Heading in the Wrong Direction
When I started working in the Middle East about a decade ago, I was astonished to discover that over 40% of the earth’s ethno-linguistic people groups were considered unreached, that is, without a witness of the gospel. I remember the exact number because it was emblazoned on my heart: 6,943. That was the number that our small team brought before the Lord of the Harvest, prayed into, wept over. I determined back then that if there was anything worth giving my life to, it would be to see that number decrease.
A few months ago, I was on a plane, flying back from spending a week at one of our indigenous ministry schools in the 10-40 window. I had taught a weeklong intensive on the Person of Christ. It was an incredible week to watch these emerging leaders, the majority that came out of Muslim backgrounds, absorb hours and hours of Christology; some hearing for the first time the doctrines of Jesus’ pre-existence, incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension, and return. Tears ran down their cheeks as I taught about the cross. Joy and courage filled their hearts as they heard about God’s grand plan for all things made manifest in the Person of Jesus Christ. It was truly amazing. While I was there, our local pastors in the country informed me that indigenous churches from around the region were inquiring about sending their young leaders to be trained at our Missions Base and House of Prayer. I was deeply encouraged; my heart was bursting with all the possibilities that lay ahead. I found myself thinking, “Lord it’s happening! You are really doing this!” I settled into my seat for the long flight back to the States and opened my computer to catch up on some work. I was behind on updating our information booklets for MAPS and opened joshuaproject.org, one of the leading research groups on world evangelization, to find updated statistics on the progress of world evangelization. As I perused the site, my eyes fell to the global summary of the home page:
Unreached People Groups: 7,403
At first, I thought there certainly had to be some kind of mistake. It could not be possible that there are more UPG’s now than ten years ago. I tried to figure out what was going on and searched through the site. And then it hit me, Joshua Project updates their statistics every ten years and this was the new number. My heart sank. When I started working in the Middle East a decade ago, that number was 6,943, today the number of ethno-linguistic people groups in the earth has risen to 7,403. That is almost a 7% increase.
What does this mean? This means 7,403 tribes, families, and people groups are without a witness of the gospel.
Fresh tears ran down my face once again. I felt as though I had just experienced emotional whiplash. I tried to reconcile what I was reading with all the language that has been used over the last ten to twenty years in the Charismatic movement and in broader Evangelicalism. I found myself saying over and over, “Lord, how can this be?” When you look at the trends of the church in America over the last twenty years, it is hard to understand how we got here.
Millennials are the first generation in history to be handed all the information, data, statistics, names, and locations of every Unreached People Group on the planet, and on our watch, the number of Unreached People Groups went up.
In the last two decades, there have been more stadium gatherings, more prophetic media channels, more worship music produced, and more conferences hosted than ever before in history… and in that same time frame, the number of Unreached People Groups went up.
The decade of 2010-2020 was known for the proliferation of multisite mega-churches. Almost a third of all mega-churches in America have started after 2011. In the same time frame, missionary-sending from America has dropped by 32%. Follow that for a second. Let it sink in. Our church growth strategies got bigger and our engagement with the Great Commission got smaller at the same time and the number of Unreached People Groups went up.
We have spent millions of dollars on marketing, millions of dollars on bigger structures, thousands of hours on brand creation, all to get our name out there and it has been at the expense of getting His name to the ends of the earth.
The numbers don’t lie.
In the last two decades, the prevailing missiology of the Church in America has been a “take-over” mentality. “Take-over” spheres of influence. “Take-over” government. “Take-over” social narratives, communication mediums, and political parties. That missiology has replaced the missiology of the New Testament “Go and make disciples of all nations”. I still remember it like yesterday; a few years ago I was on a conference call with leaders from across the Body of Christ who had invited me to share what God was doing with our little missions organization, MAPS Global. I shared the incredible testimonies of what we were seeing across the Muslim World and the great need for laborers. (The ratio of missionary to indigenous person in the Muslim world is 1 to 450,000) When I finished, another leader on the call chimed in cautioning me to not put too much focus on foreign missions because “we need people in the marketplace too.” I was stunned. I couldn’t even process the dichotomy that was just presented. Hundreds of millions of believers in America are working in the marketplace, living out their faith, and being a witness of Jesus and His kingdom. We have a few thousand in the 10-40 window. It is not even close to being a competing agenda. All the while, the language of revival and awakening has been propagated in the last twenty years in some streams in the Body of Christ. In that same time frame, the statistics on church growth have plummeted in almost every category. While this missiology of “spherical take-over” has been in full effect, the mandate to the ends of the earth has been placed on the shelf. In fact, The Barna Group confirmed as much in 2018 when it published a study called Translating the Great Commission, in which it reported that 82% of churchgoers in America have never heard of or could not identify the Great Commission. On all accounts, we are heading in the wrong direction. We have taken a detour from the apostolic missiology, and we are heading 100 mph in another direction.
Dear Church, we are heading in the wrong direction. We have an alignment problem that must be urgently addressed.
We must have the courage to stop, look, and listen to what Heaven could be saying right now. Just because some might have the resources to keep the machine going, doesn’t mean that we should. We must get honest with ourselves and before God right now. When we aren’t aligned with God’s mission, God will frustrate our momentum. We will spend much effort and reap little results. (see Haggai 1:6-9) The outpouring of the Holy Spirit we are all yearning for will only be in connection with our alignment with Jesus’ Commission. Jesus' command to “Go...and disciple all nations” was on the same mountain and in the same moment where He stood in Acts chapter 1 and promised the power of the Holy Spirit to come upon His church. When we look at Acts chapter 1-2, the Spirit was poured out upon the church to empower her to give a witness of the gospel to the ends of the earth and to make disciples of all nations (ethnos), not to build bigger brands and bigger buildings. Pentecost was about power for an impossible task that was global. The evidence was manifest on day one,
And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews, and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians--we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." - Acts 2:8-11
As numbers began to be added daily to the church in Jerusalem and unprecedented signs and wonders were being done at the hands of the Apostles, the busyness of revival overtook the purpose of the revival. It is clear by Acts chapter 6 that there are significant problems simmering under the surface of this revival community. Instead of addressing the cultural issues in the movement, the Apostles were just trying to manage the complexity that came with the growth of the ministry in Jerusalem and the “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8) mandate had come to sit on the shelf of the prophetic history of the Apostles. We soon find out that the activity around revival was hiding something underneath even more adverse to the Great Commission.
Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. - Acts 6:1
When the food was being distributed, they passed over the culturally and ethnically different widows. They saved the best for their own. It wasn’t busyness alone, but also racism that caused the church in Jerusalem to neglect those that were in need that were not the “same” as them. That root of racism fed the apathy in the Jerusalem church towards nations without the gospel. They interpreted the outpouring of the Spirit as primarily for their ministry to prosper and grow, not for the nations of the earth to hear a witness. Ten years into this revival, people in need were being purposely neglected and no one had been commissioned and sent to the nations.
They had an alignment problem. They found themselves out of alignment with Jesus’ Commission, so God initiated a shaking and trouble in the church to help dislodge these strongholds from His church and get them in motion towards His mission.
And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ. - Acts 8:1-5
This shaking scattered all that had been built over the last decade in the Jerusalem church. Jesus shook that tree and pruned it all the way back to the men who He started with; “except the apostles.” What proceeded was about a decade or so of wandering about from place to place looking for a new place to settle. Not only were they looking for a new home, God was looking for a people who would align His heart and mission. Finally, in Acts 11, a new wineskin emerged from the scattered seeds of Jerusalem in Antioch. It was here that Jesus found a people that would minister to the Lord (Acts 13:2), take His Commission seriously, deal head-on with racism (Acts 11:20; Gal 2:11-13), and set their hearts to send no matter who the Lord placed His hand on. Here, the hand of the Lord was with them (Acts 11:21). Their alignment with Jesus’ Commission released an outpouring of the Spirit and apostolic assignments. Antioch became the Apostolic hub and sending center of the New Testament and the Missions base for the Apostle Paul and Barnabas.
Beloved, it is time to come to terms with reality. The number of Unreached People Groups is rising, the number of missionaries is decreasing. We have built around the “attract and gather model” of Jerusalem and this, in my opinion, is being shaken right now. We must instead begin re-orienting around the “presence-centered sending model” of Antioch. We must, with the Holy Spirit’s help begin to take a hard look at all that we are putting our ministry energy and resources to and ask:
How much of what we are putting our time, energy, and ministry resources to is directly connected to the command of Jesus to make disciples of all nations (ethnos)? Truly?
How much time, energy, and ministry resources are we putting to endeavors that are not aligned with the explicit missiology of the New Testament church and leaders?
How much are we pushing our programs and vision at the expense of caring for people who are in need or making disciples?
Is the center of our ministry strategy commercialization or the abiding Presence of the Living God?
If the prophetic and revival movements continue to turn a blind eye to racism in the church, if we continue to prophesy with no accountability, if we continue to put our prophetic mandates ahead of the gospel, if we continue to build ministries at the expense of people, if we continue to set the Great Commission on the shelf in place of building bigger audiences, buildings, and social media followings, then the Lord Jesus will shake this tree and bring forth new trees from the scattered seeds that aligned with His mission. If we will not align our resources, time, energy, and efforts with Jesus' Commission in Acts 1:8, then the Lord Jesus will begin to do Acts 8:1 with us. One way or another, He will get His glorious gospel to the ends of the earth.
