Funding Our Work

A friend of mine said this the best in his most recent letter to their supporters:

I really do not like sending out urgent pleas for help – it is rather humbling.

But I am so committed to doing this work that God has called us to and we are all seeing such wonderful fruit that is giving glory of Jesus Christ that I am willing to ask for help.

First from God and next from all of you!

I know that humbling feeling.  I’ve been wrestling with God over it for a few weeks in my own prayer time.

As we step into July, our work here faces a shortfall in its monthly support, as well as short term project needs in the next 60 days.

The global economy affects our work, much as it may have affected you personally.

Praise the Lord for Sufficient Provision

We give glory to God for how He has supported us through his people and the work of EvangelismCoach.org since we first moved here 2 years ago July.   The work here has been sustained for nearly two years without pleas for urgent support.

We’ve seen

• Timely gifts,
• Hallway offerings
• Offerings at events
• Paid speaking engagements,
• Online Book sales (How to Welcome Church Visitors)
• Several supporters join our team monthly – without being asked.

We’ve seen the end of our bank accounts and timely last minute provision out of the blue to sustain us a few more months.  We can give story after story of last minute provision from surprise sources.

We can also promise you that living by faith this way is also very hard on the intestines – the body still feels the stress, even if the mind is at peace in trusting God.

So many of you believe in and support our work that has taken us into 4 different countries (with a 5th one coming this August) to give evangelism training in two different cultures.

As you have walked with us via our newsletter or intercessors list you’ve heard how we’ve seen

• People come to faith in Christ,
• Some healings, both physical and emotional
• Church members refreshed and encouraged to share their faith
• Several kairos moments of ministry where the Lord has used us to advance His kingdom

We can tell lots of stories.

Learning from Paul

When Paul went to Corinth, he worked alongside Aquila and Priscilla, making tents and doing ministry on the Sabbath. Once Silas and Timothy arrived, he was able to devote himself full time.

Paul didn’t start full time in his new city.  Instead, he had to establish his base of support, either from his business, or from another form of support.  In this case, I think he was able to grow his business to the point of handing it off to someone else to manage.

Paul had to be bi-vocational for a while, before being able to be full time in ministry.

This is the season we are in now – building support and building our business to the point of setting us free to minister full time here in Latin America.

The Reality of the Present

While we have seen sustaining provision to cover our immediate expenses, we’ve not yet had enough to set aside funds for future needs that we see coming.

We have some urgent project needs connected to us being here that we simply have no savings to cover.

We are asking God for provision and look forward to being able to tell stories of this provision.

We’re working at trying to use our business to generate revenue but the economic climate of the US has canceled all my speaking invitations at least through October.

What you can do

We need

• to expand our monthly support base and
• A generous outpouring of gifts in the next 60 days to meet some urgent needs connected to us being here.
• Invitations to do paid evangelism training in regional conferences.

Here is what you can do.

• Give thanks for all the gifts that God has already sent and pray for His blessing on all those who enable this work through prayer, participation and giving.
• Please pray that we will have wisdom to be good stewards of every penny and ask the Lord to move people to give.
• We need to pray in an average of 3,000 a month just to keep everything going.  5,000 a month would be ideal to help us save for August 2010 and not be in this situation again next year.  And every gift helps!
• So please pray for provision in the form of regular monthly small gifts! Each one makes a huge difference and we are so grateful for all those who already do give like this.  Your dollars go much farther here in terms of buying power for groceries and fresh fruits.

Here is how you can act

1.  Download and print our partner response form

You’ll need a PDF reader to view it.

Print it out and stick it with your devotional materials as a prayer reminder of what God might be calling you to do with us.

Whether you choose to donate or simply pray for us, still print this out.

You can print and distribute to mission committees and prayer groups.

2.  Donate.

• By Credit card: Automatic recurring contributions or make a special offering by visiting our support page.  I’ve put up a video screen cast to show you how.
• By Check: Mark your gift for the Mission to Americas.  Make check payable to PRMI and mail to PRMI, P.O.Box 429, Black Mountain NC 28711

We need people to join our monthly team as well as one time gifts.

Our desire

We long to see the church in the Americas equipped to do the work of evangelism.  We invite you to join with us as you are called and empowered by the Lord to do so.

Amazing Opportunities Before Us

Venezuela Ministry

We have amazing opportunities in our ministry to teach on evangelism and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Requests for evangelism and pastor training events have come from multiple nations: Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Panama and the United States.

Through our partnership with PRMI, we can assemble teams of trained teachers to help fulfill and respond to this international demand.

We can focus on regional and local leaders who can continue the vision of igniting the church in the power of the Holy Spirit to passionately reach their corner of the world.

One person shared with me: “I kept thinking of the question you posed to us in the workshop: What if discussing your faith was a normal, everyday thing?”

We know you desire to be effective in your own faith sharing and for your church to be effective in reaching its neighbors.

Imagine that desire multiplied by thousands of pastors in all 17 countries of Latin America, who want their churches passionate about God’s call to reach the nations.

Imagine church leaders that see evangelism as a normal everyday lifestyle and can train others to see it the same way.

But this dream is beyond the reach of ordinary means. The demand for training is beyond anything we can handle alone.

Our ministry needs to grow in funding and support staff to reach this goal. Most of our travel is paid for by the organization that invites us, but not all the time. At some events, we receive generous love offerings to further our vision, but other love offerings don’t cover our expenses.

We also rely on the ongoing regular support of God’s people to fulfill this dream.

We need your help.

1. We need intercessory prayer. People who pray for us regularly, at least weekly. This is a vision that can only be fulfilled prayerfully as we seek God’s direction for the growth of this ministry.  Join our Intercessors List if you feel led to pray for us regularly and consistently.
2. We need your financial support. Regular gifts of $10, $25, $100, and $500 a month through PRMI go a long way towards fulfilling this dream.  You can donate online now at Support our Work.  Automatic monthly contributions can be setup on your credit card.  Any gift will further advance our ministry.
3. Donate airline Miles.  We can use these to travel back to the US as needed for personal and family visits.

Pray for our Vision

Prayerfully consider how you might participate in our dream to train pastors and church leaders in Latin America. We know that times are tough in the US economy, but we believe that God can use you to further our calling.

We are excited about the opportunities in front of us and are grateful for your investment in this work.

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A Unique Training Niche for Brenda

Brenda has always loved creating craft ideas to help communicate parts of God’s story to others. 

As part of our ministry, she is often asked to teach Children’s ministry leaders about craft ideas for use in their Sunday school or outreach programs.  Brenda has lots of creativity, and the focus of her work is on using ordinary household items, such as cardboard, styrofoam trays, egg cartons and roll tubes from paper towels or toilet paper.

She hears comments like:

This is relevant for today.  
We need these ideas.  
Can we buy your book?

The demand for what she teaches produces large audiences at National Training conferences, and as word gets out that we are here, the phone is beginning to ring on a local level to come and give workshops locally.  It’s a labor of love and fueled by a desire to help others reach the next generation for Christ.

2008 Leadership Conference

At a camp in early 2008 for the National Children’s Leadership conference, Brenda had nearly 100 children’s workers gather around.  When she repeated that workshop in July, the crowd was even larger.  Our family helps at workshops like this.  For example, Brandon is helping her get supplies out of the box.

More and more people kept crowding around as she produced craft ideas to help communicate.

Children’s Drama Props

She recently provided props for a children’s ministry skit at our church.  Check these out:

The scale of the scissors is hard to comprehend, but these are about as long as an adult’s arm.  Total Cost: $0

Using cardboard and a bolt/nut from my tool box, she created the scissors.

Total cost: $0.  Using cardboard packaging, toilet paper, and borrowing a toilet paper spindle, she created a tape dispenser.  Even has little teeth on this to break the tape.  These props were used in a skit at the Palacio de los Niños (Brenda is not pictured).

In December and into January of 2009 in Volcan, Panama, she will continue to give workshops teaching others how to make such crafts from ordinary household items.  You can see photos of some of them at her Spanish Language Website: www.mismanualidades.org.  More crafts will be posted there.

To continue giving these workshops around the country, we need your help, particularly because we have to rent a car to get the teaching supplies to places.  Consider supporting Brenda’s work on a monthly basis so that we can continue to train children’s workers in this region.

Poverty in Panama and Calling the Church to Action

Panama is a country where, according to La Prensa (2 Nov 2008), almost 1,000,000 people live below the poverty line.  That’s approximately 33% of the nations population

About 385,000 of those do not have the earning power to even cover the basic human needs for food and shelter.  The reports point out that some earn less than $95 monthly, some under $64 a month.  8 out of 10 in the comarcas (where the tribes live) survive under $36.  Extreme poverty covers 80% of this regions population in 2007 (down from 89% in 2001).

According to the index of Global Competitiveness at the 2008 World Economic Forum, the education system in Panama is ranks 108 of 132 countries evaluated.  Sixth grade math scores were the worst in the Americas.

Implications

Poverty is not unique to Panama.  I’ve seen poverty in other central American countries. I’ve seen images in real life that have seared my soul with such pain that I can’t bear to see it again.  Images that have stayed with me and will not get buried in the recesses of memory.

So many problems come alongside poverty, as well as so many solutions. 

I’ve been reading Walking with the Poor, by Bryant L. Myers.  The book looks at principles and practices of transformational development.

The book explores poverty, causes of poverty, and calls the church to action in engaging broken systems that cause poverty.  He lays forth a strong case that poverty is a “deficit, entanglement, lack of access to social power, powerlessness, and the lack of freedom to grow” (Myers 81).

Poverty is a complicated issue that involves all areas of life — physical, personal, social, cultural, and spiritual.

I live and work in a country where poverty is more visible than the suburban America where I lived before.

The gospel is relevant to people such as these.  But what difference does evangelism make in their life?  Can it lift them out of their poverty?

This is the question that Myers seeks to get at in this book.

For example, he presents a simple chart about solutions to the cause of poverty (p.81).

View of Cause, Proposed response

Poor are sinners, Evangelism

Poor are sinned against, Social Action and justice

Poor lack knowledge, Education

Poor lack things, Relief / social welfare

Culture of the poor is flawed, Become like us / ours is better

Social system makes them poor, Change the system

Certainly poverty has many causes and many possible cures.  It is beyond the task of our family to challenge the system, but rather to focus on Evangelism and helping churches engage. 

Evangelism calls people to personal transformation — to step up into the purposes for which the individual has been created.

Evangelism calls people to societal transformation — to participate in the work of the Kingdom of God. 

The picture is not complete

Evangelism as traditionally practiced by many in Latin America (based on my observation on 10 countries) by itself is not a solution to poverty.  The focus is on salvation for a better life at in eternity.

Get saved and you’ll live forever.  Who wants that?  Everyone!  Life sucks for so many people in this region that a presentation of the sweet by and by is most appealing.

Yet what is missing is what I would call

1.  incorporation into a local church and

2.  obedient service to the world.

There is a vital component to helping people join a local community of faith.  The church can grow and become a vital part of the transforming the local community.  The church can nurture the faith of people and call more people to participate in the work of the God.

The second part  is obedient service to the world.  There is a calling to go back and seek to transform the world and culture, to be salt and light, to work for justice and fight for the oppressed.  The kingdom of God is not about you, but about advancing the reign of God into the world.

What’s your vision?

Organizations abound to serve the poor that do not have a kingdom vision.  Some want to extend their branding (think some Fortune 100 corporations).  Some want to give their profits away because they want to avoid paying taxes.  Some have altruistic motives to simply serve the poor, and based on their worldview, work at the appropriate solution.

Meyer’s book points that your worldview as to the cause of poverty will form your solution.  Mine clearly does.  The article in La Prensa cites that poverty is rooted in lack of education, and thus the solution is for the Government to improve the education system.

Ours

Part of our calling here in Latin America is to help the church get beyond the soul recruitment and to cast a vision that new believers and the church can engage the culture and transform it. 

I’m not talking about political control like the Religious Right’s strategy in the US. 

I’m talking about the church being involved in solutions for poverty, fighting for justice for the oppressed, and proclaiming the Good News.  The church can be the salt and light to to the world and needs to be.  By having a kingdom vision, the church can address the human needs.

The kingdom of God is such an awesome message that we give ourselves to it’s cause.  Think about how you can support us in our vision

Helping Others Forgive

Martha Tinoco - Vida Joven Staff

Vida Joven Leader Martha Tinoco (pictured standing right) wrote in a note to us after the event with them last year:

Thanks for sharing with us.  You are an example for my life.  I can see how [your team] works in unity, love, and respect.  I saw the presence of God in your lives, as great servants of God, with great gifts.  I don’t have enough words to express our thanks! – M Tinoco, Vida Joven, Matagalpa, Nicaragua, December 2007.

Leave Your Weapons at the Door:

Imagine proclaiming Christ among:

• Some of the poorest social conditions in Latin America.
• Poverty, gangs, crime, and lack of available food.
• Helping those victimized by wars, crime and abuse find faith in Christ.
• Sexual, physical, and verbal abuse.
• Broken family systems where one might have 18 – 25 half siblings.
• Living on a garbage landfill recycling scrap metals.

One club leader has a policy:

If you come to our bible study, leave your weapons at the door. 

Other leaders have already served time in jail for crimes they committed before finding Christ and now want to go back to their gangs and proclaim the gospel.

Vida Joven

Vida Joven has been ministering in this context for over 15 years in Nicaragua, proclaiming and demonstrating the love of Jesus. 

Each year in the mountains outside of Matagalpa Nicaragua, their leadership gathers for an intense week of training, encouragement, and refreshment.  Proclaiming the love of Jesus in such areas can be dangerous work: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  The camp gives the leadership opportunity to heal, forgive, and grow.

We have been on two trips to provide leadership training.  Two issues routinely come up:

1. How do the leaders find healing for the personal junk in their lives?
2. How can they minister to the broken who are coming to faith in Christ and want to find the healing of their own wounds?

Last Year’s Nicaragua Team

The Team with Omar

Last year, a leader said to me:

“It’s good to have a cry fest here and get things solved, but some of these healings have to go much deeper.  We simply don’t have the trained staff here to do it.”

I was with a team from PRMI (Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International) who went to Nicaragua.  You can read about that trip at Reflections from Nicaragua.

At both locations last year, we presented on worldview, who is the Holy Spirit, the four works of the Holy Spirit, how to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and then how to listen to the voice of God.  This material is the basis of Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International’s Ignite Project.  We had the teaching slides translated into Spanish, and had more material than we could cover in our limited time.

A New Team

Vida Joven Landscape

This January, another team from PRMI will be going to the Vida Joven Camp outside of Matagalpa to help address this need.

I will be part of this team.

We will use the basic material found in the healing Dunamis from PRMI that has made a countless impact around the world.

I look forward to meeting the leaders again and sharing with them tools that can help their evangelism.  It is our family’s desire to help these leaders grow more effective in their evangelistic calling by equipping them with some skills in trusting the Holy Spirit to bring the healing of Jesus.

Evangelism can be messy!

Ministering in a context like this can be really messy –

• abuse victims suddenly dealing with their issues,
• hearing stories of being gang raped,
• infected with veneral diseases,
• wounding from assaults,
• or filled with hatred because a sibling was killed in a gang.  

Very different ministry context than suburban north American culture where I have ministered for 11 years where people stress about their 401(k)s and the economy.

We’d like to offer help and training to the advanced leadership team so that they can be equipped in the power of the Holy Spirit to help in the healing work of Jesus in this local context.

How can you help?

1.  Prayer.  This is spiritually challenging work and we need significant prayer covering.  I’d like you to contact me to be put on the intercessors list for this event.  

2.  Finances.  Our team’s budget is $6000 and our team is raising the funds collectively through PRMI.  Most of this is for airfare, materials translation, and some in country expenses.  We need to raise it and count on the generosity of God’s people who believe our dream.

You can donate online to PRMI for this project specifically (which is different than our own support).  

Click – Donate Online Now.  

Mark Contributions to Latin American Missions.  You will have to create an account with PRMI before donating, or use the one you have.  

Donate Via Check?

Mark Latin American Missions, payable to PRMI,

Mail to PRMI

P.O.Box 429
Black Mountain NC 28711

Note: This project is different than our monthly support for our ministry.  Funds for will be used for team expenses which includes my airfare.  Any overages will be used for PRMI’s other Latin American callings and as seed money for future PRMI teams to Latin America.

Meditation on Romans 10

Romans 10:14-15b:

“How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?”

In this Romans passage, there are three groups of people: the unsaved, the senders and the goers.

Our family are the goers.  We know that we’ve been called to this part of the world.  It is our calling to work cross-culturally and help train Latin American churches in evangelism in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Our vision is clear

Our supporters, both our donors and our prayer warriors, are our senders.  You help us reach the churches and provide the training to reach the nations.  We are but one family.  We can’t reach the world.  However, with your support we can train up intelligent evangelists to reach the nations.

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Donate Miles and Help Us Visit Home

One way to support our ministry is to donate airline miles to help our family visit supporters and family in the US. 

A family of 4 tickets run between $2400 and $3000.  Occasionally, fare specials will run at just $800 for the whole family, but those are short lived buy now type programs that don’t always fit.   

We would use miles to make family trips to the US, or if needed, any emergency trips for things like funerals or health needs.

Our summer road trip last year was funded on miles, but they are not accumulating as fast as they used to . . .

We use Delta through Atlanta and American through Miami almost exclusively. 

Right now, Delta is running a bonus program for donating miles.  You can make your miles donation to us go further with bonus miles.  I’ve seen adds on Delta and in their newsletters for 25% 50% and even 100% mileage bonus to both you and us.  I’ve seen various percentages.

If you would like to help our travel and donate miles, please contact me directly to make arrangements.  I don’t want to put our numbers up on this site. . . .