Who Cares About the Pygmies?

"For 'whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.' How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!'"(Romans 10:13-15, NASB).

On a Saturday morning 4 years ago, I was reading the local newspaper when I came across a story about a representative from the United Nations who had come to Tulsa to bring attention to the horrors of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In that article, the woman from the UN mentioned how the Pygmies of the region were being murdered by soldiers on all sides of the conflict. She also mentioned that hundreds of thousands of Pygmies lived in the region, but that no church of any kind had reached the Pygmies at any time in history. That story has haunted me since I first read it.

Jesus has done something that deserves attention, but nobody has told the Pygmies. They need to know that they do not need to live with the guilt of their sins. They need to know that Jesus gave His life so that they would not need to suffer for their sins. He suffered for them, but they have not heard about it and cannot take advantage of the offer of forgiveness. How can we live with ourselves if we do nothing to help them know Christ? We would be betraying our mission. Jesus Christ deserves to be known, and everyone needs to have the opportunity to know Him.

Unfortunately, the Pygmies are not alone in their ignorance of Christ. More than a third of the world's population has not been exposed to the gospel of what Jesus has done for them. This needs to change.

Please pray for the unreached ethnic groups of the world. Please pray that God will raise up missionaries willing to sacrifice everything in order to tell these people the good news about Jesus. Please consider what you can do to take the good news to those people. Finally, please support missionaries who are doing it.

At the bottom of this page, you may link to Pioneer Bible Translators, a group of missionaries who are translating the Bible into the common languages of some of these people who have never been reached with the message before. You may consider supporting them with prayer and finances. (They have not reached the Pygmies yet, but they are working with other people groups who had not been reached before.) If you are a federal employee (either civilian or military), you may designate a portion of your paycheck to be given to Pioneer Bible Translators through the Combined Federal Campaign.