A few weeks I had the privilege of interviewing David Sitton on this blog. Mr. Sitton is the President of To Every Tribe, a ministry which has been planting churches among unreached people groups of Papua New Guinea and Mexico for many years now. Next month they are hosting a conference entitled The Privilege of Suffering: Jesus is Worth It. So that any who are interested may attend, there will be no charge for this conference. However, they ask that folks please register so that they can plan accordingly. To Every Tribe will seek to offset the conference costs through the freewill offerings of those who attend and the generous gifts of supporters.
David was kind enough to answer a few more questions for us. My questions are in bold below.
David – Thanks for your willingness to talk a bit more.
It’s great that so many read our first interview and some cared enough to respond. I’m glad we can do a Part 2.
For an opening statement, I’d like to reply to Justin Long at The Network for Strategic Missions and his observation (as a comment on your blog) that my definitions of unreached and unevangelized, according to many missiologists are inverted. That’s mostly true. However, Donald McGavran, one of the foremost missiologists of the last 100 years, defined unreached much the same way I do. “Socially isolated away from gospel witness” is one way he put it. But the important point is that I suspect most of our differences are largely in the semantics.
I would still argue that the natural progression for the gospel among unreached people groups is this: They are first unreached, meaning, there is no knowledge or access to the gospel within their culture. Then, as they hear the gospel, some are converted, leaders are trained and a small church is established. At this point, I consider them to be reached, meaning, that Christ and the gospel are now known, embraced (church planted) and accessible in their culture.
But there is still a remaining need for evangelization to be completed among them. This is the third phase, which I like to call reaching. This simply means that the needed evangelization is completed through the efforts of their own national believers (church) and with their own local resources.
At this point is when the pioneer church planter should move on to other unreached people groups. So the process is Unreached – Reached – Reaching.
Many missiologists see the process as Unevangelized – Unreached – Christian.
Here’s the reason I especially don’t like that third category (Christian) very much. It has largely lost its meaning for me because too many statisticians include anyone that claims to be Christian into that category. For example, it is often said that Papua New Guinea is 97.28% Christian. That is complete nonsense to anyone that has spent any amount of time in PNG. When the Christian category stretches its arms so wide as to surround and include Catholics, far-fringe syncretistic cargo cults and sometimes even the Mormons, it completely confuses the true situation of the urgent need for mission in the remote and still unreached places.
Romans 15:17-24 has greatly affected the way I think about the remaining task of mission. Paul explains that he is leaving the region from “Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum (modern day Albania)” because his aim is to preach the gospel, not where Christ is already named. Paul justifies his departure by quoting Isaiah 52:15 – so that “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.”
Paul says “there is no more place for me to work in these regions”, and so, he turns his attention to Spain which Paul considered to be an “uttermost” region where Christ was still not known.
How could Paul say there was “no more work for him in these regions?” Certainly there were lost people all over that huge swath of territory that still needed to be evangelized. But for the pioneer church planter, Paul’s
job in the region was finished, and he turned his attention to less reached places.
Paul wasn’t saying by his departure that there was no more need for evangelization. He was saying that this territory was now sufficiently reached so that the remaining work of evangelism could be completed by the local believers in the churches he had established.
This is what I understand from Romans 15:
Unreached Peoples are places where Christ has not been named; where people have never been told of him; where there are those who have never heard of him.
Reached (but not completely evangelized) Peoples are places where Christ is already named; the people have been told of him; they have heard of him; Churches are planted; and the remaining need to evangelize the unsaved, within that now reached region, falls to the local believers.
Reaching Peoples are those that, with their own national manpower and local resources, are completing the job of evangelization and missionary mobilization (and sending) themselves.
And the church planting missionary moves on to other unreached places where Christ is still unknown (unreached) to repeat the process.
I want to say clearly, again, much of the difference, I think, among missiologists comes from our having slightly differing definitions. But we all agree on the distressing spiritual condition of the remaining unreached peoples of the world.
I hope that’s not overly tedious, but I wanted to explain why I have come to use these words and definitions.
I was wondering if we could tackle a couple of exegetical questions. How do you understand Matthew 24:14 (“And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”) in light of the widespread belief in the imminent return of Christ?
I believe the Lord wants every generation of believers to live under the expectation on an imminent return of Christ. Paul himself, I think, was looking for the return of Jesus in his lifetime (I Thess. 4-5) and even encouraged believers to live in a way that would “speed” its coming (2 Peter 3:12).
As for Matthew 24:14, I take it at its literal face value. It means exactly what it says. When every one of the 17,000 ethnicities (people groups) in the world has the gospel established among them, then Christ will return. The Lord will not have an incomplete crop! Heaven will be gloriously populated with the elect from “every nation, tribe and language group” (Rev. 5:9; 7:9).
Do I live in expectancy of an imminent return of Jesus Christ? I do. Jesus is coming soon. And it’s certainly a lot nearer now than when we first believed (Romans 13:11-12). However, humanly speaking, I know there
are thousands of places around the world where the peoples are still desperately unreached and groping around like blind men in the strongholds of hostile spiritual darkness. So from that stand point, I don’t expect Christ to return tonight. But here’s the thing for me; Jesus said three times in Revelation 22 “Surely I am coming soon”; the last prayer of the bible is the church saying in response – “Amen, come Lord Jesus.” So when I pray – “Come, Lord Jesus”, I’m praying that the gospel would speedily go to the ends of the earth; I’m praying for the rapid success of the gospel among unreached peoples; I’m praying for the elect to be quickly drawn in. And when the Lord has gathered in the last portions of his purchased Bride from among the earths peoples, the Lord will split the skies and come for her. And the Lord could make that happen in an instant if he so chooses.
How do you understand Colossians 1:24 (“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church”)? Specifically, how does our suffering relate to the extending of Christ’s kingdom?
I tip my hat to John Piper in helping me understand this one. His message a few years ago entitled “Doing Mission when Dying is Gain” is a must listen.
There are two questions that scream out of the Colossians 1:24 text.
Question 1: What is lacking in Christ’s afflictions?
Answer: Absolutely nothing is lacking in its accomplishment of salvation for his people. Salvation is full and free and completely purchased and secured by Christ through his death and resurrection.
Question 2: If there is nothing lacking in the accomplishment of Christ’s afflictions to acquire salvation for his people, then what is lacking (because the verse clearly says that Paul was filling up the lack)? And how can we provide what is lacking?
Answer: The lack in Christ’s afflictions is not in its accomplishment, but in its, personal, specific application to the nations.
Josef T’son has said – “The nations will be won by his (Christ’s) cross and through our crosses.”
I understand that to mean that it’s the cross of Christ that accomplished salvation – But it’s our cross; that is, it’s our joyful enduring of hardship, suffering and martyrdom (maybe) that proves the truth of the cross to hostile nations.
It’s a difficult dynamic to understand at first. But the Ecuador 5 is a great example of how this works. The cross of Christ was proven to be the power of God for salvation for the Auca tribe. The truth of the gospel was confirmed through 5 human crosses when they were slaughtered by the Auca spears.
When a missionary speaks the gospel in love, then meets violent death in joy for this gospel, a miracle sometimes occurs. The eyes of unbelievers are opened. God enables them to understand the significance of the death of Christ, as demonstrated by the missionaries they just killed – And many of them eventually believe in Christ. This is the consistent testimony from the stoning of Stephen to this present day explosion of gospel advance in the most heavily persecuted areas of the world. Persecution and suffering is not a set-back to mission; it’s an incentive for more aggressive gospel witnessing.
I believe that suffering, hardship, persecution and missionary martyrdom is a divine strategy that God intentionally uses – To advance the fame of his name to all nations. Persecutions always advance the gospel more quickly.
Not to belabor the point, but isn’t it interesting that God has a predetermined number of martyrs (Rev 6:11-14) that he has appointed for the ingathering of his predetermined number of lost sheep (John 6:35-40; 44 and John 10:15)?
We talked about “panta ta ethne” (to all the nations – ethnicities) a bit last time. One of the facts that impressed me when I took the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course was that the last 50 years seem to have brought us much closer to the goal. Can you comment on that?
We are, of course, closer to the goal. But the remaining part of the task is the hardest part. We often say at To Every Tribe that the easy-to-reach places have already been reached. The remaining unreached peoples are (often) geographically remote, culturally and linguistically confusing and oftentimes physically hostile to those carrying the gospel.
When could we finish the task? It could happen quickly if a few thousand martyr missionaries would rise up to go; a few thousand financial martyrs would rise up to sacrificially support them and a few thousand Moravian-like prayer martyrs would rise up to intercede for them. This is the kind of revival I’m praying and believing for. The problem is not essentially a manpower or money shortage. The shortage is in the number of missionaries who are willing to “fall into the earth and die” for the greater harvest (John 12:23-25). A lot of seed needs to be buried in order to reap the remaining crop.
Mark Noll
The missionary task is not an American effort; and these days, missionaries from the West are among the least effective in the remaining rough and tough places of the world. Pioneer church planting is grueling work and it will not be accomplished over the long haul by soft, fearful, risk-avoiding missionaries. I praise God that he is raising up fully abandoned, martyr witnesses from 2nd and 3rd world peoples; and we want to work with them.
The effect of this cross-cultural work force will only have a positive effect on To Every Tribe. We want to learn how to maximize multi-cultural church planting teams with our brothers from other countries. We want to be on the aggressive front-line of helping them to organize and mobilize for the nations. In our own Center For Pioneer Church Planting, I see near-future multi-cultural partnerships and church planting teams consisting of American, Canadian, Australian, Mexican and Papua New Guinean believers. Part of our vision is to establish missionary training bases in PNG and Mexico in order to launch these church planting teams in the fastest, most contextually relevant and cost effective ways that we can.
Thanks again for your time and your important work.
Thank you, brother, for your interest in our ministry. I pray God’s best blessings on your family and your good work for the gospel. Let’s reconvene for a third conversation sometime.