You have no idea what a privilege
it is for me to be here this morning,
to return home
fifty years ago this month, and possibly
even this week,
I knelt at an alter across the street
at Hart
Memorial Chapel and said, Lord,
I'm yours,
take me whatever you want me to go.
Little did I have any idea that from
Spring Arbor, Michigan,
I would travel around the world many, many
times
and even today, I am on my way to
Turkey and India this
afternoon.
So it is a great, great privilege for
me to be with you.
Now what I want to do this morning is
paint a picture of what God is doing
in the world
of mission and Evangelism.
I want us to see where God's spirit is at
work in a mighty way around the globe.
I also want us to learn about the
remaining challenges in mission and
Evangelism
that we still face.
Now for some of us,
we are going to be both surprised and
disturbed
about what we hear this morning.
In Revelation 7:9 we get a
graphic picture
of Heaven; how it is all going to turn out.
After this I looked
and there was an enormous crowd.
No one could count all the people.
They were from every race, tribe, nation and
language,
and they stood in front of the throne of
the Lamb dressed in white robes
and holding palm branches
in their hands.
Wow! What a great picture. And someday
you and I will be in that picture.
There will be people from everywhere; every
people group on earth will be present,
they will all be praising God in English, right?
Well, then maybe English as a second
language.
No. In their own language.
This will be an anthropologist paradise.
It's just too bad they won't be very many there.
 
 
But you know it will be a paradise for
others as well, but especially for
missionary anthropologist like me,
and there will be plenty of time to learn all
6877
languages spoken in Heaven.
Revelation 7:9 gives us a picture
of what we have to look forward to.
There will be unity
with diversity.
All the diversity in the world will come
together
as we praise God around that throne.
I can hardly wait.
Now this morning I want to talk about what
mission world is like today. What does it
look like today?
Let's begin by looking at Jesus'
instructions to his disciples,
found in five places in the New
Testament
and the most well-known passage is Matthew
28:18-20.
I am going to begin
reading on the 16th verse
and you will pick it up on the slide on
the 18th.
The 11 disciples
went to a hill in Galilee where Jesus had
told them to go.
When they saw him, they worshiped him,
even though some of them doubted.
That is amazing, isn't it? Spending 3 years with Jesus,
and some of
his disciples still doubt.
Jesus drew near to them and said,
I have been given all authority in Heaven
and on earth.
Go then to all peoples everywhere
and make them my disciples;
baptize them in the name of the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Spirit,
and teach them to obey
everything
that I have commanded you,
and I will be with you always,
to the end of the age.
Now the Bible says, make disciples
of every people group;
not just win converts.
How often do we think we've accomplish
the task when people are converted?
But as we know from our Wesleyan
tradition, this is the only the beginning.
Now some translations read, make
disciples of all nations, and those are
represented in the flags today,
and we tend to think of political
boundaries.
a more accurate translation of the Greek
word is people group,
people group, not nation.
Now, what is the people group?
Well, a people group is a group of people
who have a common language,
common culture,
values, worldview,
common social economic level, and all those defining features
that distinguish one group
from another.
Now with the help of anthropologists,
we've been able to identify 16,598
people groups in the world,
and these are found in 196 nations,
So there are obviously far more people groups
then there are nations.
For example, Africa has 42 nations, but
well over 1000
people groups.
Now Jesus gave a set of three instructions
to his disciples,
and to us:
Number one, make disciples
of all people groups.
Number two; baptize them in the name of the Father, and the son,
and the Holy Spirit.
And number three;
teach them to obey everything;
Not just those things that are
comfortable,
but everything
that I have commanded you;
disciple,
baptize,
and teach.
Then Jesus tells us,
Don't worry. You are not alone,
I am not sending you out there by
yourself,
I'll be with you,
forever,
forever.
Wow. So you see, it is not our mission at
all.
In fact, it is God's mission.
We are the instruments that God uses
to bring about God's kingdom on earth,
to bring life giving transformation to
people,
to communities, and yes, even
to whole nations.
God has invited every day,
ordinary people, like you and me,
to join God
in God's mission.
Now if the great commission is Christ's,
instructions,
what's his game plan?
Well, that is in the Bible also.
Act 1:4-5
gives us Christ's strategy for reaching the
world:
And when they came together
he gave them this order:
Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait
for the gift I have told you about,
to gift my father promised.
John baptized with water, but in a few
days you will be baptized with the Holy
Spirit.
Now what was the game plan?
Wait. Wait for what?
Wait until you pay off your school loans?
Wait until your retirement portfolio is flush with cash?
Wait until you can pluck up enough
courage to overcome your fears of
Muslims and Hindus
or fears about living in different
places without running water, without
flush toilets,
with people who are very different from
ourselves? Is that what we are supposed to wait for?
No. No. Wait until the Holy Spirit fills you with
power,
and until that happens,
we're in trouble. Without the power of the
Holy Spirit
in their ministry, the Disciples would
have been dead in the water,
and so are we.
Now look at the strategy that Jesus lays out.
We find that in Acts 1:8.
 
But when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,
you will be filled with power,
and you will be my witnesses
in Jerusalem,
In all Judea,
and Samaria,
and to the ends of the Earth.
Jerusalem,
and Judea,
and Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth,
and that is exactly what has happened the
last 2000 years.
The instructions Jesus gave then have been
folded out over the last
2000 years.
Now, how should
we apply Acts 1:8 to
Spring Arbor, Michigan,
the town I grew up in? I was a paperboy here
once.
Well, Jerusalem is our community,
Spring Arbor, the village of Spring Arbor.
Judea is our region.
Perhaps Jackson County, or Michigan,
or the midwest, or perhaps even the
United States.
Samaria,
Samaria is interesting.
Now Samaria is geographically close,
but culturally distant.
Samaritans are our next-door neighbors,
but culturally and religiously,
they are very different from us,
and so we tend to avoid them.
You know, Samaria is the place you'd
rather go around
than go through,
and we all have Samaritans in our
life,
and we tend to avoid them.
Now, let's take a look at the face
of the world today
and see what we can discover.
The whole world looks very, very
different from what it did in Jesus' day,
and has changed most dramatically in the
last
100 years, the last century.
In Jesus' time, there were approximately 250 million people in the world.
 
Today there are 28 times that,
with just over 7 billion people.
Now let's take a brief look at what the
world looks like today,
and then note the progress that has been
made in fulfilling this great commission
that Jesus gave his disciples and to us.
In 1900 there were 1.6
billion people in the world
living in 20 cities that had a
million people or more.
By 1970 that had grown to
3.7 billion
in a 161 cities.
Today we have just passed the
7 billion mark
and these people are living in 425 cities
with over a million people.
You see, the old days of stomping through
the steaming jungles to reach the
teeming millions
are gone.
They are in cities,
and so much of our missionary strategy
has been more oriented toward the rural
area than the urban area.
By 2025 it is estimated there will be 8 billion people on the face of the
Earth
in 650 cities of a
million or more, and Shanghai will probably be the
the world's largest city,
with 31 million people.
Now let's take another look at what the world looks like.
If we were to shrink the world into a
village of 100 people,
here is what it would look like;
There would be 57 Asians,
21 Europeans,
14 Americans, both north and south,
8 Africans,
51 females and
49 males,
30 whites,
70 non-whites,
33 Christians,
67 non-Christians,
80 people live in sub-standard
housing,
70 people are unable to even
read,
50 people suffer from malnutrition,
and only one of them has a college
education.
Pretty sobering,
but that is the world
in a village.
Now in the world today, only 33 percent are Christian,
37 percent live in an area
where Christianity exists,
but they do not know Christ,
and 30 percent live
where there is no contact with Christians
and there's no hope of ever knowing
Christ
without someone announcing to them who
Jesus is.
They are simply cut off
from any Christian witness. Now one way we
could say this is one-third of the world says
thank you Jesus;
another third says no thank you Jesus,
and another third says who is Jesus?
Thank you Jesus,
no thank you Jesus,
who is Jesus?
Now here is some sobering,
very sobering statistics;
of the five-and-a-half million Christian
workers in the world,
98.4 percent of them work
with Christians only.
The rest, 1.6,
work in the world of mission.
Are you following me?
And of that number, only two-tenths of one
percent work in the world of the un-reached,
those people who've never heard about
Jesus, who won't hear about Jesus
unless someone comes, 1.2 percent,
2/10 of 1 percent work with them where 33 percent of the world
lives.
My goodness. What is wrong
with this picture?
What is wrong with this picture?
Now in the in the United States there is
1 Christian worker for every 230 people.
 
In the world there is 1 Christian worker
for every 450,000.
 
1/3 of the world population is under
the age of 15.
Man. talk about the importance of
children's ministry.
And 85 percent of these children
live in the third world, or what is
better
referred to as the majority world.
A 100 million children
live on the streets,
without parents or a home.
What is this picture of the world doing
to you this morning?
This is God's world,
and God desperately wants all of this
world to be redeemed,
all of it to be transformed and all of
it to be reached;
the people, the environment,
it all belongs to God,
and God wants it all restored.
But what are our priorities?
Well Americans and Europeans spend
17 billion dollars a year just on
pet food,
and Americans spent 8 billion dollars
a year on cosmetics.
What does this picture of the world
do to God's heart?
What is it doing to your heart and
mine this morning?
Is it the time to reach the rest of the world
with God's transforming mission?
 
Who is God calling to join God in this mission?
 
Who is God calling?
Well let's now take a look at the state
of God's mission in the world.
What does God's mission look like?
Well, there is a lot of good news, and we are going to
celebrate that this morning;
a lot of reasons
to be excited.
God is doing great things in the world
today.
I want to mention just briefly only four,
four areas. The first areas is bible
translation.
In 1600,
the Bible was translated into 36
languages. The King James version was
translated in 1611.
In 1900 this was increased
to 537
languages.
Today, 2013,
of the 6,877 languages that we know,
some scripture portion has been
translated into 2800 of
those languages.
So, 4.9 billion people have
access to the Bible,
and 600 million people
have the New Testament.
Now today, eight out of ten people
have access to the entire Bible
in their own language,
and nine out of ten have access
to the New Testament,
now that is good news
worth celebrating, yet still, still, 350 million people
speaking over 2,000 languages are
without access to the Bible
in a language
that they can understand.
 
Now the second area is the Jesus film.
I am sure many of you know about the Jesus
film that began
in 1979.
This is a very effective way to share
the gospel,
especially to people who cannot, or choose
not to read,
which is the majority of the world.
As of January 1, 2013, fresh statistics,
over 6 billion people since 1979
have seen
the Jesus film.
It has been translated into 1,188 languages,
and over 200 million people
have made known decisions
to follow Jesus.
Today there are 454 chuches and mission
organizations
involved in producing new translations
of the film.
A new translation is completed every ten
days.
Today the Jesus film is available in languages
known by 91 percent of the
world's population.
Now, there are remarkable stories
about people, how they have come to Christ
after seeing this film and hearing Jesus
speak about forgiveness,
reconciliation,
transformation and eternal life
in their own language.
Amazing
to hear Jesus speaking Karundi.
The third area, church planting;
the year 2000 served as a
stimulus to get many churches motivated
about reaching the whole world for
Christ.
In fact, over 750 plans were launched.
The Free Methodist had one of the theirs. Southern Baptist had a big,big plan.
They thought they could reach
the whole world for Christ
by the year 2000 through
Southern Baptist missionaries.
It took a few more than that.
Well, unfortunately, it didn't happen.
We did not reach the whole world
for Christ
by the year 2000,
but we are making some progress.
of the 16,598
people groups in the world,
9,433 of them have been reached with the Gospel.
Now, by reached,
I mean only that some verbal or written
word
about Jesus has been given to these
people.
I do not mean that 20 percent of the
population
is Christian, which is the standard
tipping point for a church
planting movement
to take off,
or there are also a lot of other planted
churches among these people,
so, even being generous, there is still a lot
more work to be done.
Now remember, a people group is defined by
language and culture, not by
political boundaries.
In 1900
4,000
people groups have been reached by the
Gospel; today it is twice that many.
Now, what tremendous progress has been
made in the last century?
And most of this has occurred literally
in the last
25 years.
The remaining 7165
people groups without the Gospel
have been identified
and missionaries are on the way. It is
very likely, it is very likely
that within the next
10 to 20 years
all the people groups in the world
can in fact be reached
with the Gospel.
colleagues that is in are lifetime.
Do you know understand that?
That is not a thousand years away. That
can be on our lifetime,
but we're gonna have to join
Jesus in his mission.
Number 4: the growth of the church.
The fourth area where God's mission is at
work is the growth of the church around
the world.
And I suppose one word defines it;
explosion.
Now where is the church growing most
rapidly today?
It is growing most rapidly in the south
and the east,
while declining in the north
and the west,
especially in Europe and the United
States.
For example, one place of great growth is
China.
Sixty years ago there were a
million-and-a-half Christians
in China and ten
thousand
missionaries.
Then Mao Tse-Tung comes to power,
kicks out all the missionaries.
We thought the church would probably die
because we are not there to keep it alive,
Ha, ha ha... and what happened?
Wow! Explosive growth.
Today the Chinese government admits
to 23 million Christians in
registered churches.
A few years ago I went to China
and met with leaders of three different unregistered groups,
and each of them in a different part of
China said to me, we are sure that 10 percent
of China is Christian.
Now, what is 10 percent of 1.4 billion?
140 million followers of Jesus in China.
That is just fabulous!
In outer Mongolia
there is a nascent Christian community
that came into being after the Russians
left Mongolia in 1990.
Now that is not that long ago.
And the door was then opened for
missionaries to come.
In 1990 there were only 6 Christians
known in all of Mongolia.
Last week I was in New Haven,
Connecticut, teaching a course
and a Korean missionary with the
Christian and Missionary Alliance Church
came from Mongolia for my course, and he
said,
there are 500 churches in Mongolia and around
30,000
believers
spread out through all of Mongolia,
and what is amazing, he said in the email to me
yesterday, he said,
these Mongolian Christians aren't
just sitting back and enjoying
results; there are now sending
missionaries already.
So here is a church, just getting started, and they realize
the great commission was given to us in
Mongolia,
and they are on their way.
Now these four factors:
Bible translation,
the Jesus film,
church planting, and explosive church
growth
have dramatically changed the map
of the Christian world today.
Now there are two major changes that we must
recognize,
that have dramatically changed the face
of mission.
Here is the first change;
the numerical center of gravity for the
world Christian Church
has shifted,
has shifted.
It is no longer here in the United States. It
is no longer in Europe.
It is there,
in the non-western world,
in the southern hemisphere.
The former mission fields of Africa, Asia
and Latin America
are now where the church is the
strongest
and growing the fastest.
The expansion of the church
from a half-a-billion in 1900
to 2 billion today is remarkable,
but even more remarkable than that,
even more remarkable than the numbers is
the demographic shift
in the global Christian community.
In 1900
Christians in Europe and North America
accounted for more than 80 percent
of the Christians in the world,
but by the end of the century,
these erstwhile Christian heartlands
contributed less than 40 percent.
Today it is the non-western world, the
majority world, primarily below the Equator,
that boast the majority of Christians
and where the church is growing
the fastest.
And here is the second major change:
Today there are thousands of
missionaries coming from the former
mission fields of Africa,
Latin America and Asia.
For example, there are 24,000 Korean missionaries found all
over the world,
and by 2020
the number of Korean missionaries will
likely surpass the number
of American
missionaries.
Another example is the back to Jerusalem
movement in China,
which is calling for a 100,000 Chinese missionaries
to take the Gospel back along the
silk road, all the way to Jerusalem.
Now, how do you get from China to
Jerusalem?
You have got to go through Islamic countries,
and so they are now recognizing that
this is
a challenge God is calling
us to do.
Now in response to that movement,
the Nigerian Evangelical
Mission Association has launched
what they call Vision 5015,
and their goal is to send
50,000 Nigerian Missionaries
in the next 15 years
back to Jerusalem, through 13
Islamic countries of North Africa
and the Middle East, so they said
some day we will meet in Jerusalem and
have a party,
celebrating what God has done in the
world.
The number of missionaries in the west, however, is declining,
but missionaries from the majority world
are increasing
dramatically.
Did you know this? Did you have any idea
that this was happening?
Most North American churches are
abandoning their commitment to world
mission
and Evangelism,
but if the church forgets to make
mission its primary focus, it will die.
It will die as a local church,
and it will die as a denomination.
Let me give you an example:
In 1965
Southern Baptists,
Presbyterians,
and Methodists
all had 1500 missionaries
in cross-cultural ministry.
As political colonialism began to end in the 1960s
and a moratorium on missionaries was
called in 1968,
and the book called Missionary Go Home
was published in 1964,
many of these mainline denominations
concluded that the era of mission
is over. It was just a tool of colonialism.
Well, the Southern Baptist did not buy
into this lie,
and they increased from 1500
to 5000 missionaries.
It is not a coincidence that as their
commitment to join God in God's mission
began to wane,
their denomination
began to rapidly decline.
Here is the,
I am not talking about Southern Baptist, I am talking about Presbyterians
and Methodists;
they went from 1500, down to
under 100 missionaries,
and both those
denominations are in steep decline.
In summary this morning,
we have seen a number of things that
should greatly disturbed us,
but we have also seen a lot of things
for which we can thank God.
There is much good news to celebrate in
the year 2013.
God's mission has steadily progressed
over the past 2,000 years,
but especially in the last 150 years, and even more so
in the last 25 years.
God's mission in the world is alive and
well,
and it appears that we may be entering
the final era
of mission. God has not left himself without a
witness in every single people
group
around the world.
As Weslayan's, we we believe that God's
prevenient grace
is working, not only in the lives of
individual people,
but with whole people groups
and their culture.
For example,
today there are many Muslims coming to
faith in Christ
through their dreams.
Yes, you heard me correct,
through their dreams. They are dreaming about Jesus.
This is happening all over the Islamic
world.
There are even several underground churches
in Tibet today.
They must operate with great secrecy, and
for reasons of security,
we can't describe or discuss
them this morning.
In several parts of the Islamic world,
but most notably in Banglidesh, where I
have spent a fair amount of time,
there are hundreds of thousands of
Muslims
who are coming to faith in Jesus,
but they don't call themselves
Christians.
They say we are Muslim followers of
Jesus.
Followers of Jesus.
They look very much like their Muslim
neighbors, but their allegiance is
absolutely to Jesus. They are born again
followers of Jesus.
A couple of years ago I met with a
Chinese leader of the largest
unregistered church in China. They had 25 million members.
How is that for a denomination?
More recently I met a leader of an
underground church in Vietnam
who heads a house church movement of
nearly a half-a-million
Vietnamese Christians,
but we should not be so surprised to see
God's mission progressing in the world
as it is.
This is exactly, exactly
what Jesus said would happen.
In Matthew 24:14 Jesus says
 
When the Good News about the Kingdom has
been preached all over the world,
and told to all people groups,
the end will come.
We are nearing the point
when the Good News of the Kingdom will in fact be told to all people groups.
 
I am sure it will happen in my lifetime,
and hopefully
in yours.
Now, if we are this near the end, does
this mean that there is no longer a need
for missionaries?
Some churches think so.
Witness the United Methodists who went
from a high number of 2700 missionaries
in the 1950s to less than 100.
Can the Free Methodist denomination or
the Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church
now relax because of all this good news,
and just stay home?
I was very moved this morning to see
that you are not staying home,
out of this very church.
Is there no longer a need for mission
sending organizations, like the one that I
now work with?
Not at all.
The age of mission and the need for
missionaries is not over.
The great commission has not been
completed,
nor has it been canceled,
but the era of paternalistic and
colonial missions
is over.
Thanks be to God.
The old-style of missionaries who went and lived
separately
from the people and pushed their weight
around,
are no longer welcomed,
and no longer needed.
But humble missionaries,
willing to live with and work under
the authority of National Christians
are very, very much needed today. Every
place I go in the world today I hear the cry
 
for the right kind of missionaries to
come and work with us,
alongside us.
work under our authority,
not over it.
In closing, let me suggest the challenge
of mission that remains.
Despite all this good news about mission
and Evangelism, and the many reasons to
celebrate,
there are also reasons to be concerned, and
several areas of mission
that remain a huge challenge for us.
In closing I want to lift up three
things
that are a challenge for us today:
Number 1: Even though we are closing in on
reaching the last of the un-reached people groups,
there are still 4 billion people
on the face of the earth
who do not yet know Jesus, 4 billion;
2 billion people have never even
heard of Jesus;
there are far more non-Christians in the
world today than on the day
that Jesus was crucified,
4 billion more,
that is overwhelming.
Secondly; the percentage of Christians in the
world is slowly decreasing.
In 1900
34.4 percent of the
world was Christian,
Today it is down to
33 percent.
We have a very mixed picture of the
numerical status of
global Christianity.
On the one hand, there is this tremendous
growth,
from 558 million
in 1900 to 2 billion today,
but no one in 1900
could have predicted, expected the
massive defections
from Christianity
that subsequently took place
in Western Europe
due to
secularism.
In Russia and Eastern
Europe due to Communism.
In North America
due to
materialism.
Today
there are approximately 125 million
un-churched people
in the United States,
which makes us one of the largest mission
fields in the world.
Do you understand that?
The third challenge:
The third challenging factor is that we need to
change the way we see the task
of the church
and its mission.
With explosive church growth overseas and
rapid decline here,
we can no longer be content with
business as usual.
We have been operating with a chaplaincy
model, simply maintaining the Saints,
spending all of our money and time on
ourselves.
We must move out of this mode
and into an apostolic mode.
We must realize that a cross-cultural
encounter with the Gospel is necessary
right on our own streets,
in our own communities, because the ends of the earth
have come to town.
Not only has the rest of the world
moved into the neighborhood,
but our own culture
has undergone dramatic changes in the
last 10 to 20 years. We have a whole
new generation, a postmodern young people
who simply are very different culturally
from their parents
and sometimes we think they may not even
live on the same planet as their
grandparents.
Our churches must be up to the challenge
of living out the Gospel to these
post-modern people or we will lose this
generation.
And of course, we have so much to
learn from Christians
in the global church from other cultures,
about how to make public
our witness of following Jesus.
Faith for many Americans has become too
personal
and too privatized,
and we are afraid to enter the public arena
with our faith.
What can we learn from Christians in
other parts of the world?
From Asia
we can learn more about the mystery
and the transcendence of God,
from the South Pacific we can recover
the notion of the Body of Christ.
From Africa we can discover the nature
of celebration and the healing power of
the church, and from Latin America
we are learning about the role of the
church in the work
for justice.
In conclusion,
how should we respond to what we have
heard this morning?
We have heard some sobering statistics
about the world in which we live.
We have heard some exciting news about God's
mission in the world
and what God is doing,
and we have finished with some
challenges to Evangelism and mission that yet remain.
 
I discovered an ancient Chinese poem many
years ago
that I think captures
what we have talked about this morning and
how we
should respond.
Go to the people,
live among them.
learn from them,
love them. Start with what they know,
and build on what they have.
This is exactly what Jesus did
in coming to Earth. He lived among us
and this is what our response should be
to God's mission in the world.
Thanks be to God.
