When we talk about unreached people groups, we are not talking about unbelievers gathering at the local YMCA, High School or social clubs who don’t know Jesus.
When people from Ethnos360 talk about unreached language groups of people, we are talking about people who have zero access to a Bible. They have no Christians living among them. Nobody who knows the Good News knows their language.
We are talking about groups of people who, because of their geographic location, unique unwritten language, ethnic diversity, mysterious culture or tenaciously held religion are isolated from access to Christians. Most of those people will be born, live their entire lives and die without ever encountering an opportunity to know that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
These people will not hear the Good News until Christians intentionally train, equip, support, send, and sustain someone who will tell them.
While the needs are still very great, some churches have done that.
As I flew past villages in a particular mountain range, I would pray for the people there and ask God for someone to tell them about Jesus. Several years went by.
One day as we flew through those mountains a field leader, sitting in the co-pilot seat, was telling me about the intention to survey the people groups in those mountains with the possibility of placing some missionaries among them. I pointed out a few airstrips that could be used to get close. A short time later I returned to the USA for Home Assignment.
When I came back I was thrilled to learn that missionaries had moved in among several of the people groups.
One people group that we served lived high in the rugged mountains. The missionaries there were served by helicopters. My privilege was to support the helicopter flights in fixed-wing aircraft, delivering people and cargo to nearby airstrips.
Very early one morning, I planned a flight, gave the aircraft a preflight inspection, loaded the aircraft with cargo and flew to a nearby airstrip. That airstrip was a steep, grass & dirt runway carved out of a mountain on the side of a canyon.
The wheels chattered, complaining about the rough surface from soil erosion as I touched down and added power to climb to the top of the runway. The brakes collected some long strands of grass along the way, so, I cleaned out the grass from around the wheels and unloaded my thousand pounds of cargo a box or two at a time.
I placed the cargo close to where I expected the helicopter to land. The helicopter had landed several miles away where the missionary families lived who needed the groceries and supplies I had brought.
Several people from a village nearby came up to watch.
After I finished unloading, I walked over the aircraft and sat inside the rear cargo door to wait for the helicopter to arrive with a load of cargo for the return flight, and the people who would go with me.
The villagers gathered around me. I tried to engage them in small talk using the little bit of the common trade language we shared.
“Do you know about the big message that will be delivered in Mibu soon?” I asked.
“Yes it is big talk.” A middle-aged man answered.
“Have you heard this message?” I asked.
“No, we have no one to tell us the message.”
How heart-breaking, I thought. Here I have the greatest message in heaven and earth and I don’t know his language to tell it to him.
“Do you have someone who could learn our language and tell us?” He asked.
“No, no yet.” I responded. “I do not know how long it will before someone will come to tell you.”
“Do your people inter-marry with the Mibu people?” I asked.
“Yes.” He affirmed unconvincingly.
“Do you have anyone who could learn the message in the Mibu language and bring it to you?”
He wasn’t sure.
I suggested that his village could send someone to learn the message at Mibu and bring it back so that this village could hear.
I’m not sure he even understood my suggestion, but it was the best I could do.
Eventually, some of the people living in that area did hear the Gospel message. They did send someone to where the missionaries live, but without God’s written word in the language near the airstrip, it was very difficult to communicate the message.
Meanwhile, as the years passed, the people where the missionaries lived developed a desire to share their faith not only in their own language group but other language groups nearby.
One of the missionaries wrote: Please pray. The people of [edited] a neighboring language group, after having seen God radically transforming the lives of their neighbors [here], have been asking for the gospel for several years now! This is awesome to see! But sadly, finding families to go and live there is a challenge with so few workers available!
The church born where the missionaries still want to do something. However, they need a Bible translator. They wrote earlier this year:
“Dear brothers and sisters in God’s church in America,
We, the church in [missionaries’ village], send our greetings to you Christian believers. Through the work of Jesus Christ, God has caused us to become one family. It’s very true that there is a time in the future that we will meet each other face to face and be joyful. Right now we aren’t able to meet each other – we can only communicate via letter. Later God will cause us to meet and talk together.
We have come to understand this teaching that Jesus is the only road for us sinners to come to God, our Master. And so now we are joyful and thankful to God. He sent us missionaries to explain the Gospel to us so that we could be saved. It wasn’t as if we wrote a letter requesting missionaries to come. We were just going about our lives and God saved us.
And now we believe that God is going to do something similar in order to save the other people that He desires to take for Himself. Here there are many requests that come our way from the other languages in our area, wanting to hear the message. There are many different people sending messages requesting to hear the message. Young people, old people, disobedient people, even leaders of other religious groups. They are sending their requests, but we as limited people find it difficult to fulfill their request. Everything happens according to the plan of the Lord.
There are places that we’d like to bring the Gospel, but the task of Bible Translation is overwhelming. So we’re telling you about this concern in hopes that all of us can pray and strategize together and find a way to bring salvation to these groups.
That’s all! Thank you! And may God be with you all.”
Signed by representatives of the church
If you wanted to assist the church with their request, how would you begin to go about it?
Here are some ideas.
1. Pray. Pray that God would raise up someone who is willing to be a Bible translator who works with the churches there. Pray for churches to send laborers. Pray for open doors for the messengers to go. Pray for open hearts among the people who have not yet heard the message.
2. Impart vision. Find ways to communicate the Biblical basis for mission. Equip workers for going. Bring missionaries in to tell of what God is doing. Send groups from the church to events like Wayumi or Interface to learn more about what it takes to translate scripture and reach an unreached language group with the Gospel.
3. Bible Training. If you have someone who might go, do they have the Bible knowledge and spiritual maturity to plant a thriving church in a highly stressful environment across language, culture, and logistical barrier? If not, you mentor them in the church. You could send them to one of Ethnos360 Bible Institutes for practical Bible training. You could provide and guide ministries within the church where they could grow in faith through intentional discipleship.
4. Missionary Training. Learning from the experience of other missionaries could greatly improve prospects for success. Do they know how to learn an unwritten language, translate the scriptures and establish a thriving church across great barriers? Do they know how to feed themselves spiritually where there is no church? Do they know how to survive physically in a difficult environment? If not, you could send them for missionary training at Ethnos360’s Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Missouri.