Nik Ripkin has a way of speaking with prophetic power to the North American church.  If you have not heard his Liberty University talk, I'd encourage you to do so [watch here]. 

Nik was the featured speaker at this weekends Heart For Muslims conference in New York City and he once again delivered two great talks that were powerful, challenging and full of faith.  There is much that he shared that I'd like to write about and will probably revisit with coming articles but with this article I wanted to share Nik Ripkin's three simple steps to helping your church develop a great commission, sending culture that is focused on reaching the nations. 

STEP ONE
At every child dedication in the church pray a prayer of dedication that includes a dedication to raise the child up to serve the Lord among the lost with all of their hearts no matter where it takes them.  Pray for parents to have hearts bent toward sending their children into the harvest among the world's 2.1 billion unreached.  And then give every child a Bible and commit to teach them to read and obey the word of God.

STEP TWO 
At that child dedication, give every child a passport application and have parents commit to keeping their passport renewed and ready to use.

STEP THREE
At that child dedication, give every child a savings account with $200 in it as a beginning fund for their first missions trip to be taken as a teen.  Have the family and church commit to adding to that account at birthdays, Christmas and other special occasions.

That ought to about do it.

I want to encourage you to consider reading Nik Ripkin's books, The Insanity of God and The Insanity of Obedience. 

​(check out the movie too)

Last week I listened to an interview with Justin Long on The Missions Podcast. The topic was a discussion of what is meant by the term “Unreached.”  Justin is the Director of Global Research at Beyond. He’s a missiologist, researcher and statistician whose handle on the numbers of lost in our world is quite helpful.

I wanted to share something that Justin challenged the listening audience with. There are nearly 3 billion unreached peoples in our world today. Despite this reality, the majority of missionaries and mission spending continues to go into work in countries and among people groups where the church is already established. This leaves the nearly 3 billion unreached with very little access to the saving news of the gospel.

Here was Justin’s challenge.

​If there is so little effort put toward reaching the 3 billion unreached in our world then one of a number of options must be true.

1. Either God doesn’t care about the unreached and so He is not calling anyone to go to them.
2. Or God does care and He is calling His church to go to the unreached but we either a) are unaware of the realities of 3 billion people outside of access to the gospel or b) are somehow too distracted to be able to hear God’s call or  c) are being disobedient to God’s call.

The first option does not reflect the heart of God and so we are left to wrestle with the second options.

The interview is one that I want to invite anyone involved in mobilizing the church toward work among the unreached to listen to. It will do much to bring clarity to our understanding of unreached, a term that is increasingly being used in all sorts of context. Justin and the hosts do a great job of teasing out the nuances of what we mean when we talk about the Unreached.

[Listen Now]

It was noon and I was meeting my new friend Musa* for an hour over my lunch break. We’d decided to meet at our favorite coffee shops to connect. I’d first met Musa when he had reached out looking for someone to practice his English with. He’d had a lifetime of classroom instruction in his home of Cairo, Egypt* but had few native English speakers with whom he could practice.

The first time we met we covered the bases of getting to know one another. Where are you from? What is your family like? What do you like to do in your free time? The sounds of Arabic were all around him in the busy Cairo coffee shop where he sat.

I then asked Musa what he did for a living. He is a young guy, in his early twenties and had just gotten started working as a mobile phone app developer.

Then he returned the favor and asked me what I do. I’m in full time ministry so this is always an interesting question to answer. But I dove in.

"I help people in churches in America understand and follow Jesus. That is pretty broad but it involves teaching, training, coaching, encouraging and casting vision with leaders and regular people. I'm not going to get rich, but I do find tremendous fulfillment in doing the things that I believe that God has made me to do. I bet that sounds a little crazy, but that's what I do and really it's who I am."

I could tell He didn’t completely understand what I was talking about so he asked a few more questions but then moved on, wondering if I’d been to Turkey. He’d recently visited Istanbul and loved the city. I told him of our four and a half years living there and how much we loved the people we knew there.

We meandered in and out of topics and then he asked a serious question, “I hope to hear an emotional situation you have been through?”  

I thought for a few minutes and then told him about a recent struggle I’d been facing and about how our family had spent time praying for God’s wisdom and healing. It was good to be transparent with my new friend even though it felt a bit hard and I wasn’t sure he was following everything.  Musa’s English is good but he hasn’t had a lot of experience talking about personal topics.

When I was finished, I said, “What about you?  Have you been through any hard situations in life?”  

Musa was contemplating his answer when he looked at his watch. He gave me a wry smile. “I’ll have to tell you next time. I’ve got to go now. But let’s make sure and meet again.”

As Musa left, I wondered about our conversation. Had I said too much about what I do? Should have I asked more questions about his faith and beliefs?  Should I have offered to pray for him before he left? What if I had said something wrong?

I spent some time praying for our time together asking the Lord to use it for his glory and to reveal himself to Musa.

And then I removed my headphones and shut down Whatsapp on my laptop computer. I got up from my seat in the corner of my coffee shop in South Dakota, grabbed my mug and headed up to the counter for a refill.  

Though we were half a world away, Musa and I had enjoyed a great cup of coffee and better conversation.

We continue to connect regularly, oftentimes just texting back and forth, sometimes hopping on a video chat to say a quick hello and at other times, setting aside an hour to grab a cup of coffee for an extended talk.  

To my surprise, Musa had quickly moved into questions of faith. I’ve introduced him to the Bible and we are slowly working through a creation to Christ story set.  We read a passage of scripture - I paste it into Whatsapp and he reads the Arabic and I read the English. We then ask some simple questions to help us discover what the story says about God, about people and about how we should live our lives.  

It’s been slow because Musa often brings up his own questions - questions that are stretching me and forcing me to dig into my own faith and theology. We started with his questions about the Christian idea of a triune God. We’re now pressing into the validity of the Bible. And those conversations are packed in between talk of family and culture and food and movies and dreams for life.  

It’s a whole lot of fun.

I am the only true follower of Jesus that Musa knows. I’ve been able to pray for him and continue to pray for him regularly. Musa is one of many young guys that I am connecting with online all across the Muslim world and someday, I hope I will be able to meet all of them in person, if not in this life, then in the eternity of heaven. That is my prayer for each of them.

There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world today and collectively, Christians are sending one missionary into the Muslim world for every 405,000 Muslims.[1]  

This has to change.  

John Stott has said, “We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.”

Because of advances in technology and the globalization of our world, millions of people throughout the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Animistic and un-religious worlds are working to learn English. They are going online to try and find people with whom they can practice speaking.

A new door of missionary activity has opened and it is open to everyone who is a follower of Jesus and has an Internet connection. Geography is no longer a barrier to your relationship with a Muslim like Musa.

C.T. Studd said, “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”

Will you sacrifice an hour a week to invest in a relationship with a young man or woman in the Muslim world who is looking for friendship and someone to practice English with?

Let Us Help You
Online Outreach Training: Schedule a zoom meeting to learn how to start an online outreach time at your church.

Let Speak Truth Cafe Help You
Speak Truth Cafe will connect you with individuals from around the world who have agreed to read and discuss the Bible as a way to practice English. Learn More.
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*For security, names and places have been changed.
1 - http://www.thetravelingteam.org/stats