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Signs of New Life Among the Least Reached
Gospel ministry in Central Asian Deaf communities
In 2020, the International Mission Board (IMB) estimated the global population of Deaf people to be 70 million with as many as 1,444 Deaf people dying each day without eternal life in Christ (imb.org/asr). Of the 182 known Deaf people groups in the world, 180 of them are considered unreached, meaning that the majority of the world’s Deaf population is less than 2 percent evangelical with little to no sustained gospel witness.
For Sam and Lydia, these statistics were intolerable.*
*Names changed for security reasons.
Sam, a hearing man, and Lydia, a Deaf woman, met in 2003 and stayed in touch even while serving on different continents as Journeymen with the IMB. Although Lydia was serving in Central Europe from 2003–2005 and Sam was serving in South America from 2004–2006, God was working to knit their hearts together. “We were both independently called to a life of missions,” Sam recounted, “but during our time as Journeymen we both realized we would do this a lot better with a partner we could trust.”
Before returning from the field, they began discussing how best to prepare for redeployment. “Southeastern was known to us as the sending seminary,” Sam recalled. So, Lydia returned in 2005 and enrolled in the MA in Intercultural Studies program at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS). Sam returned in 2006 and started an MDiv in International Church Planting. While students at SEBTS, Sam and Lydia married and continued praying about how God would use them for his mission.
It became increasingly clear that God was preparing them to reach underserved communities with the gospel. “My call was to the least reached peoples,” shared Sam. “It was offensive to me that we had an entire world of people with pockets who had never ever been touched by the gospel because they never had the opportunity. Seeing the need among geographically and culturally isolated people only further fueled this driving passion.”
When Sam and Lydia interviewed with the IMB, they were challenged to consider ministry among Deaf people in Central Asia since Lydia was Deaf and had experience with Deaf ministry. While Sam was processing this challenge, God quickly reminded him that Deaf communities were among the least reached to whom he had been called. They accepted the assignment, and later the next year they moved to Central Asia as gospel witnesses among the Deaf.
For the last 11 years, Sam and Lydia have bridged gospel silence through church-planting efforts in a region of the world dominated by Islam and secularism. “We are first and foremost church planters — planting churches among the Deaf,” shared Sam. “We translate Scripture into sign languages in our region as a function of our church-planting ministry, bringing to bear scriptural authority in the Deaf community.” “Our Southeastern education has aided us as we help Christians in our context wrestle with hard questions,” noted Sam. “How do you respond to your family that has threatened to kill you if you get baptized? Is baptism that important? Why do we baptize? What does that mean? We’re working on the ground level and working our way up, letting Scripture inform the way to live.”
These questions are far from theoretical for Christians in Sam and Lydia’s context. Sam narrated the story of Elijah, a local Deaf man whose family are devout Muslims. By God’s grace, Elijah began to consider the gospel through Sam and Lydia’s ministry, which aroused his family’s suspicion. Elijah was converted when the Holy Spirit opened his eyes to the power of Jesus as the Son of God in the story of the feeding of the five thousand. When Elijah told his father, his father was incensed and threatened, “If you get baptized, I will not just disown you; I will kill you.” After waiting a year to see if God would change his father’s heart, Elijah was baptized publicly in a lake near his hometown — along with four other converts to Christianity. Sam and Lydia are now discipling Elijah in the truth of God’s word, helping him follow Christ unashamedly without fear even in the face of a very real threat to his life.
Describing the difficulty of teaching biblical authority to Deaf people like Elijah, Sam noted that many of them associate the authority of the message with the one who is signing and not with God’s written word. “We work hard to teach them that we are not the authority but rather that we follow a book given to us by God, who is the authority and whose words are authoritative for our lives.”
“Scripture access is not as easy as handing a Bible to a Deaf person,” Sam shared. "Reading is not their first language. Ministering among Deaf people is not as simple as distributing print material — not if we intend to engage in their heart language. We need videos of Scripture being signed and we need a live person signing. We are working to create an accurate video codex of Scripture recordings for the Church.” “In our context, truth and story are held at the group level, and believers work out theology in the community,” Sam noted. “This increases their ability to sign the story accurately and to hold each other accountable to make sure that the story remains stable. One person will begin signing a passage and others will correct or continue the story as a group.” “When we gather, we teach them how to pray, and we story through a passage of Scripture until they have memorized it," Same shared. “Then we sit down and discuss it, wrestling theologically with how the text relates to the issues they are facing like joblessness, abuse, marital roles, or parental honor in a culture where they are dishonoring their mother and father by following Christ.” Recalling the relevance of his seminary courses for life on mission, Sam commented, “I have found that everything I learned at Southeastern could be used in some way in my context. Bruce
Ashford’s missionary study course continues to be so valuable. I learned what to expect religiously and culturally in our context. I still have my notes, and I refer to them often. Also, Ken Keathley’s and John Hammett’s theology courses as well as Bruce Little’s philosophy course prepared me to deal with the emotions of what I experience culturally and then to critically evaluate those experiences biblically, analyzing what is really at play in my context.”
With constant globalization and advancements in technology, accessibility to the Deaf community has never been easier.
“There is an increasing awareness of Deaf cultures in America as stories and even films like 'CODA' (Children of Deaf Adults) inform broader audiences,” noted Sam. “Accessibility to the Deaf community is already here; the question is whether hearing Christians will choose to learn and engage.”
According to Sam, engaging Deaf people may require some behaviors that differ from engaging other people groups, but the basic disposition and strategy is the same: invest personally and value the other person enough to learn their heart language. “Don’t be afraid when somebody comes up and starts gesturing,” Sam urged. “Give them your attention and don’t be embarrassed to write back and forth. Then, to engage over time, meet them on their own turf — learn their heartlanguage. One of the best ways to learn is to watch Deaf-to-Deaf signing.” “Deaf people are not broken humans,” Sam remarked. “They are people that have a different language and culture. Deaf people would not say that they are broken or handicapped; they simply communicate differently.” “Find a way to get into the community,” Sam encouraged. “For instance, a lot of churches in the U.S. have ASL classes. Also, consider joining Deaf meetups. Because of the cultural isolation they experience, many Deaf people are part of broader Deaf communities that meet up regularly.” “Ministry among Deaf people is really just a commitment to reaching people where they are and learning their language, learning their culture, and being humble,” noted Sam. If the lostness of the least-reached around the world is truly offensive to those who have been redeemed, how can such a commitment be too great a sacrifice?
