They ponder whether the traditional mission method, such as going to meet people, forming relationships, building a community, and preaching the gospel by planting a church, is the way God continues to want during Covid Pandemic 19.
They got this answer through fellowship with Grace, an East Asia Muslim missionary. People who live in places where there are no restrictions on freedom cannot even imagine that people in certain countries have restrictions on their freedom to reside. Grace said Muslims in some parts of East Asia are restricted from traveling abroad due to visa restrictions. Is it something you can even imagine? The answer to the question they had been worrying about for a while was too simple. The apostle Paul in Romans says: “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” So how can Asian Muslims in a particular country know about God and Jesus Christ when there is no church, no Christians, and no radio station preaching the gospel within 100 miles of where they live? They have suffered countless deaths and diseases during the Covid 19 pandemic. However, the word that the Holy Spirit resonated in their hearts was that more people are dying forever without knowing Jesus Christ than people dying from Covid.
The second president of Big Country Inland Mission, D.E.
Hoste, a 70-year-old man, prayed for 200 missionaries to go to
Big Country(BC) to work in the interior of BC when
missionaries who came to BC during the Great Depression in
1929 were under pressure to leave due to unstable internal
affairs (Fung, 2019). "Have we too readily settled down to
consolidate gains already secured while multitudes remain
unevangelized with great stretches of the country unreached for
Christ? (Fung, 2019, p. 74)" "Are we becoming stationary instead
of mobile? Are we too occupied with the near at hand? Have we
lost the vision for those far-off and still unreached - the 10
million Muslims spreading in the far north-western islands, the
Tibetans, the tribal people, and people in inner Mongolia? (Fung,
2019, p. 74)" In the end, the leadership of CIM said, "An appeal
from BC for 200 New Workers." "We ask our brothers
and sisters in Christ at home to join us in praying to the Lord
of the Harvest to thrust out these reinforcements. We are not
anxious as to the means (methodologies) for sending forth or
sustaining them. He has told us to look to the birds and flowers
and to take no thought for these things, but to seek first the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall
be added unto us (Fung, 2019, p. 77)."
When, realistically, many missionaries were retreating to their
home countries, CIM leaders prayed for impossible tasks and made
impossible appeals (Fung, 2019). Just as what is impossible for
man but is for God, God sent 217 new workers to CIM in less than
three years, and the necessary new site and buildings were
prepared in BC (Fung, 2019). 1929 and 2023 are not
different. God then and now lives and works and does God's work
in God's way. Just as Hudson Taylor, a man of faith, earnestly
appealed 157 years ago that British Christians could not sit
with their arms crossed for the souls of BC people dying
without knowing Jesus Christ (Fung, 2019). We must pray for
what to do for the dying souls who do not know Jesus Christ
during the Covid Pandemic.
"Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10 (ESV).
