, bongs, and bowed heads. If you want to be a part of this, set the alarm. If you want to join with others, pass the idea along and “like” this page on Facebook.

Shane Bennett has served in missions mobilization since 1987, much of his energy going to recruiting, training, and sending short-term teams. He’s been on research teams in Bangkok, Bombay, and Turkey. He coauthored Exploring the Land, a guide to researching unreached peoples, and has written numerous articles.

Shane now works as a public speaker for Frontiers and helps his church, Commonway, follow God to the nations. He and his wife, Ann, have five school-aged children. They live and work in Indiana.