By Guest Columnist Spencer Sullivan, Pastor, Pelahatchie Baptist
To be a Christian is to know and follow Jesus. It is to be saved by His grace alone through faith in what He did for us that we could not do for ourselves. As His followers, we then live in obedience to Him as our risen King. Following His resurrection, but before His ascension into Heaven, Jesus’ last words for His followers were these: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” As His disciples, we are to make disciples. We are all to make disciples among those where we live, but we are also to make disciples of all ‘nations’. The original intent of that word is meant to mean ‘ethnic groups’ or what today we often refer to as ‘people groups’. There are over 12,000 unique people groups in the world and the leading missiologists indicate that at least 7,000 are still considered unreached by the Gospel of Christ. Many of those are unengaged, which means there is no one currently even trying to get the Gospel to them. I first became aware of this reality in college, and it was during that time that God began to stir in my heart a calling to take the Gospel somewhere and to a people among the 7,000. God would end up calling our family to live overseas for 12 years. While circumstances brought us back to the US, our calling has not changed. How we live out that calling certainly has.
In May, seven individuals from our church went on an international mission trip for ten days to the North Africa and Middle East region. There we were able to meet and interact with some from one of the many unreached people groups in that region. These particular people are from a country that has been involved in conflict for over a decade, while also suffering from insufficient water, electricity, among other resources we often take for granted. A good friend of ours, that we know from our time overseas, led a training to equip 50 men and women from this people group to build solar cookers/ovens that are not dependent upon electricity or butane gas, because these resources are unreliable or scarce. But the training wasn’t meant to end with them. They were trained and then tasked to train others from their communities so that many others can benefit. Our role was to build meaningful relationships with them. Thankfully, the people were kind and hospitable to receive us and allow us the privilege of getting to know them. We got to hear their stories of heartbreak and tragedy from living in a war-torn country for so many years. It is incredible how in the few days we were together that real, relational bonds were formed. We were able to pray over different ones in the name of Jesus. With others we were able to have Gospel conversations, pointing them to the Bible and to consider Jesus. Thanks to technology those relationships have continued as have those meaningful conversations. In fact, in the days since our return, faith conversations have only gone deeper. I encourage you to pray that these precious people will one day repent of their sin and trust Jesus to save them and lead them.
To be abundantly clear, this isn’t meant to brag or lift up me, our church, or anyone who went on this trip. The intent is to spread awareness to the abundant and often unseen need of the world. There are many problems in the world, but none are greater than lostness. And there are millions dying everyday into a Christless eternity not because they have directly rejected Him, but because they have never heard. For those that know Him, we cannot be ok with that reality. I encourage you to pray for the unreached. I encourage you to give sacrificially to support those taking the Gospel to the unreached. And if you have the opportunity to go on a trip to experience it for yourself, by all means go!
We did several fundraisers in the community to support our trip and many of you contributed to make this trip possible. We want to say thank you for supporting us!
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