While at Cru17 we were able to hear from President Steve Douglass, who shared vision for the ministry moving forward, and encouraged us with news about partnerships that ministries are making, working together toward fulfilling the Great Commission, some of which I thought I'd share:
Translations of the Bible There are approx 7,000 languages on the Earth. About 3,000 of these languages have enough of the Bible translated to do evangelism and discipleship; another 2,200+ have progress happening towards having resources developed. That leaves somewhere around 1,800 left to work on developing translations and resourced. Recently God gave the president of YWAM an idea to partner with WyCliffe and Cru (specifically the Jesus Film) to knock out those 1800 languages by sharing human capital, finances and digital resources/strategies. With the use of technology like Artificial Intelligence, languages can be grouped by similarities and translated in clusters, and then individually tweaked and perfected by humans. This work is rapidly enhancing the rate of translation for these 1,800 languages. It's predicted that there will be enough Bible translated to make evangelism and discipleship resources in every language no later than 2033. Engaging Unengaged, Unreached People Groups A people group is unreached when less than 2 percent of its population is evangelical Christian. Currently, there are around 7,000 unreached people groups in the world. A people group is unengaged when no evangelical church planting strategy is being implemented among them. Steve shared there are around 1500 unengaged people groups left in the world, though I'm seeing online through some research that there are more like 3200 unengaged groups. But, approx 350 of these groups are being engaged every year...that means in 5-11 years (depending on the stats) there won't be any unengaged people groups left. Spreading the Jesus Film This film has been translated into 1500 languages...that's the most translated of any movie. It's a bit ridiculous to think about that. I got to share the Jesus Film with my team in Brazil in college, and I will never forget the little face that looked up at me and asked "Why did Jesus have to die?" as she and her mom watched the film. It was surreal to watch people who had never heard of Jesus learn about his life through the video in their own language. The Jesus Film has had a cumulative audience of 7.5 billion people. This is not unique views, this means that people have been double-counted if they saw the film twice. But still...7.5 billion views?? Crazy. I know statistics might not mean much or be motivating to you, but they are to me! I loved hearing from Steve that large, world-wide ministries are seeking to partner together and share resources to go after the fulfillment of the Great Commission.
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Amy WellnerEncouraging others to intentionally live out their God-given identity. Archives
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