Bob Blincoe, US Director of Frontiers, will speak at our Conference for Pastors next week. God has used Bob to influence many to go to hard, unreached places—places void of the gospel. We hope you will be encouraged and challenged by this interview. (And pastors, if you haven't yet, there is still time to register!)
Nick Laparra: What's happening at Frontiers right now? How is God working?
Bob Blincoe: The great need in Frontiers, and particularly in me, is to keep believing, as Jesus said, that we have a heavenly Father who knows our every need. As Dr. Dan Fuller says, “It is some encouragement to you that I love you (and that I will stop to help you change your flat tire), but how much more, infinitely more, is the joy of knowing that God loves you.”
Thus, in Frontiers we constantly remind one another of how great a love God the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God. But Muslims, on account of the doctrines of Islam, are prevented from hearing or believing in a heavenly Father who “so loved the world that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
NL: What exciting things are happening in the world of missions that Frontiers is involved in?
BB: By God’s grace, the “sending” trend is very positive; more missionaries than ever are beginning pioneer church planting efforts among “unengaged” Muslim peoples in the hard places: in North India, Pakistan, Sudan, Sumatra, for example. Our small part in the Great Commission is to preach the gospel among Muslims who are beyond the hearing of any Christian missionaries.
NL: What are the key challenges that Frontiers’ missionaries face regularly? What are the key ways we can pray?
BB: The great challenge is that missionaries remind one another of the promises of God, lest they lose heart. Six times in the New Testament we read about the danger of losing heart, but we also read how to “pray always” (Luke 18:1) to guard against this most pernicious problem.
NL: Are there one or two key ways in which the ministry of Desiring God or John Piper has impacted your life?
BB: In 1988 my friend Cody Watson and I heard a cassette tape of Piper’s message on prayer warfare; it changed our lives. In fact, we transcribed the message, stopping the tape to type and then listening to the next sentence, then typing again. Then we printed copies to hand out when we would speak in churches. It was in this talk that John Piper said, “If you don’t know that life is war, then you don’t know what prayer is for” and referred to America as “the Disneyland of the universe.” Unforgettable.
Last October, I was teaching the latest class of missionary candidates—50 of them—and I several times held high the book that I think our missionaries need most: Piper’s God Is the Gospel. Suddenly our director of training, in the back of the room, held up a copy of God Is the Gospel and said that Desiring God ministries had sent a copy for every candidate in the room. I did not expect that! It was a huge encouragement to me.
NL: Can you, in a sentence or two, give us a sneak peak into your upcoming talk at the Conference for Pastors?
BB: The conference theme, Christian Hedonism, should persuade every “Berean” to search the scriptures in order to validate this shocking fact: Christians should become missionaries because they believe that this is God’s best future for themselves.
For example, David Livingstone, famed missionary to Africa, explained to the students at Cambridge, in 1857, “I never made a sacrifice.” Rather, Livingstone’s “obedience of faith” gave him great blessings which he then enumerated: “healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter.”