When what we know changes, the world changes and with it, everything. These words, from James Burke the scientific journalist, sum up the themes of his TV series and book, ‘The Day the Universe Changed’ (Little, Brown & Co, 1986), in which he examines pivotal moments in history when some aspect of science was ‘known’ until someone came along who challenged, and ultimately changed, that perception. So before Pasteur, doctors ‘knew’ that disease was caused by ‘bad air’. Before Galileo and Copernicus, people ‘knew’ the earth was at the centre of the universe. Similarly, discoveries and inventions have transformed the way we live for ever: Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press in 1440; Alexander Bell’s telephone in 1876; Fleming’s penicillin in 1935; and the various scientists that contributed to the technology to produce the PC. These changes in ‘the universe’ meant people couldn’t live the same way again. Indeed to do so would seem foolish in the extreme.

Just as there have been changes in the field of science, there have been profound changes in what we ‘know’ about the evangelisation of the world.

But many UK churches are operating with information, which is decades out of date, or knowledge based upon a narrow segment of what God is doing. If we knew what was really happening, ‘our world would change and with it everything else’. This would include the way potential missionary candidates are viewed, the way we talk about mission within church gatherings, the way we finance mission at leadership level, and the way we interact with mission agencies who are involved in recruiting and placing members of our church.

It’s time to become knowledgeable so we can undergo a revolution in thinking and behaviour that matches the world as it is. If we keep operating in the dark, even the flat earth society would see us as a figure of fun.

In the first of a two-part feature we look at the ways in which world evangelisation has changed and some of the areas that are changing in the mission scene within the UK;

* meet the new missionary giants – the big sending nations

* find out where the unreached people groups live and how numerous they are

* rethink what makes a person a missionary

* discover how UK missionary agencies operate today.

So what do you need to know about world mission?

1. Not just ‘west to the rest’.

For over 200 years the missionary movement has seen a stream of people sent from the UK, and later the US, to Africa, Asia and Latin America. Today the notion of the gospel ‘from the west to the rest’, has disappeared. The growth of the church in parts of world, and shrinkage of the church in parts of the ‘west’ has meant that there are more non-western Christians in the world.

The statistics are overwhelming. Missions statistician, David Barrett, records that in the 20th century, the Christian population in Africa exploded from an estimated eight or nine million in 1900 (8 to 9%) to some 335 million in 2000 (45%). In Asia the proportion of Christians grew from 2.3% in 1900, to 8.3% in 2000. The Atlas of World Christianity estimates that the number of Pentecostal Christians across South America grew 500% between 1960 and 1980.

The evangelical church in Argentina grew from 1m in 1980 to 3m in just 20 years, in Venezuela from 1 – 2.5m between 1990-2000. In Bogota, Columbia, Cesar Castellanos at MCI church has witnessed incredible church growth from 70 small groups to 20,000 cells in only eight years.

In Asia, the growth of the church in South Korea, China and Indonesia, means there are now more evangelical Christians in Asia than in North America. Singapore's churches are now the most evangelistically active in the world, with one missionary sent out per 1,000 Christians. In the Philippines 7% of the eight million overseas contract workers are evangelicals. The tentmaker movement of the Philippine church plans to recruit 200,000 BY 2010 to engage in mission. Already many serving as nannies and chambermaids have seen churches planted some in countries where Christianity is not welcomed.

Will Elphick, Communications director for SIM-UK (which works in over 40 countries in Asia, Latin America and Asia) says: “The likelihood is that in the future the world’s mission training centres will be located in India, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and The Philippines, as Asian churches take the lead in the next wave of evangelistic activity. "Even if we acknowledge that some of this growth includes practices and beliefs that wouldn’t pass our tests of orthodoxy, few would deny that when it comes to the evangelisation of the world, the role of the British church has changed. Chris Wigram national director of OMF UK told Christianity magazine: "One of the biggest impacts on OMF UK is the growth of the church in Asia. We have had to re-think and restructure such as changing the rules that previously prevented people from working in another culture within their own country."

Mission agencies who traditionally sent UK missionaries to parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America (such as SIM, CMS, OMF, AIM) find that now they support those churches very differently.

Summary. The role of the UK church in world mission has changed radically.

2. Two billion people need to hear

The statistics on church growth must not mask the considerable evangelistic need worldwide. Missiologists have identified a 10/40 window, (nothing to do with architecture) which describes an imaginary window that extends from West Africa to East Asia, from 10 degrees latitude north, to 40 degrees north of the equator. This region, encompasses the majority of the world's Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, comprising two thirds of the world’s population and includes more than 90% of the unreached people groups in the world - more than 5,100 tribes and ethno-linguistic groups with little or no Gospel witness. Indeed there are currently two billion people who have no church within their sub-cultural group who can easily reach them. You may want to read that last sentence again.
This focus on the unreached of course has biblical precedent. The apostle Paul’s ambition was to ‘preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that (he) would not be building on someone else’s foundation’ (Romans 15:20). What would Paul make of the fact that just 1% of giving to overseas mission goes to work among people groups in the unevangelised or unreached category? (This statistic is based on data by David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson of Global Evangelisation Movement).

Paul would be encouraged that the world church’s focus is changing. According to Rob Hay, consultant and researcher in Mission at Redcliffe College, the proportion of missionaries sent to unreached peoples has risen from 1-2% in 1970 to 28% today. In China the ‘Back to Jerusalem’ movement reflects a call from God for the Chinese Church to preach the Gospel and establish fellowships of believers in all the countries, cities, towns, and ethnic groups between China and Jerusalem, focused primarily on this 10/40 area.

Evangelicals have different understandings of the fate of those who have never heard the Gospel. But even if we acknowledge with Peter Cotterell (Mission and Meaninglessness, SPCK, 1990) and Norman Anderson (Christianity and World Religions, IVP, 1984), that the Bible may give us reasons for hope that God can reach the unevangelised outside of a verbal explanation of the Gospel, we would still have to acknowledge Christ’s call to go. It seems a spiritual no-brainer to conclude that all things being equal, resources are better focused on the two billion unreached peoples than adding more missionary presence in countries already well served.

Mission agencies such as AWM and Frontiers in the Arab World, ECM in Europe, and OM, YWAM, CMS and WEC who have missionaries in unreached people groups, face the challenge of communicating the Gospel in areas with little or no Christian witness.

Summary. The need for mission is as vital as ever. Two billion people in the world don’t have the opportunities to hear the gospel that Brits take for granted.

BY Andy Peck

[Source: Christianity Magazine]

Andy Peck is the deputy editor of Christianity magazine and the author of Coached by Christ (CWR).

**Opinions represented in this article may not reflect the opinions of ChristianToday