I’ve heard of missionaries who literally built a high voltage fence around their house so that no tribal people could come bother them. I’ve heard of missionaries who spent DECADES of their lives translating the scripture into another language only to have the printed Bibles literally never read by a single person because the missionaries didn’t spend time with the people to understand their culture and way of communication. I’ve heard of many missionaries who view the people they go to with contempt and disdain, refusing to mingle with the people or give them any worth.
On the same side of the coin (not the flip side), I’ve heard of many recent missionaries who “love” the people, take pictures with them that they post to instagram (#bethefeet), pass out cold water and tshirts, show the Jesus film, build wells, and become friends with the people – in a matter of weeks. Then they leave on a jet plane, share in church about how souls were saved and lives changed forever, shed some tears and then go back to American life. What’s so important about our lives these days that we can’t sacrifice more than a couple weeks or months for the sake of the gospel? Did we actually really care about the people after all?
Do you know what the research shows? No lives were changed. No commitments were made. When a white person goes into an impoverished country and through a translator asks a local if they want to accept Jesus, they’re going to say yes every single time. Why? It’s respectful to agree with a rich, white guest in your home. You are showing them honor. They also know you have money and might give them some type of gift for agreeing with them.
Why am I saying all this? Not to make you mad, but because the largest unreached people group in the world has 134 MILLION and 137 THOUSAND people. Look at all the biblical resources the Shaikh in Bangladesh possess in their language –
Yet literally 0.0% of this people group that numbers 134,137,000 is Christian. How can that be when there are so many resources available to them?
One of the biggest lies people believe is that everyone is the same. We’re not the same. And until you’ve taken YEARS and sometimes DECADES to walk in these people’s shoes and understand how they formulate their thoughts and reason and deliberate, you can’t reach them at their core with the gospel. You’re irrelevant. You’re out of touch. You don’t get it.
How to reach these unreached people is to take what the group from the 1800s missed and the millennials missed: relationships. The older generations stayed but didn’t make relationships with the people and so failed to communicate the gospel with clarity. The new generation tries to make relationships but isn’t willing to stay. If our generation would just combine the two errors, we could reach these people: Live with the people and stay.
When I wake up in the morning in my house in Papua New Guinea in the middle of our village after a night of too little sleep and too much to get done in the day before me, I want my eyes to immediately go to a huge sign in the front of our bedroom that simply has the word STAY. And in my mind Taylor Swift will be singing “All you had to do was stay,” and Jesus will be saying “Just stay, and watch my power,” and I’ll hear Pastor Rich and Pastor Dwight and Pastor Bobby saying, “Just stay. Hang in there. Don’t give up.”
And I pray to God I’ll stay.
I pray that getting the gospel to the ends of the earth is what will make my hair turn gray.
And not advanced placement tests for Erin to get into a good school.
And not her clarinet being too expensive.
And not dinner being too high in calories.
And not trying to find a good deal on where to go on our yearly family vacation.
And not the stress of planning the community Fourth of July barbecue.
I want the gospel to be what makes my hair turn gray.
Leave a Reply