May 01, 1996 by Colin Stott

I believe that God has put the Global Recordings Network (GRN) together in these last days to accelerate the task of giving all peoples a chance to hear of Christ. I believe too that we should increasingly be on the offensive, hastening the day when GRN's stated purpose of "the Gospel in everyone's language" becomes a reality.

Over the past 57 years, we have seen God do a mighty work in using a small group like GRN to share the gospel in over 4660 languages and dialects that have no Christian witness. I believe that the shared burden of GRN is to make recordings of ALL these groups.

The following chart shows the progress we have made over the years (the figures indicate the number of languages that have recordings available):

• 1943--20 • 1973--3,843 • 1953--743 • 1983--4,293 • 1963--2,933 • 1993--4,492 Today--4,662

Over the past 20 years, we have recorded an average of 34 new languages each year. Continuing at this pace, it could take us another 120 years to record all languages! To increase progress, I believe that God needs to mobilize the GRN in new ways to systematically record the 4,000 remaining languages. The following are some of what I believe to be necessary components as the GRN sets its sights on finishing the task:

1. Concerted Prayer We are asking God to give us a renewed vision and impetus for the unreached languages and to show us how He wants us to go about capturing them.
2. Research In order to plan in a meaningful way, we will work to gather more information on what unrecorded languages are out there and where they are.
3. Divide Task into Smaller Goals While 4000 languages is an overwhelming number, it would help if we broke it down into smaller quantities and set attainable goals (allowing of course for some faith stretching). This way the task becomes less daunting and more manageable. For example, if we envisioned 40 recording teams each with the goal of recording on average ten new languages per year, this would yield 400 new languages each year. And the task of recording 4000 languages could be accomplished in 10 years!
4. Increasing Manpower for Recording If we are to have 40 or more recording teams, there are three things that can help achieve this:

• Strengthen existing reams - We plan to free up trained recordists as much as possible to primarily do recording without getting too bogged down with other jobs. We are also endeavoring to set more finances aside for the recording work.
• Pray for new teams - We are asking each of our Gospel Recording Network centers to have as a prayer goal for the Lord to raise up at least one new recording team from their country in 1996. This would more than double our current manpower.
• Explore the possibility of partnerships - Manpower for recording could be greatly multiplied if we were to involve other missions. GR- USA, recently put out some feelers and found a lot of interest out there. One mission in Oregon, USA recently contacted us saying they would like to second a team to go into Tibet to record the 60 plus languages there. Wisdom is needed in following up such contacts, but we want to encourage all evangelical agencies who are interested in using gospel recordings to work with us. If you or your mission are interested in helping with the recording task, please contact us.

5. Share the Vision We intend to boldly share our vision for completing this task. The AD2000 leadership was excited when we shared it with them. We are preparing good informative brochures and videos to widely share the vision and the opportunities to be a part of it. Join Us In This Task As we seek to provide a gospel message on cassette to every people in the world, we invite the Body of Christ worldwide, both churches and mission agencies, to join with us in a cooperative effort to finish this job. Together, we can accomplish so much more than we can separately.