Four Out of Five

In the first full week of June, our missionary staff, inquirers and candidates, together with a few members of our governing Council, gathered in retreat at a family resort near Balsam Lake, Wisconsin. We gathered to pray for the evangelization of the world. We gathered to strategize for its transformation, as faithfully and creatively as we could.

It will, perhaps, seem quaint.

In some circles of our Lutheran church, it will seem quaint to gather in prayer and consultation to plan for the evangelization of the world. It will seem strange, maybe, or immoderate to encourage our young people to think so big, so expansively, and to imagine a role in the transformation of the world by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Wasn’t that enterprise completed a generation ago? Isn’t the era of “missions” and “missionaries” over by this time?

Well, no.

Upon return to our offices in Minneapolis, we enjoyed a visit with a friend of ours from Delhi. He and his family have given their lives in service to the unreached, across the broad swath of North Africa and Central Asia often called the “Ten Forty Window.” He reminded us of a singular, startling fact: 86% of the world’s Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu persons do not personally know a Christian. (You will find this data in Johnson and Tieszen, 2007.) There is nothing quaint about numbers like these; there is only a task uncompleted.

It has become fashionable to suppose that the Christian missionary task, if it continues to command us at all, may be discharged effectively by sending our money to national churches among the world’s unreached populations. But here is the rub: there are no churches among the world’s great unreached populations. This is why we call them “unreached.” And if they are to be reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ, it can only be by the deliberate effort of missionaries crossing cultures – missionaries from north to south and south to north, east to west and west to east – missionaries who will learn languages and build friendships among peoples and cultures not their own.

St. Paul puts it this way: “How can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it? That’s why Scripture exclaims,

A sight to take your breath away! Grand processions of people telling all the good things of God!” (Romans 10:14-15, The Message)

Bridges of understanding, you see, cannot be built in a vacuum. Personal friendships are not invented out of thin air. Important things like these occur only and always in the context of actual, invested lives. They happen on the road. They happen in sacrifice and service. “How can they hear if nobody tells them?”

Our meetings in Balsam Lake were part of an entire month of prayer, planning and preparation: our annual missionary candidates’ Briefing Course. Fifteen candidates have participated in the event – candidates from Asia, Africa and North America, preparing themselves for service here and there around the world, too. They are the world church, at work around the world. They aim to become a part of the “grand procession” envisioned by Paul – and to reduce the number of unreached persons who have yet to meet a Christian.

If you read the Bible carefully, you will find that it is filled with verbs in the present tense. The Bible describes the mission of God – and not as an exercise for bygone times. It is not a project for other persons, or other churches and cultures, or other places and times. The mission of God seems always formulated in an ongoing, second person plural: you – follow me; you – make disciples; you – come along, and together we’ll change the world.

There is nothing quaint about that, I will tell you. Four out of five of the world’s unreached are waiting.