The Brutal Facts

Just before Jesus ascended to heaven, he gave his disciples the task we refer to as the Great Commission: to “go into all the world,” making disciples of every people group. Ever since, Christians have dreamed of the day when this task would be completed. Many of us connect it to Matthew 24:14, Jesus’ promise that the gospel “will be preached in the whole world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come.” (NIV) Although we may debate the precise meanings of this passage, we tend to think the task can and will be “completed,” and completion is somehow tied to “the end.”

However, while we eagerly anticipate Christ’s return, we must face the “brutal fact”: if the End of the Task and the Return of Jesus somehow correlate, his return is likely still far off. By many measures, the “end of the task” is getting further away from us!

How do we measure “the end of the task”? Two possibilities are tied to these Scriptures: a measure of proclamation and a measure of discipleship.

As a measure of discipleship, we can consider both how much of the world’s population claims to be Christian, and how much could be considered an “active disciple.”

The Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) counts Christians of all kinds. They estimate that in 1900, 33% of the world was Christian; in 2000, 33% of the world was Christian—and by 2050, unless things change dramatically, the world will still be 33% Christian! A church that only grows at the same rate as the population is not bringing the gospel to “the whole world as a witness to all the peoples.”

What about “active disciples”? This measure is far more difficult, since we can’t really know the true state of any given person’s heart. Perhaps the closest measurement might be: in The Future of the Global Church, Patrick Johnstone estimated “evangelicals” at about 6.9% of the world’s population in 2010. Research shows the number of evangelicals is growing more rapidly than most other segments of Christianity, but continues to be a small percentage of the world.

The number of believers isn’t the only measure of completing the task, however. “Proclamation,” as noted above, is another. Some people will hear the gospel and not accept it. Three measures of proclamation are widely used: unevangelized, unreached and unengaged. (Mission Frontiers looked at these three measures in depth in the January-February 2007 issue).

Unevangelized is an attempt to measure who has no access to the gospel: who, realistically, will not have a chance to hear the good news and respond to it in their lifetime. The CSGC estimates 54% of the world was unevangelized in 1900 and 28% is unevangelized today. This is good news: the percentage of the world with no access to the gospel has been shrunk significantly.

However, in 1900, the total number of unevangelized people was 880 million. Today, due to population growth, that number has risen to 2.1 billion. This is the bad news: While the percentage of the world with no access to the gospel (the ‘unevangelized’) was nearly halved, the total number of people with no access has more than doubled. By this measure, the end of the task is truly getting further away.

Unreached is slightly different: it measures which unevangelized groups do not have a local, indigenous church that can bring the gospel to the whole group without the aid of cross-cultural missionaries. Joshua Project lists around 7,000 unreached groups totaling 3.15 billion people, which is 42% of the world. Unfortunately we do not have a time measurement for “unreached,” so we don’t know if this measure too is “getting further away”—but it is clearly very large.

Finally, unengaged groups are those lacking any engagement by a church planting team. The number has been declining since its introduction in 1999 by the IMB. This decline is a good sign, but it means that for “newly engaged” groups, the work is not finished, only newly begun! It is far easier to engage a group with a church planting team than to see lasting results.

By any of these measures, none of our existing efforts will “finish” any element of the task in all of the peoples any time soon. I see several key reasons for this.

First, most Christian effort goes to places where the church already is, rather than places where it is not. Most money given to Christian causes is spent on Christians and even most mission money is spent in majority Christian areas. For every $100,000 in personal income, the average Christian gives $1 dollar to reach the unreached1 (0.00001%).

Deployment of personnel also reflects this imbalance. Researchers estimate only 3% of cross-cultural missionaries serve among the unreached. If we count all full time Christian workers only 0.37% serve the unreached. We send one missionary for every 179,000 Hindus, every 260,000 Buddhists and every 405,500 Muslims.2

Second, most Christians are out of touch with the non-Christian world: globally, 81% of all non-Christians do not personally know a believer. For Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, that rises to 86%. In the Middle East and North Africa the percentage is 90%. In Turkey and Iran it is 93%; in Afghanistan, 97% of people do not personally know a Christian.3

Third, the churches we are sustaining exist largely in places with slow population growth. Global population is growing fastest in places where we are not. While Christianity was a static 33% of the world’s population from 1910 to 2010, Islam grew from 12.6% of the world’s population in 1910 to 15.6% in 1970 and to an estimated 23.9% in 2020. This was largely due to population growth of Muslim communities, not conversion—but still, in the last century Islam has almost doubled as a percentage of the world and the percentage of Christians has remained the same.4

Fourth, the Christian world is fractured and lacks unity to work together to achieve the Great Commission. Globally, there are an estimated 41,000 denominations. The number of mission agencies has skyrocketed from 600 in 1900 to 5,400 today. A general lack of communication, much less coordination, is crippling to efforts to make disciples of all ethnē.5

Fifth, many churches often have inadequate emphasis on discipleship, obedience to Christ, and willingness to follow Him whole-heartedly. Low commitment yields little reproduction and runs the risk of declining or imploding. This shows up in the loss of Christians who leave the church. In an average year 15 million people choose to become Christians but 13 million choose to leave Christianity. If the current trends continue, from 2010-2050 40 million people will switch to Christianity while 106 million leave.6

Sixth, we have not adapted strategically to the reality of a global church. Global South Christians grew from 20% of the world’s Christians in 1910 to an estimated 64.7% by 2020. Yet the Global North church still has a large proportion of Christian wealth. Due to ethnocentrism and narrow perspectives, we prioritize sending people from our own cultures as missionaries. We continue using most of our resources to support distant-culture teams engaging unreached groups rather than prioritizing and adequately resourcing near-culture teams to reach neighboring unreached groups.

Seventh, we are losing ground. As a result of the previous six points and other factors, there are a growing number of both lost people in general and unreached people in particular. The number of lost people in the world has grown from 1.0 billion people in 1900 to 5.1 billion in 2019 while those without access to the gospel has grown from 1.1 billion in 1985 (0.8 billion in 1900) to 2.2 billion in 2019.

Despite our earnest desire to fulfill the Great Commission, unless we change how we “run the race,” current trends tell us we have no likelihood of seeing the finish line any time soon. We can never close the gap on lostness incrementally. We need to face the brutal fact that missions and church planting as usual will not reach the goal.

This is why Beyond, and many of our partners, focus on disciple-making movements: throughout history, these kinds of movements have rapidly brought large numbers of people into the Kingdom. They grow faster than population growth, filling up whole peoples and spilling over into nearby places and cultures. And in the last few years we have begun to see the “first fruits” of these movements.

Let’s be clear: this fruit is not ours—it’s God’s. Only God starts movements. He uses us, so among the unreached we place teams who do everything they can to be “ready” when the Spirit blows, calling people to Him.

In one year, Beyond saw one major movement grow from nearly 17,000 churches in 2017 to well over 20,000 churches in 2018. We’ve seen over 20 new candidates join us, and placed several new teams in the field (with others heading to the field in the first quarter of next year). Many of the existing teams have seen 1st and 2nd generations of fruit, and some more. So although they are not yet at “movement” stage, they are seeing hopeful progress.

Around the world, Beyond and our friends and partners are part of the broader global 24:14 Coalition focused on starting movements in every unreached people and place. The movements, networks, agencies and other groups are likewise seeing significant growth. At the recent Ethne conference, reports included:

· The Middle East, where networks have seen thousands of new believers and churches form in the midst of strife and warfare.

· Across Central Asia and Eurasia, one network has seen a movement of over 8,000 churches established among former Muslims.

· Across North Africa, new works are being prepared in very difficult to reach areas.

· In the Horn of Africa, dozens of movements have seen more than a half million new believers come to faith.

· In South Asia, in numerous movements, more than a million house groups are currently active.

· In Southeast Asia, over a million believers are in nearly 100 sustained movements.

In all, we have documented more than 900 movements, with over 70 million believers. Although this is amazing, we know much remains to be done. These believers represent just a little over 2% of the unevangelized world. And even now, significant persecution, restrictions, and pushback are arising. Many movements saw some of their members martyred this year.

With our partners, we are earnestly working toward the day when every place and people has a team of apostolic laborers, working to ensure every individual has the chance to hear the Good News in their lifetime. Yes, we are spurred on by the mysterious promise in Matthew 24:14 – but even more, we are energized by the desire to see the light of God brought to people who sit in great darkness, and see their lives transformed by hope, faith and joy.

Bibliography

1. [1] World Christian Database, 2015,*Barrett and Johnson. 2001. “World Christian Trends,” p. 656, and [2] Atlas of Global Christianity 2009. Also see: Deployment of Missionaries, Global status 2018.
2. Ibid.
3. Christianity in its Global Context, 2013, www.globalchristianity.org/globalcontext
4. Johnson & Hickman. “Religious Demography and Mission Strategy.” International Journal of Frontier Missiology 29:1,
5. Ibid.
6. “The changing global religious landscape.” Pew Research Center, April 5, 2017.

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