Mission trips… why do people do them? They can put a bad taste in some peoples mouths. Why build schools when there are skilled workers that need the work? Why spend a week with an orphanage only to leave? Shouldn’t you use take the money you fundraise and just send it to the people over there? Do you really make a difference doing short term mission work? These are all very good questions, a lot of times, missions don’t really seem “worth it”. In this blog post, I am going to say why it is worth it to me.
To even begin with this post, I am going to give some background on what I will be doing. The World Race is an 11 month mission trip to 11 countries. AKA, 11 short term mission trips. The World Race has different routes that you can apply to. My route is 10/40 window focused, referring to the eastern regions falling between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator (I will explain the significance of this area later). Each country will look different than the next according to the need of that area. The kind of work we will be doing is more evangelism focused, meaning the heartbeat of this mission is to tell people about the gospel. So some days we will be in villages, cleaning up, visiting orphanages, but a lot of the time we will be in coffee shops, in markets, in cities and touristy areas, telling people about Jesus Christ and who he is.
With the internet, doesn’t everybody know who Jesus is? Isn’t that kind of… annoying? Why go into somebody’s culture and try to change it? I will answer all of these questions! Let me preface, not everybody reading this is Christian. If you are reading this and you are not a follower of Jesus, I respect your opinion and beliefs and hope that you can respect mine as well, I am going to speak about what I believe and why I think it is important, and you may disagree and that is ok! Any way, let’s get started with the Great Commission. After Jesus suffered death and was buried, and came back to life, he spent time with his disciples. He told the disciples all about the kingdom of God, and told them that he was going to leave again and ascend into heaven. He leaves the disciples with a command to go into all nations and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. (Matthew 28:16-20). So, the disciples did. So we are commanded to tell every nation about Jesus and raise up disciples, but hasn’t that already happened? Actually , we are failing sort of miserably as Christ followers when it comes to this. Please stay with me here, these upcoming statistics are so important!
Since there are so many different languages and cultures within a country, a better definition of a nation is a people group. So we are going to look at our progress by studying different people groups! 40% of all people groups are unreached, meaning these groups can’t know the gospel, and won’t know the gospel. Of these people groups, 97% of these people groups live in the 10/40 window. Almost half the world has no chance of ever hearing about Jesus Christ, and of those people, 97% fall in this area, that is astounding! The purpose of a mission is to show people and tell people about the love of Jesus Christ. So surely, most missionaries are going to the 10/40 window… right? Wrong! Roughly 3% of all Christian missionaries go to this area. 3% of all missionaries are going to the 97% of people who have no chance of hearing about Jesus. “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” Romans 10:14. The people who need missionaries the most are receiving them the least, the harvest is very plentiful and the laborers are few!
So what needs to change to accomplish the great commission? Well, there are 1700 languages that don’t have a single bible verse in their native tongue. Actually, of all 6500 languages in the world, only 553 languages have a complete translation of the bible. There are upwards of 900 full english translations, however. Do we need more American neighbors to come to Christ? Well, yes! It would be amazing to see everybody come to know Jesus. But, for every 3 Americans, there is one evangelical Christian to help disciple them. For every 300,000 Unreached person in the 10/40 window, there is one evangelical Christian to disciple them. I don’t know if you have ever tried to disciple 300,000 people at one time, but Jesus stopped at 12. Missions are expensive, maybe we could accomplish the great commission if we had more money? Well… for every $100,000 that is tithed (given to the local church), $100 is given to missions, and $1 is allocated to Unreached people groups. Meaning we give 100,000 times more to the local church than we do to 97% of the people who will never hear about Jesus.
Did you know, at current rates, instead of making progress on the great commission we are actually regressing as the 10/40 window population grows? I could take a handful of rice that represented missionaries and throw it on a paper map, and that would actually work better than our current strategy. We have plenty of Christians, we have plenty of churches, we have plenty of finances. We are not accomplishing the great commission because we are not allocating properly.
So, with all that being said, is what I am doing worth it? Absolutely. I don’t care how much it costs, how much of a disruption it is, how many things I will miss. Almost half of this world has no chance of ever hearing about Jesus, meaning they couldn’t accept him even if they wanted to. If a single person comes to know Jesus on this journey, they are worth every penny, every little sacrifice, every bit of heartache. To whoever made it to the end of this post, thank you for reading what was said. If you are a Christ follower, please prayerfully consider this information. Please listen to the possible small voice telling you to go or to help send somebody else. God is desperate for these people, but it requires real action on our part.
