The Graying (and Browning) of Frontier Missiology

Last year I wrote a post that received some attention and I offered it for publication with Mission Frontiers. They asked that I expand on it for an issue on “People Group Theory” which was just published.

So here it is:

The Graying (and Browning) of Frontier Missiology

(Here is the PDF on Academia.)

Be sure to check out the whole issue which is filled with brief, diverse missiological takes on the concept of “people groups.”

Counting Missionaries | Justin Long

Here is the latest discussion on global statistics from Justin Long in his post COUNTING MISSIONARIES published on June 3, 2020:

Globally: 425,000 missionaries (Anglican, Independent, Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic)
Total in World A countries: 11,940 (3%) [World A: <50% evangelized)]
Total in World B countries: 87,000 (20%) [World B: >=50% evangelized, <60% Christian]
Total in World C countries: 326,060 (77%) [World C: >=60% Christian, of any tradition]

From the summary:

2,000 years after Christ, somewhere around 3% or less of all missionary workers are deployed amongst those who have very little chance to hear (a factor in why they have little chance to hear), while three-quarters of missionaries work in places that are over-saturated Christian countries (albeit perhaps of a different tradition than the missionaries in question). While I do not doubt that places like Germany and England and France likely need evangelistic effort, this “out of balance” situation seems to me to continue to be one in need of reformation.

Read the whole thing.

Count for Zero – The Issachar Initiative

http://issacharinitiative.org

A 6 week small group resource that will Count for Zero:

ZERO languages without the Scriptures

ZERO people groups without Disciple Makers

ZERO oral learners without an oral Bible

ZERO villages or neighborhoods without a church

ZERO people who have not heard the Gospel

 

The Issachar Initiative from The Issachar Initiative on Vimeo.

Challenges to Engaging Unreached Muslim Peoples

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?

What do Halloween costumes for pets and world missions have in common?

Americans spent the same amount of money in 2011 on Halloween costumes for their pets that they gave to unreached peoples missions - $310 million.  This $310 million (going toward UPG’s) represents only 0.001% of the $30.5 trillion income of Christians.  Another way to look at it is for every $100,000 that Christians make, they give $1 to the unreached. So it begs the question - is it God's fault that the unreached are still unreached with the Gospel, or it is the fault of Christians?  Who knows, if you don't want to deal with the facts, and adjust your life accordingly, you just might end up writing a book like "Love Wins" to justify your non-involvement in this staggering reality.

Detailed statistical breakdown from The Traveling Team below:

World Wide

World Population: 6.83 Billion (joshuaproject.net)

• 6,928,198,253 - as of July 2011 according to the CIA World Factbook, accessed December 14, 2011 at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html
• Median age - total: 28.4 years
• Life expectancy - total population: 67.07 years

Hey TTT, what is “7 Billion”?  Click below to read the whole thing, you won't be disappointed.

I Have A Dream!

This adaptation of MLK's famous "I Have A Dream" speech was written by my friend Tim in 2006.  I hope your reaction is similar to mine when I first read it; I was impressed, I wept over it, I prayed about it, then I went out and tried to do something about it. 

The Book We've Been Waiting For

For those of you who don't know about Todd Ahrend or The Traveling Team, consider this your invitation to go hear them speak whenever you can.  I consider it a privilege to call Todd my friend, and I couldn't be happier about the book he recently published, The Abrahamic Revolution.  This book concisely, accurately, and passionately handles the most important topic in the Bible - the fulfillment of the promise that God gave to Abraham once upon a time.  Before reading this book, one could perhaps claim ignorance (although I don't know quite how) of this grand biblical theme .  But after reading it, you should remember the words of David Livingstone who said, "Sympathy is no substitute for action."  This is the book that the Church has been waiting for.  Get it, read it, and find your place in doing it.

My take on the DG national conference: The difference between evangelism and missions

I wasn't able to get to Minnesota last month for the Desiring God national conference, Finish the Mission, so I did the next best thing and downloaded all the talks. And while I certainly enjoyed them, I was struck by one continual note that was just a bit off key throughout the conference. Although the conference was meant to highlight the "task remaining" in world evangelization, there was a continual blurring of the lines between evangelism and missions. The evangelistic mandate is the call for the local church to preach the gospel to all those in the surrounding culture/vicinity who are not yet saved. The missions mandate is the call for apostolic teams (Greek: apostolos = sent ones) to carry the gospel beyond into cultures and vicinities where there are no local churches to evangelize a given people group.  Both are equally important in Scripture, but they are grossly misunderstood.   John Piper is actually one of the voices within evangelicalism that has consistently gotten the distinction right; and this is perhaps why I was a bit disappointed to hear speakers at his conference such as Ed Stetzer saying that he disagreed with Michael Oh when he referred to Japan as the "mission field" - contending that the USA is an equally valid mission field.  Sure Ed, God loves lost people in America just as much as he does those in Japan, but that's not the point!  The point is, don't blur the lines between evangelism and missions by making it seem as though there isn't a different calling (a different job to be done) in reaching the USA and Japan.  In the former, our role is to help local churches evangelize their own neighbors, while in the latter, our job is to start local churches that don't even exist yet, so they can evangelize their own.   That's the difference, and it's an important one.  If we call everything missions, then nothing is missions!

Here is another way to see the difference, using another of the conference speakers' own ministries: When Michael Ramsden speaks to a  group of secular university students in London, that would be evangelism.  But when he speaks to a group of Muslim students in Southeast Asia, that would be missions.  The reason is that the secular students in London could walk into any church on Sunday if they chose to, and hear the Gospel.  So they are lost, but not unreached.  But the Muslim students have no church to walk into in their city, even if they wanted to, so they too are lost, but they are also unreached.  Missions then, is what it means to take the Gospel to the unreached so that a local church can emerge in their city, whereby they can hear the Gospel from their own people some day.  The issue at hand is access to the Gospel - unsaved people in reached people groups have it, while unsaved people in unreached people groups do not!

I hope this brief post doesn't come across leaving folks feeling as though I did not thoroughly enjoy what each speaker brought at the DG national conference.  To the contrary, I did enjoy every talk.  However, I felt it was imperative that I take a minute to voice this one concern.

For more on this crucial distinction, have a look at this excellent post by Dr. Tim Tennent:
There is a big difference between evangelism and missions.

Muslim Missions: Then & Now (CT article by Woodberry)

Another interesting, lucid, and informative article by Dudley Woodberry, from CT Sept 2011:

Ten years ago, my wife, Roberta, and I were in Peshawar, Pakistan, two blocks from the Taliban hospital. We were in the home of our son and his family, joining in a farewell party for a Christian pilot. Another pilot approached us and said, "I don't know whether I should tell you the news now or after the party." Of course we said, "Now." He said the BBC had just reported that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

A quick check on the Internet showed a little picture of a building with a quarter inch of a flame—one that radiated heat and light through the following decade to where we stand today. That heat and light have generated conflicting responses: increased resistance and receptivity to the gospel among Muslims, and increased hostility and peacemaking among Christians. It has been the best of times and the worst of times for relations between Christians and Muslims…

Keep reading…

From the conclusion:

Ultimately, the future of missions to Muslims will be affected less by the flames of 9/11, or even the flames that started the Arab Spring, than by the inner flames that are ignited if we so follow our Lord, who modeled the basin and the towel, that our Muslim friends may echo the words of the disciples in Emmaus: "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

Speaking About Muslim Ministry

Here are some guidelines I use for myself when speaking publicly with Westerners about Muslim ministry:

1. Motivate by love, not fear.

2. Emphasize the commonalities, not the differences.

3. Focus on the life, cross, and resurrection of Jesus, not Christianity.

4. Share stories of real people, not (just) abstracts.

5. Point to Muslims' lack of access to the gospel, not their failure to respond. "How will they hear without someone preaching?"

6. Compare the best of Islam with Christianity, not the worst of Islam with Christianity.

7. Build peace, respect, and understanding, not stereotypes.

8. Inspire with the hope of the church, freedom in Christ, and the spread of the Kingdom, not democracy.

9. Explain the dark side of Islam and spiritual blindness, not demonizing Muslims.

10. Empathize with Westerners' ignorance of Islam and be humble, not a know-it-all.

Ramadan Begins - 30 Days of Prayer for Muslims

Ramadan begins today, August 1.  Might I encourage some of you to fast for all or part of the month, asking the Lord to move mightily?

Learn all you need to know about praying for Muslims during Ramadan:
www.30-days.net 
www.30daysprayer.com

Desiring God National Conference 2011

Speaking of the impulses behind this year's DG National Conference, Sept. 23-25 in Minneapolis, MN, Piper shares the Need, the Command, the Joy and the Name at stake.  That he would pick this topic - Finish the Mission - for his national conference says a lot about Piper's priorities.  I thank God for how he used Piper to call me into this work myself.  And I pray that he uses Piper to do the same for many others through this conference.  The slate of speakers is tremendous.  After getting to know Michael Oh, Michael Ramsden, and Jason Mandryk at Cape Town last year, I can assure you that they will deliver!  Giglio, Platt and Stetzer are no slouches either!

Missions is About the Worship of Jesus

From Of First Importance:

Missions is about the worship of Jesus. The goal of missions is the global worship of Jesus by his redeemed people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. The outcome of missions is all peoples delighting to praise Jesus. And the motivation for missions is the enjoyment that his people have in him. Missions aims at, brings about, and is fueled by the worship of Jesus.

— David Mathis
"Missions: the Worship of Jesus and the Joy of All Peoples" in Don't Call It a Comeback
(Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2011), 225

Stop Spiritual Oppression

From a Cape Town Advance Paper Missing Peoples: The Unserved "One-Fourth" World: Especially Buddhists, Hindus & Muslims:

Over one quarter of the peoples of the world still have no opportunity to hear the message of God’s love or see it demonstrated in action. Dare we call this lack of response on our part, which leads to needless suffering and hopelessness on their part, anything less than “spiritual injustice?” Today these Missing Peoples have virtually no choice with respect to the gospel. They have yet to follow the One who said, “Follow Me,” not because they have rejected His call, but because they have never heard it.

Whenever someone goes missing, especially children and youth, the whole community quickly mobilizes to search for them. Why hasn’t that happened with all these Missing Peoples? What does it say about our priorities as a global Church when 3% of workers and less than 1% of the finances given to mission go toward seeking out these Missing Peoples?

Most people come to faith through a relationship with someone they know and trust. Yet over 8 out of 10 Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists do not personally know a single Christ-follower. What are the implications for the Kingdom? Every day which passes without reaching out in friendship to these Missing Peoples means they miss out on the opportunities we all take for granted—to know Jesus personally, to be filled with his joy and peace, to have his Spirit in us, to experience abundant life and have his power to help change society.

Imagine the impact if, rather than simply continuing to justify our own arenas of ministry, we invested our collective energy in addressing this spiritual injustice, and said, “Yes, we as a worldwide church are not going to allow this to continue.”