The Urgent Need For A 10/40 Window Prayer Meeting
When I started working in the 10/40 Window almost a decade and a half ago, I was astonished to discover that over 40% of the earth’s tribes (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 with tears and earnest prayer. I determined back then that if there was anything worth giving my life to, it would be to see that number decrease.
In 2020, I was on a plane, flying back from spending a week at one of our Mission Bases in the 10/40 Window, teaching in our indigenous ministry schools. I had taught a weeklong intensive on the Person of Christ from Genesis to Revelation. It was an incredible week to watch these emerging leaders, the majority who had come 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, 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 Mission Base. 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 Global 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 on 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 there were when we first started working in the 10/40 Window years ago. I tried to figure out what was going on and searched through the site. Then it hit me. Joshua Project updates their statistics every ten years, and this was the new number. My heart sank. When we started working in the 10/40 Window, that number was 6,943. A decade later, the number of ethno-linguistic people groups without access to the gospel had risen to 7,403.
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. How could I 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 not hard to understand how we got here.
The decade of 2010-2020 was known for the proliferation of multisite mega-churches. Almost a third of all mega-churches in America started after 2011. In the same time frame, missionary-sending from America dropped by 32%. Follow that for a second. Let it sink in. Our church growth strategies got bigger, and simultaneously our engagement with the Great Commission got smaller. While we grew our ministries, the number of unreached people groups went up.
My generation (Millennials) is the first generation in history to be handed all the information, data, statistics, names, and locations of every unreached people group on the planet. We are now leading churches, ministries, organizations, and businesses. On our watch, the number of unreached people groups increased.
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 increased.
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. It has been at the expense of getting His name to the ends of the earth.
The numbers don’t lie.
In the last few 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. Incredible! At the same time, we only have a few thousand in the 10/40 Window. It is not even close to being a competing agenda.
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. In the previous decade (2010-2020) we saw a major decline in mission sending (over 32%). For the first time in two generations, the number of unreached people groups rose by +500. Coming into the 2020’s, those trends have not shown many signs of letting up.
Dear Church, we have been heading in the wrong direction. It’s not over yet! There is time to course correct. I am hopeful about the moment we are in.
We are in a monumental shift across the earth.
2024 is not just an election year here in America. Globally, a combined population of about 49% of the people in the world, more voters than ever in history, will head to the polls for national elections. The results will prove consequential for the direction of many countries for years to come. In addition, there are active wars on almost every continent that are redrawing many nations' borders and boundary lines.
Amidst all the war, conflict, poverty, and suffering across the earth, there is one great crisis that eclipses all the others; 3.4 billion people alive today have no chance to ever hear the Gospel of the kingdom. They are unreached. The vast majority of unreached people live in an area called the 10/40 Window which includes the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia, the Arab Gulf, and East Asia. 96% of individuals that are considered unreached are in the 10/40 Window. Fifty of the world’s least-reached megacities populate this region of the globe.
When the harvest is plentiful in the earth and when the laborers are few, the Lord of the Harvest calls an urgent prayer meeting.
And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdomand healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." - Matthew 9:35-38
We are standing at the halfway mark of this decade. What if we could rally the Global Church to together for the sake of Jesus, His name, His fame, and His inheritance? What if, by the end of this decade, when the statistics are published again, another story would be told? That on our watch, “those who have never been told of Him will see, and those who have never heard will understand” (Rom 15:21). Among all the “shifts” happening in the earth, what if there was another shift? A shift of focus in the Global Church back to the Great Commission? What about a shift from “closed nations” to “open doors” for the gospel among the unreached? What about a shift from Islamic prayers, Buddhist chants and Hindu incense from the high places to joy filled adoration and unceasing exaltation of Jesus filling the atmosphere? What about a new wave of laborers carrying this glorious gospel to the ends of the earth?
It is time to call on the Body of Christ around the globe to pray, and to lean into the compassion of Jesus for harvest that are like sheep without a shepherd. If the tide of laborers is receding from the 10/40 Window, then we are going to run in against that tide and plant the flag of worship, prayer, and gospel proclamation. Our flag bears the image of a slain Lamb, and our banner says Let the Lamb receive the reward of His suffering.
This April, we going to do just that. Our MAPS Family is going to go to seven strategic regions across the 10/40 Window to host 50 hours of unbroken prayer and worship simultaneously. We are going to fill the 10/40 Window with the incense of worship and cry earnestly to the Lord of the Harvest, with our feet on the ground among the most unreached nations, “Send them here!”. We refuse to accept the ebb in missionary laborers as the new status quo. We refuse to concede the regions of the 10/40 Window over to Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism.
If the mission of the Church is to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:18) and proclaim the gospel of the kingdom to every ethnos (Matt 24:14), and if incense will arise in every place (Mal 1:11), then we know where the finish line is. It is in the 10/40 Window. That is where the rest of Jesus’ inheritance lies. That is where we must go to pray, preach, and sing.