Band Barnabas

Gus and Joy Lee are missionaries with Band Barnabas, a missionary sending organization created in response to a deficiency in the broad North American mission structure in recruiting, training, and strategically placing biculturals on the field, and a general lack of appreciation for some unique traits of biculturals that can be used in pioneering situation. Many current mission agency leaders see this as their weakness too, and have given them their full backing in order to broaden their organization.

They focus on what they term as the least-likely-to-be-reached people groups in Asia. These are the smaller, minority, politically/culturally invisible groups of people currently hidden from the attention of the evangelical church. They feel that the North American biculturals are uniquely fit for work in Asia among this type of people. They focus on pioneering work, which means that they work with groups that do not have any gospel witness, primarily focusing on the initial breakthrough, rather than on-going, established ministry.

Update, March 2004

All Band Barnabas members are going through the last installment of the three-part Catalyst training. Catalyst is a manuscript study of Luke/Acts/Pauline Epistles focusing on church/mission movement in the early days. One of our mentors and Director of Global Teams, has been helping us through this process, and we are developing this program as one of our foundational training modules. I would appreciate your prayers for a focused time together, and sensitivity to the leading of the Spirit. Please pray also for childcare for our younger children as all moms will also be going through this training together.

Praise God that we have our first official member as of last Friday. All current members are "transfers" from the U.S. Center for World Mission, but he is the first "outsider" who actually went through the application process.

For His Glory... Gus