“Film at 11…!”

TxGCI participant Pastor Campo Londono and his church, Iglesia Bautista Horeb in Houston, reach Arab Muslims in North Africa using their Hispanic heritage.

They are the subject of the featured clip on the IMB video site at http://www.imb.org/VideoLink/default.asp

P.E.A.C.E. Plan

Rick Warren and Saddleback's PEACE Plan Announcement
http://www.purposedriven.com/en-US/AboutUs/PDintheNews/Archives/25th_Celebration.htm

"The emphasis calls for church-based small groups to adopt villages where spiritual emptiness, selfish leadership, poverty, disease, and ignorance keep people from experiencing the kind of life God wants them to have, he said.
...
"Saddleback's network of 2,600 small groups is starting the movement as each one adopts a village where it will seek to implement the P.E.A.C.E. Plan. The congregation has been testing the plan over the past 18 months as 4,500 church members have been involved in pilot projects."

How to get involved with the PEACE Plan
http://www.purposedriven.com/en-US/PEACE/How_can_my_church_get_started.htm

Muslim Student Associations

"Whatever we do with other ethnics, we must be doing something with Islam. Islam will dominate America in 40-50 years." - Jim Slack, session one, 2/27/06



List of Muslim Student Associations in Texas
http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/muslim/org/MSAs.html#Texas

From “History” page at the Muslim Student Association’s national website. (http://www.msa-national.org/about/history.html)
“Muslim student organizations were popping up all over the country, mainly in the mid-west, and comprised largely of foreign graduate students bent on returning home after their studies. Many of them did. But a significant portion realized that they would still have the responsibilty of spreading Islam as students in North America. The main goal was always Da’wah (“invitation” or proselytizing).”

"The World is Flat"

Here are links to Thomas Friedman's speech to the governors that we saw at Camp Buckner.
video: mms://media.nga.org/AM2005/B-4-Friedman.wmv
audio only: mms://media.nga.org/AM2005/B-4-Friedman.wma

These are links to the 11 minute question and answer time that followed, which we did not see.
video: mms://media.nga.org/AM2005/B-5-QandA.wmv
audio only: mms://media.nga.org/AM2005/B-5-QandA.wma

"Orality" articles in current Christianity Today

Winning the Oral Majority
Mission agencies rethink outreach to the world's non-literate masses.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/003/30.56.html

"Seventy percent of the world's people today can't, don't, or won't read," says Avery Willis, executive director of the recently formed International Orality Network (ION), a partnership of 22 mission agencies including the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board (IMB), Youth With a Mission (YWAM), Trans World Radio, Campus Crusade for Christ, and Wycliffe Bible Translators.

while

"...nearly 90 percent of the world's Christian workers serve among auditory learners and often use inappropriate, literacy-based communication styles."

- AND -

Orality at Home
The language of postmodernism.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/003/31.58.html

"The storytelling around the campfire that we view as the practice of the ancients has been replaced by storytelling from the flickering light of the television screen," says Grant Lovejoy, the Southern Baptists' director of oral strategies.

International Migration to Texas Cities

Thanks, Tom, for the reference to www.frey-demographer.org. Just looking through some of the materials there I found these bits that refer to us in Texas:

• Texas had 1.4 million more foreign-born residents in 2000 that we did in 1990.
• From 95 to 2000, Harris County lost 114,892 residents to other places in the US, but gained 181,509 from international immigration.
• Similarly, Dallas County lost 89,724 "domestic migrants" but gained 137,081 international immigrants.
• The larger areas of the Dallas-Fort Worth CSMA and the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria CSMA, gained 231,494 and 214,268 immigrants from abroad respectively during that time.

I believe this is all pointing to the fact that there are more and more ethne coming to our cities.

Rapid Asian Growth in Texas

Tom Billings just pointed me toward this article in today's USA Today.

Sun Belt, Suburbs Get More Diverse
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-07-diversity-report_x.htm

Interesting quotes for Texas include:

"The influx of immigrants and people moving to the Sun Belt and Western mountain states from other parts of the USA is rearranging the ethnic tapestry of urban centers in an unprecedented way. "

Increase in Asian population from 2000-2004 (just four years!)
Austin-Round Rock, Texas 28.2%
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas 24.8%
These are the 7th and 10th fasting growing areas of Asian population in the country.

House Churches in TIME Magazine!

In this week's TIME Magazine (dated March 6, 2006)...

There's No Pulpit Like Home
Some Evangelicals are abandoning megachurches for minichurches--based in their own living rooms http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1167737,00.html

4/11/06: The article is now in the "archive" at:
http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1167737,00.html