In this engaging visual presentation, missionary Mike Scott shares about all the components required to send a missionary to the field.

Good morning!

It looks very different from this side of the auditorium. I’m used to sitting way in the back when I visit. Usually when I walk in, I introduce myself as “Christy’s dad.” That’s my identity here at Valley Alliance Church. We’ve been coming to visit for the last three or four or five years—two or three times a year—so I’ve gotten to know some of your faces. I’m really bad with names, so I forget some of them, but it’s always great to be among people we know.

Thank you for the privilege of sharing my “alter ego” with you this morning. I’m Mike Scott, missionary with World Team. My wife Becky and I served for twenty years in Cameroon as Bible translators. We began at the very beginning—learning a language that had never been written down. We had to figure out how to capture all its sounds, analyze the grammar, create an alphabet that the community agreed on, and then begin the long process of translation.

By God’s grace, in 2018 we saw the New Testament and the book of Genesis printed and distributed throughout the Oku area. Praise God! You read from Psalm 67 this morning—“Let all the peoples praise him.” Now there is another people group in central Africa, right off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, who can praise Him not only because they’ve heard God’s Word, but because they now hold God’s written Word in their own language.

Then God brought a major shift. He moved us from the tropics back to Canada. I remember thinking, “Lord, why are You bringing us back to this forsaken winter wasteland?” God definitely has a sense of humor! But He had other plans for us. For the last eight years we have been based in Three Hills, Alberta. My wife Becky works in the registrar’s office at Prairie Bible College, where we connect with many international students and help in the missions department. We’re investing in the next generation of missionaries.

We also get to work with the current generation. World Team is a relatively small mission with about 300 people serving in fifteen different countries. Missionaries, like all of us, can sometimes become so focused on their own work that they keep doing the same things over and over. Often there are better, more effective ways of doing ministry—and someone in another country may already have discovered them. My role in World Team’s training department is to help our missionaries improve what they are already doing well through collaboration, making their work more efficient and fruitful.

(Slide: Photo of Mike & Becky Scott – Cameroon, Canada, Collaboration)

Of course, I had to include a baby picture of Christy for your viewing pleasure. If you want to see more pictures of our kids when they were little, there’s an old photo album in the back. We have four children—three daughters and one son. We lived in a small town in the jungle with one main road running down the middle, lined with houses. This is the church building where we worshiped for many years. It started with planks cut by chainsaw, posts stuck in the ground, and a dirt floor. Eventually they poured a concrete floor. The “decorations” you see were for Palm Sunday. Worship there looked very different—open doors, chickens and goats wandering through, and even a snake that slithered in during one morning service!

We went to the Oku people because of numbers—not the book of Numbers, but these sobering statistics:

Of the approximately 7,400 known living languages in the world (including 392 sign languages), only about 756 have the full Bible—roughly 10%. Another 1,726 have the New Testament, and 1,274 have only portions. There are 985 languages ready for translation right now—if only we had translators. Another 1,524 need significant groundwork before translation can even begin. And 1,131 languages are dying; in this generation, they will likely disappear as mother tongues.

Of the world’s 7.4 billion people, about 6 billion have access to Scripture in a language they understand, and nearly a billion have the New Testament. Still, 29 million people—roughly the population of Canada—live in languages where translation work could begin immediately if we had the workers.

Ready-to-go means the linguistic groundwork is done; we simply need translators. That’s part of what our daughter Katie is preparing for as she steps toward church planting and translation work. We need many more like her.

After twenty years in Cameroon, God brought us back to Canada. We wondered what He was doing, but He has been faithful. Our calling now is to support the current generation of missionaries and to train and encourage the next.

When a young person senses God’s call to missions, one of the first people they often talk to is a parent or trusted friend. What that person says matters greatly. They need encouragers—people like Barnabas in the book of Acts, whose very name means “Son of Encouragement.” It was Barnabas who saw potential in Saul (Paul), brought him into the church, and later went to Tarsus to bring him to Antioch. Without Barnabas, Paul might never have been sent out as a missionary.

Becoming a missionary involves many more people: cross-cultural trainers, a home church missions committee, pastors, prayer warriors, financial supporters, mission organizations, evaluation committees, finance teams, coaches, member care workers, and teammates. It truly takes a chain of God’s people working together.

(At this point in the live sermon, volunteers formed a human chain across the front of the church to illustrate the “sending chain.” The missionary stood at one end, the unreached people group at the other, with encouragers, trainers, givers, prayer warriors, and others linking arms between them.)

This chain can stretch when people step away—through weariness, changing priorities, financial pressures, or leadership changes in churches. Sometimes the chain breaks, and missionaries have to return home far earlier than planned. The work of missions is not just about sending; it’s about sustaining.

That’s why every person matters. You don’t have to be the one who crosses the ocean. You can be the encourager, the faithful giver, the persistent prayer, the advocate on the missions committee, or the one who provides member care. As Katie reminded us, “Nobody is called to nothing.” Each of us has a role to play in God’s great vision.

Romans 10:14-15 reminds us:

“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’”

Missionaries are the visible tip of the iceberg, but the vast majority of the work happens through the faithful, often unseen support of God’s people.

Thank you, Valley Alliance Church, for the part you are already playing in sending and supporting missionaries. Don’t stop. Find your place in the chain. Ask your missions chair or your pastor how you can get involved. Be part of what God is doing to reach every tribe, tongue, and nation with the good news of Jesus Christ.