Gospel For Asia
- Details
- Sunday Morning Service
- Guest Speaker
- Copalis Community Church
- 09 November 2025
They heard our founder and president, KP Yohannon, speak in California years and years ago, and that's how y' all heard about us, and that is very appreciated.
I just have a lot of things I want to share and going through my mind, and I have notes to keep me on track, and I have a timer to look at me, and I want to respect everybody's time. This has nothing to do with my sermon, but I did want to just say a quote that I heard that the church is not a place. It's not a courtroom, it's a hospital. I think that's one of the early church fathers would tell us that in church history, that when we come, it's a place for healing. It should be a place for, you know, for that.
I don't. I just wanted to share with that. That's not even in my notes, but it's a place. So. Yeah, so a little bit about myself here.
Our headquarters is in Dallas, Texas. So I'm always have the privilege of having the Cowboys let me down.
And so they've been faithful in that for the past 13 years that I've lived there. So go Cowboys. And so I flew in from there yesterday. I think we wanted to have a speaker from GFA come and share with you guys, and this is the time to do it. And I'm glad it worked out.
I'm glad Pastor Jim was able to be here. I'm really grateful for that and prayers for him and lots. I'm gonna take your guys's bulletin and give it to our team down in Dallas so that we can pray for you guys, all the prayer needs that you have. Real quick about my testimony. When I became a Christian, I was kind of.
I kind of was crazy. My parents thought I kind of went cuckoo, meaning when I heard the gospel, Greg Laurie said, the gospel is not a treasure to be hoarded. It's a gift to be shared. So I just say that because it's like. When I became a Christian, I wanted everybody to know.
My family, my friends, my. Not my dog, but anybody. I would go. I started out kind of a personal ministry where I would put a table that. This is when I. I'm from Salt Lake City, Utah, and I wanted people to know Christ so bad.
I'd put it. I'd go downtown, Salt Lake. I'd put a table out. I put Bibles and gospel tracts, and I just stand there, and people would come and talk to me. I would talk to them.
I'd try to answer questions about the Christian faith. I'D give them a Bible, I'd give them a gospel tract. And that's how that started. And one time I even put a gospel track in my dad's lunchbox. Because when he worked in production and hoping that when he went to work, he'd open it and read it and stuff.
I'm just saying. I'm just trying to share with you. That was my heart's desire, was just tell people about Jesus. And then when I was doing this, I found out about Gospel for Asia. And it was in my church in Salt Lake.
They had a little flyer that said, tools. Tools for the Task. And I don't care about germs.
We're brothers in Christ.
But it was called Tools for the Task. It was a little brochure that was in my church that said, hey, you can. You can help sponsor a native missionary, a national missionary. Oh, thank you, dear. You're so great.
Where you can sponsor a national missionary. And at that time, I was a truck driver. I drove a truck. I did that for seven years. And I was like, wow, I can support a native missionary that's already in India.
And I'm here cruising around, doing deliveries and stuff. I can buy a native missionary for a dollar, a thousand gospel tracks, and they can go around in India or wherever. And this is the greatest thing. So I got on board with that, and I read this book right here called Revolution of World Missions. And this really shares the how Gospel for Asia started, what we're doing now, and what we hope to accomplish.
It's amazing. It's a free book. They're on the back table afterwards. I'd love you to take one, please. If you're not a big reader, here's a condensed version of Revolutional World Missions.
If you like stories and testimonies and you hear of miracles in this story, you can't put it in the book if it's not true. Real miracles. Read that. But if you want, like, if you're going to the bathroom or something. Just kidding.
I mean, you can read this in 10 or 15 minutes. This is a condensed version of the. Of the book. But I read that book and I was like, wow, this is incredible. This is incredible.
And so I volunteered for the ministry for several years. I'd go to anywhere. I'd go to Christian concerts. I came to Washington once when they had a big festival. I got a speeding ticket.
My wife reminds me of that. But my point is, I would go anywhere to tell anybody about what God's doing overseas, right? So we volunteered. We weren't married at the time. And then I applied for staff, and they said no.
And then three years later, I got engaged and we moved on with our life. I was still a truck driver at the time. And then they said, hey, we might have missed something with you guys to come on staff. What's new with you? And I said, well, I'm engaged.
We're getting married in September. They said, great, we can have two for one. You guys can both come down and interview. We got married on a Friday. Saturday, we flew to Dallas.
We spent our honeymoon in Dallas interviewing for staff to serve with Gospel for Asia. And yes. Anyways, I mean, we were just married, working. If we're going to do this together, let's go see together. And if not, then we'll.
We're like, yeah, we were living in an apartment. We'll be back in Dallas. They said, yes, we'll be back in Dallas in six months. But we had to raise our own support. We had a baby, we were both working.
And like, three years later, we ended up moving there after a few extended leases. But I'm just trying to give you. So that's where I've been living in Dallas. About an hour east of Dallas is our headquarters. We got about 75 staff that work there.
You know, IT and warehouse and facilities. And one of the things that I do is I connect with churches and individuals in 11 states in the US that partner with Gospel for Asia, whether they support missionaries or children or. Or. We call Jesus Wells. We call.
We do Jesus Wells and then other projects. I just connect with folks there. And then, yeah, that's my story. So I was able to come here and spend time with you guys. And so the next slide, please.
So I do want to thank you guys because you guys have partnered. You guys support four native missionaries right now as a church in West Bengal. I've been there. Telagana. I've been there.
I support a child in Telagana, Jharkhand and Nepal. So thank you. Thank you for doing that. Paul says, I thank God, remember you always in my prayers because of your partnership in the gospel. Like, truly your partnership in the gospel.
And I don't say this because a gift from you. Rather, I want you to receive a reward for your kindness that the fruit will be credited to your account. Right. I mean, like I said, imagine like you throw a pebble into a pond and this rippling effect that has. You guys have this rippling effect on the other side of the world by sponsoring a native missionary, and it's credited to Your account people are coming to Christ because of your guys prayers and helping those missionaries.
Amen. That's kind of cool, right?
Okay, next slide. So this is kind of a. To show you guys kind of when we say partnership, we really truly mean that it's a partnership. We can't have one without the other. Of course, everything we do in missions, in life, in our Christian walk and church, stems from our love and of Christ.
Right. And so we have our little, our. Our team in Dallas staff that, that wants to communicate, help you understand, know that you're valuable in reaching the lost. We try to do that through our build stories and communications and things like that. And then we have our national missionaries, which are the boots on the ground.
And then we have our. Then you. It doesn't work without one of those pieces. It just doesn't work. So I just thought that this was very helpful for me to communicate how it all comes together as a partnership.
So just three things. What Gospel for Asia's focus is, is training and sending national missionaries into a village that is unreached. Meaning, you know, like, I've been to villages before and it's like, yeah, they've lived there their whole life. We've had our native missionaries say, have you heard of Jesus?
And people in that village will say, and I'm not exaggerating to make a fanciful story, they would say that he doesn't live here, try another village.
I mean, I just, I'm like, really? People don't have never heard of Jesus now? And in India that's, and that's where we primarily focus on. So we train a national missionary sentimental village. We try to dig what's called a Jesus well to bless that community with clean water.
And then we start an outreach for the children in that area. And since we started in 1979, Gospel for Asia has planted more than 15,000 new churches that are thriving in unreached areas. Man, God is awesome. And 5 million baptized believers, 39 million people have received clean water. 35,000 women, 35,000 women plus have been equipped with livelihood skills.
And then we do like people ask me, like, we do a Christmas gift catalog where you can buy chickens and goats and cows. And some people think that we have the chickens and goats and cows in Dallas and then we ship them to India. But we collect the resources, send it to our field partners and they do outreaches there. We don't have. That'd be nice though if we could have some.
Let's turn to Matthew chapter nine, please. That's the Passage we'll be working out of Matthew, chapter nine.
Okay, I'll just read it. Matthew, chapter nine. We'll start in verse 35.
And in my Bible, this section, you know how it's. I know it's not titled in the original scriptures where they put the sections in, but mine says the compassion of Jesus.
Matthew 9:35. Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news and the kingdom of heaven and healing every disease and sickness. And when he saw the crowds, he was moved with compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like a sheep without a shepherd.
So we look at the life of Christ and we know that everything he did was for others. Teaching, preaching, healing was all. It consumed him. You know, we know as God sent him, he. He was sent into the world, and that's what we should also do.
And like. Like when I go to, like, a basketball game or a sports event, it's more than just like an emotional response. It's like when I go to a basketball game, am I really concerned about people that don't know the Lord? I mean, kinda. I mean, I really hope to think that I am.
So Jesus was really, you know, gripped. It moved him when he saw the multitudes. And in the Greek, where it says the multitudes, the language talks about cast down or cast out. How many has heard of the caste system? India is kind of, oh, okay, so imagine a triangle, and the caste system is.
You break it into different groups in India, and 900 million on the bottom of the triangle would be considered a Dalit or untouchable or broken. That means. That literally means crushed. These people, I hate to say these people, but this is the bottom, bottom caste of society. And it's a system that's been going on in India for thousands of years.
So I'm just saying that that's who we're mainly helping. There's a story of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army.
He was asked to speak at this big conference, but due to health reasons, he wasn't able to go. And so a lot of people were anticipating him to come. He couldn't come. He sent a telegram. This tells you how long ago it was.
And everybody's anticipating this great, incredible message.
And the telegram had one word on it. It said, others, just think of others. So I think that's a good reminder of us, for us.
So I have a short video that I want to share with you guys. And this is general. A general. You guys are, like, an exception to the rule. This is just a general video talking about World ABC to kind of give you kind of a bigger picture of world missions and where we're at today.
So if we could hopefully play that and then to answer that, let's classify.
So how are we doing accomplishing our mission? To answer that, let's classify the 7 billion people on the earth today into three groups. Let's start with the Christians. About 33% of the world's population would identify itself as Christian. We call this segment of the population World C. C for Christian.
It's important to remember that not all of the people that fall into world C are true believers in Christ. They merely identify themselves as Christian because of nominal belief in Jesus or because they live in a country where everyone is considered Christian. So they would do the same. Next, there's the 38% of the world that has access to the gospel but has chosen not to follow Jesus. They have bibles in their language, churches nearby, friends or co workers who are potentially Christians or access to other Christian resources in their language.
These people have access to the good news but just haven't acted on it yet. This segment of the population is called world B. That leaves us with 29% of the world, just over one out of every four people on this planet who not only have never heard of Jesus, but they have no chance of hearing the good news of Jesus Christ. They have no access to the gospel, no Bibles, no churches, no believers nearby, no chance to learn about Jesus. We call that 29% world A.
So yeah, there was one of our ministry partners that live in Maryland and he didn't know about World abc and he was, he was like, man, people need to be aware of this because you can't help if you don't know about it, right?
But statistics are. Let me share it with one story of Jagat. He's one of our missionaries on the field and he grew up in spiritual darkness. Meaning he grew up from a Hindu they call fanatical or traditional religion. I mean, there's what, 900 million Hindus in the world?
My dad, but he grew up in that spiritual darkness. And he, as a teenager he knew that the gods and goddesses, they have millions of gods and goddesses in Hinduism. One time I was in India and it was during one of the festivals and it was really weird because driving is pretty crazy in India. And there was like a blue idol we're following in the back of the truck. And it's like looking at me and the brothers there were saying that that's one of Their gods that they're taking to the festival.
And it just didn't make any sense to me. You know the Old Testament talks about you make you engrave these images with idols, with woods of your hands and they're dumb. Right. But I'm just saying that it broke my heart more than anything. A deception from Satan.
But back to Jagat, he didn't have any. He realized that these were just made up by men, these gods from his Hindu religion. And he had some problems in growing up. He went to jail and he lived for the pleasure of the moment. One day somebody gave him a Bible and he read about Christ, his death, burial, resurrection, his life.
But Jaggett didn't know any Christians personally. There was none in his village. And he found some Christians in a neighboring village. And while reading the Scriptures, Jagget heard about the call of God for him to be a missionary. And he enrolled in one of our Bible colleges.
And so after two years of training he went to a village called Bagadapur where there's about 25,000 people and not one of them heard the gospel and are completely unreached.
Let's do the next one.
Oh, let's see. Sorry. All right, so this one talks, this is a short video, talks about missionaries assigned and finances allocated just to give us kind of a perspective on it. Now onto missionaries. Only one out of every 1800 Christians in world C decides to serve as a cross cultural missionary.
So we can pull 400,000 missionaries out of that World C population. That's our total cross cultural missionary force world worldwide. Did you know that 72% of all our missionaries are going to World C? That's right. The vast majority of the missionaries being sent out are going to the people of the world that have Bibles and established churches.
25% of the missionaries are sent to World B, where there is already some access to the church and to the Bible. That leaves only 3% of the total missionary force to handle all of World A, the section of the population without any change of hearing about Jesus, 29% of the world has no way to hear the Gospel. But we're sending only a tiny portion of our Christian workers to them. What about finances? Annually all those Christians in World C earn a total of $42 trillion.
And together they give about $700 billion to Christian causes each year. That includes everything Christian nonprofits, churches, youth programs, missions, etc. Can you do the math? Less than 2% of Christian income is being given to Christ's causes. Out of that 700 billion given to all Christian causes.
Only 45 billion is given to missions specifically. That's a little over 6%. In fact, there is more money reported embezzled from the church each year than is given to missions. Remember those 430 missionaries? We have $45 billion to support them and their cross cultural work.
But how exactly is it allocated? Well, $39 billion goes to world C every year. Yep. 87% of that missions money is being spent in areas of the world that have Bibles and churches available. 5.4 billion or 12% goes to world B each year.
Those that have access to the government gospel message but have rejected it. That leaves only $450 million or 1% of all missions money going to World A, the least reached people of the world. To put that into perspective, annually Americans spend more money on Halloween costumes for their pets than get sent to World a. To summarize, only 3% of our missionary force, armed with only 1% of missions giving, is going out to reach the 2 billion people who don't have access to the gospel.
Okay, yeah. Can you do the next one? Yeah. And it's not a rebuke, you guys, I'm. It's just information to be aware of.
In our museum at Gospel for Asia, we have. This is kind of another way to look at World abc. And I thought it'd be a good visual world. The white on your left would be considered. How many missionaries are sent to World C?
Which America? I mean, in Dallas alone we did a search. 300. I'm sorry, three mile radius of Dallas, of course, the Bible belt. But there's 4,000 churches in a three mile radius of Dallas where I live.
They just shared that. I'm just. Okay. Anyways, but that's how many missionaries are already being, are already being sent to areas that already have Bibles and Christian radio and books and commentary. And that World B is the gray and that world the blue is World is World A.
World World A, where we focus on as a ministry. That's where we want to go. Then you can see on the other side is that example.
But our point in our heart and our goal as a ministry is I took a missions course called Perspectives of the World Christian Movement and it talks about this and it says it's the great imbalance. And so it's just our heart is to. Let's reach as many people that are unreached as we can. Okay, next one. So where are these people?
Is it in the 1040 window, which is the. I know you guys have an old Old map of Gospel for Asia in the lobby there. I brought a new big one. I love all the missionaries that you're supporting, but I want to give you a brand, an updated map. That one's probably 20 years old, and it's free, so.
But our focus is. You see the 1040 window? North Africa, Middle. Middle East, Southeast Asia. That's where 97% of the unreached people live in the 1040 window.
10 degrees latitude, 40 degrees longitude. And then one more thing for you. 60% of these countries are completely closed or severely restricted to evangelism and church planting by Westerners. Like, when I go to India, I have to go as a tourist. I can't go as an.
I can't go as a missionary if I wanted to. They won't let me. They won't let me. But I'm not saying that there's three waves and missions, right? The Book of Acts.
I will be in Acts. They were sent out. I'll be. You will be my witnesses in Judea, Samaria, the utmost ends of the earth. And then the 18th century, we have William Carey, the father of modern missions.
He did incredible job. We're not saying that that was a failure. You know, we have others also, like Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael.
Back to Matthew, chapter nine.
We know this.
The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out more laborers into his harvest field due to the urgency.
This is of utmost importance. Thrust and thrown out into the harvest field. I mean, we know that Jesus is the only hope, right, for humanity. Like, really, Jesus is the only way. He is the way, the truth and the life.
Nobody comes to the Father but through him. So back to Pastor Jagget so his story finishes. Next slide, please. So one day, a desperate wife came to Pastor Jaggett and begged him to come and pray for her husband, who had a stomach tumor. They had tried everything they knew to receive healing, from witch doctors to medical doctors.
Pastor Jaggett had visited their house before. They were not interested in the gospel until her husband was close to death. Pastor Jagat prayed for Singh and visited him regularly. While Singh's body continued to be torn by the tumor, his heart opened to the work of the Holy Spirit and said before he died that he wanted to embrace the love of Christ and surrender his life to him. Both him and his wife received the Lord and were baptized.
Three months later, Singh died. Now he's in heaven with the Savior rejoicing. And before he. Before he died, he Told his wife, I live no longer. I am happy that I will be with the Lord.
Take care of yourself and never deny Jesus Christ, who died on the cross of Calvary to save us for. So the gospel is good news when it. If it gets there on time. Right. I'm not.
And it's not a guilt thing. It's just. But. But this is him in the middle, Pastor Jaggett. He's one of our senior leaders on the field.
He's planted four churches and also one in jail. He's. He started a kind of a Bible study church in jail. So. And then in the.
In the community. Community that I told you about. In bag of. Or the village name, he's reached out to everybody. That's one of the things.
Missionaries knock on doors, ask people to pray, give out gospel tracts. So here's the. Here's a picture of the. Next slide, please. There's a picture in northeast India that I went to.
And this is northeast India. I mean, you're talking. When you say unreached, I mean, I was told that this is first generation of Christians in this village. Thousand people worship there. First generation.
Northeast India is very, very unreached.
Next slide. And during that time, it was our Bible college recruitment time. And one of the leaders asked that congregation who would like to be a missionary trained in our Bible college. And I'm not exaggerating, every one of them raised their hand. Every one of them.
It was amazing. And you can see the little aisle in the middle. They just sit on the floor. That's just. We're, of course, in the front on the nice, comfy chairs.
But anyways. And they've had to knock out that church. That church. The wall of the entryway twice, because not enough room for people. It's amazing.
Next slide. So just our heart is, you know, what's the best way to reach them or how's the best way for them to be reached? What's the best way? Is it. Is it me going to India and learning the language?
And I'm not saying there's no room for that, but I'm saying they're on the ground, their boots on the ground. They know the language. They know the culture. They could live in these villages. I don't know if I could, actually.
Nah, I've been there. I go back to my hotel, man. But they live there among the people. They live simple lives. And in this book, there's one chapter called I Became like one of them that, you know, he's like an Indian reaching an Indian With a gospel is just really effective.
God's using it. Okay, next. How can they call the one they have not believed in? This is kind of a GFA marching orders, you know. And how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard?
And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent. Becoming senders. One more. Next slide.
Josh.
Yeah. See, we're trying to be the bridge for the body of Christ around the world where somebody that wants to get involved with missions. GFA is kind of the outlet, the bridge to be able to do that. Next slide. So here's some application and I think I have like a few minutes.
I'm trying to.
Oh, here's. So we, we prayed this morning during breakfast, right, Pastor Jim, for. Was it Nigeria or. And then Jamaica? What's going on?
And they had a big flooding, right? Hurricane. Yeah, Hurricane in Jamaica, Nigeria. They're slaughtering Christians. It's a seven year prison sentence in Nepal and states in India.
If you become a Christian, what I'm saying is pray. And I have these smaller maps, the world maps with the 1040 window. You can take one too. Put it on your table at home, on your wall. Please take one for free.
I have lots of them.
Learn more. Once you read this book, we'll send you more if you want. Share. The best way to share about what God's doing is, is by reading this book or sharing it and simplify. We encourage folks to do that.
Like, I'm guilty of. Like. I mean, I try not to go to Starbucks, but Starbucks. But because you. I can't see spending seven bucks when I can send that to missions and I can make 12 cups of coffee at home.
You know, just an example. I'm. I'm working on simplifying. And then if, if God would put it on your heart. I know you guys are above and beyond what you're already doing.
I know you guys already support lots of missionaries, which I praise God for that and the four that you're currently helping. I need to get Pastor Jim some more regional reports on the missionaries you support. So I'm going to work on that when I get back. But you should have received a in your bulletin. We don't need a penny today.
If you just want to put your name in and sign this and give it to me, you don't need any money today. You can sign or you can. You can purse if you want. You can personally sponsor a missionary. I have profiles on the back.
He was born into a Hindu family. In India became a Christian and now he's a missionary. And it'll tell you where he works. You'll get regional reports from them like the area of how many people are coming to Christ and the different outreaches. There's always some amazing stories.
So I have some of these on the back and if you want to fill out one of these, you may also take that and start. But we don't need anything today.
And it's interesting like when you guys were worshiping this song, you guys played part of this song, I think in Revelation 7, 9. A great multitude which no one could number of all nations people tongues standing before the throne and before the lamb. I think we were singing one Worship the Lamb anyway. Maybe I but yeah, that's what it's all about. That's why God left us here, right?
Reach more people for Christ. So that's kind of all I have.