Our goal among the Pnong is to start a church-planting movement (CPM), where every new church is empowered to plant other churches, which continue to plant even more.
This movement is possible when you give your church members ownership, guiding them through study of the Word and prayer, and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead in exploring new horizons and reaching others for Christ, who can become disciples who reach others.
The role of the foreign missionary is to provide tools, training and, when things get tough, advice, but not to do the work for them. That way, when missionaries are no longer there, the movement will suffer little from their absence.
One of the CPM core ideas is: “It’s much better to have insiders who are not professionals than outsiders who are professionals.” Insiders have far more influence in their environment and understand the context perfectly.
But in all this work of building ownership, honor and independence, we must not forget to cast our Adventist identity, a pillar of which is prophecy. So, we have started sharing some of the most important prophecies in every village where we have established groups. The first prophecy was Daniel 2.
If you think teaching Daniel 2 can be complicated in your own language, or even just saying the name Nebuchadnezzar without stumbling a bit, then you definitely do not want to do it in Khmer, believe me! I say this with humor, but the struggle is real.
I tried to learn all the definitions, history, and names to say them correctly in Khmer: Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, Medo-Persia, kingdoms (there are several ways to say this in Khmer), prophet, prophecy, future (also several ways), conquer and king (verbs change when you talk about a king). Whew!
But it was fantastic to see the result of all that effort. To see the faces of our brothers and sisters in each village as they realized a story written around 2,500 years ago matters to us today. To think that Daniel would have wished to live in our time, at the end of history, but we have that opportunity. Knowing that the next kingdom on this planet will not be earthly, but heavenly. Seeing their eyes shine with hope gave me chills of excitement as I shared.
Reactions to this message included: “We have to share these truths with the people we love,” and “If Christ is coming soon, we have to be ready, but we can’t let those who don’t know be lost.”
How wonderful the hope of Christ’s return, driving our hearts to share the gospel with our loved ones. We do not share the Adventist identity merely as a requirement, but because it offers a deep hope to our Pnong brothers and sisters, urging them to act for the unreached in their community.
We count on your prayers as biblical prophecy impacts their hearts and the gospel continues spreading in this community—unreached until now, but we pray for that to soon change.
