At this point, you’ve probably read my previous post about how God brought me to the point of considering missions as a full time career. (If you missed it, you can check it out here!) What you don’t know is that during my college years, I swore I would NOT go to the 10/40 window.
The reason?
I was tired of the guilt trip.
They used everything from statistics to Bible verses. I sat through multiple presentations with colorful maps. All to try and convince me that I needed to go to places I was afraid of, had no connection with, or had directly attacked my country. So at the risk of this post sounding like another one of those, let me just say that my purpose is NOT to heap guilt on anyone. I firmly believe you should go where God calls you. If you read this entire thing and decide to stay in America, I will gladly go to bat for you against anyone who says you’re not doing enough, as if they could measure your impact in the Kingdom of God any more than they can measure their own.
The point of this post IS to share some facts that struck me during Training Camp; why I’ve chosen to go on Expedition, specifically; and why I feel called to the Arab world as a full-time missionary, eventually.
So, in true missions presentation fashion, let’s start with a colorful map from the Joshua Project.
Each dot in this map represents a people group. A people group is defined as a group with a shared ethnolinguistic (culture & language) heritage.
Yes, there’s a LOT of dots.
Quick side note: the dots are located at the center of that people group’s typical area of inhabitation, and are not proportional to the number of people in that group. So a 100-man village in Northern Russia shows up the same size as the Han Chinese, with a population of 1.3 trillion worldwide.
The colors represent how “reached” the people group is. For the purposes of this map, a people group is considered reached (green) if they have access to the gospel.
—> Access means there is enough information, churches or people who are Evangelical Christian such that a person in that group would reasonably be able to find out about Jesus if they had such a desire.
—> Enough is defined as 2%.Yes, 2%. That means, for a dot to be green, 2% of the population must be evangelical christian.
Seems low, right? But the Joshua Project has found that the minimum evangelical population to have a reproducible ministry that can eventually saturate a community is 2%.
I don’t think I need to tell you that the red dots represent an unreached people group, which is a group with less than 2% of people who are evangelical Christian.
The 10/40 window is the area with the red dots between latitude 10N and 40N. 97% of unreached people groups live here, for a total of 3,000,000,000 people, or about 1/3 of the world’s population.
And yet, only 3% of missionaries go here, for a total of 13,000.
To reach 2%, each missionary in the 10/40 window would have to see 4,600 people put their faith in Jesus as Lord.
So why don’t people go to the red dots? If the goal is to have every nation, tribe and tongue singing God’s praises, why aren’t we focusing our attention on the people who need it most?
Well, a lot of really good reasons, actually, including reach-ability, language and cultural barriers, media and fear, and exposure. This last one struck me the most at training camp. Often, people feel a call to the first place they travel on a short term mission trip, but American churches rarely send people to these more “dangerous” places.
Let me reiterate that this post is not intended to be a guilt trip. Not in the slightest. People who live in America: we need you. I need you. I would not be able to go if you weren’t faithfully working a job and supporting your local church, which in turn supports the spread of the gospel both locally and internationally. The Bible does say to go (Matthew 28:16-20), but it also says we are all members of a body, and if everyone were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? (1 Cor 12:12-30).
People who are called to reached people groups: we need you. I need you. Your church plant in Guatemala may one day send missionaries who possess an innate understanding of culture and worldview that I can never have, to places I will never be able to reach. The Bible says to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:16-20), and you are doing that!
So how CAN I help?
1. Support missionaries & organizations that are self-replicating, no matter their location. The goal of any missionary (should be) to plant a church that will eventually send out their own missionaries. The American missionary who goes to Belgium, though they work among a “reached” people group, may establish a church which sends missionaries into places American passports couldn’t reach.
2. Connect with an unreached people group in America. These are our immigrant and refugee populations. God is using the refugee crisis to bring the unreached people groups of the world to our doorstep!
3. Learn more and tell others! The Joshua Project is an excellent resource. You can also check out the following blogs by my squamates:
- Dylan’s blog: The Truth About the 10/40 Window
- John & Victoria’s Takeaways from Training Camp
- Jake’s “Where am I going? What am I doing there?” blog series, which outlines each of the countries we will visit. Definitely check this out if you’re interested in learning more about any of our locations!
4. Consider supporting me as I go on the Race. I still have about $6,800 left to raise, and I leave in three weeks! We won’t have time to translate any Bibles, but we could meet people who are seeking God but don’t have anyone to ask, or act as a critical connection point between seekers and the local church.
5. Pray, pray, pray! Pray for God to open doors and raise up workers. Pray for people in these countries to receive dreams and visions of Jesus. Please also pray for me, as this year will be another step in the process of discerning God’s will for my life. Right now I think I will end up somewhere in the Arab world, but I don’t know which country yet. Pray that God would reveal this to me!
God is so good.
These statistics, which used to make me feel guilty, now just make me excited. People, God is at work in the nations of the world. And we are all one huge body that is making a big difference. If we think individualistically, calling this task overwhelming is a gross understatement. But God is not calling us to do this alone. Not only are we part of a global church, but we also partner with a global God. Everyone, everywhere is a missionary—just some of us live in our home country, and some don’t.
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus. So go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded! And lo, He is with us always, even to the end of the age! (Matthew 28:16-20).
A note from the author:
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