Erich Bridges
SBC International Mission Board
All the resources of the modern mission movement did not get the news of Jesus
to one Asian village soon enough to save the lives of three young boys.
All the resources of the modern mission movement did not get the news of Jesus
to one Asian village soon enough to save the lives of three young boys.
A Christian worker preached the gospel for the first time in
the village earlier this year. The local chief sadly asked him, “Why did
you not come here two weeks earlier?”
The chief explained that a sorcerer had promised him prosperity
if he would sacrifice three small children.
“I was carried away by his words and kidnapped two 5-year-old
boys from a neighboring village, and I sacrificed them to the gods,” he
confessed. “But I failed in all my attempts in kidnapping the third child.
Finally, I took my 7-year-old son and sacrificed him also. If you had told me
about this Jesus a little earlier, then I would have never killed those innocent
children.
“Why did you come so late?” the chief asked, weeping.
The worker could have offered several valid reasons –
that the village is just one of countless communities in an unreached region,
that its people are controlled by ancient superstitions, that local leaders
are hostile to Christianity, that the national government opposes missionary
activity.
However, at the time, silence seemed the only appropriate response,
the worker reported.
Multiply the scene millions of times over, and one has a rough
idea of the challenge facing Christians who seek to obey Jesus command
to preach the good news everywhere. The gap between the biblical vision of world
evangelization and reality remains a Grand Canyon-like expanse.
Indeed, a report prepared by strategists at the Southern Baptist
International Mission Board is entitled “Closing the Gap.” It takes
a big-picture snapshot of the secular and spiritual state of the world. It also
examines the “scope and range of Gods resources” among his followers
– and asks some hard questions about how to bring evangelistic vision and
reality closer together.
International Mission Board trustees used the report as the
basis for a recent detailed review of overseas strategy.
The reports findings include:
CLUSTERS of LOSTNESS
About 600 million people claim a personal, saving relationship
with Jesus Christ, leaving about 1.4 billion “cultural Christians”
who associate in some way with the Christian religion but do not necessarily
follow Jesus as savior and Lord.
Another 2.5 billion people are non-Christian but have some
access to the gospel message by various means.
More than 1.6 billion people have virtually no access to the
gospel, a church, Scripture or followers of Christ. More than 2,100 of the worlds
nearly 13,000 distinct people groups fall into the last category.
Forty-one countries have populations that are more than 99
percent non-Christian – and 45 more are close behind. The highest concentrations
of lostness span the so-called “10-40 Window” from North Africa to
Southeast Asia. Not surprisingly, most of the countries with fewer than 10 missionaries
per 1 million lost people are in this region.
“If we are to reach the worlds more than 5 billion
lost persons, how many missionaries and resources can we afford to deploy to
countries, cities and people groups that already have thriving evangelical populations?”
the report asks.
“Can we afford not to partner with like-minded evangelical
brothers and sisters wherever we find them? How can we mobilize these Great
Commission co-laborers to take the gospel to a lost and needy world?”
BIG RELIGION, NO RELIGION
Nearly a third of the worlds people (2 billion people)
identify themselves – or are identified by others – as “Christian.”
Islam claims more than 1 billion adherents. Hinduism has 800 million followers.
Buddhism has 350 million adherents and is experiencing a surge of growth.
However, the third-largest bloc behind Christianity and Islam
is the 900 million people who profess no faith at all – including “post-Christian
secularists in Europe, post-communist atheists in Asia, materialists, humanists
and hedonists scattered around the world,” the report notes.
A WORLD OF CITIES
More and more people are jamming into cities, a trend that
will accelerate as global economics and communications drive mass migrations
to urban centers, the report predicts.
This year alone, more than 10 million people will leave poverty-stricken
rural areas of China in search of work. In India, rural flooding, drought and
poverty may push 300 million people – more than the entire population of
the United States – into already-packed cities during the next 20 years.
Cities present plenty of challenges, but members of just about
every people group in the world can be found in urban settings, the International
Mission Board report notes.
“How can we turn these opportunities for access into gateways
for people group evangelism?”
ILLITERACY AND POST-LITERACY
Two-thirds of the worlds population is functionally illiterate
(including millions of adult Americans), the missions report notes. That is
more than 4 billion people who would not understand the Bible in their own language
if they had it.
Meanwhile, of more than 6,000 world languages, fewer than 1,000
have a New Testament translation. Indeed, most of the globes languages
are purely oral, with no written forms.
“With todays technology, many non-literate peoples
are moving straight to visual and oral means of learning and communication without
ever learning to read and write their own heart language,” the report notes.
“How might the Internet, compact disks and video disks allow us to communicate
the gospel to non-literate and post-literate peoples?”
PULLED APART, PULLED TOGETHER
A wave of ethnic conflict is tearing whole nations apart, the
mission board report points out. At the same time, renewed ethnic identity and
awareness worldwide has focused modern missions on identifying and reaching
all of the worlds people groups, many of which are “hidden”
within larger countries or majority peoples.
In contrast, waves of global integration in communication,
economics and politics are washing away barriers to evangelism in many once-closed
places – both for mission agencies and for individual churches and Christians,
who increasingly seek to design their own customized mission strategies.
POPULATION GROWS EAST AND SOUTH
The worlds 6.1 billion people likely will increase to
nearly 9 billion by 2050, with nearly 95 percent of the growth projected to
come in the developing world, the report says.
Nearly a third of the worlds current population is under
age 15. More than 3.5 billion people live in Asia – and 60 percent
of expected population growth will come there. Yet, it is the region farthest
away from the Christian centers of the West, making it more difficult and expensive
to reach.
The population of the Middle East and North Africa will double
– and sub-Saharan Africas population will triple, the report notes.
Meanwhile, the aging populations of Western Europe, Japan and the former Soviet
bloc will decline.
FOOD AND WATER
Malnutrition kills 17,000 people a day, mostly in sub-Saharan
Africa and south Asia, the International Mission Board report recounts. Nearly
half the global population lives in “water-stressed” nations where
wars may be fought in years to come for access to limited water. The average
life span in some African countries may fall by 30 to 40 years because of the
AIDS pandemic.
MISSION PERSONNEL CHANGES
If trends hold, the International Mission Boards long-term
missionary force will climb from about 5,000 to more than 8,000 by 2010, the
report predicts.
Career missionaries account for 66 percent of the total missionary
force. However, rapid growth in the numbers of two- and three-year workers means
shorter-term personnel could account for two-thirds of the total force by decades
end.
“Are we prepared for this development? Many of the International
Mission Boards programs of personnel selection, support, training and
supervision were shaped with long-term missionaries in mind,” the report
emphasizes. “Are we adapting these programs to match a changing personnel
force? Is this a desirable future?”
The report goes on to identify eight key bridges for crossing
the worlds gospel “gap” – and seven major barriers.
The bridges include increased prayer among Christians for the
worlds lost; the growing phenomenon of rapid church planting movements;
the emergence of large numbers of non-Western missionaries; more partnership
among Baptists and evangelicals worldwide; expanding global communications;
the increased use of creative strategies to reach unreached peoples; and the
mobilization of Southern Baptists and other Christians in local churches to
join God on mission.
Meanwhile, barriers include a lack of prayer; unbalanced deployment
of missions resources; runaway global urbanization; lack of communication among
missions agencies, partners and churches; the non-growth of long-term missionary
numbers; the sheer volume of unreached people groups; and the stubborn persistence
of a “vast sector of the worlds population that has never heard the
good news of Jesus Christ.”
The barriers are issues that should shape the prayer lives
of all Southern Baptists – as well provide study topics for missions strategists,
missions leaders insist.
And the bridges?
They represent strategies that missions leaders can use as
they focus on closing the gap and obeying Jesus command to preach the
good news everywhere.
In other words, they must be built – and crossed. (BP)