Missions | Beyond

How Good It Is When the Church Obeys!

Sep 21, 2022 | Stories

One team of disciple-makers in Indonesia had been praying and pondering how they could send out more national workers to unreached areas. They already had ten couples who were eager and ready to go. Those couples even had work platforms once they arrived among the unreached people groups they wanted to focus on. The question was: “How do we pay for their move and get them set up in a new place?”

Help came in the form of a timely training on generosity, passed on to them by their mentors. They, in turn, shared it with the house churches under their care. Those disciples prayed, then responded in obedience. They began to give generously.

Together they raised two-thirds of the needed expenses. Then, when the original trainer heard about their faithful giving, he agreed to fund the remaining amount. All ten of the couples were soon among their unreached people groups.

After one year, the team leaders evaluated how things were going. They are happy to report that over 80 groups of believers — over 750 people — are meeting together to study God’s word. A few of those ten couples, along with their local teammates, have seen fruit to the fifth generation and beyond! That means new movements have been birthed among previously unreached areas!

How good it is when the church obeys 2 Timothy 2:2 by passing on godly training and the Good News of Jesus! “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrusted to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”

OBEDIENCE EVEN WHEN IT’S DARK
One night at a prayer event on campus, she heard about the C people. She heard God speak to her very clearly, “This is the group to whom I am calling you. read more …

OBEDIENCE SO GRANDMOTHER CAN HEAR
As *YouLin and *Amy greeted one another and sat down, YouLin said excitedly, “Thank God I’ve had the opportunity to spend more time with read more …

Who is Defining the Priorities of Our Church’s Mission Efforts?

Aug 22, 2022 | Longer Reads

by Stan Parks

If we seek to reach the world according to our own priorities then we are doomed to frustration and failure. The Lord desires obedience not sacrifice, so as disciples of Christ we must consider God’s priorities and shape our efforts to be in sync with His will. Based upon the Gospel message and the Commission of Jesus, I believe there are three priorities we should consider:

Missions was birthed in His heart because He is a missionary God reaching out to a lost humanity. The end of missions is the worship of God as is well shown in Revelation 7:9-10 “After this I looked, and there was an enormous crowd—no one could count all the people! They were from every race, tribe, nation, and language, and they stood in front of the throne and of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They called out in a loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who sits on the throne, and from the Lamb!” (GNB) In our efforts to obey God’s Commission to us, it is crucial that we prioritize God’s glory. We need to avoid pursuing human-sized goals with human-strength plans but earnestly and continually pray that the Holy Spirit will empower us to be vessels for God’s glory.

The goal of missions is to see the Body of Christ birthed and expanded within a people, tribe, nation, language and/or place. Ministry that does not see local churches birthed is often valuable, but until these church “communities of faith” are established and extended, the goal of missions has not been reached. However, this goal is not an end in itself, or the church becomes guilty of breaking the first commandment. The newly established church must be encouraged and taught that it is their mandate to reach out within their own group and beyond to the entire world. However, when we speak of growing the Body of Christ, we do not just mean numbers of converts and churches started.

We must ask God to grow the church not just in quantity but also in quality. It is not enough to start churches if those churches are selfish and powerless. The goal is Acts 2 churches being continually transformed by God and in turn serving God in devoting themselves to the Word and prayer and fellowship while sharing the good news, living sacrificially and transforming their own communities and nations.

Is it right that some hear the gospel twice when others have never heard it once? Or some hear it 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times, even 10,000 times when some have never heard it one single time? Evangelism is sharing the good news, while missions is sharing the good news where it is news. There can be no question that while we are called to many good efforts, our priority in world missions today must be those living beyond the gospel. God does not wish that “anyone should perish but that everybody would come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Approximately 30% of the world’s population has no access to the gospel and just as tragically 42.6% of the world’s population are members of “unreached” ethne – those without a culture-impacting indigenous church that is strong enough to reach its own people. 2 If reaching the world is the charge Jesus gave us as His disciples, then we cannot defend the vast sums of money and time spent on ourselves while we pray and go and spend so little to reach those most in need of the gospel. This is not to say that we should only focus on the unreached, because no church can be truly concerned about the unreached without being concerned about the lost around them. But as a worldwide church we find it much easier to prioritize ourselves and those around us at the expense of those with the greatest need for the gospel.

So if your church is seeking to obey Jesus’ mission commission by worshipping and glorifying Him in your words and deeds, a key priority should be helping reach out and start churches among unreached cities, nations, peoples and groups. That will in turn bring glory to God by their transformed lives and transforming service to their communities and their resulting efforts to bring the good news to other cities, nations, peoples and groups.

About the Author: Stan is a Church Planting Movements trainer and a coach for leaders of Church Planting Movements around the world. He has been serving Unreached People Groups since 1994 while based in Indonesia, Singapore and Dubai. He is Co-Facilitator of the 24:14 Coalition which is focused on Kingdom Movement engagements in every Unreached People and place by 2025.

When the Wheels Literally Came Off

Aug 12, 2022 | Stories

As Luke* drove back home after visiting a remote village high in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia, the front right wheel came off his vehicle.

While he was making repairs, the jack toppled, causing the vehicle to fall on him. Thankfully, a ministry partner was there and able to free him, but Luke suffered broken ribs, a broken back, and separated shoulder ligaments. He needed immediate medical attention, but the closest decent hospital was many days’ journey away.

After arduous hours of driving through the snow, they finally found a place to rest, at a location Luke had previously visited. He asked about Dache*, a man who used to work there, but people told Luke that Dache had moved away. So everyone was surprised when Dache arrived shortly after that!

“We started catching up right away,” Luke says. “I found out that we now live in the same city. Later, he asked, ‘Are you a Christian?’ When I answered that I am, he asked me to disciple him. I asked.‘If I disciple you, will you disciple others?’ He agreed that he would!”

After focusing for a time on physical recovery, Luke began discipling Dache. In their first few Bible studies, Dache discovered so much: that God created everything, that family was God’s creation, that suffering began with sin, and sin makes God sad. As a result, Dache has committed to following God’s word, loving his family, and sharing God’s story with others.

Dache is growing strong in faith and obedience. He and Luke currently meet three times each week for a Discovery Bible Study. He retells the Bible stories to his coworkers and relatives. Luke is hopeful that Dache will want to be baptized this summer, and prays Dache’s family will join him in baptism.

Out of Luke’s accident, God brought something wonderful! Pray that God will bring about a disciple-making movement in this region.

*pseudonym

The Night of Power and the Infidel

Apr 27, 2022 | Stories

The Night of Power, an especially holy night near the end of Ramadan (the Muslim month of fasting), had arrived for Rahmad.

His neighborhood mosque received many guest speakers on this auspicious night. As he waited for the next speaker, Rahmad wondered how his acts and prayers became exponentially more powerful on this one night.

Strangely, his mind wandered to a foreign man he’d recently met. Weren’t all foreigners — especially Westerners — considered infidels?

His mosque had instructed that infidels should never be allowed to enter the homes of the faithful. From his imam’s cautionary admonitions, Rahmad also understood that no teachings other than those from the Qur’an (or other Islamic sources) were valid. Yet, when speaking with this foreigner and his Indonesian friend, Rahmad observed a distinct difference between what he had been taught and what he had seen.

Rahmad remembered how the foreign man dared to broach an unthinkable topic: “Have you ever considered that God has revealed truths of His kingdom that He desires mankind to discover? I am praying that God will lead my friend and me to people who want to study the Taurat, Zabur, and Injil [roughly equivalent to the Torah (Pentateuch), the Psalms, and the New Testament] so they can know and understand God’s heart and His kingdom ways. Are you one of those people? Is your household searching for God’s path?”

Rahmad’s soul tingled with the memory. He and his family had been meeting with the men for the last few weeks. They had discovered powerful truths while studying prophets from the Old and New Testaments. Perhaps on this holy night, God would guide him with divine wisdom to the truth.

*pseudonym

Global Movement Dashboard

Apr 12, 2022 | Longer Reads

by Justin Long

For nearly a decade, I have gathered information on a new trend: rapidly multiplying church-planting (or disciple-making) movements. For the past five years in particular, I have condensed this information into a single “dashboard” presentation—sometimes delivered as email, and sometimes as a PowerPoint. The latest version was just released on the 24:14 Network’s website (under “Global Movement Statistics”) and the following is a summary of the findings I normally present when sharing in public.

Since the mid-1990s, we have witnessed the remarkable and explosive growth of disciple-making movements globally, with much of that growth happening in the past 10 years. From a very small handful of known movements in 1995, the number has grown to over 1,850 movements globally, encompassing over 99.9 million believers in 6.8 million churches (typically small, house-church type gatherings). This means over 1% of the world’s total population are Christ-followers in rapidly growing movements!

These numbers are the tip of the iceberg—or, as I frequently say in presentations, the “floor” and not the “ceiling.” Certainly, the numbers are higher than this. These movements can be found in every UN region, though their largest numbers are in Africa and parts of Asia (mostly Southern Asia). Movements have spread broadly, touching each of the Affinity Blocks identified by Joshua Project and over 222 of the 271 People Group Clusters. Growth is especially significant in the world’s least-reached places.

Movements are touching every religious block, growing markedly among Muslim and Hindu peoples, with progress also among some Buddhist peoples. While we have so far seen less progress among Western groups (Europeans, North Americans, and Australia-New Zealand), this may be largely due to the fact that movement-style work is much newer in those regions. Burgeoning movements are already happening among a few Western people groups, showing it can work there too.

However, in many places, this remarkable growth is still a just drop in the bucket among the much larger populations. The well-known Bhojpuri movement, for example, is one of the largest in the world, and yet still a relatively small (though rapidly growing!) percentage of the provinces in which it is found. Much work still remains to be done.

The 24:14 Network’s goal is to see a CPM engagement team in “every people and place” by 2025. How close are we to that goal? COVID-19 has made information gathering difficult in 2020 and 2021, but I estimate there are at least 170 languages that are less than 2% Christian and not engaged by CPM/DMM teams. They should be a priority for movement efforts. Likewise, I estimate there are at least 458 provinces that are less than 2% Christian and are not known to be engaged. If CPM teams can be focused on each of these priorities, we will be very close to reaching the overall goal.

Our great God is doing amazing works in our time. We look to him in earnest prayer, with strategic effort and global partnership, keeping our eyes on the goal of Jesus’ glory filling the whole earth. Engagement of every people and place is our initial faith goal; our ultimate aim is fulfillment of Matthew 24:14 – proclamation of the gospel to all peoples (ethné), and the glorious return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

About the author: Justin has spent the last 30+ years developing and contributing to various missions efforts including: the World Christian Encyclopedia, the strategicnetwork.org, the Ethné network, and the Movements Database. His research findings and missions articles have been published in several places, and currently publishes a weekly newsletter at justinlong.org.

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