02 December 2011

By Scott Tompkins | ResonateNews.com

LONG BEACH, Calif. — The conference under way here is showing a remarkable wave of new initiatives in Christian evangelism aiming particularly at people, places and areas of society where there is no significant Christian presence.

Presentations at the Call2All Global Congress — an annual gathering of Christian leaders for sharing missionary ideas — included topics as varied as business, language and mapping initiatives, video games and a flying car.

Paul Eshleman, founder of The JESUS Film Project which has been translated into more than 1,000 languages, kicked off Day 2 of the Congress. Eshelman led a workshop aimed at helping churches pray for, and send, workers to the world’s last “unreached people groups,” which are  ethnic groups with little or no exposure to the Gospel.

David Hamilton, an international leader with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and YWAM cartographer Jill Thornton unveiled an advanced version of the www.4kworldmap.com, a system now widely used by missions agencies to identify the world's most underprivileged people.

“Our goal is to go where we are not and to reach 'the every and the all,'” said Hamilton, who had delegates standing over a huge world map on the floor and pray for specific regions.

Bill Wolfe, another leader of The JESUS Film Project, challenged participants to think digitally and visually in their outreach.

“The average teenager now watches more than100 movies a year and they interact daily with other digital devices,” Wolfe said. “To reach the new generation we have to use their preferred media.”

He recommended www.globalshortfilmnetwork.com as one approach. He also described the success of a new version of the  "JESUS" film that highlights Jesus’ interactions with women. He said the film, called "Magdalena," has been translated into 70 languages and is used to reach out to Muslim women.

Throughout the day there were presentations on human trafficking, Bible storytelling for oral learners, video projects, business outreach, street kids ministry and online missions. There were also workshops in Korean, Spanish and Indonesian.

David Garrison of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board who authored the book “Church Planting Movements,” told delegates of “amazing works of God” in places such as Cuba, Iran, China and India.

“We’ve done research on church growth statistics we were getting from the field," Garrison said, "and found our missionaries were actually underestimating the growth of churches there because they didn’t think we would believe them.”

Roy Peterson, founder and CEO of The Seed Company said 2011 was “the greatest year ever for Bible translation.” Peterson highlighted projects in Nigeria and India where native workers stepped forward to assist and speed up translation projects.

“In India we requested translation help on the Internet for the Bihar language group and we got offers from 1,100 native speakers," he said.

Loren Cunningham, founder of YWAM, gave the keynote message and stressed the importance of the Bible in world evangelization.

“The great Christian leader John Stott said we can’t do evangelism without the Bible," Cunningham said, "My great burden is to end Bible poverty. ... The word of God can transform nations."

Cunningham wrote “The Book That Transforms Nations” to demonstrate that the Bible, used under the direction of the Holy Spirit, can change the  world.

He expressed concern that the next generation was growing up without learning even basic Bible precepts.

“We need to find ways to create a hunger for the Word in this culture and to find ways to get the Bible out to  people who have not yet received it," he said.

Cunningham concluded his message by praying for three initiatives. One is led by his son, film director David Cunningham, involved in producing movies, video games and graphical novels that introduce Bible themes to youth culture. He also prayed for YWAM’s medical ships ministry and The Flying Car Project, an invention of Steve Saint to take the Gospel message to unreached ethnic groups.

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