Lenexa, Kansas, United States - Engage Magazine "A global mission magazine of the Globa Church of the Nazarene for Thursday, 5 June 2014 Issue #79

Lenexa, Kansas, United States - Engage Magazine "A global mission magazine of the Globa Church of the Nazarene for Thursday, 5 June 2014 Issue #79
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God heals after typhoon disaster in Philippines by Brian Woolery
Editor's note: Brian and Julie Woolery are missionaries serving in Okinawa, Japan since 2010. Recently, Brian led a mission team from Japan to the Philippines to help with the disaster relief several months after Typhoon Yolanda destroyed the central section of the country. He wrote about the team's experience with the people they met in typhoon-devastated Balangiga, Philippines.
When the four of us flew into Tacloban it reminded me of how the Tohoku region of Japan looked after the tsunami. I didn’t know what to think or how to feel. There was just devastation everywhere. The district superintendent, Edgar Longcop, who was driving us the two hours further to our work site, said that this town did not have the destructive winds, but the storm surge had drowned many.
As we drove down the highway, every small community, already poor, looked like it had been hit with a hammer. The rain was falling, making everything more muddy. The landscape was covered by white tarps and tents from more aid agencies than I had ever heard of. The hillsides, once covered with thousands of coconut trees, held some long trunks with the tops snapped off, but it seemed most were blown down like match sticks.
We arrived into Balangiga and saw the church where we would be working. The entire structure, well built though old, had been destroyed, along with the nursery school and parsonage. The church members had painstakingly separated the destroyed materials into piles of lumber, metal rebar and crushed concrete. After beginning that day to rebuild a temporary wooden structure to give the church a place to meet, we went to stay in the home of a church member whose concrete house had not been destroyed.
I remember being surprised by the many young people who were in the church. They were there at the work site that day as our team tried not to get in the way and to be as much of a help as we could, without specific carpentry or construction skills. What struck me that day and the days after was their great joy and great optimism. They were always laughing, joking, smiling, half in English and half in their home language of Waray.
God has taught me through multiple mission trips that the "job" is not the reason you come to a place. It’s often a convenient purpose or reason. The "job" is the people you get to be with. This was a great blessing because there were more people than work, and we began to settle into a very different rhythm of working and talking as the frame of the structure slowly went up.
The youth always love to sing. There was a small tarp-covered area where they would bring out a guitar and worship. They love to worship Jesus. As we got to know them we found out that most of them had only come to have a relationship with Jesus in the past few years, but their faces were living illustrations of a change in their lives.
On the last day our team invited the youth over to the house where we were staying. Probably 35 to 40 people crammed into the small kitchen and living room. One of our team members had been invited to guide the group through a stress debriefing and invited them to talk about their stories surviving the typhoon. We wanted them to speak in their own language and share with those who had experienced the situation together. But I was surprised when a few of the youth found me and said, “We want to share the story of the typhoon with you.”
I sat for the next hour listening to the horror of that night. It struck hours before dawn, the winds rising to gale force and the storm surge from the ocean, a mere 100 feet away, flooding the property to their knees. The youth had been living in the church sanctuary recently and they recounted how the church literally was blown to pieces around them. They met the pastor and his family outside, the parsonage also blown down around them, and waited out the night in chest-deep water, with 180 mile-an-hour winds howling around them. I won’t forget the youth who said, “Jesus will not forget us, we will make it!”
At the end of our few days, the new church sanctuary had a frame and half of a roof. But our lives had been changed by Jesus and what He had done in the lives of those who would remain after we flew back to the comforts of home and Japan. I remember reflecting with God about the time. The people’s lives had been deeply traumatized, many still dealing with the after-effects of that night. The joy that Jesus gave, while not cancelling out the past, began to surpass it, re-shape it and redeem it. Their laughter, smiles and songs were not the triumph of the human spirit over and against adversity, but the gift of a loving a gracious God who saw them through that night, and was giving them a life, even greater than they had before, as they learned to live more deeply from His inexhaustible presence.
I remember watching the landscape grow small in the airplane window as we returned while I talked to God. What I saw in the lives of that church, of those youth, I hungered for. There was a joy, hope and love that went so far beyond the reality of their economic condition and the trauma of that disaster that I couldn’t grasp it. It only was because of Jesus and what He does in the lives of people who, in whatever the circumstances of the life they are living, learn to trust deeply in Him.
Thank you to the people who make up the Balangiga Nazarene Church, for your hospitality and for the ways Jesus met me through your lives. May my life also reflect the same to others! -- Reprinted with permission from the Woolerys' mission blog.
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Genesis' initiative in Mesoamerica takes church to the cities by Gina Grate Pottenger
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic -- Given just 200 pesos, which in the Dominican Republic is equivalent to about $5 USD, Daniela González Guerrero and six other missionary trainees purchased the bare cleaning necessities that money would buy, and began visiting homes in an impoverished area of Santo Domingo to clean residents’ bathrooms.
For González, entering the neighborhood was her first experience with culture shock. Growing up in Mexico, the 26-year-old said everyone complained about poverty, but nothing she’d seen in Mexico compared with the conditions in this area of Santo Domingo.
As she cleaned up dead leaves and debris on one family’s patio where their children were playing, she found herself stepping in human waste, which dirtied her clean shoes. She had no idea the family was using their patio as an outdoor bathroom.
“The people were just amazed that we were there to help them clean, so that provoked me to continue serving and it didn’t matter what was wrong with my shoes,” González said.
The cleaning activity was part of several weeks of missionary training prior to González’s group being sent 2 May to their two-year ministry assignment in Veracruz, Mexico.
González (photo above) is in the first cohort of as many as 112 planned missionaries who will be deployed to 28 selected sites across the Mesoamerica Region between now and 2020 in a region-wide church planting initiative called Genesis. The objective of Genesis is to push the Church of the Nazarene into metropolitan areas where the denomination – which mostly flourishes in rural areas on the region – has little or no presence.
Going to the cities
The strategy for Genesis is based on the premise that the Church of the Nazarene denomination has a lower-than-desired presence into major metropolitan areas of Mesoamerica. Elevent percent of all members of the Nazarene denomination in Mesoamerica reside in major metropolitan areas, while 24 percent of the overall population lives in major metro areas, according to statistics provided by Nazarene Research Center.
Missionary Emily Armstrong, who, with her husband Scott (photo right), is coordinating Genesis, cites information from the World Health Organization (WHO) that by 2050 more than 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities (http://www.who.int/topics/urban_health/en/). This phenomenon of people moving en masse from rural areas into metropolitan areas is called urbanization, and is widely considered a global trend in the 21st century.
Through Genesis, regional leaders hope to establish the denomination’s presence in 24 carefully selected cities, along with four islands in the Caribbean where the work of the Church of the Nazarene has not yet been started. The sites have been selected through collaboration and planning between regional, field and district leaders.
Nine of the 28 sites will be in major Mexican cities. Mexico has an edge with Genesis, having spent 10 years developing its own missionaries in short-term mission projects such as Project Paul, 4 by 4 and Maximum Mission, as well as consistently hosting cross-cultural orientation events for training short-term missionaries.
“Over 90 percent of the (Mexican) population lives in cities of over 200,000 inhabitants,” said María Eugenia “Maru” Rodríguez, the coordinator for Global Mission in the North Field of Mexico. She says the largest percentage of population in the Mesoamerica Region is located in the North Field of Mexico.
“And in the majority of urban cities in Mexico considered in the Genesis project, the church has not been very effective.”
In the urban areas of the North Field of Mexico, the Nazarene church has a number of house fellowships that Rodríguez believes could be officially organized into official churches with the support of Genesis missionaries.
The North Field’s objectives with Genesis include developing local churches to become mother churches that plant daughter churches; providing opportunities for those who are called to missions to receive theological education; helping local churches to become sending churches; uniting urban churches in working together missionally; developing leaders; discipling every believer to be missional.
Mexico and the Dominican Republic have received the first two teams of missionaries, with the other sites to follow between now and 2020.
Led by the young

Leadership plans to carry out the initiative by harnessing the enthusiasm and availability of the many young people on the region who have caught a vision for the Great Commission – a new generation of young people growing up learning that God is calling them to go as missionaries themselves, not just to receive missionaries from North America, as previous generations have often believed.
“In Mesoamerica we have a rich history in many of our countries that the church was started by missionary presence,” Armstrong said. “Our people, especially young people, are now responding and obeying God and His call to us all to practice the Great Commission.”
The young people will be deployed to the 28 sites in teams of four to six over the next six years.
The volunteer missionaries are raising their own support through giving from their local churches and districts, as well as creative fundraising efforts of their own. González used seed money given by one district to make T-shirts which she has been selling to raise funds. The youth group in the home church of Freya Galindo’s, another missionary from Mexico, is organizing a series of 5K runs to raise money for her.
As local churches and districts are rallying behind their home-grown missionaries, the vision for Genesis is spreading through the grassroots.
Changing ways of evangelism
And Genesis may gradually change Mesoamericans’ understanding of evangelism. For instance, González and her fellow missionary trainees were challenged that evangelism should be more than simply walking around cities and parks talking to strangers with the EvangeCube or bracelets with the salvation colors. Evangelism needs to be more than going door-to-door with tracts, asking if they can share the gospel, Armstrong said.
These methods are popular tools of evangelism in Mesoamerica, where Nazarenes are accustomed to confronting strangers with the message of salvation and seeing conversions as a result. In metropolitan contexts, the gospel must be lived out, addressing issues of justice, socio-economic challenges or the desperate needs created by poverty, unemployment, alcohol and drug addiction or broken families.
Cleaning someone’s home is an act of service that can touch a stranger with God’s love just as effectively as walking up and showing the person an EvangeCube, González learned.
Armstrong said the training they are providing to their new missionaries will attempt to consciously shift them toward more relational and service-oriented ways of doing evangelism and church planting.
“The ultimate goal is for our missionaries and churches to be change agents in a culture that is known many times for extreme poverty, broken families, gang violence and addictions,” Armstrong said. “All strategies will be unique to each site, but each will include evangelism through various methods, intentional discipleship of new converts, and leadership training in order to develop new Nazarene congregations that are making a difference in their community.”
Genesis will integrate into its strategy every denominational ministry on the region, from Nazarene Youth International (NYI) and Nazarene Compassionate Ministries (NCM) to Nazarene Missions International (NMI).
For instance, it is mostly members of NYI who are going out as missionaries to the selected sites, while NMI will be working to promote Genesis in local churches and help to identify other potential missionaries, as well as mobilize local churches to support the initiative. Theological education will also be integrated into the work, as new pastors are raised up in the new church plants, and will need to be trained.
Challenges
Genesis faces a few challenges in becoming effectively adopted and integrated across the region, said Erika Chavez, a Genesis planner from Costa Rica who herself is a product of missionary development, having served in the region’s 12:7 Serve six-month youth missionary program in 2012.
First, some churches in Mesoamerica may have a very traditional mindset that was shaped by trends in the church 40 years ago, she said. They may see church as what happens inside the church building, and expect nonbelievers to take the initiative come to them, or to come to an event held in the building. They may need to grow in a more outward focus, rather than inward.
Language differences are also a challenge, as French, Spanish, English, Dutch and Creole are all spoken in the Mesoamerica Region.
Third, the local churches in Mesoamerica will need to reorient themselves as sending, not only receiving, missionaries.
“We also are facing the big challenge in the support, financially especially. Our region for years has been receiving … from other regions or the U.S.. and we are trying to change that mindset – that we can give and we can support someone and we can keep them for two years on the field,” Chavez said.
So far, the young missionaries have managed to excite their congregations, who have committed regular prayer support as well as financial help to get them to the field and keep them there for two years.
The third and fourth teams will go through training and be ready to deploy in October this year. The Genesis team is recruiting more missionaries for 2015 and 2016. Candidates don’t have to come only from the Mesoamerica Region – the invitation is to people with a missionary call hailing from anywhere in the world.
Chavez knows from her own missionary experience that these teams are in for big changes through their two-year experience.
“They will change deeply. They will change their hearts. When they will come back, they won’t be able to be the same people. They will want to change the town or community where they are from.”
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La iniciativa 'Génesis' en Mesoamérica lleva la iglesia a las ciudades by Gina Grate Pottenger
Santo Domingo, República Dominicana -- Con tan sólo 200 pesos, lo cual en la República Dominicana es el equivalente a 5 dólares americanos, Daniela González Guerrero y otros seis misioneros en entrenamiento compraron los artículos de limpieza básicos que les fue posible recolectar y comenzaron a visitar hogares dentro de un área marginada de Santo Domingo para limpiar los baños de sus residentes.
Para González, el ingreso al vecindario fue su primer experiencia de choque cultural. Habiendo crecido en México, la muchacha de 26 años cuenta que todos allí se quejaban acerca de la pobreza, pero nada de lo que había visto en México se comparaba a las condiciones que pudo observar en esta área de Santo Domingo.
Mientras que limpiaba la ojarasca y escombros del patio donde los niños jugaban, ella se encontró pisando despojos humanos y ensuciándose los zapatos. Ella no tenía idea de que la familia estaba utilizando su patio como baño externo.
“La gente estaba sorprendida de que nosotros los ayudáramos a limpiar, así que eso me animó a continuar sirviendo sin preocuparme por mis zapatos,” dijo González.
Las actividades de limpieza fueron parte de un entrenamiento misionero de varias semanas, en preparación para el viaje del grupo de González el día 2 de mayo a Veracruz, México, donde llevarán a cabo una asignatura misionera de dos años.
González se encuentra en el primer grupo de unos 112 misioneros que serán enviados a 28 sitios seleccionados a través de la Región Mesoamérica entre ahora y 2020, como parte de una iniciativa de plantamiento de iglesias denominada "Génesis." El objetivo de Génesis es el de hacer avanzar a la Iglesia del Nazareno dentro de áreas metropolitanas donde la denominación (la cual es fuerte en zonas rurales) no tiene gran representación.
Yendo a las ciudades
La estrategia de Génesis se basa en la premisa de que la Iglesia del Nazareno es una denominación con una presencia menos que deseada dentro de las áreas metropolitanas de Mesoamérica. La membresía nazarena equivale a menos de la mitad de la población, a una razón de 11% de miembros respecto a 24% de la población de las áreas metropolitanas más grandes, según estadísticas provistas por el Centro de Investigación Nazareno.
La misionera Emily Armstrong, quien junto con su esposo, Scott, coordina las actividades de Génesis, cita información obtenida mediante la Organización Mundial de la Salud, la cual indica que para el año 2050 más de 70 por ciento de la población mundial vivirá en ciudades (http://www.who.int/topics/urban_health/en/). Este fenómeno en el que las personas se movilizan en masa desde zonas rurales hacia áreas metropolitanas es conocido como urbanización, y se lo considera una tendencia mundial del Siglo XXI.
A través de Génesis, los líderes regionals esperan poder establecer la presencia de la denominación en 24 ciudades cuidadosamente seleccionadas, así como también en cuatro islas del Caribe, donde la tarea de la Iglesia del Nazareno aún no ha sido iniciada. Los sitios han sido seleccionados mediante la colaboración y la planificación conjunta de líderes regionales, locales, y distritales.

Nueve de los 28 sitios serán en grandes ciudades mexicanas. México tiene una ventaja con Génesis, habiendo invertido 10 años en el desarrollo de sus propios misioneros en proyectos misioneros de corto plazo tales como el Proyecto Pablo, 4 por 4, y Misión Máxima, así como también realizando eventos de orientación intercultural para la capacitación de misioneros a corto plazo en forma consistente.
“Más del 90 por ciento de la población mexicana vive en ciudades de más de 200.000 habitantes” dijo María Eugenia “Maru” Rodríguez, la coordinadora de Misiones Mundiales para el Campo Norte de México. Ella dice que el mayor porcentaje de la población de la Región Mesoamérica se encuentra en el Campo Norte de México.
“Y en la mayoría de las localidades urbanas de México consideradas dentro del proyecto Génesis, la iglesia aún no ha sido muy efectiva”.
En las zonas urbanas del Campo Norte de México, la iglesia nazarena tiene varias comunidades de fe que se reúnen en casas, las cuales Rodríguez cree que pueden ser organizadas como iglesias oficiales con el apoyo de los misioneros de Génesis.
Los objetivos del Campo Norte junto a Génesis incluyen el desarrollo de iglesias locales para convertirse en iglesias madre que se dediquen a plantar iglesias hijas; el proveer oportunitades para quienes sientan el llamado a las misiones y que así reciban educación teológica; el ayudar a iglesias locales para que se conviertan en iglesias enviadoras de misioneros; el unir a las iglesias urbanas para trabajar juntas en forma misional; el desarrollo de líderes; y el discipulado de cada creyente para ser misional.
México y la República Dominicana han recibido los dos primeros grupos de misioneros, mientras que los otros sitios los recibirán entre ahora y el año 2020.
Liderados por los jóvenes
El liderazgo tiene planificado llevar a cabo la iniciativa mediante el entusiasmo y la disponibilidad de muchos jóvenes de la región, quienes se han apropiado de la visión de la Gran Comisión. Se trata de una nueva generación de jóvenes que crecen entendiendo que Dios los está llamando para ir como misioneros, no tan sólo a recibir misioneros de Norteamérica como la generación de sus padres frecuentemente creía.
“En Mesoamérica tenemos una rica historia en muchos de nuestros países donde la iglesia fue iniciada mediante la presencia misionera,” dijo Armstrong. “Nuestra gente, especialmente nuestros jóvenes, están respondiendo y obedeciendo a Dios y Su llamado a que practiquemos la Gran Comisión.”
Los jóvenes serán enviados a los 28 sitios en equipos de cuatro a seis durante los próximos seis años.
Los misioneros voluntarios están recaudando sus propios fondos de apoyo mediante las ofrendas de sus propias iglesias locales y distritos, así como creando eventos de recaudación por su propia iniciativa. González utilizó el dinero otorgado por un distrito para fabricar camisetas, las cuales están siendo vendidas para recaudar fondos. El grupo de jóvenes de la iglesia de Freya Galindo, otra misionera de México, está organizando una serie de corridas de 5K para recaudar fondos para ella.
Gracias al apoyo ofrecido por las iglesias y los distritos locales a sus misioneros, la visión de Génesis se está esparciendo como movimiento de raíz.
Cambiando la forma de evangelizar
Génesis podría cambiar gradualmente el entendimiento de los mesoamericanos en lo referente al evangelismo. Por ejemplo, González y sus compañeros en entrenamiento misionero fueron desafiados a ver el evangelismo como algo más que el caminar a través de ciudades y parques hablando con extraños utilizando el EvangeCubo o con brazaletes de colores de salvación. "El evangelismo debe ser más que el ir de puerta en puerta con panfletos y pidiendo permiso para compartir el evangelio," dijo Armstrong.
Estos métodos son herramientas de evangelismo populares en Mesoamérica, donde los nazarenos están acostumbrados a confrontar a extraños con el mensaje de salvación y teniendo conversiones como resultado. En contextos metropolitanos, el evangelio debe ser vivido diariamente, prestando atención a asuntos de justicia, a los desafíos socio-económicos, o las necesidades desesperantes creadas por la pobreza, el desempleo, el alcohol, y la droga, así como los hogares rotos.
"El limpiar el hogar de una persona es un acto de servicio que puede tocar a un extraño con el amor de Dios de una manera tan efectiva como el acercarse para mostrarle un EvangeCubo," dijo González.
Armstrong dijo que el entrenamiento que están proveyendo a sus nuevos misioneros apuntará a llevarlos a un movimiento consciente hacia actividades de evangelismo y plantamiento de iglesias de una manera más relacional y orientada al servicio.
“El objetivo final es que nuestros misioneros y nuestras iglesias se conviertan en agentes de cambio en una cultura que es a menudo caracterizada por la pobreza extrema, hogares rotos, violencia de pandillas, y adicciones,” dijo Armstrong. “Todas las estrategias serán únicas de cada sitio, pero cada una incluirá el evangelismo mediante varios métodos, el discipulado intencional de nuevos conversos, y el entrenamiento para liderazgo requerido para desarrollar nuevas congregaciones nazarenas que marquen una diferencia en sus comunidades.”
Génesis integrará cada ministerio denominacional de la región dentro de su estrategia, desde Juventud Nazarena Internacional (JNI) y el Ministerio Nazareno de Compasión (MNC), hasta Misiones Nazarenas Internacionales (MNI).
Por ejemplo, una gran mayoría de miembros de JNI están yendo como misioneros a los sitios seleccionados, mientras que MNI trabajará para promover Génesis en iglesias locales y para ayudar a identificar a otros potenciales misioneros, así para como movilizar a las iglesias locales al apoyar la iniciativa. La educación teológica también será incorporada al trabajo, ya que al surgir nuevos pastores junto a las nuevas iglesias habrá una necesidad de que reciban capacitación.
Desafíos
"La iniciativa Génesis se enfrenta a algunos desafíos para ser efectivamente adoptada e incorporada a través de la región," dijo Erika Chavez, planificadora de Génesis de Costa Rica, quien es a su vez producto del desarrollo misionero, habiendo servido en la región durante el programa juvenil misionero de seis meses, Servir 12:7, en 2012.
Primero que nada, algunas iglesias en Mesoamérica tienen una mentalidad muy tradicional que ha sido formada por las tendencias de la iglesia hace 40 años. Estas personas quizás vean a la iglesia en términos de lo que ocurre dentro del edificio, y esperan que los no creyentes vengan a ellos mediante su propia iniciativa, o que concurran a un evento dentro del edificio. Quizás necesiten crecer en un enfoque hacia afuera, en lugar de mirar hacia adentro.
Las diferencias de lenguaje también son un desafío, ya que dentro de la Región Mesoamérica se habla en francés, español, inglés, holandés, y criollo.
En tercer lugar, las iglesias locales de Mesoamérica tendrán que reorientarse como enviadoras de misioneros, no tan solo como recibidoras de ellos.
“También estamos enfrentando el gran desafío de ofrecer apoyo, especialmente en forma financiera. Durante años nuestra región ha recibido (...) tanto de otras regiones como de los Estados Unidos, y estamos tratando de cambiar esa mentalidad; estamos tratando de comunicar que podemos dar y apoyar a alguien y que podemos mantenerlos en el campo durante dos años.”
Hasta ahora, los misioneros jóvenes han podido entusiasmar a sus congregaciones, quienes se han comprometido a apoyar regularmente tanto en oración como en forma financiera para enviarlos al campo y para mantenerlos allí durante dos años.
El tercer y el cuarto equipo recibirán capacitación y estarán listos para ser enviados en octubre de este año. El equipo Génesis está reclutando más misioneros para el 2015 y 2016. Los candidatos no tienen por qué venir exclusivamente de la Región Mesoamérica; la invitación es para todos aquellos que tengan un llamado a las misiones, sin importar dónde se encuentren en el mundo.
Chavez sabe por su propia experiencia misionera que estos equipos se enfrentarán a grandes cambios durante su experiencia de dos años.
“Ellos cambiarán profundamente. Cambiarán sus corazones. Cuando regresen, ellos no podrán ser las mismas personas. Ellos querrán cambiar el pueblo o la comunidad en la que viven.”
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Q&A: Genesis missionary rallies her church by Gina Grate Pottenger
Freya Galindo, from Veracruz, Mexico, is among the first cohort of missionaries in the Mesoamerica Region's Genesis initiative to be deployed to one of 28 selected sites to begin planting churches. Galindo will be serving for the next two years in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Her many responsibilities will include creating preaching points that will eventually mature into organized churches in the Nazarene denomination. She will also develop local leaders to lead the new churches.
Engage: How did you become a Christian?
Galindo: Since I grew up in a Christian family, I made the decision when I was 13. It was during vacation Bible school. I always feel really special ... to minister to kids because when I was a child, people impacted my life in a really special way.
Engage: How did you sense God calling you to be a missionary?
Galindo: I was going to start school in a different place, not Jalapa, but my parents didn’t have the money to do that, so I was really frustrated. So I had to stay in Jalapa, which is a good university, but it’s not the one I really wanted to study at. I started the college in August, but the next February some of my friends from church, they were going [to a cross-cultural orientation offered by Mesoamerica Region's mobilization team] and they were saying it’s going to be fun, it’s a camp, let’s go. I didn’t want to go but I had the money. During the last service they made the call and it was the perfect time for God to speak to me. I was praying and I stopped and said OK I’m gonna do it.
Engage: How did you prepare to obey this calling?
Galindo: I’ve been involved more in district activities in all of the missionary opportunities in my district as well as other districts in Mexico because I had a lot of doubts if this is really what I was supposed to be doing, so I wanted to try it out as much as possible. Usually in my local church I would be involved more in administrative tasks and finances, but I know this is what I need to be doing right now.
Engage: Do you have any stories of how God enabled you to raise all the financial support to become a missionary?
Galindo: My family that’s not even Christian are supporting me for this. Recently the youth in my church organized a 5K run and it was my dad’s idea but the youth took the idea and organized the entire event. The weather did not cooperate that day but everyone had a lot of fun and that created a lot of awareness. They’re moving forward to doing it two more times. I was the Nazarene Youth International president before I came, so they’re still supporting me even though I’m here. I was selling these types of bags -- drawstring backpack type of things; they still have that inventory and they’re still continuing to sell for me while I’m here.
Engage: Has your church done anything like this before?
Galindo: No, this is the first time. It’s special for them because I grew up there, so everybody knows me. They are really happy for it. Yesterday during the prayer service they were in the middle with my mom; they started praying for her and it was really special because they have been doing this when I was there but when I’m not there they are praying for my family. They are really taking care of them.
Engage: Why do you want to be part of Genesis?
Galindo: When I heard about Genesis ... I knew I wanted to be involved in it. I started to get involved with the Veracruz committee so I started to plan that site. It didn’t matter how I participated, I just knew I wanted to participate. The district superintendent wanted persons who are involved in missions. Since I was every time participating in these kind of projects, he asked me to participate. We helped with the budgets and developing objectives for the team. I’m going to ... Santo Domingo. It’s special because my district is a site for Genesis, but at the same time they are sending a missionary. It’s a big deal.
Engage: What do you think of the Genesis project?
Galindo: I think it’s a huge initiative and it’s got a lot of challenges to it, but I think we’re going to meet those challenges because we’ve already been working In missions and a process of missions as a region for so long.
Engage: How do you feel about being part of this big initiative?
Galindo: I still don’t really believe; I’m still putting it all together in my mind.
Engage: What are you learning in the training so far?
Galindo: I think it’s been really good. God has actually been answering my prayers. I was really nervous and scared because I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. At the same time it’s confirmed God will be with us. And it doesn’t matter how many challenges we have that we believe are impossible. This is what He wants and this is what He’s called us to. I just want to say my parents and my brother have supported me, so even though it’s my call, it’s also been their call, as well. It feels as though it is something we are doing together as a family.
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Shadow riders cycle for children in South Asia by Gina Grate Pottenger
Rod Ruger, Ted Diehr and many others may be riding in the shadow of cyclist David Argabright (photo left), but their efforts to help him raise funds for child development centers in South Asia means they’re far from being left in the dust.
Through a cross-U.S. bike ride every spring, and tireless year-round promotional efforts, David Argabright’s fundraising organization, Compassion575, has raised $645,000 to build and fund 36 new child development centers (CDCs) in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal since he started the organization in 2008. One hundred percent of all donations go directly to Nazarene Compassionate Ministries (NCM), which is responsible for the CDCs.
In CDCs, underprivileged children receive an education, health care and nutrition, spiritual and social training, and emotional support. In addition, their families and communities are transformed through a variety of awareness-raising and income-generating measures.
A primary way Argabright has raised awareness for Compassion575 has been through his bike rides, which have ranged from 575 miles to more than 3,000 miles.
Argabright has not done all of this alone. There is a small but growing grassroots movement of people who call themselves “shadow riders,” which means they shadow Argabright in their own riding to promote the work in South Asia as well.
The informal group doesn’t rigidly track members or miles or funds raised. They just urge people to get involved in God’s work in the lives of underprivileged children in South Asia through the work of Nazarene local churches that partner with NCM.
Rod Ruger (photo left), who attends both Mesa Church of the Nazarene, in Arizona, and Beaverton Nazarene Church, in Oregon, because he spends part of the year in each location, proposed the idea of a shadow riders group to Argabright in 2012, after Argabright had already done four cross-country rides. It was Ruger’s first time to ride part of the way with Argabright to support him.
Ruger, who is 69, had first gotten interested in cycling after he underwent cardiac rehabilitation and lost some weight. His physical therapists, who had put him on a stationary bike for training, said he should also consider riding on the road. He enjoyed it so much he began riding long distances regularly.
He wrote up a shadow riders proposal for Argabright, who readily agreed with the idea. Argabright shared the idea on his organization’s website.
Ruger led the way, adding up 3,300 miles over the course of the year. He wore a sign that said “Riding for Compassion575.com” which attracted attention and questions, giving him the chance to promote Compassion575.
“A lot of friendly people I’ve become acquainted with while riding, after a while say ‘What is that?’ and I’ll tell them about the ministry. And many times they’ll give me cash or a check and say, ‘This is for the Bangladesh ministry.’ I’d like to get to the point where people will subscribe a nickel or dime per mile. Mostly it’s a one-time gift of $20 or $50 and one couple gave $200. We’re just getting the word out.”
In 2013, Ruger rode 4,320 miles. A friend of his in Washington decided to start shadow riding for Compassion575, and so did another friend in Oregon. Soon he and Argabright heard of others who were riding in their own communities for Compassion575.
By September 2012, 17 Nazarenes in Gelnhausen, Germany, joined the cause with a shadow ride of their own.
Ruger has been invited to share about the shadow riders at Nazarene Mission International conventions and district assemblies in Oregon and California.
Ted Diehr, who attends Houston Living Word Church of the Nazarene, in Texas, has been supporting Argabright’s annual ride, as well as riding one day with him each year since 2009. Diehr was inspired to get involved after he’d traveled on a Work & Witness trip to Sri Lanka in 2008 and seen for himself how a CDC was transforming not just the children who attended, but their entire families and village.
“I see the passion that Dave (photo left) and [his wife] Sharon have for the children and the great eternal reward that I know reaching children will bring. That’s what’s prompted me to stay involved and to support both financially and in terms of riding,” Diehr said.
Diehr promotes the shadow riders and Compassion575, helping to raise thousands of dollars by urging friends, family members and coworkers to make pledges together totaling a minimum of $5,000, which his employer matches if they reach that goal.
Ruger, Diehr and Argabright hope the shadow riders movement continues to grow. Argabright this spring completed yet another cross-country ride, this time racking up 1,320 miles from Del Rio, Texas, to Nashville, Tennessee, in an attempt to recruit sponsors. It costs $132 to sponsor a child in a CDC for one year.
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Doing mission well: Mobilization by Howard Culbertson
Some missionary heroes of the past are notable for more than their cross-cultural ministry.  They have also been good mobilizers of the church back home.
Sadly, I have heard missionaries grumble about having to speak in lots of mission services in churches.  In my opinion, they were thinking far too narrowly about their missions call. World evangelism mobilization should be seen as part and parcel of a missionary call.  Indeed, in the long run, mobilizing the church at home contributes greatly to Great Commission fulfillment.
Indeed, people call William Carey (1761-1834) “the father of the modern missionary movement” in part because he was a terrific mobilizer as well as a pioneer missionary to India.
In its early decades the Church of the Nazarene was blessed with an effective global missions mobilizer in Susan Norris Fitkin.  Growing up in Canada, Susan felt that God wanted her to be a foreign missionary.  However, serious health issues prevented that (For more: http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/fitkin.htm). 
Rather than turning her attention elsewhere, Susan spent the rest of her life fulfilling that call by mobilizing others.  She infused global passion into her church and mobilized intercessory prayer and resources for world evangelism.
In 1908, Susan’s small denomination merged with two others to form the Church of the Nazarene.  She was disappointed when the new denomination failed to set up a missions mobilization organization such as today’s Nazarene Missions International (NMI).  However, Susan worked behind the scenes for seven years until it happened (and she, by the way, was elected first president of that organization).
Over the 30 years in which Susan Fitkin led what is now NMI, she traveled to mission fields around the globe.  While she reported to the North American church about those visits, her most powerful appeals for world evangelism involvement were grounded in Scripture.
Susan was convinced that ALL of Scripture communicates God’s desire for world evangelism. In her little booklet Holiness and Missions, she quoted 29 of the Bible’s 66 books.  Susan Fitkin could preach on world evangelism from Isaiah and Jeremiah just as powerfully as she could from the Great Commission in Matthew 28 (Read booklet: http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/holiness.htm).
As a volunteer global missions mobilizer for more than four decades, Susan Fitkin may well be the person most responsible for the world missions component of today’s Nazarene ethos.
Susan got the denomination to publish a print magazine that was the forerunner of Engage.  Using a phrase from John 10:16, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen,” she titled that magazine The Other Sheep.  She was also a key player in launching what is now the World Evangelism Fund, which is the funding that operates the Church of the Nazarene and its entire mission effort.  Through the Great Depression, Susan Fitkin kept Nazarenes motivated to give to and pray for world evangelism.
Susan Norris Fitkin stands as an example of how people called to be missionaries can be used by the Holy Spirit to fuel passion for world evangelism involvement in one’s own homeland.
Talk about it
Susan Fitkin felt a call to be a missionary, but health problems prevented her from living out her dream. How did she respond?
Have you experienced something similar? How did you respond?
How is mobilizing people part of participating in the Great Commission?
Although she was not a missionary, Susan tirelessly led the entire church to fulfill the Great Commission. How could you or your local church participate in God's mission to the world, even if you don't move to a foreign country to serve as a missionary?
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