About 20 years ago, I had the privilege of being in a gathering of what I’ll call “His Team.” These were leaders from 11 international missions, representing many workers pouring out their lives to reach least-reached peoples. Including a worker who had served 35 years among one of the largest unreached people groups in the world.

The question was asked, “How many believers are there?”

Each group contributed based on their experience and reporting. It came to only about 500 believers in total.

Twenty years later, I learned that thousands are now coming to faith in Jesus every month! Praise God!

More than 55 years of labor. You might be wondering why it took so long for a movement to start like this.

Often the unreached live where governments do not welcome international workers. After finding a way to enter the country, workers often labor for years to learn language, culture, find a person of peace, learn how to bind the strong man, and express the Gospel in a way that is easily understood as “good news” in the local culture. It takes time for each worker to discover and learn how to contribute their part to the process. In the meantime, God is refining the workers too.

As least-reached people come to faith and learn to live it out, slowly a model emerges and matures of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in their culture. The second wave—the near-culture worker—forms and washes over least-reached communities.

As people see that they do not have to become “western”—that they can follow Jesus without rejecting their language, music, culture, and families—openness to the Gospel grows. Finally, the basin of prayers, tears, sweat, and giving overflows, and the Holy Spirit moves with power.

Does it have to take so many years? Not when God moves.

But frequently, God chooses to move through His people. If we want to speed His coming, we need to find the places where the gifts He’s given us are best used—in the US, among international students, refugees, and immigrants, or in some other part of the world.

Wherever it might be, it begins by pouring our lives out daily. By investing the gifts God’s given, building the relationships, praying for openness, and laboring together with others to reach the least-reached.

As Global Disciples, we do it by coming alongside local churches to help them equip disciples who make disciples, who minister through business, and are growing as Christ-like leaders. Each phase of our approach contributes something that assists the church and that second wave, the near-culture workers, to reach the unreached in their nation.

–Restricted areas worker