Yana was 15 when missionaries came to his village. All of the men and teenage boys in his village had put someone to death. Many women and children in his language group had been sent to eternity by them, and more were always in danger. They believed that witchcraft is the cause of all illness and death; when anyone died, the responsible witch had to be found and given the death sentence. They told each other, “If only we can remove all of the witches, then we will all live forever!” They believed that witches live inside women and children, coming out at night to put deadly spells on people.

Someone had to go tell Yana’s people the truth. And before anyone could go — someone had to ask.

Many Christians who ended up serving overseas as missionaries started moving in that direction because someone asked them to act — face to face.

I was 8 years old when a mission mobilizer came to our house. My family responded in faith to what we heard from God’s Word and began acting on behalf of the unreached tribes. Since then we have cumulatively invested over 125 years of adult missionary service to multiply laborers among the tribes. It’s not about us, but about Jesus taking ordinary people and multiplying their efforts for His glory. Many other people have been influenced as each of us has encouraged faith among God’s people through our own ministries. My hope is that every seed of faith will multiply.

Why mobilization is a ministry, not a detour

For many years we worked to provide aviation services in remote places, speeding the messengers who were establishing thriving churches where Christ was previously unknown. Now we work as mission mobilizers to grow the Ethnos360 church-planting teams. Why the change? Because the greatest need to accomplish the Great Commission is people — and people go because they hear and believe God’s Word, and because they are asked. Mobilization is going to where Christians congregate and asking people to act: presenting God’s word, the needs of the world, the opportunities to serve, and the paths forward. One mobilizer who helps send ten missionaries multiplies a lifetime tenfold. Our role on the Ethnos360 team is simple: “Go get help!”

The mathematics of multiplication

Breaking the task of reaching roughly 2,500 unreached language groups into smaller tasks, we are working to send 100 missionaries, with 100 supporters each, to 100 unreached language groups — and Ethnos360 Training can accommodate 100 career candidates each fall. The bottleneck is not capacity. It is asking. Missionaries don’t grow on trees; ordinary people take on the task of reaching remote people when they are asked to act, and we work to give them the information they need, inspire them with what God is doing, and invite them to engage.

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