The article stated that the Bible “is rated very highly by all the people who supposedly live by it but who in actuality have not read it”. So, how true of a statement is this?

Christians in the Word

Last year, LifeWay released a study that surveyed 1,000 Americans on how much they’ve read in their Bible.

Twenty percent said they had read the entire Bible. Of that, nine percent had read it more than once. Twelve percent of those surveyed said they had read almost all of it, 15 percent said they’d read at least half of it, 30 percent – and the largest majority – said they’d read several passages or stories, 13 percent had read only a few sentences of their Bible. And, finally, 10 percent said they hadn’t read any of it.

(Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash)

In America, we have no lack of chances to hear the Gospel. We’ve become comfortable and haven’t had to put up much of a fight for what we believe in. But because of that, have we become complacent, relaxed, and lazy in sharing our faith and growing in it? What does this do and what message is spoken to unbelievers around us if we – believers in Christ – don’t read the Bible even as we encourage them to do so?

“We have to live in both worlds. In other words, we have people around. We have opportunities to hear the message every day in the country where we live, and we need to be both able to share our faith orally, and we need to live our faith and demonstrate it in our everyday lives. And I think sometimes people write off our faith because they don’t see it lived out where they are,” says Issachar Initiative’s President, Paul Eshleman.

Finishing the Great Commission

The backbone of Issachar Initiative is to finish the Great Commission by bringing together ministries and Christian leaders.

Recently, Issachar Initiative gathered mission leaders in the Grand Rapids, MI area to strategize how they can fulfill the Great Commission.

“It’s not an effort of one organization to try to build its organization, but it’s an effort of the whole Body of Christ to say how are we doing,” Eshleman says.

“Jesus gave us this command two thousand years ago to make disciples of all nations or people groups and we haven’t asked how we’re doing.”

Eshleman points out that there are about 120 passages in the Bible that talk about sharing faith, including how we can share it and who we should share it with.

But first, we have to dive deeper into the Word.

Living out faith and being in the Word helps in working towards the goal of fulfilling the Great Commission as it opens peoples’ eyes and hearts to what Christians believe and follow.

Recently, there have been a number of other events focused on sharing the Gospel with the unreached too, including Finishing the Task and International Day for the Unreached.

“I think it’s the Spirit of God moving in other places,” Eshleman says.

“It’s a commitment by leaders in the global Church that we ought to do what the New Testament says, that we ought to love one another. And if we love one another, people who aren’t interested in Christianity right now will begin to know two things. They’ll know that God loves them and they’ll know that Jesus came from God.”

Share with the Unengaged

(Photo courtesy of Issachar Initiative via Facebook)

Eshleman says people will know these two things because they’ll be reflected in the lives of believers. While these conferences focus on sharing the Truth with the unreached, you can share with the unengaged too by reflecting the Love and Truth of Jesus.

“I think all of these things have come about in terms of sharing one’s faith because there’s a new interest and a new spirit that’s happening within the global Church right now that says now is the time. The worse that things get in society, the more we need to turn to something that really works and that’s a personal relationship with Jesus.”

Join Issachar Initiative in finishing the Great Commission through prayer, evangelizing to those around you, and through giving.

“Hearing people have always seen the Deaf, but they don’t really understand the Deaf,” says Paul Njatha, a Deaf Kenyan leader serving with DOOR International.

Less than 2% of the global Deaf population knows Christ, making them one of the largest unreached and unengaged people groups in the world.  As such, the Deaf were one of three focal points at the Summit.

As explained here, each Issachar Summit helps focus the Church’s attention on Christ’s final command: going and making disciples of all nations. This instruction is also known as the Great Commission, and it’s the heartbeat of Issachar Initiative.

Issachar Summit | Grand Rapids

(Photo courtesy Issachar Initiative)

Issachar Summit | Grand Rapids gathered more than 150 marketplace and ministry leaders from across the West Michigan area.  They heard from presenters like Samuel Chiang, Paul Eshleman, Roy Peterson, and more.

Presenting entirely in sign language, Njatha and a Deaf Ethiopian coworker, Tesfaye Moges, shared how hard it is for Deaf to access Scripture.

“Many hearing people think that all the sign languages in the world are the same,” explains Njatha.

“There [are] over 350 sign languages in the world (but) only a very small percentage have had any translation, maybe about 20 sign languages.”

J.R. Bucklew from Deaf Bible Society (DBS) also presented at Issachar Summit | Grand Rapids, sharing his experience growing up as a CODA (Child Of Deaf Adult).  DOOR partners with DBS and others to eradicate spiritual poverty among the Deaf.

Why does it matter?

In order to resolve a problem, you must first be aware of its existence.  In order to make disciples among the remaining 1,061 UUPGs (Unreached and Unengaged People Groups), the Church must first be aware that these millions of souls have no access to the Gospel.

Issachar Summits help provide this awareness to believers in major cities throughout the U.S.  The Summits also introduce believers to specific needs, such as the needs of the global Deaf community.

Of the estimated 70 million Deaf people worldwide, fewer than 2% of them know Christ.  Along with sign language Scripture, the Deaf need Christian leaders. “We have very few mature Deaf leaders,” Njatha explains.

(Graphic courtesy DOOR International)

“Remember that the Bible says the harvest is huge but the laborers are few. We would like people to pray so that we can get more leaders who could be trained, so that they train other Deaf leaders.”

Click here to learn more about reaching the Deaf for Christ.

International (MNN) – Jesus commissioned his followers to make him known to all nations. Even so, there are 7,000 people groups around the world who are unengaged with the Gospel. Only 0.3% of the Church’s resources given to missions are focused on areas of the world where the Church doesn’t already exist.

The Issachar Initiative recently held a conference to highlight the movement of the Gospel worldwide and the groups of people who have not yet heard about Jesus. DOOR International is one participant in the initiative.

“We’ve had 2,000 years since Jesus walked this earth and yet it’s amazing that there are so many people groups who have yet to experience the amazing transformation the Gospel can provide,” Rob Myers of DOOR says.

He says, “The Issachar Initiative is actually a collection of different organizations that recognize that we have the potential right now to see within our lifetime—within our generation—the Great Commission actually happen.”

The Issachar Initiative is a way for mission organizations and leaders of the marketplace to pool resources so that all nations can hear the Good News of Jesus to complete his mission. Myers says while mission groups already are in or near the areas they need to be, the marketplace leaders bring innovation, creativity, accountability, and encouragement.

“All of us need one another and there’s no way that any one ministry or any one marketplace person can achieve this incredibly large goal.”

Those mentioned on the list of unreached people groups are not necessarily people living in isolation in the middle of the jungle. They may be isolated, but it’s for a variety of reasons.

Paul Njatha, speaker for DOOR (Image courtesy of DOOR International).

DOOR International serves a very large group of people who haven’t engaged with the Bible. They are the deaf community, made up of about 70 million people worldwide.  Less than two-percent of them know Jesus.

“You may be surprised to learn that some of those groups are really close to home. The deaf here in the United States,” Myers says.

DOOR International focuses on translating Scripture into sign languages and training leaders in the deaf communities to reach their own people. Myers stresses that this group is not considered an unreached group due to disability, but because they are a linguistic minority.

He says, “They’re on these lists because they grow up many times without written language, without spoken language. As a listener to this, if you think about how you first learned English, you grew up and actually became fluent in English probably by the age of three or four and then later learned to read and write the English language.”

There are over 400 sign languages in the world which constitute the heart language of millions of people.

Count for Zero

This year, DOOR was invited to be a Count for Zero partner at the Issachar Initiative. “We want to see the number of people groups that currently number in the hundreds that have no workers, no access to Scripture, no JESUS Film, we want to see that number eventually reach zero,” Myers explains.

At the conference, a deaf presenter shared from his own perspective on the needs of deaf communities. He explained that if his interpreter were to stop translating for the audience, they would have to guess what he was saying and respond accordingly. Similarly, he explained, well-meaning organizations in the past had tried to guess the needs of deaf communities and meet them. But, they would usually miss the mark.

DOOR is partnering with several other organizations to make sure they’re asking leaders of the deaf community what their real needs are. Then they can provide the appropriate resources to these communities so the Gospel can be shared effectively.

DOOR encourages business leaders and mission groups to get involved in what the Issachar Initiative is trying to do. There are some helpful resources you can use as a starting place.

There is also a list of people groups who are unreached and unengaged with the Gospel. You can find that here.

How you can help

If you’d like to learn more about DOOR and their partnering organizations, click here.

“The involvement in the Great Commission begins with a passion for the lost, so everything we do begins with desiring to see others come to a knowledge of Christ the way we have,” Myers says.

He encourages you to get informed and learn where you can best focus your resources and passions. One very important thing to do after you learn about a people group is to help advocate their cause.

If the idea of missions is intimidating, consider what Myers has to say: “Fulfilling the Great Commission, especially as an American, doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to pack up and move across the world, even though God calls us to do that sometimes. Sometimes it means resourcing and supporting people who are already there, who live in country, who grow up in that culture and who can reach their own people very easily but they just need support and encouragement and some of the resources that we have to provide.”

Myers says he is grateful for those who partner with DOOR with the desire to see the 70 million deaf reached. Over the last 10 years, they have been able to reach about 7.3 million people with Scripture in their heart language. In the next 10 years, they desire to see half of the population reached with the Gospel and to have churches planted.

“If deaf people come on your radar screen at all and you have a desire to see them reached, please contact us and please find out how you can become part of this amazing movement that God is doing.”