No mountain too high

Sharing Christ’s love in rural mountainous regions can be an almost impossible task. Houses dot the ridge lines, and only small clusters of homes sit in the valleys, isolated from others by a lack of roads.

For many churches in South Asia, physical and spiritual challenges prevent Jesus followers from sharing their faith with people from their wider communities. In one country, OM teams have identified districts where there are hardly any Jesus followers and plan to reach every household with the gospel.

The initial strategy includes distributing individually packed Christian literature to each home and sending follow-up teams, who are regionally based, to have conversations with people who are interested in knowing more about Jesus. One OM leader in a mountainous area, Saajan*, is passionate about Jesus and feels compelled to share His love with others in his home country.

The district where Saajan serves is home to around 144,000 people.

Over 77 per cent of the district’s terrain is above 2,000 metres (6,400 feet), isolating the population by making it hard to reach. The rugged mountains mean pastors often walk one or two days to get to church members’ homes to spend time with them. Discipleship and deep community building within this context are incredibly hard. Saajan is familiar with the challenges local churches face and believes the solution is equipping every Jesus follower to get involved.

“There was a group of pastors meeting together, and when the pastor who was organising this fellowship left for another city, he handed the leadership of the group over to Saajan,” explained Saajan’s leader, Won*. “Saajan began sharing about OM’s vision to reach those who did not have access to hearing about God’s love.” Over time, Saajan established deeper relationships and trust with this group of pastors.

They prayed together, shared their struggles and began encouraging one another to involve their small churches in the enormous effort of taking God’s Word to every household within their district. Each pastor took responsibility for a part of the district, and together the group developed a plan to share the message of hope.

Working Together

Over the course of around four years, Saajan’s team partnered with local Jesus followers to distribute Christian literature to every household in the district. As they travelled and served together, opportunities arose for discipleship and further training.

“Through this wide literature distribution, Saajan’s teams formed approximately six or seven small fellowships of people interested in knowing more about Jesus,” Won shared. “Then, after a few months, we looked for individuals within that fellowship who we could raise up as a leader and invest in training more.”

Through these efforts, many seeds have been sown. Pastors have been strengthened in their missional vision, local Jesus followers have been discipled in their faith and people who had never heard of Jesus have a portion of Scripture in their homes and an opportunity to meet their Saviour. “We cannot guarantee the timeline,” Won said, “but we know that this is God’s vision for all people to hear about Him.”

“Without cooperation with local churches, OM cannot achieve the vision to see every household reached. Local churches are the key,” Won explained. “OM also supports these churches with training and resources, and we listen to them and their vision and look for ways to partner with them. This approach takes time to build trust.”

The result is a beautiful collaborative effort to carry God’s Word into hard-to-reach places and to people who may otherwise never have the opportunity to know God's life-changing love for themselves.

Praise God for all He is doing through ordinary Jesus followers to enable His love to reach the ends of the earth. For guidance on how to pray for this area of the world, visit uk.om.org/prayfor-the-nations.