Simply put, REACH is our annual church spotlight on the nations. We look at God’s plan for the nations and our role in that plan, in particular how we might help relieve global gospel poverty.
What?
For two Sundays every fall, we hear messages from the Bible about God’s global heart, usually with a guest speaker from one of our missions partnerships. We also hear from our visiting missionaries during morning services, in adult Sunday classes, and in small groups throughout the week. Finally, we have a special event on Friday evening or Saturday where we hear in more detail what our missionaries are doing and how we can pray for and encourage them.
Who?
Who are the nations? The word “nations” is a way to look at how all eight-plus billion people in the world group together, including us. One grouping is a political nation of which there are approximately two hundred in the world.
But the other grouping is the more important one, an ethno-linguistic one. These are “people groups,” a group of people with a shared identity through their ethnicity, language, and history. How many people groups are there in the world? Anthropologists tell us the number of such “peoples” is approximately seventeen thousand.
Why?
The most important question to ask is why we have REACH at all? Most of us, after all, are pretty well committed to our responsibilities right here in Indianapolis. And some might argue that there are plenty of needs in our own city and country, so why should we care about other nations and peoples?
The answer is that Jesus did (and does). Our mission as a church is to ignite a passion to follow Jesus. If you really follow Jesus, you will at some point find him going to the ends of the earth. You won’t be able to follow him very long or very well if you don’t share his heart for all peoples.
Consider the message that Peter learned from his vision of a sheet filled with animals in Acts 10: God shows no partiality (v. 34). God cares for all peoples equally. He has told us that he is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9) and that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Rom. 10:13).
But, as Paul goes on to argue, how can they call on someone they have not heard about and how can they hear without someone preaching (Rom. 10:14)? That is why Jesus’s last command to his own followers was that they should go and make disciples of all nations, “people groups” (Matt.28:19).
How are we doing with that job? Unfortunately, there are still ten thousand people groups with 3.2 billion people in them who today do not have access to the gospel. That is what we mean by “gospel poverty,” people who are spiritually poor because they have never heard about Jesus and currently have no way of hearing.
What Now?
REACH is our time to focus on this command of Jesus to fulfill his purposes that all nations might come to know him and be saved. It is also a time to evaluate how our priorities might need to change in order to take the glorious message of life in Jesus to all peoples so that the earth might be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Join us at our special REACH event or go to your small group or Sunday class eager to learn about God’s great plan for the world which will result in people from all nations, tribes, and languages worshiping the Lamb. Ask him afresh what role he would have you play in eliminating gospel poverty so that, one day, all peoples on earth will know about Jesus.
