February 2007

AGORA WEA MISSION COMMISSION WORLD FORUM

Agora is the Greek word for market place, forum, where people gathered for dialogue, discussions, sharing information or just for being together (Acts 17.17). The Mission Commission staff is launching a monthly newsletter, called Agora , directed primarily to the MC Associates but also sent to other mission leaders and available on the MC web page. Agora is an open forum for the MC Associates, MC Task Forces and Networks as a complement to the magazine Connections . Brief texts and news for publication in Agora can be sent to our office in Brazil:bekstrom@worldevangelical.org

NEW BYLAWS

The Global Leadership Council of the Mission Commission has approved the New Bylaws of the MC. Changes have been made particularly in the definition of the six categories that form the MC constituency and their representation in the GLC. The new Bylaws have also a clearer description of the function of the GLC, the Executive Committee and the Executive Director. For the complete text, please click here. 

NEW DOCKING DOCUMENT

A second document approved by the GLC is the new “Docking” document with a more elaborated text on the premises for the co-operation between the Mission Commission and International Missional Networks desiring to link to the MC. Several such Networks are in the process of formalizing their partnership with the MC. The full text of this document can be read by clicking here.

THE GRANADA COVENANT OF BEST PERSONAL AND MINISTRY PRACTICE

Of major concern for the MC leadership has been the need for a document that affirms Good Practice for local, regional and international mission leaders. All those who would like to commit to its affirmations can sign the covenant and around 20 leaders have already done so. The signing can be done through an email to the Executive Director, at: bekstrom@worldevangelical.org . 

The background to the document was that in 1993, following some deeply troubling cases of high profile, public leadership failure within WEA, William D. Taylor was charged with the task of leading an internal team to craft a core document that became known as the 1994 Singapore Covenant.  Many months of research and correspondence including a study of the seminal Billy Graham Team “Modesto Manifesto” of 1948, articulating a commitment to ethical and ministry guidelines and the consultation of other leaders from various nations and types of ministries who had faced thorny discipline cases of staff members were used to obtain sufficient insight. The 1994 WEA statement went through some eight drafts until a full agreement on the wording of the Covenant was reached.

Signed publicly by the staff present at the 1994 Singapore International Leadership Council meeting, those present felt the hand of God upon them to commit to the spirit and letter of what became ‘The Singapore Covenant’.

The Mission Commission leadership has taken the core of the Singapore Covenant and made adaptations.  We submit this code to the MC Global Leadership Council and to you as MCA as a robust document to spur us as MC leaders to integrity and to holiness, to faithfulness to our marital vows, to full financial transparency, to personal and corporate transformational discipleship, to serious mutual accountability, and to the honourable treatment of each other as created in the image of God.  The degree to which we fall short may determine whether we ought to continue in ministry, and as Associate of the WEA Mission Commission.

Following you find the complete text of the modified Singapore Covenant:

Affirmations of the Mission Commission Global Leadership Council created for the MC Associate community.

In dependence upon the Holy Spirit, fully identified with the vision, purpose and values of the Mission Commission; in sincere inter-dependent partnership with each other as vital members of the global missional family, we the worldwide community known as Mission Commission Associates affirm these commitments before the Triune God

1. We commit ourselves to personal purity.  We affirm the need for vital personal growth in Christ, of transparency before God and our colleagues.  Integrity and holiness must mark our personal walk with God.  These are intimate matters, but at the same time we can and must submit them to scrutiny by loving and honest colleagues.  We will establish a personal team of 3-5 fellow servants who are authorized to call us to authentic accountability in our private, family and public worlds.
When necessary we will submit to and support transforming repentance, forgiveness, discipline and restoration.

2. We commit ourselves to the spiritual disciplines of transformational discipleship.  We confess that as Christian leaders we have given too little time to prayer, the Word, to fasting and meditation, to worship and deeper reflection.  We ask God’s forgiveness for this inconsistency.  We in Mission Commission leadership desire that our ministry be marked by personal integrity and godliness, and not only by competency, strategic thinking, quality research and effective programs.  We pledge to help, encourage and challenge each other by sharing valuable sources, counsel, articles and books that have impacted us directly, by praying for each other and by informing each other that we do so pray. We commit to read some of the challenging and even difficult books on spiritual formation that have been produced by women and men of God over the centuries who know what they speak of.

3. We commit ourselves to our family.  We affirm that parents and/or spouse and children are our priority ministry responsibility.  May our ministry, especially if it requires extensive travel, not be carried out at their expense, producing bitterness and alienation from family and/or faith, but rather resulting in love and respect.  We will seek to maintain a balance between family and outside ministry. 

4. We commit to invite the intervening and convicting Spirit of God into our interior landscape.  He must examine us, our weaknesses and addictions in ministry, some of which we list: abuse of our position and authority, unjust treatment of fellow-workers, excessive travel, weakness in personal morality and temptation, attraction to Internet pornography, gender confusion, struggles with faithfulness to the spirit as well as the law of our marriage vows.

We shall submit our travel schedules to our spouses as well as our accountability team.  We will not accept any invitation unless at least 48 hours have gone by.  We are fully aware of the subtle craving for extended ministry travel. The price already paid by some of our friends and colleagues is all too clear. 
When needed, we ask the Spirit of God, and our sisters and brothers, to expose this addiction and help us recover from it.

5. We commit ourselves to a local church.   We will seek opportunities for witness and service according to our gifts and time.  We will model in our local churches what we in the broader World Evangelical Alliance community desire to see built in the worldwide Body of Christ.  We desire to see vital missional churches who truly impact their community and from that base spiral out to the world.

6. We commit ourselves to financial integrity.  We accept our responsibility as stewards of God’s resources. We will reveal our funding proposals, and open our personal financial records to trusted colleagues for their critique.  Competent accounting firms who can examine our finances will evaluate our corporate financial books, and courageous colleagues who can evaluate our motives and processes as we raise, account for and utilize funds.

7. We commit ourselves to respect Christian organizations and leaders and honest communication.  We seek to build up the Body of Christ!  We confess that too easily we fall to the temptation to belittle other colleagues and ministries.  We wish to be characterized as a movement that genuinely affirms other leaders and the ministries they serve.  Where there is error, however, we will speak the truth in love. We will report stories and statistics accurately, without embellishment.  We shall give credit to sources as well as individuals and organizations involved and not take credit for that which we have not accomplished.

We affirm these seven commitments as a personal and corporate covenant of best ministry practice, exemplifying the Apostle’s charge: “You yourselves are our witnesses—and so is God—that we were pure and honest and faultless toward all of you believers”.
I Thessalonians 2:10

To be signed by the Mission Commission staff, Global Leadership Council, and all Mission Commission Associates, as one way of demonstrating our commitment to the vision, purposes and values of the Mission Commission. 

The signing began in Granada, Spain, November 2006.

THOUSANDS ATTEND THE COMIBAM 2006 CONGRESS IN GRANADA – PRESS RELEASE

“Results and Challenges among the Unreached” was the theme of the Third Iberoamerican Missionary Congress that took place in the historic Andalucian city of Granada, Spain on November 13-17, 2006. The congress was summoned and organized by Comibam International.
An attendance of approximately 2000 participants from 37 countries represented in national delegations, alongside almost 300 Latin missionaries brought from their fields of service interacted for four days to analyze and evaluate the last two decades of work that the Iberoamerican church has been carrying out among the people groups of the world that have not had a clear opportunity to hear the gospel message.

During the inaugural meeting, the mayor of the city, José Torres Hurtado, gave a warm welcome to all those present, as well as representatives of the evangelical church in Spain and Granada. The executive secretary of the Federation of Evangelical Entities in Spain (Ferede), Mariano Blázquez, expressed his greetings as a representative of the evangelical people of Spain, and Pastor Miguel Fernández did the same in representation of the pastors of the churches of the hosting city.
In his inaugural speech, the outgoing president, David D. Ruiz M., expressed, “because of the serious nature of the missionary endeavor, it is time to examine how our missionaries have done their work. It is imperative that the movement write a missiology that, while firmly based on Scripture, will allow us to reflect the best way to work on the field.”
It is estimated that there are close to 10 thousand Iberoamerican missionaries in the world, sent by a great variety of agencies and local churches. Many have suffered due to the lack of preparation and adequate support and the inherent difficulties that are part of the work, as was clearly shown through the field research results that were presented during the congress by the person in who led the research, Dr. Levi DeCarvalho: “In spite of the fact that the majority of those interviewed expressed the lack of the minimum resources to accomplish their ministries, all of them remain firm in their calling. If there is something praise worthy in our Iberoamerican missionaries is it their sacrificial spirit to do the work that the Lord has entrusted in their hands”.
Due to its format the event stood out from others. The program was designed in such a way that there was enough time for all the participants to hear and personally dialogue with the invited missionaries, either through the discussion tables set up in the dining room, or in the forums  in different rooms, or the panel discussions that took place on stage of the main auditorium. The well known Latin-American missiologist, Samuel Escobar, who led one of these panels expressed, “one of the important components of the program was what we could call “critical reflection of the practice of missions”, which took up a good part of four mornings” and he concluded by saying “the congress has been an enriching experience and it has provided a vision of hope by giving us a glimpse of the great thrust of the missionary movement of the evangelical churches of Latin America. The feeling of celebration, without a sense of overconfidence, was very comforting.”
The executive director, Jesus Londoño, from Colombia, said: “Holding a congress with a perspective from the field combined with a work and evaluative format has been a great contribution to the Iberoamerican missionary movement. We believe that our future work can take place if we are capable of analyzing and evaluating moments of growth and strength like the ones we are currently living”

In his final message during the closing ceremony, Carlos Scott from Argentina, the incoming president of COMIBAM International, highlighted the risks and challenges that the missionary work faces: “We need a real understanding of the unity of the people of God, a greater participation in the global missionary movement by making ourselves participants of the universal church, sharing in the global challenges with a complete integration and a search for cooperative models as well as understanding missions as a process and not a project.”
Carlos Madrigal from Spain, who took the initiative that led to the first legally registered evangelical church in Turkey, expressed at the end of the event: “we express our deep gratitude for having invited us and for the effort made and we are convinced much fruit will be harvested as a more efficient and responsible work in missions is done by the Iberoamerican movement”.
During the International Assembly (triennial) that took place during the congress the new board was elected and it consists of the following: Carlos Scott, President; Jesús Londoño, Executive Director; and regional directors: Jasón Carlisle: Hispanics of North America; Luis Martí: Central America; Víctor Ibagón: Andean countries; Rubén Suárez: Spanish speaking area of the Caribbean; Marcos Agripino: Brazil; Daniel Bianchi: southern region of South America; the regions of Mexico and the Iberian Peninsula  remained under the leadership of the interim directors Juan C. Gómez and Enrique Montenegro until the end of their terms at the beginning of 2007.
It is fitting to remember that the first congress took place in Sao Paulo, in 1987, under the presidency of Luis Bush, the second in Acapulco, Mexico ten years later, when Rudy Girón handed the presidency over to Bertil Ekström who is the current executive director of the Mission Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA).
During the next two years Comibam International will continue the process of investigation and analysis already in effect, focusing during this stage on senders and receivers in the mission field.
Federico A. Bertuzzi
Department of Publication

ARTICLES IN THE LAUSANNE ONLINE MAGAZINE

Lausanne produces a monthly online magazine called Lausanne World Pulse and the Naomi A. Frizzell, Director of Communications of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization is asking for articles for the Lausanne World Pulse. She is interested in receiving articles on any of the following topics:

 

- April: Contextualizing the Gospel, deadline 1 March 2007
- May: Evangelism and Discipleship, deadline 1 March 2007
- June: International Communication and the Gospel, deadline 1 April 2007
- July: Education and Training for Missions and Evangelism, deadline 1 April 2007
- August: Reaching Families for Christ, deadline 1 July 2007
- September: Unto the Least of These – ministering to the poor and
disenfranchised, deadline 1 June 2007
- October: Reconciliation and Evangelism, deadline 1 July 2007
- November: HIV/AIDS and Holistic Evangelism, 1 August 2007
- December: Evangelism and Worship, 1 October 2007

Articles should be 1200-1800 words and should be submitted in English.  Articles may also be sent in the native language of the author (both versions will be posted online).  We would particularly be interested in receiving articles from non-western leaders. The articles should be sent to:  naomi@lausanne.org

WEA MISSION COMMISSION PUBLICATIONS PROGRAM

Over the last twenty years, the MC has generated a substantive number of publications that address global issues of the worldwide mission movement.  It is ”niche market” but we know that we are addressing and meeting grass-roots-felt needs.  Over the last 14 years, Dr. Jonathan Lewis has coordinated our publications program, and his keen insight into the process needed to produce books and manuals is unique.  Other writers have asked us to produce their books, and we simply cannot take on more than we are able to.  But in light of these requests we have developed the following standards, which establish a “road map” for our publications,

Guidelines for the WEA Mission Commission Publications Program:

  1. The MC publishes research-based, practical training tools that are highly collaborative in their production.
  2. We do “issues” based on international and global studies, with preference going to products that emerge from task forces or networks.
  3. Most of our books are edited, with the task shared between Global South and North editors.
  4. We prefer to publish books that reflect our commitment to our global constituency—both in writers and readers.
  5. We have also done practical books by an MC Associate (David Harley’s adaptation of a very valuable missionary training work). In these cases, the publications emerge from the values and vision of an established MC task force or network.
  6. When considering a publication, we work seriously to discern the clear need for the book, its readership, the publisher, the pre-print promotion program, distribution and sales.
  7. Volunteers do most NC publications with no expected remuneration to authors or editors.
  8. We invest financially in books that guarantee our ability to recoup our production costs primarily through the pre-print volume sales.
  9. Decisions to ‘green-light’ a book are made by the MC Executive Director in consultation with staff.

THE EVANGELICAL TRAINING DATABASE

By God’s grace the Evangelical Training Database is now open world-wide for free registration by all evangelical training providers – Bible Colleges, missionary training organizations, and non-formal training programmes – at www.trainforChrist.org. Many training providers have already registered and posted details of their courses and all those who have not yet done so are keenly invited to participate. The database is fully accessible in English and Spanish, and translations into other key languages are underway.

This international project is a response to the need for prospective trainees, churches and others to know what training is available in their area. Geoff Tunnicliffe, CEO of the WEA has kindly said, "We certainly want to find ways of seamlessly integrating this into our WEA web presence". Dr. Chris Wright, Chair of the Lausanne Theology Working Group and International Ministries Director of the Langham Partnership is also backing the project. Several member bodies of the International Commission for Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE) as well as Trainers of Pastors International Coalition (TOPIC) are cooperating in this endeavor.

Training institutions fill in the details of their courses directly onto the site and can update their entries as needed through a password. The database is free for anyone to search and free to post information on courses, though donations are welcome. The system will display only training institutions that have been validated for authenticity as an evangelical body. To help in the process of validation and in order to appear on links from evangelical alliances and other evangelical bodies, training bodies are invited to indicate the evangelical associations of which they are members when they register.

Please pray for this initiative, that it will enable all Christians to find out what training is available and so be better prepared for service. Thank you. 

Ian Benson, Coordinator of The Evangelical Training Database and The Missionary Training Service

 

TENTMAKERS INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER

Tentmakers International (TI), one of the MC docked networks, produces a monthly newsletter with important information about opportunities for service in different parts of the world and events related to missionary “tentmaking”.

For a sample of the last newsletter and the possibility to subscribe please follow this link.

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Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him – to the only wise God be glory for ever through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Romans 16: 25-27)