What Is the State of Global Mission Outreach?
As I began writing this article, the President’s “State of the Union” address was about 24 hours away. Even with the current deep polarization in U.S. politics, this address is an important part of our governmental framework and our history. It dates to 1790 with the first report given by President George Washington, fulfilling the constitutional requirement for the President to inform Congress about the state of the nation. Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution requires the president to “from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient”.
If our country needs an annual update on the ‘state of the nation’, how much more do Christians need a report on the status of Jesus’ command to His church to “Go and make disciples of all the nations” (‘ethne’) (Matthew 28:19). The Barna Research Group published an in-depth study by that name in 2021 which is fascinating and insightful, but outside the scope of this writing. The most disturbing finding was that only 17% of church attenders ‒ fewer than 1 in 5 ‒ had heard of the Great Commission and actually knew what it meant!
What Is the State of the World?
My question: how is the work progressing globally? Where are those with little or no access to the Gospel? What is the “State of the World”? This is a Global snapshot summarizing the work carried out by national leaders, missionaries, mission agencies, and churches around the world. It is what is being done and taking stock of what remains! Considering the ‘state of the world’, we also need to personally and congregationally look at what we are doing, are not doing, and how we are practically and personally engaged in the global mission mandate given by the resurrected Christ to His Church!
One key source for this Global Assessment comes from the Lausanne Movement, which held its Fourth Congress on World Evangelization in Incheon, Korea in September 2024. Pastor Tom & Deuane Thorstad, part of our ALWM team serving in Laos, were in attendance, looking at gaps and opportunities in global mission as 2033, and then 2050 get ever closer. Was I just a little envious? Yep! The first gathering was in 1974.
“Billy Graham’s global travels revealed a disconnection among Christian leaders, prompting him to convene the First International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974. This sparked a movement characterized by humility, friendship, prayer, and partnership, known as ‘the spirit of Lausanne’, and led to further global gatherings, collaboration, and strategic efforts that would shape global mission for the next five decades and beyond.”
Important missiological terms such as ‘people groups’ and ‘quantifying the least reached/unreached peoples that inform and shape global mission’, were not new concepts but were brought forward into focus as a part of the impetus flowing from Lausanne, 1974. The Lausanne movement the past 50 years has been rooted in the idea of assessing where we are in Global mission and what remains to be done. (Visit Lausanne.org for valuable and interesting information!)
Current Global Mission Statistics
The Traveling Team is an evangelical mission ministry working on college campuses to mobilize young people to answer God’s call to the nations. It is a reliable source for a wide range of helpful and sobering statistical information about the current state of Global mission world-wide.
Here are just a few of the stats found there:
WORLDIDE POPULATION GLOBAL (updated February 2024)
- 8.12 billion
- Median age – total: 30 years
- Life expectancy – total population: 67 years
TOP TEN MOST POPULOUS COUNTRIES
- India 1.43 billion
- China 1.42 billion
- United States 341 Million
- Indonesia 279 Million
- Pakistan 243 Million
- Nigeria 227 Million
- Brazil 217 Million
- Bangladesh 173 Million
- Russia 144 Million
- Mexico 129 Million
Total People Groups: 17,281
UNREACHED PEOPLE GROUPS
- Less than 2% Evangelical Christian.
- Total Unreached People Groups: 7,246
- Total Population of UPGs: 3.39 billion people
- Total Percentage of world: UPG’s make up 41.8% of world population
UNEVANGELIZED PEOPLES
- Greater than 2% Evangelical Christian but still great numbers of unsaved.
- Total Unevangelized People Groups: 2,906
- Total Population: 799.7 million
- Total Percentage of world: the unevangelized make up 9.9% of world population
REACHED PEOPLES
- Greater than 2% Evangelical Christian or majority Christian Population
- Total Reached People Groups: 7,129
- Total 82% goes to Home ministries of local churches (mostly Christian nations): $1 trillion [2]
- 12% goes to Home Evangelism in same Christian Population: 3.8 billion
- Total Percentage of world: the reached population makes up 46.9% of world population
STEWARDSHIP WITHIN CHRISTIANITY
WHAT CHRISTIANS EARN:
Annual Income of all Church Members: $70 trillion. [1]
WHAT CHRISTIANS Give:
Only 1.86% is “tithed” to any Christian causes: $1.3 trillion.
How are Ministry Donations Used:
- nations: $156 billion [2]
- Only 6% of this “tithe” goes to general Missions: $78 billion
What Missions Money is used to Reach the Unreached?
- Only 1.7% of “Missions Giving” goes to work among Unreached Peoples Estimated $1.32 billion (1.7% of the $78b for general “missions”) [3]
- For every $100,000 that Christians make, they give $1.83 to the unreached.
If you were in a ballroom with a fifty-foot ceiling and the ceiling represented what Christians earned, you could stand two dollar bills, end to end, 12” from the floor to represent what Christians tithe. But to see how little is used for the unreached you would have to stack both bills and lay them flat. (roughly 1/2 mm).4
I was a math major in college, so I do enjoy statistics. They are not everyone’s favorite thing, But they often do paint a picture. The story told here is about misplaced priorities and redeployment of resources, especially when it pertains to working among those unreached and least reached with the Gospel. These include places where ALWM, the agency I serve, works, for example: places like Bangladesh, Belarus, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar & Vietnam. Only 1.7% of missions giving goes to ministry to the unreached! In addition, the ratio of fulltime Christian workers to Christians in the reached world is about 1 to 450, while in the unreached world the ratio of missionaries to the unreached population its about 1 to 255,000. (That statistic was among the many things God used in my life as He called me from parish ministry to global mission ministry full time in 2004.)
What Is Your Role?
Where do you fit? What is your role in God’s global call to the nations? Does your congregation weigh any of these factors as it considers global mission? My experience with over 35 years in global mission, the last 22 full-time, is that in our Lutheran family many of these concepts unfortunately are relatively unknown.
Yet these concepts and others like them are essential for meaningful, strategic, and effective global mission involvement! Informing and inspiring national leaders and congregations in our Lutheran family about the actual ‘state of the church’ in global mission is why the Lord led me to establish ALWM in 2007, expanded it in 2015, and with the leadership of Rev. Kent Groethe helped launch CGM Magazine in 2021!
I invite you to read my Ideas from Churches article in this issue as I suggest practical ways to get a snapshot of the “State of Global Mission” in your own congregation.
In Christ for the nations,
Bill Moberly, CGM Editor
