Bridging
the global gospel gap
by Erich Bridges
-
All
the resources of the modern
mission movement didn't
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 again,
weeping bitterly. 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.
At
the time, however, silence
seemed the only appropriate
response. Multiply this
scene millions of times
over and you have 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. "Closing
the Gap," a report
prepared by strategists
at the International Mission
Board, takes a big-picture
snapshot of the secular
and spiritual state of
the world. It also examines
the "scope and range
of God's resources"
among his followers–and
asks some hard questions
about how to bring evangelistic
vision and reality closer
together. Its 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 don't 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, meanwhile,
have virtually no access
to the gospel, a church,
Scripture or followers
of Christ. More than 2,100
of the world's nearly
13,000 distinct people
groups fall into the last
category. Forty-one countries
have populations that
are more than 99 percent
non-Christian; 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 world's
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
world's people identify
themselves - or are identified
by others - as "Christian."
Islam claims more than
1 billion adherents. Hinduism
has 800 million followers.
Buddhism, with 350 million
adherents, is experiencing
a surge of growth. The
third-largest bloc behind
Christianity and Islam,
however, 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. 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
over the next 20 years,
according to the Asian
Development Bank. Cities
present plenty of challenges,
but "we can find
most of the world's people
groups living in some
urban enclave"–even
members of the hardest-to-reach
groups as they flood cities
looking for jobs and education.
"How can we turn
these opportunities for
access into gateways for
people group evangelism?"
ILLITERACY
AND POST-LITERACY: Two-thirds
of the world's population
is functionally illiterate
(including millions of
adult Americans). That's
more than 4 billion people
who wouldn't understand
the Bible in their own
language if they had it.
Of more than 6,000 world
languages, fewer than
1,000 have a New Testament
translation. Most of the
globe's languages are
purely oral, with no written
forms. "With today's
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. 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:
The centrifugal wave of
ethnic conflict is tearing
whole nations apart. Yet
renewed ethnic identity
and awareness worldwide
has focused modern missions
on identifying and reaching
all of the world's ethno-linguistic
people groups, which are
often "hidden"
within larger countries
or majority peoples. Meanwhile,
the centripetal waves
of global integration
in communication, economics
and politics are washing
over 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 world's 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. Nearly a third
of the world's current
population is under age
15. More than 3.5 billion
people live in Asia -
greater than the rest
of the globe combined
- and 60 percent of expected
population growth will
come there. Yet it's 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;
sub-Saharan Africa's population
will triple. 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.
Nearly half the global
population lives in "water-stressed"
nations where wars may
be fought in years to
come over access to limited
water. The average life
span in some African countries
may fall by 30 to 40 years
because of the AIDS pandemic.
The
report identifies eight
key bridges crossing the
world's gospel "gap"
- and seven major barriers.
The
bridges include:
1. increased prayer among
Christians for the world's
lost
2. the growing phenomenon
of rapid church planting
movements
3. the emergence of large
numbers of non-Western
missionaries
4. more partnership among
evangelicals worldwide
5. expanding global communications
6. the increasing use
of creative strategies
to reach unreached peoples
7. the mobilization of
Christians in local churches
to join God on mission
"as never before."
The
barriers:
1. lack of prayer
2. unbalanced deployment
of mission resources
3. runaway global urbanization
4. lack of communication
among mission agencies,
partners and churches
5. the non-growth of long-term
missionary numbers
6. the sheer volume of
unreached people groups
7. the stubborn persistence
of a "vast sector
of the world's population
that has never heard the
good news of Jesus Christ."
The
barriers are issues that
should shape the prayer
lives of all Christians
as well as provide study
topics for missions strategists.
The bridges provide strategies
missions' leaders can
use as they focus on closing
the gap and obeying Jesus'
command to preach the
good news everywhere. |
