The (not so?) Great Commission

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  The great commission.  Jesus' final words before he ascended into Heaven.  The objective of the Christian church; to finish the work that Jesus started of establishing the Kingdom of God through his church, by being the hands and feet of Jesus on earth.  So.  It's been 2000 years.  How are we coming along? 

Well, 42.1% (3 billion) of the world's population, 6,900 people groups, are still unreached.  There are 2.2 billion Christians in the world, 550 million of which are evangelicals.  There are 78,000 Evangelical Christians for every one unreached people group.  So how many missionaries are currently among the unreached?  13,315 or 0.0005% of Christians.  

The annual income of all church members in the world is $42 trillion.  Of that, $700 billion is given to Christian causes - church, missions, etc.  Of that, $45 billion is given to missions (which is $5 billion less than is embezzled annually by the church).  And of that, $45 million goes toward unreached people groups.  That's only 0.001% of Christians' income.  For every $100,000 earned, $1 goes toward reaching the unreached. 

Evangelical Christians could provide all of the funds needed to plant a church in each of the 6,900 unreached people groups with only 0.03% of their income.  The Church has roughly 3,000 times the financial resources and 9,000 times the manpower needed to finish the Great Commission.

Come on church!  What's going on here?  We are basically hoarding 99.99% of our income to ourselves and sending virtually nobody at all out to make disciples of all nations.  I will say though, as depressing as these statistics are, that God is still accomplishing his work, the mustard seed that Jesus planted in the garden is still growing whether people opt to help Him or not.  In the last 500 years Evangelicals have grown from 3 million to 550 million.  In the last century, the continent of Africa has gone from 9 million to 390 million Christians.  In 2006 alone there were 30 million new adherents to the faith.  Christianity continues to grow at a faster rate than ever before.  What an incredible opportunity there is to be a part of something so big and so important for the few who choose it!  Come on church, let's change those statistics!  We can finally be the generation that finishes the job and makes disciples of all nations!  I actually believe we might see it happen in our lifetime. 

statistics source: 

www.thetravelingteam.org/stats/

[1] International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1,  also World Christian Database, 2015,*Barrett and Johnson. 2001. World Christian Trends, pg 656, [2] Todd Johnson, Global Atlas of Christianity, pg 296, [3]. Baxter, Mark R. 2007. The Coming Revolution: Because Status Quo Missions Won't Finish the Job