The sun was hot that afternoon and yet as you stepped under the thatch roofed hut, the sun wasn’t so bright. You had to squint your eyes to make out what was right in front of you and you gradually realized that what you were squinting at was a man. But this man was unlike any you had seen before. And as you attempted to communicate with him, you realized any attempt you made would be futile at best.
The hot temperature, the strange sights and smells, this man speaking in a language so radically different than your own, all had you wondering how you were going to begin to share God’s love with this man and others like him. You were struggling to learn even the most basic of phrases in this tribal dialect and yet you knew that if you were going to make God’s story clear to him, you were going to have to do far better than ‘What is that?’
How is this seemingly impossible task going to be accomplished? How is this unreached man going to be reached?
I had the chance to coordinate this experience along with an incredibly gifted team of 8 others, to create this scenario for almost 1000 festival goers at Michigan’s Big Ticket Festival in Gaylord MI in late June. From current NTBI staff and students to former students and missionaries on their way to the field, all of us worked together to create a tribal village setting in the middle of this festival attended by over 25000 people in two and a half days.
After creating that tension that each person who went through our experience felt, we presented them with options, opportunities to gain the Biblical worldview and training needed to accomplish this ‘impossible’ task.
We pray that the list of approximately 2500 un-reached people groups that we posted on the walls of our tent eventually becomes a shorter because of people heeding God’s call and taking Him seriously.
That’s how the impossible will be made possible.
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