By: Joshua (Ablaze Media Productions)
Photo by Manish Upadhyay on Unsplash
The State of the World
Currently, we have a total of 4.6 BILLION unreached people in the world. (www.grd.imb.org) While we only have a mere 13,315 missionaries (3.3%) among them, trying to give them access to the Gospel. (http://www.thetravelingteam.org/stats)
In a survey done by Barna Research, it showed that 51% of the U.S. churchgoers do not know the Great Commission and 63% could not even correctly identify Matthew 28:18-20 as the Great Commission when given 5 verses to choose from. (https://www.barna.com/research/half-churchgoers-not-heard-great-commission/)
Many Christians do not know the Great Commission, this leads to them to not knowing about the Unreached People Groups. What can we do about it?
Power of Media
Media and social media have played a major role in pollical situations around the world, spreading of ideologies, recruitment of terrorist cells and advocacy for social causes.
Are we creating enough digital awareness through videos and on social media about the needs of the Unreached People Groups?
An Imbalance
There are many amazing producers like Campus Crusade, yesHEis, the Jesus Film Project, that are creating high quality Gospel and evangelistic content to share about Jesus in the digital space. Many of these gospel contents are being continuously produced, and can be used across organizations.
Even when it comes to evangelistic films, there is a long list of it, “God’s not Dead”, “Courageous”, “War Room”, “Fireproof”, “The Chosen”, “Facing the Giants”, “Breakthrough”, etc.
But when it comes to videos on mission awareness, missions education and Unreached People Groups, how many can you name? IMB, Global Frontier Missions and History Makers have made some pretty good mission awareness videos.
We also have a few, good short videos like, “Tears of the Saints”, “State of the World / The Task Remaining”, “Reaching the Unreached”, but the list is pretty short.
Most missions mobilization videos are organization specific and can not be used generally across churches for awareness purposes.
There is huge potential among the younger generation Christians to reach the Unreached, if we can wake them up to the reality of the Unreached not having Gospel access.
The Need
We need to see more media producers, social media influencers, content creators, and journalist that will seek to create awareness in the digital space about the urgency to give Unreached People Groups access to the Gospel.
We need to utilize mobile ministry in showing the Unreached to Christians, that they will respond to bring Jesus to the Unreached.
There is huge potential among the younger generation Christians to reach the Unreached, if we can wake them up to the reality of the Unreached not having Gospel access.
What better place to create awareness than the digital space? As most people are already on the internet, and seeking for videos to watch.
Social media and Internet users
According to reports of Hootsuite in 2021, we have a total of 53.6% active social media users globally, which is 4.2 Billion people.
With the pandemic in place, people will be on social media seeking out for content that will engage them. Do we have social media influencers with a heart for Christ and a heart for the nations, that will seek to produce content to challenge believers about the Gospel deprived groups?
The Hootsuite research also shows that 90.6% of internet users globally are using their time to watch videos online, with 51.4% of users watching vlogs.
What better place to create awareness than the digital space? As most people are already on the internet, and seeking for videos to watch.
Conclusion
The Unreached is among us – the Asian Christians, if media producers, content creators and social media influencers who love Christ, will commit to work together in collaboration, producing digital content that will wake the church up to the reality of Gospel Deprived groups, educate the church about the urgency to give everyone a chance to hear the Gospel – then, we might see a new generation of young missionaries rising up, committing themselves to be witness among the Unreached.
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