From Our CEO

Dear Friends, 

I recall from my Bible college days the emphasis my teachers put on context. Context is critical for proper Bible interpretation. Who is the author? Who is the author writing to? What is the author addressing? How would the hearer of that generation and time understand what the author is saying? What came before in the text? What comes after? These are all important questions to answer if proper understanding is the goal.  

I find this same principle in play in the missions world today, related to unreached people groups and how we can reach them. In fact, we use the same word context to describe the situation. From the early 1940s and for following decades, NTM/Ethnos360 missionaries found unreached people groups living in very similar situations to one another. They were almost always isolated from the outside world to some degree — sometimes very isolated with no roads, no access to medicine, stores or government services. This was the context they were found in.  

In recent decades, that picture has changed dramatically. There are still many physically isolated unreached people groups in the world today. But even the most isolated today are less isolated than past generations. We have airplanes and helicopters. Roads have been built. Cell towers have often been installed. And what is more relevant to us as messengers of the gospel, often people groups have physically moved toward the outside world, or the outside world has moved in on them. Though still unreached with the gospel, some now find themselves in a context that is similar to ours. They are living in towns and working jobs. They have busy schedules and, at times, speak multiple languages. But the broader context is that, sadly, many live in countries that do not allow in messengers of the gospel.  

So how do we develop strategies to reach an unreached people group in this kind of context? How do we gain access, build a platform from which to operate legally and honestly, while maintaining our core principles of culture understanding, language proficiency, foundational Bible teaching and long-term discipleship toward a mature, functioning local church?   

In this addition of the Ethnos360 magazine, you will read one example among many of what God is doing to reach into these changing contexts. 

Yours in Christ,