MK forum

When I was a candidate last year for a mission agency I made a mistake on numbers during a trial run that I was doing in front of staff at a practice presentation of my future ministry with the mission. They pointed out that I was off by one number in one of my facts. I had accidentally claimed they had an extra ministry stateside. I had copied it wrong as I did not spend enough time planning it out. That was fine that they corrected me. Many people today are not impressed with bloated statistics when they find out the numbers are embellished. If you are going to post something on the internet, you would think you would strive to be accurate especially when you are under scrutiny. I agree with Raz in wondering why ntm feels the need to exaggerate their numbers if they have. And of course Bemused's response is probably correct.

But really who cares about all their grand outreach as a mission in to remote areas? I no longer do. Even if all those facts are true. Imagine the amount of prayer support for the MK"s they could have acquired if they had asked for prayer for the many victims. Just think of the many ways they could have come clean to the public on these issues of abuse. As we have seen throughout these various threads, many MK victims have never even been asked by ntm how they are doing. Perhaps a public apology would have been nice.

Of course I want to see the world evangelized. The two tribal groups I worked with are still in my prayers and people I come in contact with surely are sick of me talking about them. I stand with missionaries overseas reaching the unreached. I just can no longer support ntm.
Really, to me, I do not care how many people they are reaching or how quickly. Because I see all the damage they have done in the process.

By the way, I have sailed around Alcatraz. It is windy and frigid, even in the warm summer months.
Congrats to NZ on the great sailing!

I think I've worked it out.

Having had a look at the NTM website there are 1520 missionaries. The country with the most missionaries is one called USA. So I googled USA and found there are 50 tribes: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, . . .

At a rate of 45 days to reach each tribe, that equates to a 8.1111111 tribes per year. So it will take NTM 6.2 years to reach all the lost tribes of USA. Then there are the Lost Tribes of Canada to reach . . .

On the serious side, I think a bit of inflation has taken place, quite a bit of inflation! And it is not a good look, on top of the handling of the Child Abuse Scandal.

P.S.

On a quick tally, of the 1520 missionaries in NTM about 660 are serving in the United States. Thats 43%!

However many of those 660 missionaries are well and truly retired, so the figures are not exactly reflecting those who are "active".

In light of the lively discussion on this thread, I will not be surprised if God suddenly leads NTM to discontinue the "Find a Missionary" section of their website.

Their explanation for its disappearance may be something along the lines of "persecution" by the "enemies of the Gospel".

So if you want to verify Bemused's shocking percentage observation, or make some observations of your own, you'd better do it quickly.

I went to the media files on this site today and read an article in the Chicago Tribune from June that I had not seen. I found a quote from Boz that even if it has been on here, it merits being repeated as we discuss lack of transparency.

He says, "The Gospel is about the fact that God does his greatest work when we are most vulnerable and most transparent," he said. The argument that publicizing abuse "will hurt the cause of Christ is nothing but a smoke screen for 'This could hurt my paycheck. This could hurt my future.' It has nothing to do with Jesus."

Here's an early "Amen", Bemused. It's not Sunday anywhere yet, but your post is spot on. Thank you!

From Bemused:
"The biggest destroyer of the promotion of any gospel is when it's credibility is eroded by lies and half truths from within. Healthy debate and questioning are actually productive, for it allows the chance for credibility to be enhanced."

Healthy debate does not happen in ntm.
That's a BIG check.
Lies and half truths?
Just read here and on the main page.
It was always painful to read "transparency" in
an ntm statement.
Because from our dealings with "leaders"
we knew this wasn't true.