19. Get Involved Personally
19
GET INVOLVED PERSONALLY
Paul reveals the secret to indifference in Romans 15:20 where he says that he strived to preach the Gospel “not where Christ was named.” We should learn to be on the lookout for opportunities to share Christ with those who haven’t had a chance to hear—wherever they may be.
There are four basic ways that you can get involved in world evangelism.
First, become an informed intercessor. There are all kinds of resources available to help you learn more about missions and pray for frontline outreach.
Read up-to-date books on what’s happening in the world of missions today, such as Operation World[1] or Come, Let’s Reach the World.[2]
Hang national and world maps of various mission fields in your home, office and church facilities. There are many excellent sources for these maps. Some also include beautiful illustrations of various “ethno-linguistic” people groups, national backgrounds and names of leaders. The “Operation World” Prayer Map is one of the most popular. Of course, you can also order secular maps from the National Geographic Society and cartographers.
When God touched my family with a renewed burden for lost and dying souls, one of the first things we did was hang a big map of Asia in our kitchen with pictures of national missionaries nearby. Our children are growing up praying for and learning about the lost world.
Subscribe to missionary magazines, newspapers and prayer letters. Literally thousands of such periodicals are published by denominations, missions and Christian organizations. One of the most helpful tools is the Global Prayer Digest, which provides daily prayer updates on the progress of world evangelism.
Go on a vision tour to the mission field. Many missions sponsor tours of Buddhist, Communist, Hindu and Muslim nations. If such a visit is well organized, you can see firsthand the sacrifice and service of frontline indigenous missionaries. For many, even a week or two in a closed nation can be a life-changing experience.
One warning, however: Two weeks or two months on the mission field do not make you a missionary! It takes a lot more than a brief visit and some volunteer work to disciple new believers and plant churches. We have found vision tours to be one of the most life-transforming experiences possible if they are organized properly.
Second, become a faithful prayer warrior. There are all kinds of ways you can remember frontline Gospel workers in prayer.
Spend time alone every day remembering the needs of missionaries, sending organizations and the unreached peoples.
As you read newspapers, watch television and absorb other media, send out sentence prayers for people and places you learn about.
Work with your pastor, Sunday school leadership and other church organizations to see that prayer for missionaries is included as a regular part of all worship and group activities.
Third, get involved personally. You can become a world Christian. There is something for everyone to do.
Help sponsor a missionary yourself. For as little as $1 a day, you can help support a national missionary working in the remote areas of Asia.
Work to get others to become sponsors. Prayerfully share the vision for the unreached peoples and national missionaries with your pastor, group or class leaders. Often the group can make world evangelism a line item in its budget and sponsor a national missionary. At other times, you may get permission to challenge others to become missionary sponsors. Many sending missions have films, speakers and videos available to help you tell the story of various missions to your church or small groups.
Go to the mission field as a short-term volunteer. Many times there are behind-the-scenes ways you can become a servant to national missionaries and churches in the Third World. In some areas, short-term volunteers can be effective in literature distribution and evangelism. I thank God for ministries like Operation Mobilization and Youth With a Mission, which are helping thousands of young people spend two years in overseas service. I believe God wants to send forth tens of thousands more from these shores—even if it is only for one or two years. I am convinced that there is a place for learners and servant-hearted young people in the Third World mission fields.
Evangelize representatives of unreached peoples in your community. Many students and visitors from closed countries are short-term visitors to our shores. These include Arabs, Buddhists, Israelis, Hindus, Marxists, Muslims and many others from nations where the Gospel is suppressed. Your friendship, hospitality, prayer and witness to these could help introduce them to Christ. Historically, such contacts have helped win whole nations and states to the Lord.
Help arrange for a missionary conference at your church, or better yet, a united annual festival of missions for your whole community. Volunteer to serve on the missions committee of your church. There are many resources available from various missions and associations to help you arrange such events.
Finally, you can go as a missionary yourself. I believe there are people reading this book whom God is calling to go “to the uttermost parts.” Others may think that you are throwing your life away, but if you obey, God will open doors to places where you can be effective and used of Him on the front line.
How long has it been since you’ve gotten down on your knees and prayed the prayer that Jesus must have prayed every day, “Lord, please use me to reach the lost—not my will, but Thine be done”? There is something He would have you do. You can play a part in this great end-time drama. Don’t let anything stand in the way of giving your best for the cause of Christ.
World Evangelism Now Possible
We are on the verge right now of the greatest explosion of evangelism in history.
God is doing a miracle today in world missions. Throughout the Third World, He is raising up tens of thousands of indigenous evangelists and church planters who speak the language and understand the culture of the people they are called to reach. This new soul-winning army is already on the move, going to their own people with the Good News of redemption in Christ.
These national missionaries are incredibly effective. Through the ministry of one of our missionaries, 80 fellowships have been started in one district in Nepal. Another missionary who graduated from Bible college nine years ago has established six local churches. From these churches, 45 more missionaries were sent out, who have already started 25 more local churches themselves!
Those are the kind of miracles we’re seeing today, not only in Nepal but also in India, Myanmar and throughout South Asia.
Finishing the task of world evangelization has never been more possible than right at this moment. A generation ago, African leader Gottfried Mensah, former executive director of the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization, made what Ralph Winter called “an electrifying, simple proposal.” He said that if we were to let every 1,000 evangelical believers in the world today select and support one missionary couple from their midst and then send that couple to one of the hidden people groups, every tribe, tongue and culture would have a missionary witness. Today, if we would put his simple plan into practice, every unreached people group in the world would have 50 missionary couples among them.
Reaching the 500,000 villages of India could easily be done by qualified national missionaries if just one out of every 250 Christians in the affluent evangelized nations of the world would give $1 per day to help support them. And that assumes a national missionary will only reach one village in his or her whole career. Although this may be true for some, many Gospel for Asia-supported missionaries will plant a church within just a year or two of their graduation from Bible college. After that, they and the believers from that first church will work together to reach the next village over. And so, over time the impact of $1 per day is multiplied over many villages.
Opportunities Are Many and Great
It can be done, and by God’s grace, it must be done.
At this moment, thousands of national missionaries are ready to go to the unreached if only support were available. The nation of India is the greatest open door in the world for missions at this time. The need there is outstripped only by the opportunity. Similar situations exist in nearby lands such as Myanmar and Nepal.
But what is actually happening? What is the evangelized Christian world doing to respond?
Every villager in India, even where they cannot read or write, knows what Coca-Cola is! Marketing firms like Avon cosmetics have 6.5 million salespeople worldwide peddling soap and makeup.[3] That’s 20 times the number of missionaries the West sends out to the whole world! Mormonism, a false cult, is able to field 52,000 young missionaries every year[4]—five times more than the total number of evangelical missionaries working in unevangelized nations.[5]
What a rebuke these figures are to the disobedience and rebellion of so many Christians and churches today. Our Lord has given us the command to go, the spiritual power to go and the material resources to go. How much longer will we continue to be the bottleneck that prevents world evangelism?
We need to rediscover the purpose for our lives. As I was writing this chapter, a top computer programmer from a Fortune 500 company came to me to talk about Christian service.
He had been working for this company for 17 years and was making a salary that was comparable to $100,000 in today’s economy. But he was miserable with his life and work.
“All I do,” he said, “is write programs, train people to run them and write more programs. I want to use my skills and training for God.”
Praise the Lord, he is now serving in a Christian organization.
God is not calling all of us to leave our jobs and go into full-time Christian service as this brother and his wife are doing. Others need to stay and develop their careers and vocations—but find ways to send more of their earnings to the mission field. Still others can give volunteer work to help spread the vision for missions in the churches of the West. I believe that God has something special for each of us to do in this great work of world evangelism.
There is no longer any excuse for us to live mediocre, washed-up lives without a sense of purpose and mission. Every Christian has something to do in this great task of world evangelization.