Many peoples are unreached and unengaged due to the difficulties of traveling to remote places. Photo by Derek Clinton
Sweat poured off the men’s foreheads as they made the two-hour journey up the mountain. They clung to their motorcycle drivers to stay balanced on the eroded and bumpy path as they experienced a sliver of everyday life for the Vidunda of Tanzania.
In August, five African American pastors were challenged by the International Mission Board to embark on a journey to Tanzania to take the Gospel to an unengaged, unreached people group like the Vidunda.
“It was a trip of endurance not only up the mountain but down it,” Robert Anderson, pastor of Colonial Baptist Church in Randallstown, Md., said. “But [how] can you weigh it in terms of getting to people and sharing the Gospel?”
While on the trip, Anderson said he witnessed nearly 10 people come to Christ. Many more heard the Gospel for the first time.
Globally, there are more than 3,000 unengaged, unreached people groups. Many of them remain unengaged and unreached due to their isolated locations.
“It’s one thing to be told it will be difficult to reach people,” said Ryan Palmer, pastor of Seventh Metro Church in Baltimore. “It’s another thing to trek up a steep mountain, through the crevices that have been eroded because of rain water coming through, putting in two-feet gashes.”
Palmer said sharing Christ in these remote areas is not optional. There is a need for others to catch a vision for spreading the Gospel to all nations, and a need for more African Americans to go.
“It’s more than a decade that I have heard of the indigenous people asking my blonde-haired, blue-eyed missionaries, ‘Where are my African-American brothers; is it that they don’t care about our condition?'” Palmer said.
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SOURCE: Baptist Press
Emily Easttom
