Reflections on 25 years: 2000-2025

“Oh, sing to the Lord a new song!
Sing to the Lord, all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, bless His name.
Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day,
Declare His glory among the nations
His wonders among all peoples.”  ~Psalm 96:1-3 (NKJV)

With the Psalmist, our hearts at Engage Today are overflowing with praise to our God. Here is this glorious Psalm focus includes all the earth, reaching all the Unreached People Groups (UPGs) and refusing to accept even one people group left out.

In a number of articles over the years, I have shared about my “Macedonian call” to work with indigenous mission leaders in the 10/40 Window. In 1995, at the Global Consultation on World Evangelization in South Korea, indigenous leaders invited me to work together with them to advance the gospel among the unreached. Our family’s call to serve as missionaries in India had been prevented when the country closed the door for missionary work in 1984. Additionally, we had been seeing the traditional missionary movement in decline globally. The rise of major world religions made reaching the unreached more complicated because they were gaining political influence and military might. The call to work with indigenous missions became an obvious opportunity: they were operating quite freely in their own nations, they were determined to reach their unreached neighbours, and they were seeing many respond to the proclamation of the gospel.

Three places stand out.

Firstly, early in my work with Engage Today, I connected with Narayan Paul. He was a Hindu Priest when he met Christ at an evangelistic meeting in Kolkata. The Lord led him to serve as a missionary to the Saura people. He laboured for twelve years before there was even one believer. I was invited to speak at a Saura conference after the awakening had begun. There were 7,250 delegates. I was ushered into a place of fervent unusual, persistent prayers and a huge bamboo structure to provide shade. A government official officiated at the opening. He testified as a Hindu to the power of the Gospel to transform these tribal people from being drunk at noon, beating their wives and having no control of their children. The new Saura, through Christ, were responsible fathers, caring husbands and men who refuse to drink alcohol. All of the 200,000 Saura in northern Andhra Pradesh have come to Christ and have been registered with the government as Christians. Now they are effectively reaching the five other tribes near to them. (Narayan’s son has continued the ministry in his footsteps, after he graduated to heaven in 2008.)

Secondly, Indonesia is a demonstration of the power of God. The country was suffering under many years of terrorist activity. We called our brothers and sisters across Canada to pray. Our Heavenly Father orchestrated a dramatic reversal. Now, for eighteen years the federal government recognized six religions with full protection. Today, there are 400 Bible Schools, Bible Colleges, and Seminaries, including Light of the World Bible College and Seminary where Engage Today serves yearly. How incredibly precious were my two weeks of missionary focus as I taught six hours a day for two weeks from Colossians. The one hundred and twenty plus faculty joined to seek His face with zealous energy.

Thirdly, on my very first trip with Engage Today, I traveled to Southeast Asia. David Yone Mo was world famous as a former drug addict, gang leader and country wide drug dealer who turned to Christ in the hospital on his death bed. Immediately, he was healed upon repentance and faith. Soon three of his former drug addicts in his gang were completely transformed by Christ. We were so overjoyed to visit some of the churches with over a million baptized believers in their Baptist churches. Adopted street children, church planting in leprosy villages, world famous musicians and guitar players and huge evangelistic gatherings of 50,000 to 100,000 for three days at a time verified an outreach that demonstrated the power of the Holy Spirit.

Engage Today has maintained an unwavering commitment to proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ as our raison d’etre. The Lord has been working, and yet we still see that much more work remains. Our Leadership Seminars have been cherished times with each of our partners. The constant refrain we have heard from them over the years is the need for more training. Bible Schools are a key need to develop leaders in the church to continue carrying the gospel to the unreached. And perhaps the greatest issue that we have observed among our partners is the challenge of smooth leadership transition. These are all areas of ongoing focus as we press forward in our work.

Narayan Paul etched in our memories the centrality of persistence. His passion to reach the Saura along with the enabling of the Holy Spirit brought the entire people group to freedom in Christ. Persistent prayer is bringing Indonesia to an awareness of Christ and solid training of missionaries is multiplying messengers. David Yone Mo is an illustration of the impact of a transformed drug addict and gang scoundrel overwhelmed by the new birth in Christ. What a model to the countless drug addicts around the world.