AGORA Newsletter

We were all challenged by the importance of radical discipleship as a lifestyle from which we must teach and mentor a younger generation. The perception is that Evangelicals in Latin America have grown in number but not always in maturity and influence in the surrounding society. The mission movements has grown although, but there is much more potential in churches for and even stronger involvement in world missions.

The week was full of fellowship, new friendships, challenges from God and reaffirmation of the commitment to serve His kingdom through the Ibero-American mission movement.  Jose Luis Ramirez of Mexico was elected the seventh president of COMIBAM.   He will provide leadership for the movement together with the Executive Director Decio de Carvalho for the next three years.

The strategic plan of COMIBAM includes concrete actions that will promote deeper commitment by God’s people in Ibero America and will support that commitment by walking together with the very diverse missional initiatives.

As part of the Silver Jubilee of COMIBAM several of the former leaders were present. Here the new elected president (to the left) together with five of the six former presidents of COMIBAM.

As Latin American evangelicals continue to become effective in missionary outreach, the realities in which COMIBAM does its work have also changed.  At its General Assembly this week, COMIBAM announced initiatives that continue to mark it as a pioneer in a new phase of global missions based on south-south partnerships.

Victor Ibagon de Colombia, outgoing President of COMIBAM, opened the assembly by challenging participants to listen to God together to understand the future of the movement.

The daily themes were

• Together in the Word
• Together in Prayer
• Together in Fellowship
• Together in the Task.

Each theme was applied to the administrative challenges of COMIBAM. I had the privilege to share about the Centrality of the Word of God in the first evening.

Victor Ibagon spoke about Prayer in the morning session of the second day.

In his Presidential report, Victor Ibagón described recent changes in COMIBAM,  In the past, COMIBAM saw its primary task to be challenging national movements to become mission minded. These efforts have been largely successful.  In each country of Latin America there is now a national movement with sufficient maturity to develop their own plans.

The new focus is on mobilization toward unreached people groups.  And it is this new focus that has led COMIBAM to turn to partnerships with non-Western initiatives.   COMIBAM announced plans to participate in the Ethne to Ethne Network.  COMIBAM has also worked out a co-operation with MANI in Africa.

We look forward to hearing from you about how the MC can encourage even more of these kinds south-south connections.

The Mission Commission is about relationships more than anything else.

From time to time we convene global opportunities for people to meet, focusing on fellowship, mutual sharing and strategic reflection.

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The MC recognizes the value of adapting our communications style to take advantage of new tools that are available to us.   Technology is changing the way people around the world relate to each other and changing the rules of communication and cooperation.
That is why our internal communication with MC Associates will be through this new  Agora Newsletter reborn as a blog.  This blog is the first step in a journey for the MC to be more intentional, constant and flexible in our communication. Compare it with the old Agora Newsletters, if you want. We will find new ways to make the bulletin Agora more frequent and interactive.  MCA’s will get e-mail alerts whenever new content is posted on Agora.

We have decided to stop producing the magazine Connections.  There is a treasure of excellent thinking about the missionary task in past issues of Connections.  We are making sure that they will be available to you soon in a more useful format. This is just the beginning of rethinking and re-designing our communication strategy.

The current Mission Commission websites are being closed and redirected to the WEA/MC page.  From now on you can find us by going to www.worldevangelicals.org.  Look under “What we do” and there you will find the Mission Commission.  There is still some updating to do on that page.  It would have been done by now, except for the weather damage in New York City.   The electricity is still off at the WEA office as it was affected by Hurricane Sandy.  Please pray for WEA staff and their families.  And, if you want updates, you can look at Geoff Tunnicliff’s Twitter feed.

But most of your news will be right here at agoraweamc.com 

Our desire is also that communication in the MC will be multi-directional.  Eventually there will be a place where who are connected with the MC can post their own messages and participate in a global dialogue regarding missional issues. More information about that will be available in a near future.

This is where MCA’s (Mission Commission Associates) can keep up with the news of the MC, as I see it.  From now on, this blog will take the place of the Agora Newsletter

The Mission Commission envisions the proactive, synergetic, enabling of the global mission community to fully live, proclaim and extend to all peoples the transforming message of the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus through the power of the Spirit.

Bertil Ekstrom