Pioneer Missions and Theological Education

There is a lot of good work today going on to plant churches, and even to establish long-term healthy churches through some sort of theological education (read: discipleship). Organizations like TMAI, TLI, Reaching and Teaching, HeartCry, and many others organizations and events (such as The Cross Conference) are integrating church planting and theological education, evangelism and discipleship. However, we keep finding that Bible translation is often forgotten, and thus the reason BTF and Together 4 the Bible began, to (1) educate people that there are 7,100 languages in the world and only 500 have a Bible, and (2) to encourage churches to raise up more pastor-translator-missionaries and to support translators who are integrating translation with church planting and theological education (such as our Partners are doing).We ran across this great message, "Pioneer Missions and Theological Education," from the 2011 DGM National Conference by David Sills of Reaching and Teaching Ministry, also Professor of Missions at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and wanted to pass it along to you. Sills is addressing the need for both evangelism and discipleship, for not only planting churches but making sure they are established with qualified elders (cf. Titus 1:5); but Sills also includes a short discussion on Bible translation needs; HOORAY for Dr. Sills! Thankful for this brother, whom we got to meet and talk with at the 2013 Cross Conference.By the way, the next Cross Conference is in 2016, we highly recommend it; until then, don't miss out on all the audio and visual resources on their website, which are the recorded sessions of the 2013 conference. They didn't just have well-known US pastors as speakers, but experienced pastors and missionaries from around the world; we look forward to their next conference, as the Lord wills.