God is doing something great, and you can be a part of it By Michael Boyland The Presbyterian Layman Sept/Oct, 1997 PASADENA, Calif. – Local churches are getting directly involved in the Great Commission. Rivermont Presbyterian Church of Lynchburg, Va., has had a river of blessing from its decision to assist directly in planting a church in Nepal. In 1994 the church took up a special Mother’s Day Offering for work among unreached peoples. Since then a partnership with the National Churches Fellowship/Nepal has resulted in some 50 new churches being started among various unreached tribes. One of these new churches has itself planted eight daughter congregations! The goal is that there be churches that are culturally right for the people and that can keep on growing without outside help. Many congregations in the PCUSA are adopting people groups in which there is not yet a church. The congregation learns about the needs of the people for whom it has chosen to pray. And God uses those prayers in amazing ways to bless both the unreached people group and the church. The program linking PCUSA congregations with unreached people groups is called Commitment to Share the Good News. Jesus told us to make disciples of every nation (Matthew 28:19). In the Bible the word “nation” (ethne in Greek) means not a political nation but a people group. There are about 24,000 groups of people in the world who think of themselves as “us” and everybody else as “them.” Some are distinguished by ethnicity, some by language. Class, culture and caste can all separate groups from one another. Some 8,000 such groups remain without a movement of followers of Jesus. Jesus told us to make disciples of every people group. This is a clear and achievable goal. Many mission leaders are talking about actually completing the Great Commission. The worldwide church, urged on by God’s love for all peoples, is marshaling its resources to finish the task. First Presbyterian Church of Santa Rosa, Calif., learned that the untouchables in North India had the despised job of collecting human wastes for disposal. They asked some waste management engineers in a Bible study group what could be done. The Presbyterian engineers visited India and designed effective but simple human waste bio-gas digesters that produce methane gas and high quality fertilizer. Many of these digesters are now being built as part of the ministry of the Rural Presbyterian Church of India, where church planting and community development go hand in hand. The Presbyterian Church (USA) helps Witnessing Ministries of Christ to plant churches, presbyteries and synods among the untouchables of North India. Fifty thousand new followers of Christ were baptized in 1996, and a self-supporting synod was launched in Uttar Pradesh State. In 1986 a member of First Presbyterian Church, Bakersfield, Calif., invited her Cambodian refugee neighbor to church. The next week a team from the church visited the Cambodians to welcome them. One thing led to another, and now First Presbyterian hosts the Cambodian ministry headed by the Rev. Sahara Chea, the first Cambodian to be ordained to the PCUSA. The waves of immigration to the U.S. present our churches with huge opportunities to bring the good news of Jesus that people would not have had a chance to hear in their mother country. Many churches like these are adopting unreached people groups to pray for them, to learn about them, and to work toward seeing an indigenous church within that particular group. This is one of the most important strategic developments in the history of the growth of the church. There are more than 600 “Great Commission” churches in the world for each unreached group. All over the world, as congregations catch the vision of reaching the unreached, the global church comes within sight of completing the missionary task that her Lord gave her, to make disciples in every people group. How the PCUSA got involved In 1991 the 203rd General Assembly adopted Turn to the Living God; a Call to Evangelism in Jesus Christ’s Way. This booklet describes a truly biblical view of missions and evangelism. “The church has a special concern to share the good news among those peoples who are still without the gospel, who have no culturally indigenous church, for ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3:16).” The Commitment to Share the Good News was developed in response to Turn to the Living God to match particular churches with specific unreached people groups, to pray and to work for their evangelization. In 1995 the General Assembly Council adopted the goal of doing evangelistic and church-planting work in 200 of the world’s least-evangelized people groups by the year 2000. Our denomination is part of a global movement for Jesus Christ. How you can be a part of it Seek guidance. Does God want your church to adopt an unreached people group? Should it be one in the U.S., or overseas, or both? Is this the right time to begin the process? Learn what is involved in adopting an unreached people. Find out about the Commitment to Share the Good News from the Presbyterian Center for Mission Studies (PCMS) in Pasadena, Calif. Discuss it with your pastor. Does he or she like the idea? Does he or she have a burden for a particular part of the world? Pray about which group to adopt. Together with the mission committee and church leadership, decide on a people group. Inform the PCMS of your choice. Get a prayer group meeting regularly. Pray for a strong, growing church in your adopted people, a church that is appropriate to their culture without compromising the authority of Scripture or the centrality of Christ. Ask God to help your church stay on the job until there is a viable church in the target group. Go The delicate work of transplanting the Good News of Jesus Christ into a new culture takes the wisdom and skill of a mission agency. Work with the International Evangelism office of the Worldwide Ministries Division. Help support a team from the U.S. or some other country to plant a church in your adopted group. Consider sending a short-term lay mission team from your church. Help raise the funds needed to do this. Rejoice in the victory when the power of the Gospel is bringing new life to the people who previously had not known Jesus. Michael Boyland is executive director, the Presbyterian Center for Mission Studies.

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