Aviation – A Critical Component

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Ethnos360 Aviation’s Core Purpose is to assist the church planting ministries of Ethnos360 and likeminded ministries through the use of aviation, to achieve the goal of a thriving church for every people.1

How do they assist church planting ministries?

  • Enable access to remote communities, eliminating long or dangerous land/ocean journeys
  • Transport missionary families, pastors, language/translation consultants
  • Fly missionary kids to and from boarding school
  • Deliver home and building supplies, groceries, mail
  • Provide emergency medical evacuations
  • Distribute aid and disaster relief in coordination with local believers as a means of outreach

“In a country that has no transportation infrastructure, each day hundreds of missionaries in the interior of Papua New Guinea depend solely on aviation for their life-link to the outside world.”2

Aviation service to remote areas provides the life link to church planting teams determined to stay the course until a thriving church is established. Hear it straight from Jonathan Kopf, church planter in the Hewa group of Papua New Guinea.

In Papua New Guinea they assist3 . . .

  • 24 active church planting locations completely dependent on aircraft
  • Another 25 maturing churches/itinerant ministries that utilize aviation services
  • There are plans to add 10 new locations within 2 years – all dependent on aviation!

Our Team in Papua New Guinea3 . . .

  • Currently has 6 pilots, 4 mechanics, a handful of support staff and 8 national employees – flight coordinators, baggage handlers, parts managers, janitors, and security   
  • Flies 3 Quest Kodiaks ~ 110 hrs/month
  • 1 Bell Long Ranger helicopter ~ 30 hrs/month – There are plans to replace this aging aircraft with 3 Robinson 66 helicopters.

Aviation is an incredible tool and critical component of the church planting effort! There is an ongoing need for more personnel to support the existing work and enable outreach to new areas.

 “[The] exciting news is that we have about 20 families interested in joining NTM-PNG in church planting roles over the next couple of years. The downside is it’s going to stretch our support structure to the max, aviation included. Our biggest bottleneck in reaching the lost used to be lack of missionaries. Now our biggest bottleneck is probably aviation support . . . we have great needs in aviation, for both pilots and mechanics. It’s a vital part of the church planting effort.”

Neil Burleson, NTM-PNG Personnel Director

We are eager to join the team in PNG and help advance the reach of the gospel!

Visit the Ethnos360 Aviation website to learn more and see how you can join the team!

1 http://ethnos360aviation.org/about/who-we-are 2 http://ethnos360aviation.org/about/where-we-serve/papua-new-guinea 3 These numbers often fluctuate, but are based on our correspondence with Ethnos360 personnel in PNG, 2019.