God Speaks Our Language: The Deaf Journey to Jesus

Renca Dunn is one person of only 2% of her people group that know Jesus—a people group of 70 million.

As a group, she articulates, “We’ve been made to feel ashamed. We’ve been oppressed. We’ve been rejected. We’ve been made fun of. We’ve been looked down upon. We’ve been viewed as people others need to fix.”

Their “offense”? Deafness.

In John 9, however, Jesus is stunningly clear: physical challenges like those of the blind man are not punishment for anyone’s direct sin. The Deaf, too, are “fearfully and wonderfully made” by a purposeful, loving God (Psalm 139:14). God asks Moses, “‘Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or Deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?’” (Exodus 4:10-11).

We know Jesus deliberately entered the world of society’s outcasts and addressed not just physical issues, but their accompanying alienation.

Dunn worked for Deaf Missions, a Converge ministry partner. She illuminates why reading the Bible can feel ostracizing for the Deaf community. “Deaf people depend a lot on visuals. We need to see things in order to see it in our heads. So when I see the Bible in sign language, I finally feel that God…understands me. He wants me to understand Him. … He speaks in my language! God signs my sign language.” It’s similar for any other foreign-language group not reading in their “heart” language in which they spend their days, dream, talk with those they love.

This isn’t a new emphasis for the missions community. In 1917, as Wycliffe founder Cam Townsend sold Spanish Bibles in Guatemala, a Cakchiquel Indian asked, “If your God is so great, why doesn’t He speak my language?”

Townsend would later reflect, “The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue.” Yet out of around 375 sign languages worldwide, most have not a single verse of the Bible translated.

We must ask: In what language would Jesus speak to a people group?

Their own.

Alienation by the Community = Alienation from God?

Yet the Bible in ASL was only just completed in 2020.

Most of the Deaf don’t speak English—a language with different sentence structure and grammar. So it’s  “a language they already struggled with in school” which “perhaps they never learned to read or write [fluently],” Dunn reasons.

Thus, “a vast majority of Deaf people have not encountered the gospel, even in countries saturated by churches and Scripture,” writes DOOR International.

Following thousands of years of rejection and with communication challenges, most of today’s Deaf still struggle to feel accepted by hearing communities. It’s why the experience of deafness vastly differs from every other physical challenge.

“Approximately 90% of Deaf children are born to hearing parents”—families who may never learn sign language says DOOR International. Many Deaf consider the Deaf community their true “family.”

For any of us, our pictures of God often eerily resemble our most influential relationships and typical interactions: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12). Yet profound alienation defines many of the Deaf’s relationships with the world at large.

Dunn shakes her head. “Most people I meet feel distant from God, or question whether God exists,” she explains with her characteristically more dramatic facial expressions, conveying vital emotion, tone, and grammatical information to the Deaf.

This linguistic separation has also caused “an identity of their own, one directly associated with their deafness and quite different from their surrounding hearing community”—with many who would not choose hearing, DOOR International explains. The Deaf consider themselves “a people with a rich language, culture, and set of experiences unique to them.  Deaf people want to be described in terms of who they are, not by what they are not.”

So just as a person from Haiti would be the best to reach Haitians, the Deaf are the most essential people group to reach other Deaf. Converge’s Deaf Catalyst team pursues a multiplicative ministry, seeking—along with other nations—the 11 million unreached deaf in America’s own backyard.

“A Gift to Deaf People”

This intimate understanding of God and the Deaf community fueled the creation of Jesus, a powerful American Sign Language (ASL) film created by Deaf Missions for the Deaf and by an entirely Deaf cast and crew. One Muslim cast member even came to know Christ through the film’s taping. (As of 2020, Deaf Missions has completed translation of the entire Bible online into American Sign Language.)

DOOR International explains that merely interpreting hearing-led events often reduces the Deaf—created with immense gifts and talents to lead, teach, and encourage—to be “objects of a ministry, whereas God has created them to be ministers. “They cannot exercise these gifts in a context where language and cultural barriers are constantly present.” Thus, it was a tremendous achievement as cast, crew, and other ministers of the Deaf community collected for the movie premiere in Arlington, Texas in April 2024.

Mark Abercrombie, a Deaf leader in the Deaf ministry of Grace Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota and a longtime partner with the Deaf Catalyst Team—couldn’t attend due to cancer treatments. Instead, Mark spent the weekend praying for the lost souls of the Deaf community.

During Mark’s nighttime vigil, the Holy Spirit planted the idea of hosting the ASL Jesus movie for the Deaf of the Upper Midwest. When his wife, Kathy, rose the next morning, Mark had scrawled pages of ideas for the event’s format. He began praying for 500 to attend.

Meredith Henderson, a member of the Deaf Catalyst Team, and Mark planned diligently for the seven-hour event set for September 28. Churches, businesses, and individuals linked arms to make this event “a gift to Deaf people,” Henderson reflects.

They arranged for transportation, tactile interpreters and extra monitors in another room with better lighting for the Deaf/Blind. Stanchions directed attendees to sit together in close community at the center of the 3,500-capacity auditorium.

Despite COVID and a transportation mishap preventing 100 from attending, 343 Deaf (including 10 Deaf/Blind) gathered in the auditorium. Excitement tinged the atmosphere as so many of this marginalized population converged and began to greet one another in enthusiastic signs.

Chad Entinger, CEO of Deaf Missions, signed his warm welcome to the intrigued attendees. And then, the crowd raptly watched the two-hour-plus movie created for people just like them.

After the movie, local Deaf leaders and pastors presented clear gospel messages, including visual object lessons and even a mimed skit on the reality of spiritual warfare.

But God wasn’t done.

The Fields are White

Mark invited those who would choose to follow Jesus to come forward…and over fifty people—close to 15%—streamed forward.

Another leader invited those interested to be baptized at the local Peace Deaf Church that Sunday afternoon. The group participated in several Deaf-led worship songs—a vital cultural connection, considering that simply translating songs written by hearing people rarely communicates inspiration to a Deaf audience. 

Following the service, Chick-fil-A partnered to provide 475 boxed lunches for a fellowship meal. Local Deaf churches, ministries, missionaries, and organizations welcomed the curious at informational tables clustered around the perimeter.

One couple, who’d been Latter Day Saints for years, contacted Mark Abercrombie following the event. Already beginning to discern that the Mormon church did not teach the truth, the couple brought their 10-year-old son to the Jesus event. During the Altar call all three of them came to saving faith and told Mark that they all want to be baptized. The couple also hopes to renew their wedding vows before God.

Echoing Mark’s sentiment, Henderson is simply amazed. “We are praising the Lord for His goodness in arranging such an event so more Deaf people can learn about Jesus’ love for them and His offer of eternal life.” She continues to pray for other churches to embrace the opportunity to provide ASL Jesus-movie events in their communities.

So what’s next? The Deaf Catalyst team partnered with Deaf Missions and another Deaf organization to co-create this small group curriculum many Deaf groups around the country are already using—and which Mark Abercrombie will use for follow-up with new Christ-followers.

These indispensable members of Christ’s Body are those Jesus commands us to invite to our parties (1 Corinthians 12:21-22, Luke 14:12-24). Yet the emphasis of that parable lies not on God’s people as the rescuers, but as the rescued, who God sought to collect for His own table when we were maimed and outcast.

Too many Deaf in every region of the world are born, live, and die without ever once encountering a follower of Jesus who can speak their language. Will you support the Deaf Catalyst team?