Great Commission Deadline

Spurred on by the millennial spirit, independent missions strategists in the West have launched a multitude of plans to conquer the world for Christ within the next 12 years. Like a cruise missile locked on its target, they have zeroed in on the world’s unreached billions.

But is reaching the world by 2000 a realistic goal, or is it just a clever device for recruiting more missionaries and keeping the support monies coming?

CT asked Jim Reapsome, executive director of Evangelical Missions Information Service, to survey mission executives and missiologists for their responses.

Can the world be reached by the year 2000?

It is an intriguing question not easily answered. And its difficulty begins with the very word reached. What does it mean in the context of the Great Commission? For some, people who have had a chance to hear the gospel are “reached”; for others, it means the unbelievers who have turned to faith in Jesus Christ and are part of a church.

In launching “New Life 2000,” Campus Crusade’s Bill Bright used a common understanding of “reach.” “We prayerfully anticipate that at least one billion people will receive Jesus as Lord and Savior by the year 2000,” he said.

Technically, however, “reaching” has nothing to do with response. “Reaching is really an indication of the quality and extent of the effort to evangelize, not of discipling and church planting,” explained Patrick Johnstone of WEC International in England and compiler of the authoritative balance sheet of world missions, “Operation World.”

But that narrow definition has been broadened by others to include not only massive evangelistic efforts by radio, television, films, and literature, but also the making of disciples and the establishing of churches.

Some agencies that have set bold goals for 2000 are carrying out the biblical mandate to preach the gospel to every person. Others have set more measurable goals: like establishing at least one church within each ethnolinguistic group—in obedience to Christ’s command to make disciples.

Therefore, if you ask the telling agencies if reaching the world by 2000 is a realistic goal, you get a resounding yes. But if you talk to someone like Richard Winchell, general director of The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), a multifaceted agency, the answer is no. “There are far too many people swelling the world’s population for us to have any kind of hope like that,” Winchell said. “Eighty-five million people a year is the increase, not to mention those that are still lost. If the population of China would stand still, and we could have a ‘Pentecost’ every day with 3,000 saved in China, it would take 900 years before all China would be saved.”

Richard Sollis, of New Tribes Mission in Sanford, Florida, looks at the current rate of church-planting progress and agrees that the 2000 deadline is unrealistic; but “when our Lord decides to rattle the bones of his church—possibly through persecution—we may indeed finally see believers with his message scattered everywhere.”

Jim Montgomery, whose agency—Dawn Ministries, San Jose, California—seeks to mobilize churches for church planting on a nationwide basis, said he is “almost alarmed at the speed and intensity with which leaders embrace this concept.” He admits that “to plant, say, another 5 million churches in the right places all over the world in the next 12 years is an enormous task.” However, he believes that the resources—and the willingness—are available to reach the world by 2000, “by filling it with committed cells of believers.

Southern Baptist research consultant David Barrett, g editor of World Christian Encyclopedia, takes the broad view of “reached” as giving people an understandable hearing of the gospel. Even so, he projects that at the church’s present rate of evangelizing the world, 16.6 percent will still be unevangelized by the year 2000.

Four Challenges

Indeed, population growth is but one of a number of hurdles independent mission executives and missiologists pinpointed when discussing with CT the completion of the Great Commission by the year 2000. Among other challenges noted were:

• The church’s lagging commitment to world missions.
• Problems within mission agencies.
• Religious and political opposition.
• The high cost of missions.

Challenge 1: The church’s “commitment.” Ron Cline, president of HCJB World Radio, one of four missionary radio stations behind “The World By 2000” project, pointedly raised the issue of church commitment: “Will the church stay with us until the year 2000?” he asked. “Or, will it become interested in something else? Will it send people and finances, and support us with prayer? Or are we alone in our commitment to the lost of the world?”

A rousing battle cry thundered from WEC’s Patrick Johnstone: “Where is the church’s concept of militancy? Where is God’s mighty army, its members wearing the badge of suffering? Where is our exultant determination to take the world by storm for our King?”

The world won’t be won, he claims, so long as the church’s structure, terminology, and theological education have a “built-in bias to produce static hierarchies, buildings, and a comfortable lifestyle for its members.”

This means it is harder to find people “totally committed to the will of God, regardless of the cost,” noted Ian Hay, general director of SIM International. Hay questioned whether churches are “producing the kind of people who can meet the spiritual challenge” of the times.

Reaching the world by 2000 will demand the church’s total mobilization; but Richard Sollis, of New Tribes, claimed that few churches take the task of world evangelization seriously enough “to make it the program of the church, rather than a program of the church.” He sees confusion and error in establishing church priorities. “By insufficient vision, discipleship, and obedience, the church has bottle-necked the flow of personnel and resources needed to do the job,” he said.

In a nutshell, apathetic Christians are the biggest hurdle to overcome.

Challenge 2: Problems from within. Independent mission agencies themselves appear to be handcuffed by a number of serious obstacles. Among them:

• Dependence on Western mission structures, which stymie development of partnerships with mission agencies and churches in other countries.
• Failure to cooperate. Ron Cline fears continued “competition with one another, while great groups of lost people go without the gospel.”
• Fear of change. This management weakness leads to an unwillingness to look at new strategies and makes decision making in the home office or overseas extremely difficult.
• Waste and duplication. WEC’s Patrick Johnstone attributes this obstacle to “organizational isolationism,” which he graphically describes in terms that are usually reserved for the world’s corporate structures: “empire building, jockeying for power and position, jealous guarding of funding structures and supporting constituencies.”

Challenge 3; Religious and political opposition. The hurdle familiar to most laypeople—religious and political opposition—was surprisingly not a big concern of the mission executives and missiologists surveyed. They agreed with Denver Seminary’s Ralph Covell that our “problems are more internal than external.” However, trouble erupts, according to Ian Hay, “when a mission society enters territory that has long been Satan’s domain.”

David Hesselgrave, missiologist at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, succinctly articulated these external troubles as “totalitarianism, anticonversion efforts, closed and partially closed countries, martyrdoms, the resurgence of non-Christian religions and world views, and demonic activity.”

Research consultant David Barrett estimates that the average annual rate of martyrdoms will jump to 500,000 by the year 2000 from the present 335,000. In the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (Jan. 1987), he writes: “This century’s biggest killer has proved to be civil terror. Since 1900, 119 million innocent citizens have been tortured, shot, slaughtered, killed, or otherwise executed by their own governments. The great majority have been Christians. As a ‘sign from God,’ this appalling statistic warns us about the escalating conflict between church and state, and hence our future prospects in global mission.”

Challenge 4: The high cost of missions. Although more than $1.3 billion was given to North American Protestant mission agencies in 1985, some experts fear a financial shortfall will preclude their reaching the world by 2000. Trinity’s Hesselgrave observed that “affluence has a way of numbing mission concern.” He claims that, when adjusted for inflation, overall missions giving is not increasing as much as the cost of missions.

When it comes to world evangelization, Hesselgrave fears that “more attention and funding devoted to keeping missionaries equipped and well cared for” will have a damaging effect on the effort to reach the unreached.

So Why The Date Setting?

What is the point, then, in rallying the independent mission agencies and the churches to try to finish the Great Commission by the year 2000? Simply answered, both need a good dose of goal-oriented revitalization.

“Unless we have something to aim at, we won’t hit it,” said SIM’s Hay. “In 1910, our forebears sought to reach the world in their generation. Did they do it? No. But they stimulated an army of missionaries. The fact that the church is a worldwide reality today stems from the work of God’s Spirit through his people as a result of that kind of vision.”

Despite the hurdles, leaders see 1988 as a propitious time to move ahead. With people and money at their disposal, the time is ripe. “Today is a day of great opportunity, unparalleled in the history of the church,” said John Bendor-Samuel, executive vice-president of Wycliffe Bible Translators International, Dallas, Texas. “It is hard to project a better time for world evangelization in the more distant future,” said Trinity’s David Hesselgrave.

And although he thinks that “reach the world by 2000” campaigns “reflect a rather simplistic view of the gospel and what it means to become a follower of Jesus Christ,” Denver Seminary’s Ralph Covell sees value in setting goals. “Why not be more realistic and say that we want to reach 300 unreached groups by 2000? This comes out to about 15 a year. This would be hard enough.”

Full Speed Ahead—Regardless

Thus, whether or not the churches are up to providing the people and the money needed over the next 12 years, mission agencies are not standing still.

Hesselgrave sees some agencies “changing too much and too often, following now this end-all strategy and now that one.” But overall, “most missions are much more sensitive to the need for effective strategies than has been the case in the past.”

They are consequently moving toward partnership overseas and cooperation at home. “God is raising up a dedicated army of witnesses in other countries,” said SIM’s Ian Hay. Asians have become part of his mission, Africans are on the way.

Projects are either already under way, or are on the drawing boards for joint efforts to disciple whole nations in 13 countries, with 12 different parachurch groups taking the leadership.

“Interdependence seems to be the word in vogue,” says John Bendor-Samuel. “The go-it-alone attitude has been abandoned. There is very real hope for a relationship that recognizes the mutual needs, skills, and resources of all.”

The broadcasters are working together. “We have admitted that we are not alone and we cannot do the job by ourselves,” said HCJB’s Ron Cline. “We are working at trusting one another and not questioning motives.”

Two major tactical moves are urban church planting and “tentmaker” witness, whereby Christian professionals pursue their careers in countries that do not permit traditional missionaries. “We are working in 25 so-called world-class cities,” said team’s Richard Winched. “We don’t represent the hope for the entire city, but we will roll up our sleeves and do what we can.”

The number of opportunities for witnessing teachers, doctors, engineers, and so on in restricted-access countries is mounting—more than there are people to fill them. More and more agencies are cultivating this ministry as a supplement to their other work. Some of them offer counseling and training to professionals before they leave. No one sees this as a cure-all, but rather as one more tool to reach the unreached.

Researcher Barrett called for more research, cooperation, and planning. “The biggest hurdle of all is the ignorance of one part of the Christian world of another part. Nobody knows the whole picture.”

To make a start in that direction, the Southern Baptists convened a meeting of 20 missions leaders last September. In addition to calling for the churches to pray and fast during Pentecost each year from now until the year 2000, these leaders created an ad hoc research group, headed by World Vision’s Ed Dayton, to find out if a common data base of unreached groups could be established.

Barrett said he hopes to complete an analysis of the data and have it published late this year. Asking all agencies to contribute information, he said his files would be open until June.

Seeing the approach of the end of the century, and taking stock of both their resources and the magnitude of the task, independent agencies have taken on a new zeal to get the job done. Not only are they sharpening their focus on the unreached world, they are also throwing down the gauntlet to the churches.

“We have asked the Lord first to keep us continually challenged with the task of world evangelism, and then to use us to present a bold and uncompromising challenge to the churches,” said New Tribes’ Richard Sollis.

If “reach the world by 2000” campaigns help them to do that, then the efforts will lead not only to the multiplication of conversions and churches, but also to an explosion of missions interest, prayer, and giving among the rank-and-file at home.

A former managing editor of Christianity Today magazine, Jim Reapsome is executive director of Evangelical Missions Information Service, Wheaton, Illinois.

Happy 2000Th Birthday

According to missions researcher David Barrett: “Of history’s 300 distinct plans to complete world evangelization, those referring to A.D. 2000 have numbered at least 70. Fifty of these plans are still alive today.”

Included among those plans (and the agencies sponsoring each) are the following:

• To provide every person the chance to hear the gospel on the radio in a language they can understand (Far East Broadcasting Co., HCJB World Radio, Trans World Radio, ELWA [SIM International]).
• To fulfill the Great Commission in Europe (Operation Mobilization).
• To mobilize churches in every country to disciple the unreached (Dawn Ministries).
• To reach all of Asia (Asian Outreach).
• To reach every home (Every Home for Christ).
• To help tell every person in every country that there is new life available in Jesus Christ (New Life 2000, Campus Crusade for Christ).

By James Reapsome.

“You Speak English?”

In addition to the major challenges of lagging commitment, rising costs, internal struggles, and religious and political opposition, the mission executives and missiologists surveyed also listed some other “strategic hurdles” confronting their agencies as they work to complete the Great Commission.

• A poor grasp of communications principles. Ralph Covell, missiologist at Denver Seminary, credits mission agencies for using radio, literature, television, and films—all of them major components in “reach the world by 2000” campaigns. But he wonders if we have learned how to make the gospel intelligible to people who have radically different world views. “Technology,” said Covell, “is at the periphery of communication.”
• A lack of necessary data. Mission agencies are looking for ways to overcome the basic hurdle of identifying the people who still need to be reached. “Without hard data, the dream of reaching the world for Christ becomes nothing more than that—a dream,” said Jim Montgomery, president of Dawn Ministries. Part of the data bottleneck is due to lack of precise agreement about what constitutes an unreached area or group. When lists have been published, mission agencies on the scene have said, “No, that’s not right. We do have churches in such and such a tribe.” Another hindrance is that various agencies compile their own lists, according to their specific goals.
• Language barriers. John Bendor-Samuel, executive vice-president of Wycliffe Bible Translators, pointed out that “millions of men and women are denied access to the knowledge of Jesus Christ because it has never been communicated to them in a language which they really grasp.”

• Lack of unified church-planting goals. Whatever methods mission agencies use to reach the world by 2000, it is clear that the agencies and the existing churches in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America must work together toward commonly accepted goals. With the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization planning its next gathering for 1989, some mission leaders suggest that this would be the best forum for agreeing on goals.

Among other strategic roadblocks, New Tribes’ Richard Sollis cited:

• Packing too many missionaries in some places and neglecting some others;
• Western-style methods that call for people to make decisions “without the missionary-evangelist first laying the essential biblical foundations”;
• Failure to see the difference between people’s “felt” needs and their primary spiritual need;
• Not making pioneer church-planting work “the number one priority.”

By James Reapsome.

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