Counting the evangelized

Measuring the number of Christians in the world is controversial. Well, actually, it’s not so much measuring the number of members of the organizations that label themselves Christians (whew!) as it is measuring the number of people who truly believe in Jesus Christ and follow after Him. Anyway, that’s really NOTHING compared to trying to measure the number of people who have been told about the Gospel.

On the face of it, this would seem an easy task. You can quantify the process of “preaching the Gospel” fairly easily. It’s just telling someone the good news and giving them a chance to respond to it.

Except, of course, that it’s not that easy. There are several different arguments about when a person is evangelized. Examining these aspects is the objective of this issue of mission-metrics. They include:

1. “When someone is offered a chance to hear the Gospel.” This is the “access” definition. There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who have no access to the Gospel - they are completely cut off and isolated by government forces, or language barriers, or the like. Then, there are hundreds of millions of people who have easy access to the Gospel - a church on every corner, Bibles in bookstores, Billy Graham specials on TV, etc.

2. “When someone is presented the Gospel.” By any means, a person is directly confronted with the direct opportunity to listen to the Gospel - a TV special, or a tract, or a radio program, or a preacher on a street corner, or an Easter service, or whatever.

3. “When someone hears the Gospel in its entirety.” Just because a person is confronted with the Gospel doesn’t mean they listen to it - they could throw the tract away, turn the TV off, switch radio stations, drive away, walk out. This definition says you’re only evangelized if you hear the Gospel all the way through.

4. “When someone hears the Gospel in their own language and culture.” Hearing the Gospel is not enough. You have to understand it, be able to process it, analyze it, and make a considered decision to respond to it. This argument says that the Gospel must be placed in a language you understand, one that you are not opposed to culturally, and in cultural idioms that you can grasp.

5. “When someone hears the Gospel (in their own language, possibly), and responds to it.” You are only truly evangelized if you have made the decision to respond to Christ. After all, Jesus’ words do not return to Him void (without effect); therefore, anyone who doesn’t respond hasn’t really heard.

Each of these could (in theory) be measured:

Aspect #1 is the number of people who live in generally open societies, where there is a great deal of religious freedom and plenty of religious activity going on.

Aspect #2 is measured by estimating the number of people impacted by evangelistic ministries within a specific country.

Aspect #3 is measured by estimating the number of complete offers made through these same evangelistic ministries, a number that would be somewhat less than the total of Aspect #2.

Aspect #4 would use a similar methodology but would restrict itself to offers given in the local language.

Aspect #5 is, essentially, the number of new conversions within the country. I’m not going to tell you which one I think is “really evangelized.” Well, I’ll say this much: I think evangelization is a continuum: movement along each point makes it progressively more likely than an individual will accept Christ, even though he or she could do so at any point.

The question I’d like you to ask yourself is, “which one of these aspects is MY organization’s definition of evangelized?” And then, “are our ministry activities effective given this definition?”