Last August a four-man team of lay people flew across nine time zones, rented four-wheel drive vehicles at their destination (with the help of local contacts) and headed east into rolling valleys and heavily timbered mountains. Their mission: carry the gospel to an unreached people group. Upon discovering that their carefully researched target area had just been evangelized by a team from another country, they shifted to the province beyond, which had not yet heard the gospel.

"We really didn't have a plan as far as where to go," says Matt, manager of a fish hatchery back home in Colorado. "One of the awesome things about the trip was God's sovereignty, and how He directed us."

They found the local villagers, nominal Buddhists, quite friendly. Some even invited the Americans to stay in their homes and share their food. Matt and the team stopped in numerous villages to share the gospel, including one where about 500 people lived in log cabins. "We showed the JESUS video in the cultural center," says Matt, "and about 150 people came. It was so cool--video players that once spread political information now were showing the JESUS film. About three dozen people received Christ."

As Matt found out, God is working in new ways to take the gospel to the "uttermost parts of the earth" by the end of the year 2000. Matt's team was part of the Macedonian Project, a strategy enabling the average person to help take the gospel to the least-evangelized regions of the world. With training in cultural sensitivity, and a great deal of faith and prayer, ordinary people are beginning to carry the gospel to places with very few believers.

Macedonian Project teams first went out from countries like Korea and South Africa, but in the last 18 months, American teams have joined in taking the gospel to the ends of the earth.

The concept originated in the mid-'90s, when Campus Crusade leaders began asking what it would take to actually get the gospel to every person in the world. They concluded it would be impossible to reach every area, at least humanly speaking. Some regions were too remote, some restrict visitors to just a few days in the country, some just needed more manpower.

"We call these the 'least-evangelized areas,'" says Paul McKean, U.S. director of the Macedonian Project. "It doesn't mean there hasn't been evangelism, but these are very difficult places. Our mission hasn't been successful, nor has anybody else."

Paul and others felt that small teams of lay people would be able to enter these areas. Ordinary people like Matt could choose an area, attend a training conference, then trust God to open doors. The goal is simply to provide a gospel witness in places where there is none. In more open countries, "Mac" teams can go boldly with the gospel. In any case, team members meet people, make friends, and, as God gives opportunity, talk about their faith in Christ. Return trips build on those friendships, to the end that indigenous believers would become rooted in their faith.

"The idea," says Paul, "is that a church or a Sunday-school class or some other group could claim a place on this planet and say, 'We are going to keep sending teams until a ministry is begun.'"

Last summer a 49-year-old CPA from South Carolina boarded a plane for a two-week trip to Asia. Neither he nor the others on his team spoke the language. They knew nobody at their destination. They had no contacts. They just knew that God wanted them to visit a certain city, then trust Him to use them in some way to influence the region for Christ.

On the final leg of the flight, the CPA met a finance professor who had been dispatched from the capital to help start new businesses in the province. Unfortunately, the professor knew finance, but had little experience in starting businesses. As the two men talked, the professor discovered the CPA had spent 20 years specializing in this very thing, and invited the American to share his expertise with city leaders. However, he would need a translator before he could attend the meeting.

After the plane landed, the team visited the local university, where they met a teacher whose husband just happened to be a businessman fluent in English. The man agreed to translate, and the CPA met the leading businessmen of the province. During the visit, he gave away several JESUS videos and other materials.

"I never knew God would make me a business missionary," he says. "He used what I've learned in my job and has given me solid business reasons to go back."

Although most trips last just a couple of weeks, God is doing far more in that brief time than can be humanly explained. "Part of the reason," says Paul, "is that we emphasize praying for the area before you go." One team estimated that some 1,200 people at home were praying for them.

"I was amazed at how much happened in just a few days," says Ken, an Orlando, FL, executive who went to Asia last summer. Ken, who has a degree in chemical engineering, met with chemistry professors while his wife, Susan, found several opportunities to talk to English classes about life in the United States. She concluded her talks by pointing out the Christian origins of the United States.

"Any American can do this," says Ken, "because everybody speaks English and can talk about their experiences of life in America. You don't have to be an entrepreneurial missionary, or a strategist, you just have to be available, pray and go for it."

Not every Macedonian Project team will see people turn to Christ, at least not at first. "We're talking about forging new frontiers," says Paul, "and we may go two or three times and not see anybody trust Christ. But [we need] that kind of commitment. It's a jump start for missions."

For more information call 1-888-257-7885, or e-mail macprojectus@ccci.org.