12,000 people groups - one church at a time

We have lately been reading some powerful books on missions that have challenged our materialistic, consumerist tendencies.  These books have helped us to see that as missionaries we are seeking to incarnate the living, giving God amidst those who do not know Him.  Therefore, our attitude among the people we are working with should be one of giving, not of receiving, one of generosity, not of greed.  Our attitude towards Christmas is different this year than it has been in the past, and we find it liberating to be more free of the desire to accumulate than we can remember being before. 

“How long will you be in Africa?”  This is a question we often hear.  When we tell the one questioning us that our work in Africa is based on fulfilling the mission of planting a growing church among the Otammari people, and that AFM estimates that it will take 6 to 12 years, people are often astonished.  “So long?  Wow, you are really committed.” 

Well, we don’t think we are so very committed, nor that 6 to 12 years is really so much time.  We are going to work for the Otammari people, among whom the SDA church has already been planted to some degree.  If our work stops there, then when it comes to taking the gospel to every people group on the planet, we have not really hastened the day of God at all.  (See 2 Peter 3).  There are still other groups around the Otammari that have no access to the gospel in their language or among their people group.  In our minds, our work with the Otammari will be the opening door to help us learn how to reach other people groups, and to learn how to train local people to be missionaries to other people groups.  We do not know what the future will hold, of course, but our hearts yearn for the unreached people groups of Africa to hear the everlasting gospel, and we are choosing to devote the rest of our lives to that task.  We are choosing to give of ourselves and of our family to this great endeavor.  We have prayed earnestly over our children, that they may be vessels used by God to reach the unreached.

There are still at least 12,000 ethnic groups in the world with no Seventh-day Adventist church among them.  That is still around half of the world’s population with no access to somebody who can explain the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14 to them in their own language.  From the point of view of somebody who wants to be alive when Jesus returns, this is unacceptable!  Because the Bible makes it clear, in Matthew 24:14 and Revelation 7:9, among other places, that there will be representatives from every people group in heaven, we still have a work left to do.  Not we, as in Jason and Maggi, but we as in everybody who calls themselves by the name of Christ on this earth. 

As we think of the work we will be doing among the Otammari people, of the friendships we will be forming, of the souls that we will hopefully lead to their Saviour, we also think of the bigger work left to be done.  We wonder how it is that God is going to finish up the work He has promised to finish.  We know He will use His church in some way, but we wonder how that will be.  Thinking about 12,000 ethnic groups, or around three billion people, is more than any of us really manage to do.  Perhaps only God can really think in such terms.  For us, it is much easier to focus on one thing at a time.  Instead of wondering how the whole world is going to be reached with the gospel, and getting overwhelmed as we see the immensity of the task, perhaps we should narrow our vision.  What would happen if one local church, your local church perhaps, would focus on just one unreached people group?  What if you and your church would study that people group, researching it in every possible way, until you became experts on that people group?  What if you would then pray earnestly for God to show you somebody in your midst that He is choosing to go as cross-cultural missionaries to reach that group?  Reaching 12,000 people groups is daunting, to say the least, but this would be doable, wouldn’t it?  One church; one people group; one missionary team.  That is not such a big task, really, is it? 

This is the way I start to think as I wonder how God will go about finishing up His great work of salvation in the world.  These are the kind of thoughts that Christmas-time stirs in my heart this year.  I want to go home!  I want to go to heaven.  For us, our journey to Benin is just one step on the path in that direction.