Why Are We Doing This?

"No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once." (Oswald J. Smith)

As our family progresses toward service with Pioneer Bible Translators, I’ve been asked many questions.  I hope to be able to answer these in different formats.  Some questions I’ve answered in personal conversation, some I hope to answer in sermon form, and for other questions, I will write answers.  In this space, I’d like to answer the question "Why?"  People want to know why I would move to working with a mission organization that focuses on the unreached parts of the world when I’m part of such a great congregation.

There are over 340 million people in the world who have no access at all to the written Word of God.  They haven’t rejected the Scripture, it doesn’t even exist in their language.  This number represents more than the entire population of the United States (311 million).  Of the over 2,100 different language groups these people are part of, 900 of them have no church presence at all.  If we truly believe Jesus is the only means of salvation for the world, and that God has commissioned the Church to share the good news with them, we have to be willing to make sacrifices to see it happen.

The task of taking the gospel to the Bible-less and Church-less people of the world will require people willing to go to the most remote places on the planet.  For them to thrive spiritually and make disciples when they arrive, they must have people willing to support them financially and spiritually.  They are like the branches of a tree where the fruit is produced.  But branches cannot survive unless they are attached to a trunk that is supported by a network of roots.  God has called our family to serve in the role of being the trunk of the tree.  Those who support us will be the roots who will hold us up so we can train and disciple those whom God is sending to the ends of the earth.