December 18, 2019
The Next Language 14 — Finishing the Task
Last week Gerry Gutierrez, Dan Rulison, and I attended the Finishing the Task (FTT) conference. It was hosted by Saddleback Church which turns out to be just over the mountain from Temecula. After three days of networking, I came away more convinced than ever that Global Recordings Network has an impact completely out of proportion to its size. It always has.
Finishing the Task was started a few years ago by some of the larger agencies like The Seed Company, CRU, and Youth With a Mission (YWAM). Many of those agencies have broken out sister organizations to further focus the job but all represent what FTT claims to be over 1600 agencies that desire to see reproducing churches planted among every people group in the world.
Global Recordings was listed as one of the resources available to all. Two other resource providers – Megavoice, and Renew World Outreach (who mass produce players) – claim that if it weren’t for GRN they would have few languages with gospel content to load.
It was challenging and encouraging to see that today we are not alone facing the task to reach every tribe with the audio story of Jesus in every language. In the not-so-distant past we were alone with that vision and alone with many of the techniques to turn the words of a totally unreached people group into the sound of the gospel.
Now many scripture translation groups are using our thought-by-thought translation techniques to translate scripture directly into audio, by-passing the written text.
All scripture translation agencies that I know include scripture audio recordings as part of their venue. Those all end up on 5fish.mobi, our very own free server, and on our 5fish app.
This movement with FTT is a race to the finish – proposing the completion of the gospel for all people groups in this generation.
As GRN focuses our resources and builds strategic partnerships, we must remember that though this is starting to feel like a stampede for the finish line, our role remains: turning into words and sound the first seeds of the gospel which will fall into good soil and produce fruit – some thirty, some sixty, and some one hundred fold.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Heb 12:1 NIV
God Bless,
Larry DeVilbiss | Executive Director
Global Recordings Network USA