11/5 North Point

Thursday, November 5

The Roadmap for Missions

“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” -- Acts 1:8

When faced with a large and, in human terms, impossible task, some choose to wave the white flag, retreat, and give up! But there is a better way to react when we encounter a difficult task. We are commanded to “preach the gospel to every creature,” in Mark 16:15. How can we do this? How can we be witnesses both at home (our Jerusalem) and in all points between and to the uttermost part of the earth? How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time! How can we reach over 3 billion precious souls who have not heard the glorious gospel (2 Cor. 4:4; 1 Tim. 1:11) of Christ, and who will die and spend a Christ-less eternity in hell? By developing a plan for eating the elephant one bite at a time! In this case, the bites are called people groups.

People groups are people connected through factors such as language and culture where the gospel can be understood by the people and spread. Instead of saying, “We are going to focus on the nation of Turkey,” we should say, “We are going to evangelize the Turkish-speaking Kurds, who may live in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia or Azerbaijan.

The roadmap for missions is to break down the huge and daunting task of reaching over 3 billion into bite-sized, accomplishable pieces. No one church, mission board or other group could possibly reach everyone, everywhere. But by focusing on a particular people group, we then have a roadmap to follow that can lead to the destination of an evangelized world, both at home and abroad.

Have you thought about how we as the church of Jesus Christ are to reach this world?

Pray for God specifically to show you what part you can play in helping reach the unreached.