Reach One

How do you plant a thriving church among a language group of people who have no access to the Bible, no Christians among them, an unwritten language, a mysterious culture, and are isolated from other language groups?

The objective is to equip these people with the tools they need to live a life of believing God, applying God’s word to their own lives, evangelizing others around them, and equipping others for active fruitful ministry in the regions beyond them.

Bible. A prerequisite is access to God’s written word. They cannot grow to maturity or equip others to grow to maturity if they do not have direct access to God’s thoughts about how they live their lives. They need the ability to read the Bible in a language they understand.

Teaching. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. Someone will have to take the time to make God’s word available and teach the people to read, believe, and apply it to their own lives.

Discipleship. Practical insight and application of God’s word to our daily lives comes through the witness of the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and the testimony of other believers. Someone who knows God’s word will have to live among them, sharing life with life, and practically applying God’s word to daily situations.

Literacy. People need to be able to read God’s word in order to feed themselves spiritually and minister God’s word to others. If there are no readers in your language group, then part of the role of the missionary will be to teach them to read. What if there is nothing written in that language, especially the Bible? How will you teach people to read God’s word?

Translation. Before teaching can begin. Someone will have to translate the Bible portions that need to be taught into the language of the people being taught. After all it is God’s word, not the words of the messengers that people need to hear.

Culture. Culture is the meaning behind the words that we use. Without culture words have no context and no meaning. Culture includes the assumptions about reality that shape the meaning and context of the words to bring about communication of ideas. Someone will have to learn the culture of the local people to communicate God’s word accurately.

Language. Someone will have to learn the words that are used to communicate ideas and accurately communicate God’s thoughts. If you want to translate God’s written word into that language then you will have to learn that language well enough to clearly communicate abstract concepts such as eternity, life, hope, joy, and faith. You will need to associate sounds with symbols, do a linguistic analysis of grammar, verb usage, modifiers, pronouns, tenses, gender, and a host of other things. create an alphabet

Relationships. How do you learn a language? You need to get close to someone who speaks that language and ask them to help you learn it. Usually that happens in loving, trusting relationships. How do you teach people? You establish a relationship in which you have earned the right to be heard.

Immersion. Time on location. Time with people. Spending time being with people doing what they do is how you learn how they think and how you earn the right to be heard. To do that you need to live close enough to join them as they go about their daily lives.

So, to reach one language group with the gospel, you will need to live near where they live, establish trusting relationships, learn their language, decipher their culture, translate the Bible, teach them to read, teach God’s word, disciple the believers, and equip them to minister to others with God’s word as their guide.

How do you learn how to do all of this and establish a thriving church?

Training: Learn from people who have been there an done that. ethnos360.org/training