Outreach in the Pandemic and Beyond
In these tumultuous times, we see that life as we know it has been changed. There is great suffering and human tragedy. During this time, we have seen the life and practice of believers greatly altered.
Many are still not even meeting together, and traditional outreach has come to a screeching halt. Most churches and organizations that carry out missions’ trips all over the world have now cancelled everything for all of 2020. Crusades and rallies have been cancelled. What do we do? How can we participate in outreach from our own living rooms? How do we reach our communities, our country and distant lands? Much of the world is still under some form of lock down (as of June 2020)
But, if ever there was a time when people need to be pointed to the Lord and to solutions for today and eternity, it is now. So many people face every day with multiple fears, from getting sick to dying, to great concern for loved ones and then fears of how to simply survive the economic disaster. As believers, we know are called to share our faith, but the pandemic has dramatically altered how we interact with people. Believers are called to demonstrate the love of Christ with others. In John 15:27, Jesus said “…you also must testify.”
But how do we testify during this pandemic? Although traditional methodology cannot be utilized at this time, by the grace of God, with innovation and technology we are providing the Christian public with tools to share their faith very effectively and more broadly than ever before.
BACKGROUND OF THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY
We completed the original print version of The Most Important Story in 1995. God has greatly blessed and used this unique evangelistic book around the world. By God’s grace we have reached over 93 million copies in distribution in 125 languages. It has reached 160 countries and been utilized by over 100 denominations and countless ministries and individuals. We continue to provide The Most Important Story in print but with the constraint of the pandemic, we knew we had to transform the print version into an app that can be downloaded on any Android or Apple device.
OUTREACH IN A WORLD OF COVID 19
Therefore, under God, we have already begun work and we aim for completion of The Most Important Story (MIS) app in English by the end of June followed by Spanish, Arabic and Farsi. The app has the complete text of the MIS which is 50% scripture and concludes with an invitation to accept Christ. In addition to the brilliant animation style artwork, voice has been added to enable even more dynamic sharing of the Gospel. Those who can’t even read can hear the Gospel in their own language. We are beginning with English as over 1 billion people worldwide speak English and we ask you to share it with everyone you know through every possible means – Facebook etc. We also ask you to pray for this great evangelistic endeavor and for the resources needed to complete multiple languages.
If you’d like to donate to create these apps, CLICK HERE.
We have identified some of the world’s most spoken languages:
English 1.130 billion
Spanish 534 million
Arabic 274 million
Farsi 110 million
2.048 billion 26% of the world’s 7.8 billion people
Then, as we considered and prayed about next steps, we determined the next six languages to be completed:
Mandarin 1.117 billion
Hindi 615 million
Vietnamese 95 million
Amharic 60 million
Tagalog 60 million
Bengali 265 million
2.212 billion 28% of the world’s 7.8 billion people
Total of both phases can reach 4.260 billion.
That’s 54% of the world’s 7.8 billion people
As the Lord leads us and as individuals step forward and take the lead in prayer and in providing financial resources, we will complete new language apps accordingly. However, there is no limit on how many we ultimately do.
All apps will be free to download with the exception of English after the first month of free downloads. This is in order to have a revenue stream to help fund new language app and also keep them all updated. For English, after the first free month of downloads, it will cost .99 cents to download the app.
NEXT STEPS
Keep checking back as we will put a notice on this site when the apps are live. In the meantime, please pray and give as the Lord leads you. Thank you and God bless you!