June 28, 2026 - INSCRIPTIONS FROM THE HEART

Abby Cheng

MissionWorks is a Christian family of ministries that provides individuals, churches, mission organizations and schools with all the outstanding resources, connections and training needed to be successful in local and global mission work. According to their MissionGuide, there are currently 7246 unreached people groups in the world (defined as less than 2% evangelical Christian), with a total of 3.39 billion people among those groups. That's 41.8% of the world's current population. To put that into perspective, think of the World Cup that's going on right now in cities around North America. The largest stadium where matches are being held is the Dallas Stadium in Texas which holds 94,000 spectators. If all of the 104 matches in the World Cup were held in the Dallas Stadium and each had maximum attendance, we would still need 346 World Cups’ worth of spectators to reach 3.39 billion people. In Edmonton Oilers terms, we would need 2253 seasons of Oilers hockey with 100% attendance at Rogers Place to get to that number.

Jesus wasn't kidding when he told His disciples that “the harvest is indeed plentiful.” When we think about the scale of the task we believers were given to go into all the world and make disciples, it's very easy to write it off as impossible and just give up before we even start. This is why Jesus instructs His disciples to “pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers.” He doesn't tell them to brainstorm strategies on how to effectively share the gospel to as many people as possible. Instead, He immediately reminds His followers to fully depend on God to achieve what He has commanded. No matter what the outcome is of our efforts to go preach His word, we have already succeeded when we step out in faith into the harvest field and obey God's command to tell the world about the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.