More workers are needed to reach the deaf for Christ…
BIMI CONSULTANT Jim Sloan gives his personal testimony:
“As a child, there was nothing unique about my family except I had a deaf uncle. During the summer of l956, while watching TV with my grandmother, God used a program to touch my heart about the deaf. At that time my grandmother, while crying, told me she had been praying for forty years that God would call men to work with the deaf.”
God has answered his grandmother’s prayer by giving Jim and his wife Joyce a burden for the deaf. In 1990, after years of serving as a pastor and evangelist, Jim states: “The focus of our ministry changed.” They joined the Committee on Missionary Evangelism located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. While in Romania for a Bible conference in January of 1993, he met with an interpreter for the deaf. “She told me the deaf had never had a Bible study or church service. That statement changed the focus of our ministry until this present time. “
The ministry of the Sloans to the deaf has taken them to many foreign countries, as well as across America - presenting a desire to see deaf people saved and training them to serve God wherever He directs.
Have you ever thought about the deaf?
Jim Sloan
I sat in the office with a pastor of a large and aggressive Baptist Church in Budapest, Hungary. I said, “Pastor, you have great outreach ministries in the city and to your country. Why not to the deaf?” He replied, “We never thought about the deaf until you came.”
NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT THE DEAF! I have heard this many times. Deaf people are everywhere—every country, every city, every village. Every country has its own sign language. Because of the difference in population of the deaf in each area, different kinds of ministries are required: deaf churches with deaf pastors, deaf ministries in hearing churches with interpreters, separate Bible study classes, etc.
Some countries like Germany, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria have several ministries to the deaf, but not enough. There is a deaf school with over 200 students and many adult deaf in the capital of Albania. As far as I know, there is no ministry for them. France has only one small ministry to the deaf in Paris. Four-hundred thousand deaf live in Paris. BIMI Missionary Bob Huffman wants to reach the deaf, but has no worker. NO WORKERS!
Deaf people cannot be reached with the gospel in the “usual” ways local churches use. We must have someone (a missionary from America or a national) who is willing to learn Sign Language and to learn the culture of the deaf then go to the deaf community with the Gospel. Begin now and pray Matthew 9:38: “Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers into the (deaf) harvest.”