I love the folks at the US Center for World Mission. Some of them, well known to me, are good friends. Some I’ve only known through the Internet. Their influence and ability to communicate the need of missions, and their focus on frontier mission, is incredible.
At the same time, I have to say I disagree with their latest issue of Mission Frontiers, and in particular the “Amazing Countdown Facts.” I am bringing this up because it’s getting quite a lot of twitter traffic, and I think it deserves a closer inspection.
On p. 31 (the 2nd page of 4 in the Amazing Countdown Facts PDF), they suggest “what is needed.” Here they say that “at a minimum level” 32,000 missionaries are needed to engage the least-reached population segments among the world’s 8,000 unreached peoples.
My own estimate is about 5 times that high. Granted, I am including a number of World B (heavily evangelized non-Christians) peoples in my list, but I think it’s only right because I’m dealing with “unreached” vs. “least-reached” or “least-evangelized.” Even still that’s a huge discrepancy. Why the difference?
When you look closely at the chart, you realize that USCWM talks about 8,000 unreached peoples—and 32,000 missionaries for them. Let’s consider a different set of numbers on the chart: population. There are 8,000 peoples but looking at the pie chart, we see these people groups include:
- 3,300 Muslim peoples = 1,260 million individuals
- 1,200 Ethnoreligionists = 161 million
- 2,400 Hindus = 860 million
- 700 Buddhists = 275 million
For a grand total of 2,556 million people. So if 32,000 people engage this group, it equates to 1 missionary for 79,875 people.
Back at the early part of the century, we engaged the unreached at a ratio of about 1:40,000, and didn’t succeed in finishing the task. The researchers with the World Christian Encyclopedia project that by 2025 we might have 50,000 workers amongst the unreached—and the number of unevangelized (least-reached, least-evangelized, no-access people) will still be increasing by 12 million per year.
If 32,000 people each raise up 100 local ministries which each evangelize 1,000 people over 10 years – a conservative estimate – then they would reach 3,200,000,000 – which would in fact cover this segment. But I would argue that is overly optimistic! My estimate is that this is not going to happen. We need to think not of individuals but of teams. The team of people (remember, Jesus sent workers out 2-by-2) will do this kind of work.
I would estimate at a minimum we are going to need at least 32,000… teams! (My own number, published elsewhere, is 48,000 teams.) But the problem, of course, is that the problem doesn’t stand still. By 2050, population growth will add likely another 3 billion people, mostly to the unreached world. the job will grow half again as large, and we will need half again as many missionaries. My own estimate is 58,000 teams needed by 2050.
If the team is 2 to 3 people, then we’re talking about a need for 60,000 to 100,000 workers now, and close to 150,000 workers total by 2050.
That’s a much bigger, much more complex structure. I would certainly be happy for 32,000 workers sent. But I think that is probably very minimal and not enough to deal with the scale of the challenge in front of us.
I would look forward to hearing your comments – and especially comments from the folks at the USCWM! I certainly do agree with the optimism expressed in a statement on the same page:
“Despite the tremendous progress of the Gospel shown on the previous page, being able to actually finish the Great Commission still seems like an impossibility to some. That’s because most of us tend to look at the immensity of the job, without realizing all that God has placed at our disposal to do the job. The task before us is no doubt very large, but God has given His Church everything we need to do just as He commanded!”
See also:
- The Amazing Countdown Facts, Mission Frontiers, 9/2009
- Where are we going, Justin Long, http://www.strategicnetwork.org/2006/06/where-are-we-going
- What will it take to make a difference, Justin Long, http://www.strategicnetwork.org/2006/09/what-will-it-take-to-make-a-difference/
