How Did You Decide Which Language Group to Go To?

How did you decide which language group to go to?

As we started to approach high fluency in the national language of our host country, the area of the country that we live in, as a region of the country, has 112 language groups. And so of those 112, our organization had identified around 40 as having a priority for gospel ministry. Well, as a team, we can't serve in 40. We have to choose one. And so we started looking at the list and trying to see what had the highest priority on the list. And we narrowed that down to about six language groups.

And this is where it became very difficult as a team. We struggled a lot with six different groups that all needed a translation of the Scriptures, that all needed a church planting effort among them. How do you narrow down to one? And it started to weigh on our souls, knowing that as you choose one, five others are getting crossed off the list. And souls will have to wait longer, years longer, to receive a team and receive the good news, the hope of Christ.

But for us as a team, we looked around collectively at the skill set that the Spirit had given us, that our churches had equipped us with, and we said, which of these six that we've identified is the least likely to receive a church planting team in the next 20 years? And so that helped us to start whittling down our list. Originally we prioritized it by population— which one had the biggest population? Let's start there. But then from that side of things, we began to see what was the hardest to get to, what was the hardest to live among long term, what had the most difficulty establishing a business platform to maintain visa status in this closed access country. And that's how our team ultimately identified the people group, the language group, that we are working among now.

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