Some reflections/fragments, if not random, from my time at the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force meeting. These show why we need a Great Commission Resurgence:
Here's some good news:
- In 1970, there were over 7000 "unreached" people groups (groups with no
access to the Gospel) that numbered over 1 million in population. Due
to a massive missions movement in the US and elsewhere, that number is
now down to 400! - In
1997, church planters in the IMB were training only 30,000 national
believers in church leadership/church planting. Today that number is
over 250,000! The Great Commission is not the white man's burden. It is
the property of believers in every nation, and we are recognizing that!
But here's the bad news:
- Currently, 1.48 billion people have NO access to the Gospel. 3.06 billion have little (or nearly no) access to the Gospel.
- Southern Baptists have only one missionary on the field for every 1.6 million people out there.
- Southern Baptist churches report about $12.5 billion in revenue. Overseas work gets less than 2.5% of that.
- Southern Baptists spend $1.31 per person for missions in North America, and
spend $0.04 per person for missions to reach the world. (Source)
"The Gospel is only good news if it gets there in time." Carl F. H. Henry
And more bad news:
"The SBC is a bureaucracy that seems to have a passionate commitment
to mediocrity at best, and to our own self-destruction at worst." (I've
got to let this one remain anonymous).
“Institutional
self-perpetuation holds no legitimate place in a world of scarce
resources; institutional mediocrity should be terminated, if not
transformed into excellence."
Go to pray4GCR.com to pray for a much needed Great Commission Resurgence in the SBC!
How are you defining “unreached?” Joshua Project still has the number of unreached people groups in the 6000 range.
I am not sure about a hand-picked task force being needed to further study, talk about and report the obvious, but it sounds like the people of God need a revival — a deep, genuine move of God upon His people. A return to our first love — love for the Lord Jesus. My prayer is for a global awakening — lazy, bloated SBC churches/leaders/bureaucrats may or may not be involved. Like God needs us and our pride.(?) But may we cry out to God for His mercy,for His strength and His mighty movement among the nations.
Please tell us who made the statement on mediocrity? Please!
I agree with it somewhat but then again there are places that I do not.
Philip, note the qualifier in that paragraph as UPG’s with over a million in population. Those are only 400… UPG’s with less than a million would be in the 6K range.
“The Gospel is only good news if it gets there in time.”
Doesn’t that imply that people who die without ever having heard the gospel go to hell? I seriously doubt the thought “God is roasting them as we speak” is going to motivate many people to get out and try to convince others to follow Him.
Brian,
You are exactly right. This does “imply that people who die without ever having heard the gospel go to hell.” This position is consistent with both Scripture (Romans 10:14) and Christian tradition. If you do not believe in the exclusive claims of the Gospel then you should be adamantly opposed to the aim of the Great Commission. For the Christian inclusivist the work of a missionary should be condemned, for they are only sending people to hell by giving them a chance to reject Christ. If people can gain salvation without a knowledge of Christ (which Scripture does not teach) then the missionary is not needed.
chris. Romans 14:10 says that calling saves, but it does not say calling is the only way to be saved through Christ. Christ is bigger then Romans 14 and may have other ways. For instance, see John 5:29. No one knows for sure what the judgment of John 5:29 is going to look like for people who haven’t heard the gospel. Missions work remains very important because we want people to have abundant life here on earth and to _be certain_ of the life ever after.
Billy Graham famously told Larry King that he didn’t know what happened to the unreached who die. Ultra-conservatives jumped on him, but forget them. Graham was one of the most successful evangelists ever, and he didn’t need to assume thousands of unreached were going to hell daily in order to motivate himself or his enormous support team. Apparently his focus on the love of God provided better motivation. We should learn from that. “The kindness of the Lord leads us to repentance”, not the dread of his wrath. (Romans 2:4).
If Baptist leaders would stop assuming that the unreached go to hell then we would see _more_ support for missions work, not less. The thought of a God who is roasting thousands daily unless we do something to stop the slaughter does not make many people want to spread the gospel. It makes most people want to avoid talking about it. Such a gospel is more often then not bad news even to the living, whose first thoughts go to their deceased family and friends.
Getting a lost person to follow such a Christ is like trying to convince someone to follow Hitler’s teachings by saying, “Hilter was good to a select few Germans, he wants to be good to you, and just try to forget that he burnt a bunch of your family alive.”
J.D.,
I am glad you are on the GCR.
Here is a question? Is it good analysis to zero in on only people groups who have more than 1 million to the neglect of the others? http://www.imb.org/globalresearch/
I only raise the issue for it seems to play into conventional SBC pragmatics. If somehow those groups are more important than other groups who gets to decide?
The information from the Florida Baptist Witness and the research by the fellow at SEBTS presupposes quite a number of things. While we may pretend to live in a gospel saturated culture, we certainly do not see the effects of such a cultural distinction. It is in fact, the opposite. This gets to our methodological bias – an issue you note quite well in past posts.
To use this information as support may well point out some needs but it skews reality a bit don’t you think?