How about Southern Michigan!?
Last week starting Thursday, festival-goers at Michigan’s Big Ticket Festival, got the chance to see tribal church planting from a whole new perspective…their own! The sights and sounds of the Kaulong tribe located in Papua New Guinea’s island province of West New Britain were witnessed by hundreds of people, from 4 year olds to 64 year olds. In the midst of the festival’s field of other tents setup by various ministries, a tent from New Tribes Bible Institute’s Jackson campus captured people’s attention with a small Cessna airplane (Provided by the School of Missionary Aviation Technology) and arresting images. “What do you guys do?”, “What’s the plane for?”, “Tribal missions what?”…all questions that we fielded as people wondered in to our tent. And in between watching Awayo, the short film on the story of a tribal man from Indonesia’s Moi tribe and checking out the many everyday but very fascinating objects from tribes around the world, our team challenged hundreds of people with what God’s word has to say to us, the church, about making the Gospel known and understood to those who have yet to hear.
Then, those people we met, were able to step into a whole new world, a small 10′ x 15′ ‘hut’ where they met ‘Piom’, a missionary kid whose parents, Peter and Pam Van Der Decker, planted a church in the Kaulong tribe. Piom challenged the people visiting to try and learn some words in his language and as they struggled to do so, he asked if they themselves would be willing to go to a tribe like the one he grew up amongst and take the time to develop a relationship and learn their language and teach them God’s word which brings salvation!
Hundreds of people met Piom, hundreds of people were challenged not just with statistics and cool pictures, but with the truth of God’s word and His irrevocable call for believers to take the Gospel to the unreached!
Even now, we’re confident that God will stir up hearts and keep them stirred up with desire to begin a journey of faith in reaching people like Piom. My team is praying specifically that several of these people will even begin that journey as students this fall semester at New Tribes Bible Institute!
Will YOU pray for people to join God’s cause as a result of this past weekend?