This has been a very exciting time for me to be here and I appreciate the invitation that was given to me to be your missionary in residence during these days. In 1963 or something like that, I went to a conference much like this where Martin Lloyd Jones was our preacher and I was a struggling young preacher (35 years old) in my first pastorate in the mountains of Kentucky and evolved greatly in evangelism and had a heart for evangelism, concern for the lost. He preached a message each evening. Then in the morning, we had more theological intent messages. And I couldn’t tell either one from the other except they all moved my heart.

But I remember this one, we had a question and answer time and someone raised a question about having a call for a decision. And being very Calvinistic, he came down very hard on that. He said there was no need for invitations given when you did evangelistic messages. He went on in great detail about this and turned around to the young theologian behind him who was also speaking that day and he said, “I’m sure that you will agree with me Dr. so-and-so. Now why don’t you get up and say what you think.” He got up and this was a very strong Calvinist and he said, “I agree with every word you’ve said Dr. Jones. My only problem is that I accepted Christ when I was 17 years old in Jackson, Mississippi at a Billy Graham decision when he called for a decision.” These are the quandaries of life.

Accounts from the Life of a Missionary

I want to tell a story. We missionaries are concerned when we come back from the field after five years or so on what culture is like. I remember our experience. Coming back, we wondered, “Was it wide lapels or narrow lapels? Was it short skirts or long skirts? Was it narrow ties or wide ties?” I had this friend who was coming back from Africa after five years and his wife was preparing for their furlough time. So she said, “Jack, I don’t want us to look odd like missionary folks. I want us to look sharp, our five kids and you and I.” He said, “Well, what do you want to do?” She said, “I want to just get a Sears Roebuck catalog and buy new clothes.” He said, “Go ahead and do it.” So she did.

They came off the airplane in New York from Africa and went through the immigration, came up into customs, and the customs officer looked at them and said, “Wow, I see missionaries coming in from Africa.” And this lady came up and she said, “What do you mean missionaries coming out of Africa?” And he said, “Well, ma’am, not many tourists have their kids carry the luggage on their heads.”

Poor, Yet Making Many Rich

I can identify with it. Another account that I’d like to share with you is one that I shared with a barn of people years ago, but it’s a personal thing with me. I had this very dear friend, Al Wheeler. We were converted almost simultaneously out of business in the Bay area of California back in the mid 1950s. He was a great big tall guy and we prayed with him and his wife and he prayed with us and our kids about missions and involvement and all kinds of things in our local church. He finally ended up down in Columbia with a very small tribe of some 2,000 or 3,000 people doing bible translation work. But he had graduated with honors from the University of California in Berkeley, both an undergraduate degree in Romance languages — of which he had no use because he didn’t want to teach, but he was just interested in languages — and then when he came back from the Vietnam Conflict, he got an undergraduate degree in business management courses at Cal. Both were with honors.

He went onto the field and eventually got his master’s degree in linguistics as he realized that’s what all this love for language was about. And then he got his PhD also later as he went into his missionary career at the University of California — all with honors. And so he was coming back to the United States and stopped by on his way from Columbia to Jackson, Mississippi at a particular church where we were staying in residence for a year on furlough. So I heard that he was coming through to speak to the men’s class, which is about 400 men in the morning. So I ran over to the church across the parking lot. I got there and saw him. He picked me up off the ground and hugged me. I hadn’t seen him for five, six years and he began to speak to these men.

He said, “I’m on my way to the University of California for a special mission. I received a letter from the chancellor of the university system about three months ago and it came in airmail, it came by Jungle Aviation and Radio Service. The pilot circled around and finally opened up the door at the right time and kicked out the canvas bag with a little parachute and down came my airmail. We ran out, as was our custom every three or four months, and we fished it out of a tree. And I took it back over to our little two room shack along the river that divides Columbia from Ecuador.” And he said, “After a couple of days, I ran across this letter from the chancellor and opened it up.” It said there, “We’re going to celebrate our 100th anniversary and so we would like our various graduates to participate in the book that we’re writing about the University of California’s 100 years at Berkeley.”

And so he said with a form, a survey form, and the first question on it was, “Do you own your own home?” And he thought back several years before, 10 years or so before, and he thought about when he gave the tribe a 100 dollars worth of trade items — machetes and axes and shovels and beads and whatever — to help him build this little two room shack up on stilts overlooking the river. And he said, “Yes, I own my own home” and checked it off. Next question was, “Do you own a second home?” Of course a cottage on a beach or a mountain cabin or something. And he thought, “I guess I don’t.” Then he thought, “Well, Jesus said I’m going to prepare a place for you that where I am you may be also.” So he checked it off that he owned a second home.

At that time it was in the late 1960s and having a boat was a big thing. And the next question was, “Do you own your own boat?” So Al said he looked out what would be a window but just an open space and looked down at the river and saw the carved out log that the tribe had helped build. It was a canoe and on the back of a little Johnson outboard mortar and he said, “Yes, I own my own boat.” He checked it off. The next question was, “Do you plan to travel abroad this year?” His wife, Margaret, was next door. He called and said, “Peggy?” And she said yes through the wall, which was not a wall really. He said, “Are we going to go home in furlough this year?” She said, “Yes, Al.” He checked it off. And then finally, that all penetrating question, what is your annual salary today? And he went down this list and he finally got to the bottom. His salary wasn’t there and so he said he stuck a line across there and he wrote in his monthly quota. And then he leaned over and he looked at the men and he said, “Men, I can’t wait to get to the university and go to the computer room and find out what my survey did to their computer.”

What Is Success?

That’s what we think about so much sometimes in missionary work, this matter of success. I know you think about that in a pastorate, what is success? The world looks at us and they say, “What are these people doing?” Sometimes they differ on what they think success is and how we measure success or what is meaningful in ministry. I do want to preface what I’m saying with two scriptures. One that much has been said about already. I want to read nothing new, but I mainly want to penetrate my heart. It’s those last words where my Bible says “The Great Commission.” But we know it’s through the whole Bible:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

I know you have held onto that last phrase in various places of the world — “Surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.” And then of course, I want to read Acts 1:6–8:

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

I have been stirred during these days as Wayne has taught us all and shared with us in his very human way, in his very friendly way. He helped us. I was also helped as Don opened up and shared with us very meaningfully and as John just has really opened his heart to us in a very significant way. And as each one of you have ministered, not only to me but to one another.

Reformed Theology and Missions

I’m really not qualified for this assignment because I am not part of the third wave nor the first or the second. It is not that I don’t long to be, some of my family are very much so to the praise of God. When John invited me, he was concerned about the Pentecostal Charismatic impact that has taken place all around the world, particularly in Latin America. And he gave me these figures and they’re pretty accurate, although one Pentecostal told me in 1900 there was not one Pentecostal. I suspect there was knowing how God is. But that’s what he said. But I’ll give you these figures and I’ll quickly go over them. In 1945, there were 16 million Pentecostal Charismatics; 1955, 27 million; 1965, 50 million; 1975, 97 million around the world; 1980, there was a jump up to 268 million; and 1989, 351 million of these dear people making an impact all around the world.

The last figure is not accurate according to one person. It is about 375 million more and growing. And John asked a question.Out of good theology should come good missions. And that’s true. What has happened? Now, some of you are not Reformed or a good many of you may well be. But why the rapid growth? And what’s going on with the Reformed group?

I discussed this with a leading Assembly of God man in the Foreign Missions Board at some length. A man I respect greatly and a man who was with me, a candidate secretary at one time. He is now in charge of all research for the Assembly of God Foreign Board. And he sent me a paper, quite a thick paper on this subject. And as I looked through it, he was sympathetic. He was very sympathetic to the Reformed tradition. He came out of a Lutheran tradition, his wife was a Presbyterian. Very sympathetic. I told him an answer when I saw him the next time that I felt that he was too sympathetic. He should have been more direct.

But these were a few things that he shared with me as he thought about his experience in Latin America, especially in Brazil, as a missionary and then being involved in the leadership of the Assembly of God and knowing what’s going on in those circles, both the Pentecostal circles and the Charismatic. He said he felt within the Reformed tradition there is a tendency to defend the position of the founders. That is to say, we defend Calvin rather than what the scripture is saying. Oftentimes our theology absorbs us. And of course it comes from the scripture, but he made that comment. Infant baptism may tend to eliminate some kind of an important right of passage into a clear distinction that someone is a Christian and they’ve been born again. And so he made that point. It’s a so-called initiation right maybe. Something is lacking there.

Third, he mentioned an emphasis upon an unconditional election and limited atonement, which raises the question: Who should be the object of our evangelism? I’ve never had that problem, but some do. Some do. And he also said there is a strong emphasis on God the Father and God the Son and not enough emphasis on God the Holy Spirit. I could identify with that myself. In seminary, I went to my professor. He told us at the beginning of that course that we were going to discuss in great depth God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And that was 1959. I was some 32 or 33 years old at that time. At the close of the course, I went to him and I said, “You have done a great disservice to the body of Christ, the church of Jesus Christ. You did not mention anything about God the Holy Spirit. You did not break out time enough in your lectures for that during that whole semester.” He said, “Well, I just didn’t have the time.” I said, “It was neglect that’s going to haunt us. My classmates are going to have that haunt us because you did not take adequate time to talk about God the Holy Spirit.”

My friend said to me that God is real, a person that you can put your hand upon that you have a relationship to, not some concept of the mind. And also he mentioned the seminary education of pastors. Most of them have lots of education. But he also said that there is somehow a depreciation of the laity. And that spoke to my heart. It speaks to my heart. And he went on to talk to me personally when I saw him about his training of lay pastors in Brazil that most of the work there was carried on by lay pastors who held secular jobs.

Observations

Now here are some observations. My son is much more Reformed than I am,and sometimes he’s difficult. In fact, I told him when he went to seminary, “If you become like some of my friends, I’ll kick you from one end of Mississippi to the other end — from the border of Texas all the way back over to Alabama.” He’s a good theologian and he really loves the Lord. And he’s leading one of our teams in Mexico City, a middle-upper class target. And I was talking to him about coming to be with you all and he said, “I’d love to come.” He talked about good seminary training. So often, Reformed people have just the very greatest training, wonderful training. And then he talked about the matter of somehow the spirit of students being quenched while they’re in seminary. They go in with their evangelistic fervor, many of them, and there’s no opportunity except in the summertime or whatever to really get out and share their faith and that is quenched.

He also feels that Reformed people are slow to respond to rapidly changing situations. That’s his experience. In talking to one of our directors who was raised in South Africa, went to Scotland for further training as a professor, and became a Christian while there, he said that he has a feeling that sometimes the Reformed people are so sold in our theology, in our doctrine that we build a fortress mentality to defend our position and that we are not risk takers. My son says that so often we’re in the trenches fighting, but we won’t get out and run the risk of going out of the trenches where the people are and getting out of where the conflict is.

Now, I’m not being critical. I’m just trying to deal with the question that John asked, and I have studied this a great deal. However, I want to say that people of the Reform persuasion have been used by God to bring into life very creative ministries. There are very creative ministries that God has used fantastically. We talked about the four spiritual laws and we discussed that. I think of Bill Bright, a good friend of mine. He was a businessman and one church in California when I was a businessman in another church. They were two sister churches, 500 miles apart. And he founded Campus Crusade for Christ. And his whole background has been Reformed and nobody can ever say that God hasn’t used that ministry tremendously. I can talk about the Jesus film in a few minutes and Paul Eshelman and his part.

Dream Big

I can’t help but allude to what Don said yesterday about Henrietta Mears. There’s a book out. The book they should read, Don, has just been published at the close of last year called Dream Big: the Life of Henrietta Mears. She had a profound influence on my life as a new believer. She began what we call Gospel Light Press. She was lured from Minneapolis as a teacher to become the teacher of God’s word at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church for 30 years. And she influenced men, not only college students and young people, but men. She was a Presbyterian Reformed person.

I think of Young Life. That name was mentioned, the founder of Young Life, yesterday by Don. A Reformed pastor has had a great influence in our country. Another is the US Center for World Missions, Ralph Winter, formerly a missionary on the field and reformed tradition. I go back to Samuel Zwemer who is the apostle to the Muslims or apostle to Islam, but a great reformed man with a great heart. And he was a leader of Greg Livingstone and others that had fallen in his train trying to reach the Muslim in an effective way. All these Reformed people.

It is interesting that these Reformed people have led the charge, in my knowledge, practically all the time throughout history of the church to go to the Muslims. I’m talking about the time of the Reformation. They have been used wonderfully. Although the reaching of people has been mighty slim, they’ve had a heart for that. I believe the sovereignty of God has driven them. My last assignment with Wycliffe Bible translators was to work with William Cameron Townsend, the co-founder. The other founder died in 1941, but he was a great Reformed preacher, traveling itinerant, and lecturer. And Cameron Townsend who never finished college, was a dropout, but was a great Reformed layman. These Reformed people have been used as thinkers somehow or another to visualize that which is impossible and by faith and with their biblical understanding have forged out into areas that are entirely new or were entirely new. They are risk takers in some ways.

International Students and Immigrants

I want to understand how that fits in with my director’s statement. I tried to be a little clever and John said to get a provocative title. I don’t think it mattered, but I had written down Acts 1:8 in reverse, banana spelled backwards or something, I don’t know. But the title is Witness from the Ends of the Earth? The reason I did that was because in my mind, I think at least 80 or 90 percent of the time we are thinking overseas because we have almost 600 people out there and I have so many friends out there. That’s my thinking. And yet I’m so concerned about what’s happening right here in our own backyard. And I think of some 500,000 international students at our front door year after year after year from all the nations of the world. These are future leaders, and some of them are leaders right now. There is an opportunity because the world has come here.

Now many of those are not Christians. They’re open to the gospel and open to your church if you’re near a campus or can have an influence on those campuses for Jesus Christ. I was talking to a professor who has started a PhD program in a seminary and he says he has 19 students, 12 of them are candidates from overseas. He’s trying to bring them into a PhD program. We have seen the Christians coming to this country, but there is opportunity for outreach. With a change in immigration laws and so forth, there are going to be more immigrants coming to this country.

In fact, there have been more immigrants coming to this country in the last few years than there ever came in 1900 and 1910. So we’re being flooded with these people. Right now, they say there are 70,000 people from mainland China in this country and in Canada. They are great objects and targets, if I can say it correctly, for us to take the love of Christ to and to witness to them in their need. The Hispanic matter is a pressing need. In 1988, there were 400 million Hispanics in the United States, and that’s a jump of 4,800,000 from 1980. And it’s just simply going to grow. The cities of New York, Miami, and Los Angeles are just popping with Hispanics.

The reason that I was concerned is that there has been such a dichotomy between whole missions and World Missions. And frankly, I hope nothing happens before I step out of the role I have because it’s going to be very difficult to bring those two things together. We know in the missions community that we have people who are highly qualified to work with Hispanics, to work with the Laotians, to work with the Filipinos. We have them on our staff. They’re overseas in those countries working. What would it be like if we could bring all their expertise back and share it in the communities where home missions is being done with the ethnic unreached people groups in our country? And yet in our mission, we are so young (17 years old) that we’re just grappling with how to keep up with our own operation with leadership and field leadership and all that kind of thing. But one day, that’s going to be dealt with.

Praise the Lord, there are church organizations out there and in your community working with ethnic people. But this needs to be dealt with. So that’s what I’m thinking about. Many of these people who are coming are Christians, so they are a boon to us to know how to reach their fellow ethnic people.

Pushing Toward the Unfinished Task

Then I wanted to just comment on my view of World Visions. Mission to the World has a 10 year plan in effect. We’re just one of many 10 year plans out there, but I got involved in an ad-hoc committee called 2000 AD Movement. I’ve realized suddenly that we didn’t have a 2000 plan. How could I be a part of some kind of a movement and we didn’t even have a plan for 2000? It seemed impossible to me. So I went back and I talked to my former executive director before me and I was his consultant and he was my consultant. We pushed this job back and forth to each other and I said, “We have to do something about a 10 year plan.” So last year, we began planning. I brought him in and many other people and we went through a process. I’ll tell you, we have 10 tigers by the tail right now. That’s what planning will do. We got 10 things that we began pushing towards 2000. I believe in planning. I’m just saying that I’m being pushed in my last years of life, very, very heavily — much heavier than I was when I was with InterVarsity.

We have 54 cooperative agreements. I cut the first agreement with Wycliffe Bible Translators for Mission the World 1974. And today, about 85 of our people are working with Wycliffe Bible Translators right now in all different capacities. That is to say that people in our denomination, in our fellowships, who have particular gifts and burdens aren’t able to use those gifts and burdens because we don’t have airplanes. So they can go with MAF or Jungle Aviation and Radio Service or CemAir or whatever and they can serve there. And they can be Reformed people and express their opinions and how they approach the Scriptures. They have those rights. About half of our forces are with other agencies, some 48 right now. And that has been a wonderful relationship for us because we’re part of the greater body of Christ. We’re not some isolated reformed group over here doing our thing, but we are associated with people who are baptists, who can have other agendas as far as their theology is concerned. But our people can be what they are and they are Reformed people.

Of course the idea of partnerships just drives me. I believe there’s so much duplication going on. That’s why I like this planning for 10 years so that we can honestly sit down and Bill Bright can lay his plan down and somebody else can lay their plan down. We can lay our plan down and see what we’re doing and what we’re duplicating and what we need to work together with. I’ll speak to that in one moment. I went to this consultation that we had in World Evangelization Singapore in 1988. There were just a handful of us there, about 363 from around the world from about 50 nations. And we discussed this 2000 AD movement idea. We asked how we could hold each other accountable.

The thing that has been interesting to me and has driven me somewhat is that when I was with InterVarsity, I was forced to study the Student Volunteer Movement because I was heading what was called the Student Foreign Missions Fellowship in InterVarsity along with my other work. And it had grown out of the student volunteer movement in 1936 when the student volunteer movement, which had put 22,000 missionaries in the field with 90,000 lay people and preachers praying for these missionaries that went out backing them up.

When that began to fail due to liberalism and other reasons, the Student Foreign Missions Fellowship was born and I eventually became the director of it. So I had to go back and look at where all this came from. I found out that it began with Dwight Mooney and A.T. Pearson, who happened to be a Reformed preacher from Cincinnati. A.T. Pearson was there when the Student Volunteer Movement was formed when Moody called in some 300 students for a month’s conference. Although he didn’t believe in college students, and thought they were useless, he did that and the Student Volunteer Movement grew out of that.

A.T. Pearson in his preaching during those last days of that month was used to raise the motto of the Student Volunteer Movement. Had a great part in it. He had a burden on his heart as a pastor that all the people in the world would have the opportunity to hear about Jesus Christ by 1900. So back in about 1880, he began to push in that direction and he was motivated by other people to do so. As I thought about that, I thought, “Well, why are we not thinking in the last decade of this century about 2000 and what we could accomplish?” I’m not talking about Christ’s return. That’s the furthest thing from my mind and my colleagues. But what are the things that we should be involved in stopping duplication during these days overseas and how can we extend the dollars and our staff further?

A View of the 10/40 Window

So some of us got together and began to talk about how we could lay guidelines out to help people to measure their goals on how they were doing things like prayer. Is prayer evidence all across the world today among evangelicals for revival, for world evangelization, for missions, home and abroad and so forth? That’s one track we began to think about. Saturation evangelism was another track. So I’m going to try something that I don’t do very much. I’m going to show you these overheads and let you look at this because I find it very interesting.

This is a map that has been done by some research people that some people call the 10/40 Window. Actually it’s based on a stretching out from the 10th of latitude north across to the 40th. And it goes right across from North Africa across the Sahara area all the way through to Asia. And in this area of the world, in this rectangular area or this window are some of the most resistant people to missions and to outreach for Jesus Christ.

Now, in saying that, I want us to realize that we’re not looking at Latin America. And that’s a great need, although there are more Protestant missionaries in Latin America than any other continent. We’re not really looking at South Africa. We’re not looking to the United States. We’re leaving some things out. But I think that this would give us some idea that 55 of the least evangelized countries fall right across this area. And inside the window, you’ll notice there are 62 countries and a total population of 3.1 billion. Sixty percent of the population of the world lies in that area. Twenty-seven percent of the missionaries are working in that area. And 22 percent of the Muslims, 23 percent of the Hindus, and five percent of Buddhists are in that area. Indonesia is really not included up there. It should be of course in that area.

This shows the predominance of the Islamic people. And you see Indonesia is not pulled into that, but it would be part of that in this whole window where they are. It’s a very significant graphic picture of the task to reach and where these people are. And of course we’re interested because this is the cradle of our biblical heritage, where the Gulf War is going on right now. The three religious blocks in this particular window are Muslim, though not only Muslim but also Hindu and Buddhist. And the breakdown is that there are 28 Muslim countries. Again, I’m not going to spend too much time, but you get the feel of how many people of different religious faiths are piled up and how resistant the Muslim and the Hindus have been. There are one billion Hindus in that block.

The poorest countries are in this window. Eighty-two percent of the poorest of the poor live within this window area. It gives figures here, but you can get the feel of these poorest of the poor. I understand that the Commerce Department has made an announcement that in the United States this next year the average income by 2000 will be almost 16,000 dollars. The poor and the evangelized are in this area. Ninety-nine percent of the least evangelized, poorest poor live in this window. You can just get a feel of that right across India and where those people are. We’re concerned about the quality of life with people. Eighty-four percent of the people with the lowest quality of life live within this window. There are 29 countries with the lowest quality of life with a total population of 1.4 billion. Twenty-seven percent of the population of the world is in this condition. Nine percent of the missionaries are working within 40 percent break down again.

Then finally, this graph helps me. These are the areas that we would like to hold ourselves accountable for every year. What are organizations doing across the world? What’s Crusade doing? What’s Navigators doing? What about Sudan Interior Mission, Africa Inland Mission, Mission to the World, the Reformed Church of America? What are they doing concerning national and global research together? What are they doing about training these emerging missionaries from third world countries, local church mobilization, mobilization of women, mobilization of young people, and theological issues. These are the things that are going to drive us to ask the questions how are you doing? And in 1994, we want to bring these people together at a conference in Seoul, Korea and just go through those exercises of how we’re doing and what we are duplicating and what are we accomplishing.

Fourth World People Groups

That’s just one way to look at World Missions. It isn’t the only way, it’s just one way. I’ve been helped with that by looking at that particular part of the world. Peter Wagner wrote a book early on: Stop the World, I Want to Get On. Then he changed the title for Havana 1984 or 1987 and updated it On the Crest of the Wave. And there, he talks about a fourth world and we talk about the third world. I’d rather call it the two-third world. The fourth world is the idea they are made up of anyone, anywhere, at any time who do not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That’s what he called the fourth world. And that is the target that I think about and pray about a good deal. And that target is made up of all kinds of different people. At some of our conventions, we came in on the Muslims and the Hindus and the Buddhist and the tribal people. And these populations continue to grow. We’re talking about 930 million Muslims, 700 million or so Hindus, and we could go on. There are 200 million tribal peoples that need to be reached yet.

And it’s interesting, the statistics I ran across are that in New York City in the metropolitan area today, there are 300,000 Muslims that come from all parts of Africa. They come from Jordan, they come from Syria, and all through the Middle East. There are 300,000 from Iraq and Iran with 100 Islamic centers in just the New York area. And so when we talk about Muslims, we’re talking about worldwide and right here in the United States. It’s the same thing with Hindus and others.

Overseas Missions

I just want to speak about the overseas missionary force. Supposedly right now there are 80,000 Protestant missionaries overseas from all different categories. Around 55,000 are from North America. That’s career people we’re talking about that are serving overseas as career missionaries. Now, as we look at where these missionaries are coming from, we have to say of course the local church throughout North America. The last five Urbanas have seen almost 100,000 delegates go through.

I set a goal for Urbana 1979, 1981, 1984, 1987 that we would see 5,000 of our alumni somehow tied in with World Missions. I’m told that that goal was achieved by the director Dan Harrison. So I had a goal of moving these people from the Urbana experience through the local church to the mission field. And then there’s a missions congress in Europe that comes up every three years, which grew out of Urbana, and they call it the Missions Congress. It was 1989 when they had this last one. And they had 9,500. They call it their one year off kind of into the next year because they go one day into the new year. They started in 1989 to close off December. And they had some 9,500 people there. Eastern Europe had just opened up as had the USSR unexpectedly.

And suddenly they had delegates coming from the USSR. Forty-four delegates came from the USSR and 590 came from the different parts of Eastern Europe or Central Europe unexpectedly. And that movement unfortunately went 250,000 dollars in the hole of which they’ve still not come out, but they’re trying to struggle towards the Missions Congress. But they’re getting people out of Europe. And then there’s these many conferences going on. We see a little Urbana in Nigeria the year before last with almost 1,000 students there. We see it happen in different parts of the world — the idea of bringing students together just for pushing the cause of missions, home and world missions, but mostly world missions. We see them as personnel. Two-thirds world agencies that are springing up. And this has been the result mainly of Western missions springing out of the churches around the world are emerging mission sending agencies.

I have the figures here that in 1980 there were 743 agencies like this sending their own people out of Costa Rica, sending their own people out of Brazil, overseas. Not only are the United States and Britain and Sweden and France and so forth sending missionaries, but these two-thirds world places are sending people out. And they had 13,238 missionaries out in 1980. Now, those are cross-cultural missionaries. Not all of them were going overseas. A lot of them are staying within the country cross culturally and they’re ministering. And we figured today that there are over 1,000 agencies and that they have much over 32,000 people who are out. They are joining forces with Westerners. Trying to figure out how to partner with these emerging agencies that are sending missionaries out? How do you work with them? How do we as an agency that was brand new and 1974 struggling to get started and learn the hard way?

Working with Cross-Cultural Agencies

I was there three years, did all the candidate secretary’s work, set all the forms up, did all the work in recruiting, traveled, went to the churches, went to colleges, and did all that for three years myself. How do you share that with people who were starting out on a shaky foundation also? How do you share what you’ve learned and do it correctly without westernizing their operation? They need computer help, they need organizational help, they need all kinds of help. How do you put together a board? So we’re wrestling with these things right now.

Then finally, the short term missions thing, which I am very much in favor of, has grown. In 1965, they thought there were 540 people sent out. Then, 1987 is the last figure we have for mission agencies. There were 32,000 sent out. I don’t think that’s an accurate figure because I think that Bethlehem sends people out from this church with some missionaries they know about never reported. So I reckon that out of the United States, every year there are 60,000 or more missionaries in the short term. That could be for two years, for one week, for six weeks, for eight weeks, or whatever. We are just sending a lot of people out. There is a criticism of this. People are saying, “Well, if that’s the case, what about the money we could put into career people?” Well, I feel that they’re the gateway to world missions for career work. And I’m not going to talk about the baby boomers and all this. My son Mark could talk to you a long time about that because he’s one of them.

The Reality of Urbanization

I want us to talk about urbanization quickly, that the world is going to be urbanized. Basically, the bottom line is that by 2000, Europe will have 82 percent of their people living in cities. For the USSR, 80 percent; Latin America, 73 percent; Asia 60 percent; and Africa, 45 percent. So our work is cut out for us. It’s going to be much easier in one sense that we can get right into target areas. It’s going to be harder to reach people in the city. The opening of Russia to missions has been like a ballgame. All kinds of people are piling up in Moscow. I got word last week that there is a Christian college on the drawing board from Moscow, and a friend of mine is leading up that effort. But I made a trip just before Christmas for 10 days to Alma-Ata, which is the capital of the Republic of Kazakhstan where there are some 10 million Kasak people who live in Russia and Germans, but there are 10,000 Kasak people of whom they believe there are 20 who are Christians out of 10 million. And they flow over into China.

I was there as a delegation to talk about creating a business school and to start a school there to train their people how to enter into the free market. It was a very exciting time and I just got word that my colleagues got back and signed a contract with them when we began the school. We will be recruiting Christian professors in English. Of course they need teaching in English very badly. We have a lot of people going in for that I trust. But we’ll be talking to people who can teach economics and teach banking. At the last delegation a week ago when they met, we met with about six different groups when I was there and just discussed through interpreters what we wanted to do.

We’re working in conjunction with the Southern Baptist Forum Board and the consortium of other people. This is what I call partnership. And last week, the president of the republic crashed the meetings. He came in and said, “I want to chair this meeting.” We had worked all the way through different ones when I was there. One week, we were in five different meetings, six different meetings with different people working up the ladder. And finally one day near the end a man walked in and everybody stood to their feet, I said, “Yes, we finally reached the right person.” He said, “I’m going to conduct this meeting through the interpreter” and he told the other man to pipe down while he did it.

But this last week, the president came in and sat down and he signed the accord, and he wants this. Now, he sat down with the president of Chevron Oil last fall, and he cut an agreement directly in Moscow with no leadership except his own people from his republic present. He cut a contract for 5 billion dollars for Chevron directly. So these people are moving, and I see a great opportunity for us to go to an area where people are not piled up like Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev into a new area, and to reach an unreached people group by witnessing.

Encouraging Events

There are many encouraging events. I could talk about Korea where there was no church at all 102 years ago and where there are 6,000 churches right in Seoul, Korea. One of them has 600,000 members with 487 pastors with a membership coming in monthly of 10,000 people with meetings on Sunday of 25,000. I can just go on about Paul Cho’s operation there.

But also there are other churches. And as Wayne mentioned I think for one of you, that there’s the largest Methodist church in the world probably, or the largest Presbyterian church in the world, the largest everything. And we have done church planting there. We have seen 1,100 rural churches in the last 10 years through our little mission in working with others in rural careers where we have had a big burden.

What’s happened in Nepal? In 1977, you could count 15 identified Christians in Nepal. Today, there are 80,000 or more in Nepal. There’s two churches there with 800 to 900 people worshiping. There are 20 churches in the city of Kathmandu in the capital. There are villages being taken for Christ, all of them coming to Christ. It’s very unusual what’s happening and we can be really encouraged.

And of course in Latin America, the statistics are overwhelming. In Africa in 1900, the statistics are that there were 10 million Christians south of the Sahara. By 2000, they were projecting 400 million. And in Latin America in 1900, there were 50,000 evangelicals by count. And by 2000, there will be 100 million. The African Protestant Church is growing faster than the population by 500 percent and the Latin America church is growing faster than the population by 20,000 percent. I want you to be encouraged by what’s happening. We hear about the high cost emissions. Are we going to quit sending missionaries out and all this kind of thing? There’s lots of challenges. I’m not going to talk about tent making. I spent 10 years of my life talking and working about tent making and I think we’re finally going to get involved in it in a strategic way in our mission anyway.

The one thing that has been very encouraging to me is the large churches in the United States that are taking more responsibility for bigger programs. I cut an agreement with one of our churches. It has 3,000 or 4,000 members, so the pastor and I made an agreement/partnership. And we made an agreement that we’re going to take all of their people that they have trained to be college outreach people. They have a college outfit that’s not as big as Crusade or InterVarsity or Navigators, but very large in the Southeast. So we’re sending two teams into Mexico City to work with our teams. They’ll be down for five years. They’ll learn Spanish and they’ll work with the college students there. And we’re helping that church get the people there overseas, at least in Mexico, and some are going to Thailand because large churches have their own seminaries and their own missions programs. And some of our churches in our little denomination are giving 50,000 dollars a year to Campus Crusade Learning Center to build Bright’s work. They’re giving 25,000 dollars to different projects. They’re very ambitious.

Strength for the Task

Of course, I’m more concerned for the smaller churches because that’s where the challenge is to me. I mean churches from 200 up to 1,000 members, whatever you call that. We have a lot of those churches and the prospects are great. I would like to close with three quotes. In light of the recession, in light of the Persian Gulf crisis in our concern, here are three quotes about world missions I think and the unfinished task. Here’s one by William Russell and Motley:

Jesus promised three results for those who follow him: they will be absurdly happy, they will be entirely fearless, and they will always be in trouble.”

Tom Peters in “Thriving on Chaos,” which we gave all of our managers recently, says:

In order to survive, organizations have to relinquish the deep entrenched need for certainty and not only accept unpredictability, but relish it.

And finally, Donald McGavran, the week before he died, Dr. McGavran — former dean and founder of the School of World Missions in Pasadena — met with Arthur Glasser in his home. He said, “The week before he died, Dr. McGavran was lying on a couch, fully dressed in a tie for his visit.” And Arthur Glasser, the man who followed him as the dean of the school was talking with him about missions. And Donald McGavran was asking, “What is so-and-so lecture about? What happened? How many missionaries are going here? What was the decision on this”? He was all mapped up there a week before he died. I think he was 94 or 93. This was a statement that Arthur wrote down. This is what McGavran said:

Nothing that is easy is ever worthwhile, and nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

Question and Answer

I wanted to share those statistics with our church. Are those available?

Yeah, they’re available and they’re available from the research center in Pasadena. They are GMI (Global Mapping) resources.

What do you know about the churches that are in Iraq right now? Do you have any idea about the number of churches pr Christians there?

I have no information whatsoever on that. I’m sure that they’ve not been able to function at all because they were not in Iran. They’re having a tough time there. But I do know I got a letter from an officer about two weeks ago. I wrote an article on what happened after World War II and how a new movement grew out of World War II when they started all these new missions. And he told me that he got that article and he said that he’s been praying that out of this conflict, a new force will grow. I would say just off the record that Saudi Arabia will never be the same.

There was an article about two weeks ago saying that in the city of Detroit there are 250,000 people directly from Iraq. But in your point that these people have come to us, what do we do about all the Iraqis coming to Detroit.

The point is that there are a lot of Iraqis here in this country in big blocks, 60,000 here and different ones from Iran. I know when the conflict came in Iran, I was working with international students as a side issue at the University of Madison and Wisconsin. And they all went underground. I just couldn’t find them. They were so embarrassed by the whole thing.

Looking at the demographics of the 10/40 Window and the needs that are represented there, and then looking at Jesus’s agenda for ministry that Don shared with us yesterday, it seems that approach is absolutely necessary in addressing the people in the 10/40 Window. Do you know what is being done to train and equip missionaries that will be sent over there to deal with those needs as far as what we’ve been talking about the past few days, specifically with regard to practicing spiritual gifts?

I’m afraid not enough. There are 73 agencies of course working with development workers. We look at the poorest of the poor and they’re dealing with spiritual conflict. We’re dealing with spiritual warfare in our mission. It’s going to take a lot of tent makers to go in there because we cannot get in on missionary visas. We Westerners cannot get a Visa or many of these others, so it’s going to take tent makers. All these people will have to be equipped in spiritual warfare. There is no question in my mind. And I think that most mission agencies that are sending people in these areas as well as others are doing this now, though probably not to the depths that we’ve discussed here.

How can short term people and lay people be best used in missions to unreached people groups?

Every agency — or at least most that are worth their salt — has adopted unreached people groups and they would have programs set up for summer, winter breaks, vacations, and whatever that a person could be involved in. So you just contact an agency and say I’m particularly concerned about unreached or whatever, and they would have some kind of a program for a short term, two years, or whatever.

In the 10/40 Window, the sentiment in there is pretty anti-Western. Christianity is often seen as a spearhead of Western culture, and that’s part of the resistance. But as the church grows in Latin America and Southern Africa, the center of gravity of Christianity is moving away from the Western region into those. What are the prospects for people who are non-Western carrying Christianity without the cultural bodies that we give it, addressing that 10/40 Window and having acceptance?

This is what’s been done in Saudi Arabia. There have been so many Koreans in Saudi Arabia working there. There have been Filipinos as well. Now, not all of them are Christians because there’s not been a real strategy set up to recruit Christians to go do these jobs. There are many like InterVarsity in the Philippines and in Korea. There are many engineers and people like that that have just not been motivated or encouraged to go there. There are a lot of those people there and from Latin America also moving in that area.

So it is a strategy that’s going to take some people to start thinking how to do it. It’s there. We’ve got the people. We’ve got emerging agencies. Somebody just got to get in and plant that seed that you would do better or let’s team up and go. That’s what I’d like to see: international teams with some Americans, some Australians, some Filipinos, and some Koreans. It’s going to be very difficult. I think I’d better stop.