What if you could give the perfect gift this Christmas season? A gift guaranteed to fit, not be returned, and never break. A gift that wasn’t promoted on Black Friday. And, with so many gifts so soon forgotten, what if you knew that this gift would be enjoyed for all eternity?
Of course, I’m talking about the gift of the Gospel.
As we have for many years, we at SMI invite you, our community of members, to use GivingTuesday as an opportunity to reach more people with the Good News of Jesus.
In GivingTuesdays past, we have encouraged you to support the Jesus Film Project directly. It’s a worthy organization whose mission we continue to fully support. This year, we’d like to bring to your attention, and encourage your support of, a much smaller ministry that’s having a big impact — in part, through its use of the JESUS film: Asia Christian Services (ACS).
A long obedience
ACS traces its remarkable history to 1921, when J. Russell Morse and his wife, Gertrude, accepted a call to serve as missionaries in Tibet. In the decades that followed, the Morses lived and brought the Gospel to countless people in Western China, Northern Burma (now Myanmar), and Thailand, seeing thousands place their faith in Christ. They worked tirelessly in difficult conditions and God used them to bring about much good.
In 1966, the Morse’s youngest son, LaVerne, established Asia Christian Services to expand that work by training and equipping Asian national missionaries to share the Gospel with their own people; build churches, leadership training centers, Bible colleges, schools, and orphanages; provide disaster relief; and disciple new believers. Its church-planting work focuses on planting “reproducing churches,” which send evangelists to share the Gospel with more people and establish more churches.
Multiplying your generosity
Sound Mind Investing founder Austin Pryor has gotten to know ACS in recent years and has been moved by the ministry’s evangelistic efforts that are bearing great fruit “actually and visibly” right now, not just “hopefully” in the years to come. So it is that this year Austin and his wife, Susie, along with many of us on the SMI staff, are directing our GivingTuesday offerings to help further the work of ACS. We invite you to do the same.
To encourage your generous investment in this cause, every dollar contributed by members of the SMI community will be doubled by the Sound Mind Investing newsletter, up to $20,000. So, if SMI members contribute a collective $20,000, SMI will match that amount, enabling $40,000 to be invested in spreading the Gospel in Myanmar, a country devastated by an ongoing civil war that has displaced countless families, and also in neighboring countries.
A life-changing, eternity-shaping tool
If you have followed or participated in SMI’s GivingTuesday appeals in the past, you know how God has used the JESUS film to alter countless people’s eternities. The film vividly depicts the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Since its release in 1979, The film has been translated into over 2,200 languages and has been viewed some 11.1 billion times, whether online, in remote villages, or in towns and cities throughout the world. According to the Jesus Film Project, since 1979, more than 665 million people have placed their faith in Christ after watching the film.
With the film available in 47 of the 200 languages spoken in Myanmar, ACS began using it in 2022, distributing tablets preloaded with the film to 50 evangelists who are planting churches along the border of Myanmar and Thailand. The next year, another 110 tablets were distributed, as well as solar-powered projectors that are used to show the JESUS film to larger groups.
An evangelist named Moses was the recipient of one such projector. He ministers to some of the many refugees displaced by the war in Myanmar. In a village of refugees that sprung up around a church he planted, Moses used the projector and a bedsheet strung up as a screen to show the JESUS film to a group of 30 families. After the showing, he answered questions for four hours and the next day baptized 20 new believers.
The situation in Myanmar is very difficult and being a missionary there is dangerous work. However, many people in this heavily Buddhist country appear to be open to the Gospel.
Thoroughly equipped
This year, we are praying that the SMI community will collectively contribute $20,000 to ACS, which will be matched dollar for dollar by Sound Mind Investing. If successful, $40,000 will be enough to purchase more than 130 tablet kits that include a tablet preloaded with the JESUS film, a battery, and a portable solar panel for charging.
If each tablet is used as instructed — to show the JESUS film at least 25 times per year to at least 10 people at each showing — through this GivingTuesday initiative, 32,500 people per year will hear the Gospel, many for the first time. Local Christian missionaries will then follow up with and disciple new believers.
Making disciples in all nations
We hope you'll agree that funding the spread of the Gospel in Myanmar and neighboring countries will be a great way to begin your celebration of Advent and Christmas! After all, Christ came to save a lost world, and He has given us a similar mission: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).
To learn more about ACS and then give as the Lord leads, click here. To have your gift doubled, be sure to use that link. Also, you don't have to wait until Tuesday. You can give right now! Thank you!
