An email I received today from a friend:
All seem to agree: it is a day of unparalleled opportunity in world evangelization. The global church has never had more resources than she has today. Yet, there are 1,214 totally unengaged/unreached Muslim people groups in the world– right now. 197 of these have populations over 100K.
Question: From your personal or ministry perspective, what do you believe are the three greatest roadblocks or challenges that stand in the way of the global church engaging every one of these Muslim people groups in the next five years?
How would you answer?
3 comments:
Three things? I guess these are more sociological than anything else, but I think they will make sense:
1) As the Boomers die out American evangelicalism will too, and the main source of sending and funding will decline. Churches will be living in a more antagonistic society and will not feel like sending money abroad as much.
2) All throughout the Muslim world indigenous Christian populations are being purged, and have been for decades. Since it is these communities that usually get permission for missionaries to come in, and increasingly have been doing the work themselves, this does not bode well.
3) Missionaries. You just can't do that much with people who will come over for a a few months or a year or even three or four. You need to really learn the language and the customs and that takes a long time. Americans don't make those commitments anymore, so having high-quality, long-term missionaries in the field is a real difficulty.
Perhaps we need to be willing to rethink what we have thought to be the right ways to do things. I recently read an article where the author stated "I have come to realize that we should focus on planting Jesus, and let Jesus build His church and work through His church." This is quite a challenge to a western mindset, although many things we associate with church are good they may not be Biblical. What if our responsibili was to only plant Jesus and let him grow the church. After all he did say "on this rock I will build MY church." we seem to have gotten the idea that we are building our church.
I don't know where you live, but in my area, the 3 roadblocks are 1. satisfaction with idols...which leaves believers about 2 feet from the 'starting gate'; stunted faith, limp muscle, vulnerable to attack as they crawl along in their diapers lacking basic self-control 2. Lack of abiding in Christ 3. unredeemed sin which means we are trapped in our sinful attitudes and wounds; unhealed, broken and stagnating. There is a serious lack of understanding of confession here. Catholics have a structure, protestants don't; and in general neither sees the critical need to use Christ's sacrifice as He intended-to SET US FREE!!!!!
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