A Place at the Borderline

It is estimated that one third of our human family has yet to hear the Good News. More than two billion persons. The Good News is not broadcast on their radios. The Good News is not available in their bookstores. The church of Jesus Christ is not present in their neighborhoods. They have very little access to the Good News from heaven at all.

Over the course of the last century the percentage of the unevangelized has been trending downward, I am happy to report. It stood at 54% of the world’s population in 1900 and today it is just less than a third. Yet the overall numbers have increased. It is estimated that 880 million persons were unreached in 1900. Today, as we have said, there are more.?[1]

Two billion persons. Numbers like these represent a crisis for the Christian community – or they should. Since New Testament days, we have believed that “there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). That anyone, anywhere should have no relevant access to the saving Name – this should represent an unbearable emergency for believing Christian people.

The emergency arises just at the borderline between reached and unreached, faith and unbelief, communities familiar with the Name and others without access: this is where the gospel drives us. The gospel “wants to be… preached,” as Luther once said.?[2] It is irrepressibly, uncontainably good. Once we have believed it, the message itself drives us into the world to demonstrate and proclaim the wonderful news. This is what Christian mission is all about.

Lutheran missiologist James Scherer describes the mission of the church in this way: “Mission as applied to the work of the church means the specific intention of bearing witness to the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ at the borderline between faith and unbelief…. The entire life of the church has a missionary purpose, to be sure. But the heart of mission is always making the gospel known where it would not be known without a special and costly act of boundary-crossing witness.”?[3]

This is the “emergency” that has motivated the World Mission Prayer League through the years. It motivated us into the Andean highlands many years ago. It mobilized us to India, then to Africa, Central Asia, Europe, and beyond. In this month’s newsletter, you will read a story from the “Bahah” of the Philippines – one of the largest unreached and underserved people groups in the world.

And the emergency continues: there remain unreached and underserved people groups around the world. There are more missionaries overall, than there were one hundred years ago – a total of 417,000 cross-cultural missionaries at work in the world today. Yet relatively few are at work among the least-reached populations that surround us. The International Bulletin of Missionary Research reports that the world’s 4,400 least-reached peoples – representing 1.7 billion persons, or 25% of the world’s population – receive only about 7.5% of the world’s missionaries. This is true of the service of “national” missionaries, who cross cultural boundaries yet remain in their own country, and expatriate missionaries alike. Fewer than 10% have aligned themselves at the very place of emergency.?[4]

This does not mean that 90% of the world’s missionaries should be redeployed (although some of them, perhaps, should consider it.) There is much good and appropriate work to do, even where the church is established. You will read another story in this month’s newsletter from such a setting in Peru.

Figures like these mean that we need more missionaries – and more who are willing to serve among the least-reached peoples of the earth. We need men and women who are ready to give “whatever it takes” to get the job done. We need individuals who are prepared to work side-by-side in and with the world church, for the sake of the world beyond the church. And where our missionary family is at work and at prayer within an established church (as you are yourself, I suppose), we need to build vision and imagination for the “borderline between faith and unbelief.” We need to advocate the “special and costly act of boundary-crossing witness.”

This and nothing less, as we have said, is what Christian mission is all about.