Feature Articles

The Good News of Christ is by far the
most important message that one human can give to another. Thank God for anyone
who makes a great sacrifice and goes to a foreign country to preach the Gospel!
Upon arrival, the missionary makes a critical choice: whether he will struggle
to learn the language now and preach later, or whether he will begin preaching
now through an interpreter and learn the language later—maybe. Surely a message
is more clearly understood and better received if delivered directly in the
heart language than one that is delivered through an interpreter. That should
settle the issue. However, some may argue that quickness is better than clarity
and expedience is preferable to effectiveness.
I will declare emphatically that time and effort invested first in
language and culture acquisition is a minor sacrifice when compared to the
value of a clear message. Also, the effectiveness of the words delivered from
the mouth of the missionary to the ear of the recipient without the middleman
trumps any reason the missionary may give for relying on an interpreter.

The status quo, or the state of affairs, concerning world evangelization may be acceptable to many, but is it acceptable to God? After all, it is His work; He allows us to share in it. We may be content for things to continue the way they are, but is God’s will being done on earth as it is in Heaven? Alexander Duff (1806-1878), missionary to India, said, “We are playing at missions.” He said that about his generation; what would he say about ours? He might say, “The status quo must go!” If the status quo is not working, then God help us to do things differently.

No honest observer could say that we are fully obeying the command of Christ to preach to the nations. There are thousands of ethnic groups that are still unreached; many of them are totally unengaged. Paul strove to preach where Christ had not been named (Romans 15:20). That was two millennia ago. Surely, there could not be people today who have not heard the name of Jesus! But there are. Jesus said that we are to preach His gospel to every creature, and still there are billions that have never heard it. The way things are is not the way things should be. God help us when the Coca Cola company has put their product in almost every community in the world, and we have not preached the Gospel in these places! Our status quo preaching needs to go!

The Bible has led the best-seller list since its release. Someone has always wanted it and has, at times, been willing to pay a very dear price for it. It is said that a hand-written copy of the Wycliffe Bible cost the equivalent of a year’s labor! Can you imagine anyone spending $60,000 for a Bible today? Throughout the world, people without a Bible vastly outnumber those who have it. You may have three or four Bibles! There may be more Bibles in your house than in some entire cities!

There are multitudes who have not even a verse of the Bible simply because no one has ever translated it into their language. The number of speakers may be ten thousand or ten million, but nobody quotes John 3:16 in it! Languages have diversified since the tower of Babel until today they number 7,100. No one has paid the price—admittedly a high price every time—to put God’s Word into approximately 4,000, or 56%, of these tongues. Someone must translate it for them. Why have the hundreds of thousands of gospel-preaching churches in the world not produced 4,000 Bible translators to accomplish this task? Perhaps these churches have never been informed of the need or challenged to meet it. Oh, but this ignorance and lack of concern could not possibly exist in the fundamental, Bible-believing, missionary-minded churches of America, could it? Let’s find out. With your pastor’s permission, take a survey of church members and ask how many languages are spoken today and how many of these languages have at least some part of the Bible. Ask how often they pray for laborers for the unreached, Bibleless people groups of the world. To further test your church’s concern level for Bibleless people groups, check to see how many of your missionaries are in some way involved in Bible translation or what percentage of the mission budget goes to Bible translation. To further prove the pathetic priority level given to Bible translation in our circles, contact every fundamental Baptist college you know and ask them if they have courses in linguistics and Bible translation. Either we change the way we do missions, or 56% of the world’s language groups will live and die without the Bible and the salvation it offers.

What are you going to be when you grow up? Do you remember being asked that question as a child? (If you are forty and still being asked that, you might have a problem!) A child dreams of becoming a hero: cowboy, fireman, doctor, nurse, sports superstar, astronaut, etc. His dream changes often; as he moves into adolescence, the dream becomes more serious. The young person may even begin to prepare to make the dream a reality. This is certainly not a bad thing. We encourage young people to study and work hard to follow their dream, to become something and someone useful to society.

If the young person is a Christian, he may conclude that his desire (dream) comes from God and is God’s will for him. He may even proclaim, “This is what God has called me to do.” After all, he is going to use his honorable profession to provide for his family, to help others, and to support the work of God. He may even give to send out missionaries.

Missiologists such as the late Dr. Tom Brewster make a distinction between students and learners. The words are synonymous to most, but we at BBTI stress the difference. A student enrolls in a school and is dependent on a teacher. A learner takes responsibility for his own learning and finds ways to get the information he needs. A learner mindset is quite an asset in mission work.

From kindergarten through college, we are students. We sit in a classroom and a teacher directs us. He tells us what is expected of us. He approves or disapproves our progress and gives us a passing or failing grade. This system works well in most areas of life. But it has disadvantages and limitations, especially in the work of missions. It is not bad to be a student. Students usually work hard and should be commended. A learner usually begins as a student but can be taught to be a learner. A learner can go further linguistically, culturally, and geographically.

Were we to survey a group of serious adults and ask them what is the greatest book ever written, I would expect the answer to be “the Bible.” However, there is really no such thing as “the Bible” except the one settled in Heaven (Psalm 119:89). So, we must clarify which Bible. Which Bible has touched and changed more lives over the centuries than the Authorized King James Version, given to the English-speaking world in the year of our Lord 1611? Which Bible has brought more revivals and literally shaped more nations? Which Bible has gone further, carried by holy hands, and turned on the light in so many dark places? Thousands have taken it to the foreign field; or has it taken them there? This Bible traveled 238,900 miles and was read on the moon! Can anyone, friend or foe, deny that the King James Bible is the greatest book ever written?

Periodically, every missionary needs a furlough from their field of service. Normally, they spend four years on the field and then one year in the home country. Some today take six month furloughs every two years. As the missionary prepares to leave his field of service, the neighbors and new believers wonder why he is going to take a year-long vacation. They also wonder if their missionary will return. Even a supporting pastor might not appreciate the missionary’s furlough. He may say, “I can’t take a year vacation away from my church. Why should you?” Is the missionary furlough an unnecessary luxury or a legitimate need?

Jesus and the disciples saw a man who was born blind, and Jesus made this a learning experience for His twelve missionary candidates. Throughout their lives, the disciples had been locked in one culture. To succeed as missionaries, they needed to expand their thinking. This is true of missionaries today. Actually, a missionary must consider three cultures: his culture, the native culture, and most importantly, God’s culture. He knows his culture well. But his culture is sometimes a problem because it is not necessarily God’s culture (although he probably thinks it is). Some of our western culture is based on the Bible (and thus is God’s culture) but much of it isn’t. The missionary must distinguish between his culture and God’s, and then attempt to pass on to the native audience only God’s culture.

Throughout the history of Christian missions, women have played a very important role. Some have been single, but most have gone to the foreign field with their husbands. We would all agree that a married woman’s first responsibility on the mission field, or anywhere else, is to her husband and children. However, if her ministry stops there, the missionary husband is missing half of his team. In many cases the wives have been overlooked, and their contribution has not been properly recognized. (If you enjoy this publication, it is due to the tireless efforts of a missionary wife!) This article is dedicated to the other missionary—the wife who never clamors for praise.

There are nearly 7.5 billion souls alive today but only a few thousand missionaries on foreign fields to tell them of Christ. If ten thousand Bible-believing missionaries were evenly spaced throughout the world, each missionary would need to reach nearly a million people. This would be like one preacher trying to reach the entire population of Ft. Worth, Texas. We simply need more laborers, thousands more! Unless some terrible world-wide catastrophe occurs, the population is only going to increase. And unless a spirit-ual awakening occurs, the number of missionaries will decrease. Many of us are praying for revival in America; God knows we need it! But shouldn’t that revival result in the evangelization of the world? After all, that is the task that Jesus left us here to do. No one would disagree that we need more missionaries, but missionaries don’t spontaneously appear. They must be developed. Though ultimately it is God who must work in a person’s heart to get him from here to the mission field, there is a very definite part that we play in the making of a missionary. The old adage “we must work like everything depends on us and pray like everything depends on God” surely applies here. Following are some things to consider when evaluating our mission endeavor.

Our Lord Jesus made it very clear that He wants every person on earth to hear His gospel (Mark 16:15). It is humanly impossible for a few missionaries, or many, to speak to over seven billion people. But Jesus also gave us a strategy to reach this goal and obey His mandate. It is “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). If a few people from each nation are won to Christ and grounded in a local, self-propagating church, that church could then evangelize the rest of the group.

Jesus did not say to teach all countries but rather nations. We use these two terms interchangeably, but there is a difference. (If we speak of the Navajo Nation, we are speaking of an ethnic group of people living within the country of the United States. They have their own land, language, and cultural traditions.) There are 195 countries in our world today, but there are thousands of nations, or ethnic groups. Perhaps our failure to fulfill God’s Great Commission is due at least in part to our view that countries are nations.

When the need for Bible translation is presented, well-meaning Christians sometimes ask, “Why not just teach people English and give them an English Bible?” After all, we have a perfect copy of the scriptures. It works for us; shouldn’t it work for the rest of the world, too? But the teach-them-English method is inconsistent with Christ’s mandate. Jesus said to teach the Gospel and to teach them to observe all things. He did not tell us to teach them English!

The teach-them-English approach is impractical. There are language groups consisting of millions of speakers that have no scriptures. But let’s just consider a smaller group of fifty thousand. Suppose we had fifty English teachers willing to teach them. (Although supposing is a big waste of time. If we can’t find one person to go as a missionary, how are we going to find fifty dedicated people to go as English teachers?) These fifty thousand people live in many different villages, some of which will be very inaccessible to foreigners. It is more practical to give those fifty thousand people the Bible in their own language. The printed Word has no limitations; it can go anywhere at any time.