Ratios show us the task is doable but can tempt us to oversimplify

No missionary quotes today. I am traveling, and writing this from an airport waiting area. Writing a blog post is fairly straightforward, but copying tweets from one app to another on a IPad is not so easy.

I am headed off to south Texas to teach lesson 9, the remaining task, for a Perspectives course. This morning I was thinking a lot about some of the ratio stats – I mostly know of these from the US Center for World Mission.

I like the USCWM, so don’t get me wrong here. I think the ratios are useful and we should use them. The one I am recalling, and I think this is right, is that there is something like 9 Unreached people for every evangelical Christian in the world. (The stat may be off but it’s on that order of magnitude.)

The good thing about this ratio is that it shows us we have the manpower. Resources really aren’t the issue. We need tore mind ourselves that the task is doable.

But the bad thing, or the complex thing, is that it makes the task SEEM, if we think about it at only a surface level, overly simple. And we humans are often tempted to think of things only at a surface level.

If I reach 9 people around me, and everyone else does the same, the task will be done. My job is just the 9.

I know that’s not what the USCWM thinks. We shouldn’t either. The fact is, not everyone will reach 9, but the Unreached still need to Unreached. Moreover, 86% of all Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists don’t know a Christian. They are not one of “somebody’s 9.” It will take intentional effort to leave those we know (our 99) and go find them.

By all means, let’s tell people the task is doable. But let’s challenge them with the full task, and not offer people the easy way out of just reaching those they already know. If we only reach those we already know we aren’t solving the challenge of the Unreached.