UNREACHED
In Revelation 7, John shares his vision of heaven with members from every tribe, tongue, people and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb.
Yet today there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world.
For the last six years, my family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet and fund the task remaining.
Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work through the men and women he has called to reach the UNREACHED.
UNREACHED
Pioneers: From Cannibals To Kingdom Innovation with Steve Richardson and Nathan Burns
Steve Richardson and Nathan Burns from Pioneers share their organization's extraordinary journey of bringing the gospel to unreached people groups around the world. Through personal stories and strategic insights, they reveal how cross-cultural understanding, team-based approaches, and innovative methods are accelerating global mission work.
• Founded 46 years ago, Pioneers now has 3,000 workers serving in over 100 countries among 441 unreached people groups
• Steve grew up in a tribe of cannibal headhunters in New Guinea, witnessing his father's breakthrough using the "Peace Child" cultural concept
• Teams typically aim for three couples/singles initially but can grow based on the size and needs of the target group
• Pioneers focuses on matching missionaries' unique gifts with strategic needs rather than forcing standard roles
• Mission work increasingly leverages technology, business partnerships, and involves people of all ages and backgrounds
• Former mission fields are becoming mission forces – Mongolia now sends about 40 missionaries through Pioneers
• Pioneers' 10-year vision aims to engage 250 additional unreached people groups beyond their current 441
• Steve is writing a book called "Silver and Bold" challenging those 55+ to invest 5-10 years in missions
Follow @unreachedpodcast on Instagram for more!
In Revelation 7, john shares his vision of heaven, with members from every tribe, tongue, people and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb. Yet today there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world. For the last six years, my family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet and fund the task remaining. Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work for the men and women he has called to reach the unreached. Hello friends, dustin Elliott here today, your host for the Unreached podcast. Welcome back. Today we have guests that are really great friends and truly have been partners of mine and my family and Bless and the Bless family longer than anyone. For context, bless got started in 2016 when Tabitha Hale woke up in the middle of the night with a dream and wrote down in her prayer journal you know, hey, we're going to start this organization, we're going to throw a Christmas concert and a storytelling benefit and we're going to raise money and we're going to support five critical categories. Okay, and so those categories originally for Bless were ending the orphan crisis, fighting human trafficking, mobilizing cross-cultural workers, advancing the gospel and supplying life-sustaining resources. And I think one of the greatest lessons that we've learned with BLESS and that all of us learn as we lead companies and we lead organizations, is you know, the vision that you set and the operating model that you put in in the beginning is not necessarily going to be static and stay the same forever. And so initially we were funding short term projects. We were going out and we were finding partners, like we have today, and we were finding them and saying where are you working with a UPG and what's a short term project that we could bring our community together and fund? And we did that for several years. As we grew ending the orphan crisis we found out really that needed to be changed. We changed that topic to protecting vulnerable children over time and then, over time, we realized short-term projects are good in Jesus' name, but ultimately creating a fund where we were committed to an unreached people group for years, where we were saying we're not going to fund you for a little while and then step out and you've got to figure out new funding. Instead, we're going to kind of adopt this people group. And so we're going to support pioneers. You just heard, if you listened to the last episode, ethnos 360 and GSI. We're going to support UPGs that you're working in, whether it takes three years, five years, 10 years or more to get a healthy, indigenous-led, disciple-making church in their people group and the Bible translated into their heart language. So when the missionaries can go from the pulpit to the pews and then home, we're going to go with you that whole journey.
Speaker 1:And so today we have Pioneers. Pioneers was the first mission partner that we funded in 2017, and they are the only mission partner that we have funded every single year that Bless has existed. They've been our longest standing partner. They're a phenomenal partner. If you know anyone involved with Pioneers or if you don't, you'll find out if you do a little research they are the gold standard. They're as good as it gets in missions. And so today we are blessed to have Steve Richardson, who is the CEO of Pioneers, and Nathan Burns, who's the chief administrative officer, with us. So help me welcome both these guys to the show.
Speaker 2:Dustin, it's great to be with you.
Speaker 1:That was Steve talking. We'll start with Steve. So Steve and Arlene lead Pioneers. Arlene's parents started Pioneers. So, Steve, maybe just take us through the story of the organization how you met the Lord, how you met.
Speaker 2:Arlene how you've got to where you are today. Arlene's father came to Christ when Billy Graham visited the front lines of the Korean War.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:He took a Bible from Billy Graham and came back from Korea with a new relationship with God, but also the beginnings of a vision for the world. He went into the corporate world, worked for Mobile Oil, eventually became the national sales manager for the Wall Street Journal and loved leading co-workers to Christ, was discipled in good churches, but he had this gnawing sense that God had even more in store for him and eventually he resigned his lucrative position, stepped out by faith, a little bit like Abraham did, and started visiting different countries around the world Africa, south Pacific. Eventually, as China was opening up, made a trip there. One thing led to another and in their home they started the organization that we call Pioneers Today, and it's about 46 years old. Ted went to be with the Lord in 2003. And today we have about 3,000 or more workers serving in over 100 countries in the world among about 400 unreached people groups. All because a couple involved in the corporate world asked God, basically the prayer of Psalm 28, lord, give me the nations as my inheritance. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:So I was a senior in high school in Pasadena, california, and my dad was traveling all over the US two or three-week-long trips, speaking telling the story of our own experience among a cannibal headhunter tribe in New Guinea and encountered the Fletcher family really liked Ted, got acquainted with Arlene. He came back to Pasadena and said Steve, I found a young lady that I think would be perfect for you. I was a little shocked but I thought I'd give it a try. So I wrote Arlene a letter on my dad's Institute of Tribal People Studies stationery with all the fierce heads at the top. She responded. We became pen pals and four years later we got married during my senior year of college.
Speaker 1:What a story that is so old school.
Speaker 2:We have an arranged marriage, the arranged the parent introduction, the pen pal beginning.
Speaker 1:Come on, man. I mean, somebody call Hollywoodllywood, maybe not hollywood, somebody call another studio uh, that is fantastic and and her.
Speaker 2:Her family and heritage obviously was very different than mine. I'd grown up in the jungle, she grew up in the jungles of new york and detroit and san francisco uh, in the corporate world, boy, the fusing of two families that loved God's Word, had a passion to see Him glorified globally, not just locally. It's been a fun ride.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going to come back to your story and the concept of the peace child, but let's bring Nathan Burns in. Nathan's the chief administrative officer of Pioneers. Nathan's been our primary contact to Pioneers for eight years now, getting close to nine years now. Nathan, All right, take us through your story please, sir.
Speaker 3:I think the parts I find special about how God's been working in my life and led me to being with Pioneers now for 16 years, right out of grad school, which wasn't my plan it starts with. I grew up in a Christian home, a family who worked for a crew Campus Crusade and always felt like church ministry was going to be a big part of my life. Church ministry was going to be a big part of my life and I think was walking with God since a very young child because I had the blessing of a Christian home. But it was in high school where he gave me the mercy of like really understanding his grace. And there's a summer, my junior year, that I just remember. I think I walked around with a silly smile that whole summer on my face when I realized the freedom of I'm forgiven no matter what. I'm a firstborn always tried. I was a good kid but like all sorts of pressure I felt, so I felt set free then.
Speaker 3:And then I went into college and despite this assumption that church and ministry would be a big part of my life, because my folks have had ministerial roles, I kind of wanted to prove I could cut it in the real world.
Speaker 3:I guess, is how I entered college. I wanted to prove I could cut it, prove I was smart, but I wanted to serve and I thought I'd go work for the government or something like that. So I did international studies through graduate school and thought that that would probably turn into State Department service or even intelligence analyst kind of work. Doors were shut and I had this conviction, like I've done all this work now six years to an undergraduate thesis, a master's thesis talking about institutions, laws, and at the end of the day, I still really believe the world only changes one heart at a time. Right, that the human problem can't be solved any other way. Right. And he opened this door to start at Pioneers as a grant proposal writer almost 16 years ago. In that process, him even unveiling more how he's gifted me and giving me roles that align with that. As someone who's good at systems, I found that that was the vein that's cut through. Everything I've done is how you work through human systems to affect change.
Speaker 2:And Dustin missions is so complex. It's probably one of the most complex endeavors. Imagine having thousands of employees, so to speak, in over 100 countries doing the hardest work you can do. So, yeah, we need bright people like Nathan on the team, I think it's a great point.
Speaker 1:I think it's a great point. It's a very encouraging point for a lot of the listeners that maybe haven't been called to go to the field and serve in a cannibalistic tribal group like you and your family did. But it's like no, I've got a good skill set in accounting. I've got a good skill set in coding. I've got a skill set in web design and graphics and marketing and these other things and that's incredibly needed and incredibly useful. And everybody that's listened to the pod for a while has heard about Switchboard, globalswitchboardio, and we've encouraged everyone to go create a profile for yourself and your company or your church or your nonprofit and get connected. You know, tell the world what your gifts are and you're going to get pinged and somebody's going to say, hey, I need your help and that might be a volunteer opportunity. It might turn into more.
Speaker 1:But all skill sets are needed and you know, biblically God doesn't just call us to use some of us. He wants to use all of our time, talent and treasure and when we kind of redirect our life to, you know, praying hey, god, will you help me with this and that in my day. From there to hey, god, what do you want to do with your day and how can I play a role in that? That's Nathan's story, right? Nathan thought, okay, I'm going to develop these skills that I have and I'm going to go to corporate and I'm going to go prove myself and do these things and I'm always going to go whole self, which maybe I need to put another disclaimer on this Doesn't mean that someone that's not working full time in missions is not using their whole self. But you get the point.
Speaker 1:I think it's great, I think, just seeing the multi talents coming together, even the story of your family and Arlene's family and the very different backgrounds. So, speaking of your background, let's get to the Peace Child story. Steve, take us through. What was it like to grow up, how you did?
Speaker 2:So when I was six months old, my parents carried me. We actually traveled on a ship, took about six weeks to get to what was then called Netherlands New Guinea. It's a 1,500-mile-long dinosaur-shaped island just north of Australia with about a thousand languages, maybe more. About a fifth of the world's languages are found right there on the island of New Guinea and the neighboring islands. So we ended up in a tribe of cannibal headhunters, literally, who lived in the trees, had never encountered the outside world before in the trees, had never encountered the outside world before, and that's where I grew up as dad and mom learned the language well enough to begin explaining the story of Jesus, which took several months. You can imagine about six or seven months.
Speaker 2:We were totally immersed because there were no English speakers around us. I grew up speaking Saoie better than English. Only mom and dad spoke English. Everybody else spoke Sawe. So anyway, when they got to the point of sharing the message, the story of Jesus, dad was shocked, when he came to the part of Jesus' betrayal by Judas, to find that the Sawe wanted to know more about Judas. And he said wait a minute, you mean Jesus? And they said no, judas, he sounds like one of us? Didn't you just say he betrayed his friend to death? Dad said yes. They said, well, that's like us. We do that all the time. We make friendships with people from outside groups whenever we can. We don't just kill them on the spot and we entertain them. We invite them to be special guests at feasts and dances, and then one day we actually kill them and they are the feast.
Speaker 1:Tell us more about Judas, I'd love to promise my daughter in marriage to a man like that, oh my goodness. And you're looking around going.
Speaker 3:Lord, are we going to?
Speaker 1:be served at the feast at some point soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Why have they been so friendly the last few months?
Speaker 1:right.
Speaker 2:So dad and mom, obviously, were forced afresh to just get on their knees and pray Lord. In the meantime a lot of fighting broke out because three or four Saovi villages had moved in right around us. They wanted to be close to us. They didn't want to be close to each other, they were generational enemies. Fighting broke out. People were getting injured, if not killed.
Speaker 2:She counted 14 major battles fought in the first month in our front yard because they didn't have anywhere else to fight. Oh my gosh, that was the only open area in the jungle. She got used to grabbing me as I'm playing outside and pulling me into the relative safety of our thatched-roofed house there. Anyway, dad finally said you've got to make peace. He didn't know how a treachery, honor and culture could actually convince their enemies. They were serious if they said, oh, we want peace now. But that's the fun story of a book called Peace Child that Dad wrote in the 1970s of the breakthrough of the gospel message among Nassaui. Because the only way he discovered that they could convince their enemies they were serious about making peace was to give one of their own little boys, newborn to the enemy, and that boy was called the peace child, the Tarabtim, and the peace would last as long as that child lived if he lived fell out of a canoe and got eaten by a crocodile, or got bit by a death adder and died half an hour later. The warfare could resume at any time. Oh, my Mom and dad had the discernment, as they were praying, to realize not only is this the strangest thing they've ever heard, it's also strangely familiar. I mean, it's the essence of the gospel Two parties at war, one of those parties wanting so desperately to be reconciled to his enemies, he's willing to give his son, his only son, the peace lasting as long as that son lives. Hebrews says he ever lives to make intercession for us.
Speaker 2:So dad learned a few more vocabulary words, went back to the same group of Sawi warriors, shared the same message and this time there wasn't a ripple of laughter jokes being made. They said wait a minute. Are you saying that Jesus was a peace child? Dad said yes. They said why didn't you tell us that the first time To betray a peace child is the worst thing anybody can do? They had a term for it. It's called tarok gaman, which means shredding the peace. And that was the beginnings of an amazing movement among the Sawi. And wow, I just had a front row seat growing up there for 15 years watching the impact of the gospel message almost fast motion. Just the reality that the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of those who believe.
Speaker 1:Unbelievable, I mean to the listeners. Isn't it incredible to hear these stories and hear the different ways the gospel gets connected, based on a tribe or a people group's own history and own understanding of the world? It's like the missionaries go. They don't know what that's going to be yet because they don't know what they don't know. They get to know the people, they get to know the culture, they get the language and then they start to figure out like okay, we've had other examples where it's the stomach and not the heart and how are we going to relate things to the stomach, not the heart? And now we figure out kind of how to do that and like this story with the peace child like wow.
Speaker 2:So Dustin, for the, for the Sawi was their liver. Oh, okay, we've got another organ in the game. One of the chiefs came to my dad and said your words have made my liver quiver.
Speaker 2:My liver quiver and the Sawi would have literally a ceremony when the when the child was given by their enemies, and the warriors would gather around they would lay their hands on that child, one by one, and say I accept this baby as a basis for peace between us and the enemy. And so this chief Hato said your words have made my liver quiver. Can you tell the Creator God that I want to accept his peace child? And my dad had the privilege of saying to him you know what, hato? I don't have to tell him, for you.
Speaker 2:You can express your liver directly and tell him you want, you know, by faith, just express your liver to him. And he said I want to do that, and my four wives and all our children do too. So dad said bring your whole family. And that was the beginnings of a major movement.
Speaker 1:Wow, incredible.
Speaker 3:Incredible. All right, Nathan, that's going to be a tough act to follow.
Speaker 1:It always is.
Speaker 3:So let's kind of bottom up, let's go top down now, Nathan. Go up to the administration of Pioneers and talk through how does an organization like yours operate, what's the processes that you put into place and how do we stay in touch? The pioneers in our mission statement, we entrain the church as a core value, and that doesn't just mean over there, Churches send right, we help send. Part of the story is that God has been really faithful to use American churches to have a vision to go to the unreached. Of course we want to see more and we keep sharing that, and so the church is a really important part of building all of the support and systems for people who are going to go to the frontier and engage an unreached people group who doesn't have a gospel emissary there. To support that, though, the things we bring along to help that church and that missionary is we have to be able to process gifts, as that church and God and their network rally around that missionary to get them out. I mean so you have hundreds of people behind every missionary who goes, and they need support systems so that they can give to that person. We receive those gifts well, and then we have to work on.
Speaker 3:We now have security trainings for missionaries because they're going to very tough areas, sometimes with opposition from government, sometimes with opposition from nongovernmental organizations. That can range from terrorists to just well, if you're still going to headhunters, there's still some risk, right. So there's a range of risks that, of course, missionaries are accepting, but you want to, as much as possible, wrap around them preparation and protection for those things, and that gets more and more complicated as the world gets complicated, because then you have to begin protecting from digital threats, and God's given us some just wonderful people who actually have skills in those areas. But we still need to upskill in a lot of areas, including digital. We can talk more about that as we talk about our 10-year vision. I think we can get into that.
Speaker 3:We're excited to see pioneers grappling with the digital future of missions and what that's going to look like. So there's a bunch of exciting stuff we can get into talking about there. But then you have to continue to build out. How do you provide good member care? Missionary families are just like us. They're going to go through tough seasons. Families are just like us. They're going to go through tough seasons. So how do you help them with those tough seasons of problems in marriage or with kids or conflict with teammates. That's something that missions, as it's gotten started, realized was a huge need to keep missionaries from burning out, and I think the missions community continues to do a better and better job of wrapping support around missionaries, but it's hard to ever say that's done. So we work hard on that keep missionary attrition low, keep people thriving, able to continue to pour out.
Speaker 1:Let me pull on that thread for a second. So what I'd like to go with that is a lot of the teams that we know of and support. There's maybe three different families working in a group and there are players with different roles within those families. Someone might be a gifted translator and someone might be gifted in other ways. How do you arrange the teams? How do you put them together? What are the key roles typically that you need them to play? What are the size of the teams? So, if I'm listening and I'm thinking about taking this step, who are you going to pair with me? Right, if I'm an offensive lineman or I'm a tight end, or I'm a receiver or I'm a QB, who else is going to be with me? How does that work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think Steve could add a lot of flesh to how that works out on the field. But, to start us, another core value is the team. Now, first, we're focused on the unreached right. So we will send people to start a team by themselves as needed to aggressively go and engage the unreached. But the desire is to have a full team. Because you have more support structures, you're able to begin to specialize and address those different needs, like you talked about. How that works out can be very locally informed by the local leadership structure we have there, so we can assess the individual needs in those areas rather than send people out with some kind of maybe blind, naive view of oh well, you will just, you'll share the gospel this way and you'll translate this way. We make those decisions in the context, trusting our field leadership to do that. And then, steve, from there, how would you bring some light to that question around structuring teams?
Speaker 2:strategically units three couples or singles as a goal. Obviously, when you're first getting it started, it might not be that many, and then they can grow beyond that and a lot have. Our team eventually was 45 adults and even more kids from multiple countries, and our target group numbered 30 million. So there were as many people in the Muslim target group that Marlene and I served as there were in the Roman Empire in the time of the Apostle Paul. So most teams get up to maybe 6, 8, 10 adults. So ours was unusual for sure. But again, like Nathan said, it depends on the context.
Speaker 1:If you've got a team in a major city in Japan or in Cairo working with Sudanese refugees, you know it's going to look different than it does in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Sure sure I've mentioned Nehemiah plenty of times, but I feel like he's just worth mentioning again because when you answered the question, nathan, you were very humble and careful to say we're not fitting every square peg into our round hole. We're not like here's how we do it and we're sending this with the same structure. You're saying, no, we have teams there that are present, people that are present, leadership there that knows the culture, knows the groups, has an understanding of what's needed. And so it's this long process of prayer and intercession and asking okay, what's the right amount of people, what's the right strategy, what's the right timing? Y'all are going back and forth in that conversation and a lot of folks that decide to step into missions. I think there's maybe a couple ways to do it.
Speaker 1:You hear Todd Aaron talk and he's like put a map on a wall and throw a dart at the map right and go there right, kind of as one way. But then there's also this like I just want to serve, I don't know where I'm going to be needed yet. I'm coming into this open-handed and then the couple or the family or the individual gets to know y'all. Y'all get to know them. You kind of figure out what their gift is and you're like, hey, this team is getting ready to go here, or this team's got this need and I think you fit that need. So it's like a bit of a chessboard right or a game of risk, I guess might be a better way to say it.
Speaker 1:You're putting your players in the different countries in the different spots.
Speaker 2:It's a blend of strategic need and individual gifting and we found that as long as we had kind of a macro strategy of how we were intending to see a church movement among this people group, then you ask what are you gifted at? What's your experience? Like? We had on our team somebody had a master's degree in community development from Johns Hopkins, so he started a sub-team, he and his wife really leveraging their expertise to help advance the gospel. Another guy had run a print shop in Philadelphia, a successful printing company. We put him in charge of the media aspect of our strategy for reaching these 30 million people and he just went with it and it was just so good because we had a strategy. But forcing individuals to work outside of their area of gifting, you're kind of asking for long-term trouble if you try to sustain that for too long.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I'd say that works in how we run a company and how we run a team within a company as well right Understanding your people and their roles and responsibilities, how they feel valued, what matters to them, right, and then setting them up for success. The other thing that I think I'd like to hear y'all comment on is when you have multiple people working in a group, then you have an opportunity for one family to leave for a little while on respite and come back and see their family and rest and recuperate and the work continues. You talked kind of through that strategy. What's the cycle or the rhythm? How does that typically work? I know sometimes it's informed by health needs and family needs and things like that, but otherwise, how does that work?
Speaker 2:No, that really helps a lot to have continuity, create continuity and even if you reflect back in the book of Acts and the Apostle Paul's missionary journeys, he always took people with him and often those people ended up staying or getting reassigned. So I think in a team it's good to have some people who have a really long-term commitment. And then there are others who come, maybe for a period of time, for a season, and they help with a specialty. One lady came out in our experience and spent two or three weeks with my wife my wife translated every word training people how to make quilts, people who had been jobless, and they ended up starting a ministry that has produced thousands of quilts and generated millions of dollars worth of revenue and helped lead hundreds of people to Christ. All because this lady came out from Colorado and spent three weeks of her time to help train people. I feel like I've read a book about this, steve. Yeah, she wrote it up. It's called Threads.
Speaker 1:That's right. Threads is in our library at home.
Speaker 3:Tell us a little bit.
Speaker 1:Dive into that a little bit more. Pull on that thread, if you will, for us.
Speaker 2:It quilts in the tropics. I mean, only God would think of that. But we had people from Dubai purchasing these things, australia, the US and we'd formed cooperatives in the villages. The Christians became the benefactors, the people willing to invite others into getting jobs. So even when they were ostracized from their communities because of their faith, they ended up having a skill that they could transfer generously to the people who had been persecuting them.
Speaker 1:Today that ministry actually is supporting several dozen church planning efforts in countries all around the world that if I'm a little older in my years and I haven't maybe had a career working, but I know how to knit, or quilt or sew or these other skills. There's a place, clearly, where we can go out and we can teach those things and be helpful as well.
Speaker 2:Dustin, you're getting me so excited because I don't think most of us realize what a unique period of history we're living in in terms of the Great Commission. It's an all-hands-on-deck proposition right now, and we're like the first second generation that has the option of going anywhere almost in the world, at least for a period of time, and using virtually any gift, any background to contribute to the advance of the gospel. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's go, dustin, you got me going here. Let me mention one more thing. There are 100 million Americans over the age of 55, and millions of people are retiring and wondering you know, am I going to play golf? You know, full-time for the next 15, 20 years? And I would love to challenge people if you're in that age group, if you're like 60, even 65. We have a worker who's been serving 21 years in a valley in Central Asia. She's the only witness to the gospel in that entire valley, in an unreached area. She's been there 21 years and guess what? She's 87 years old. She started when she was about 66.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Talk about running that full race right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you hear of someone who's been overseas 21 years, you think they got started in their 20s, so it's not too late, and it doesn't mean you have to go somewhere necessarily. There's just so many different ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's just fantastic. In my day job, we talk a lot about this concept of retirement and I'll ask you a question, both of you.
Speaker 2:You may have heard me say this before so you may know the answer, but how many times is retirement mentioned in the Bible? Yeah, I would say it's not. Maybe I'm wrong there, but it's one.
Speaker 1:Okay, what is it? It's one and it's way back in the Torah and it's for Levitical priests. God says that 55 Levitical priests get to retire. Okay, so if your job has been so intense that you've had to run a 24-7 barbecue restaurant and skinning and tanning operation and do it all perfectly, or anyone could vaporize at any moment then you get to step out, okay.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, for the rest of us, there is no biblical concept of retirement. So this whole thing where we're like we're going to work until we're 60 or 62 or 65, and Social Security and this, and that it's cultural, it's not biblical. It's not how God made us right, and so we've built an entire industry on it. We've got people living their lives, trying to get to a certain point to do what you just said, to play golf, et cetera and I'm going to play golf today. Clint and I both are actually.
Speaker 1:So that's okay, it's okay, but it's not the only thing, right, and I think it's beautiful that you're inviting and challenging folks to say there is something more for you. There's not a dull gray void that has no purpose for you. That has no purpose for you, right, when you step out of your career, but there is so much more and you can do it here. If you've got a big family and kids and grandkids and you want to stay involved and help, that doesn't mean you can't help. You absolutely can still help. But if God's got it on your heart to go see the world right, go experience this creation, then you have an opportunity, if you call pioneers, to go work with teams established in 100 different countries over half the countries on the earth, right, and there's going to continue to be new people groups that y'all are going into. Is that Nathan? Am I right?
Speaker 3:There's going to continue to be. I mean, our 10-year vision is to go from the 441 unreached people groups that we have a presence among right now and place people to engage another 250.
Speaker 1:Another 250 groups. Okay, yes, so if everybody listening to this episode, all right, get involved in one of those 250 some way and we'll have multiple people involved in every people group.
Speaker 3:Just from who's going to hear this.
Speaker 1:Tell us more about the 10-year plan, Nathan.
Speaker 3:That's another part of just this healing. I have of gratitude that God's kind of pulled me into something that he's doing and I get to be here for it. We've spent really the last two years or so, steve, on a really robust analysis of future trends and strategic planning and looking out where could the world be in 10 years. What are the possible futures. We're not going to predict the future, but you can look and you can see where trends like AI, where they're going, where they could land you in 10 years. And then you start asking yourself how do we try to intersect with that To make sure we're not as much as it depends upon us that we're open to be used by God in those scenarios, and we have done work to make ourselves open to change and even start changing now to be usable and not dinosaurs in the world of 10 years from now. And that's led us into a really challenging but exciting strategic planning process. And when everything is uncertain, you kind of need to make sure you know where you're going and, as we've prayed about it, what we should be focusing on.
Speaker 3:Steve and the executive leadership here, we've agreed this goal of 250, it's not about I don't think there's any ego in it. I really think that's been totally divorced. Our mission statement says we're going to go engage unreached people groups. So what are we aiming at? So we've decided 250 unreached people groups, people in places, because even people groups we'll talk about that more. It can be a really hard thing to define. It's still the way to go. Like there are groups, ethno-linguistic groups of people that don't have a Bible, they don't have a gospel witness, they don't have a church. We have to go there. This identifies the people group and the place that we need to go to, and 250 seems to be the right number to focus on to galvanize efforts for the next 10 years. It's going to go to and 250 seems to be the right number to focus on to galvanize efforts for the next 10 years. It's going to be aggressive. We're a 46-year-old organization. It took us 46 years to get to where we're currently engaging 441 unreached people groups and so we're seeking acceleration.
Speaker 1:So that's about 10 a year on average.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so 100 would be continuing your average. So you're two and a half, x-ing that over 10. But you're utilizing AI and you're utilizing the technology and the new methods and you're embracing them and you're saying we're not going to be the dinosaur that always does things the way we always have. We're going to step into this new future. I would argue the two most strategic methods to step into for the next 10 years is the tech and AI and the wings of business. Right, it's partnering with business leaders and companies and folks that are running organizations that are already in and behind hostile borders, already have established relationships and are already not just doing business there but establishing great relationships with government leadership there because they are bringing such commerce and a lift in the economy. And you take the AI, the translation and the things that we can do there and the interface that allows us to collaborate and work together.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, we've had Craig Bradley on with Seed Bible and what he's working on with the open source code where translators can work together. We're getting ready to record a special episode with a guy that's already built an entire chatbot that all he's ever let the large language model, the LLM, read is the Bible and trusted commentaries and so you can interact with it, and it's already out in beta and there are. You know what? The most questions in the world are coming in right now? From Indonesia, of all places, I know right and so it's so encouraging to see these methods all coming together.
Speaker 1:You said it, Steve. You said now you got fired up there for a second, You're like now is this time engaged in that process, leveraging those tools.
Speaker 2:For example, I remember when there were only four known believers in Mongolia. Today we have around 40 Mongolians in Pioneers serving internationally. How about that? And it's fantastic. So you know. Obviously it's not just North Americans, it's the whole church to the whole world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think the first person I ever heard say it was Kirby Holmes with Storyline, when he said the mission field has become the mission force. And he may not have coined it, but he's the first one I heard say it. That's so exciting, isn't it though?
Speaker 2:Yeah it is, Isn't it though. And you have to hold in tension the fact that God is doing so many amazing things and the church is really growing on the one hand. On the other hand, there are still such overwhelming needs and still over 7,000 unreached people groups. So you've got to be careful not to get apathetic thinking, oh, the job's already been done, and, on the other hand, get discouraged and think that we're not really making an impact. There's realities all mixed in there.
Speaker 1:Two key points I want to make. First, do you understand, if you're listening to this, do you understand how intentional Pioneers is operating with excellence, that they're meeting with the other key players, collaborating at the highest levels? They're asking the hard questions. They're double checking their work. Are we still doing it the best way? Are there new ways to consider? That is so encouraging? And second, get in the game. Get in the game to Steve's point Now. I don't know if he wants to talk about what his next project is that's sitting on his desk right now or not, but you can if you'd like. But I know Steve's an author. I think he's working on a new book and I think he's trying to encourage continue to encourage all of us. You know, use the gifts you have, play a role, find a way, steve. What are you working on, steve? What?
Speaker 2:are you working on? I'm working on a book that we're tentatively calling Silver and Bold, with the idea of, as I mentioned earlier, challenging thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands, in the body of Christ to engage at least five to ten years in what we're talking about later in life. You know, say, 55 and older. It shouldn't be that hard to do and we can help you do it. You know we think of investments you're much better at knowing that arena than I am but people think of invest. How can I invest monetarily? Well, you know, for later in life, how much do we think about investing our lives for eternity?
Speaker 1:How much?
Speaker 2:do we think about investing our lives for eternity, because that's really the ultimate game? I think that's a challenging thought. How do I best invest my remaining years for eternity?
Speaker 3:For my part, I would want to leave people encouraged again. Things do seem to be accelerating, as Steve noted. The global workforce that is emerging Brazilians, egyptians, mongolians joining and then everything we're talking about no matter your age, no matter your location, being able to get involved digitally. That's accelerating, and so when we all work together, this job can get done.
Speaker 1:There you go, love that. Thank you for saying that. All right, let's wrap it up, steve. We always ask the guests to pray for the listeners, but anytime we have somebody that's bilingual and has worked in a group, we would love it if you would pray first in another language group so that we can hear you pray and the people can hear somebody pray in a language they haven't heard, can hear you pray and the people can hear somebody pray in a language they haven't heard before, and then translate and close us out in.
Speaker 2:English. All right will do. Thank you, lord, that you are the wonderful creator, the one who is all-powerful, all-gracious, and that you have, in Jesus, provided us with a way to salvation. Lift our eyes, we pray afresh to the harvest and the needs around us, in Jesus' name, amen and amen.
Speaker 1:Thank you, gentlemen, thank you for listening to Unreached. Our sincere desire is that what you've heard today will cause you to see the mission of God differently and your role in it more clearly. If this adds value for you and we hope it does would you please rate and review the podcast wherever you listen. Also, share with your family, your friends, your church, your life group, small group, dgroup, wherever you do life, and if you want to connect with us, find us on Instagram at unreachedpodcast, or email us at unreachedpodcast at gmailcom. You, you, you, thank you.
