GOD’S NEW ENVOYS IN THE 21ST CENTURY:
THE MANDATE FOR THE GLOBAL
Tetsunao ("Ted") Yamamori
Former International
Director,
The fundamental reason for
God's New Envoys is that increasingly large areas of the world are no longer accessible to the traditional
missionary approaches of the past.
A century ago the situation looked much rosier. From the late 1800s
through the first few years of the 1900s, many missions strategists believed the world could be evangelized before the twentieth century drew to a close. David B.
Barrett in the World Christian
Encyclopedia states:
By
the year 1900, one third of humanity were Christians,
and one half were aware of Christianity and had become influenced by it. Optimism
for rapid completion of the task of global
evangelization was high. From 1889 to 1914 the great Protestant and Anglican
communions of
Sadly, these optimistic projections have not been
realized. Today,
nearly a century later, the total percentage of the world's
population identified as Christian has actually declined. In
1900, the best estimate of professing Christians was 34.4 per-cent of the global population, an all-time high.''
This declined to 33.7 percent in 1970
and to 33.2 percent in 1975, still further to 32.4 percent in 1985, and is projected by Barrett to drop an additional
tenth of a percentage point to 32.3 percent in the year 2000.
As we face the end of our
own century, it's essential we understand why our recent missions efforts have
not achieved the goals which many
optimistically predicted would be attain-able well before now. Even more
importantly, we need to examine the new emerging barriers which, if
un-circumvented, will make global evangelism
even more tenuous in the twenty first century.
But before looking into
these, we need to take two other steps: first, to define our terms, so we can
focus our investigation more precisely; second, to review why we should devote
our time, and perhaps even our lives, to
evangelizing in foreign lands.
DEFINITION
OF TERMS
In almost any discussion of
this subject, a handful of important words
tend to be used repeatedly, words describing parts of the process
central to this book's purpose-bringing people outside one's homeland to faith and obedience in Christ. Brief
definitions of these terms will be sufficient for us here.
The first, evangelization,
is specifically related to proclamation
of the gospel. According to the helpful definition in the World Christian Encyclopedia, being evangelized refers to "the state
of having the good news spread or offered; the state of being aware of
Christianity, Christ and the gospel."'
Evangelism,
for our purposes, does not mean conversion. Rather, it would seem to be exactly what Jesus had in mind when
He told the disciples to "Go into all the world
and preach the good news to all creation" (Mark
An evangelized people is one in which more than half the members
have had m opportunity to hear or read some of the key elements in the gospel. They have not necessarily been converted.
A second concept has to do
with whether or not a people group is reached. To qualify as reached, then~ must be a viable indigenous church
capable of evangelizing within that people group.
The word "indigenous" here is key.
The indigenous church or Christ group
is self-sufficient, and thus can continue without outside support.
Most important of all, a
reached group can potentially have the local resources to maintain and expand
its Christian population, even in highly restrictive environments such as those
where many of God's New Envoys might work.'
The concept of a Christ group is
used in this book to cover indigenous
churches, as well as house churches and other secret gatherings of Christians which often must be the
church alternatives in the
"closed countries" where New Envoys will be sent.'
For our purposes, people groups are
best defined as culturally and linguistically separate peoples (such as
the Maasai tribes
of
Throughout this book, the word closed will be used to
refer to the people groups and countries to which traditional missionaries cannot gain access without disguising
their true vocation and purpose. The 77 countries and thousands of
people groups which are currently closed tend to be predominantly in the Muslim
and Communist world.'
Another
basic concept is conversion. In
Matthew 28:I9 Jesus says, "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Spirit." In other
cases baptism is not mentioned, and the instructions are to accept the
Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, possibly through a special prayer, public
proclamation of faith, or some other means.
To avoid disputes about
when precisely conversion takes place, I prefer a more global concept that of bringing people to faith
and obedience in Christ. This term is quite precise and, it seems to me, describes our objective very well.
The only problem, of course, is that
it is unmeasurable and unquantifiable, except of course to God. Thus, throughout this book
we will some-times be forced to
quantify the concept of conversion in less precise terms.
In many statistical cases,
for example, we will talk about "professing"
Christians-thereby basing the number of Christians on the number of
individuals who claim the title of Christian as their own.
Through the years we have struggled to find better ways to count
Christians in comparison to the national or international population at large. I generally
prefer to use the term communicants
(adult church members). This
category is less elastic than the term "communities,"
which some denominations (Roman Catholics, for example) prefer, and which
includes not only adult members of a given church but also their children, who certainly tend to be influenced by their parents'
religious preference.
By converting all our figures
whenever possible to communicants, we avoid
the error of attempting to compare incomparables.
This is probably a good
time to make another distinction, necessitated by the fact that there is
currently a net increase of 270 new Christian denominations throughout the
world each year. As of this writing, the number of denominations and church
groups totals more than 22,000, all claiming to be the best way to follow the
Way of Christ.' With this broad range of sometimes competing denominations, 1
want to clarify that the goal of this book
is to help bring more people to faith and obedience in Christ, not to
any particular denomination or group of denominations within the global Body of
Christ.
I am confident that once
the new convert has moved to faith and obedience, she or he will be properly
guided as is required, by the greatest
Teacher of all. Perhaps the best recent ex-ample of this is the
explosive growth of the Church in
This is not to say I lack personal convictions about ways of worship and interpretations of God's Word. These
matters are of vital concern to me,
as they are to most Christians. The burden of this book, however, is to
develop strategies that can help bring hundreds of millions more people to Christ and not to dispute about fine points
of doctrine, however important, with those who are already believers.
Our goal is to build up the
Body of Christ and to expand His Church, not to weaken it through additional
factional squabbles at a time when the salvation of billions depends on our
working as one. Together as His Church, the Body of all faithful believers, we
are charged to pursue the Church's mission:
to proclaim Christ and bring a l people possible
to faith and obedience in Him (Romans
RATIONALE
FOR EVANGELISM ABROAD
Now that necessary
definitions have been briefly spelled out,
it's time to take the next step: to explore why we should be so audacious, and often so self-sacrificing, as to
leave the comfort and security of
our homelands to pursue evangelism abroad.
Many of the reasons for this are very old. Others
are quite new, necessitated in recent
years by changes in populations and governments.
Although these reasons are written here primarily for an audience in the more developed world, it
should be noted that most of them
will also have relevance to the less developed world, which is now expanding its own Christian missions out-reach
at a very rapid rate. i0
Here are eight basic
reasons for continuing and expanding our evangelism abroad--or, if you prefer,
our global mission:
I. Because Christ
mandated the global mission-in Acts 1:8, Mark 16:15, and Matthew 28:19-20.
Elsewhere He rein-forces these instructions in
different words:
Come, follow me . . . and I will make you fishers of men.
(Matthew 4:19)
The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,
and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all
nations. (Luke 24:46-47)
I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe
for harvest. (John 4:35)
As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. (John 20:21) And
finally, the instructions to Peter:
Feed my lambs.... Take care of my sheep.... Feed my
sheep. (John 21:15-17)
2.
Because our Lord appears to establish global
evangelism as a precondition of His return. In Matthew 24:14 He
says,
And this gospel of the
kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Later, in Revelation
5:9-10, the risen Lord Jesus is addressed as one who
purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and
nation.
3.
Because as Christians we have received a
precious gift which must be shared as widely as possible. Put simply, if we
are called to share our food, our cloaks, our shelter
-which are only temporal things----how much more should we be called to share
our greatest gift, the faith which provides eternal life?
Because every individual
is important . . . and every
4.
Individual’s
spiritual hunger deserves to be met. Clearly John
For God so loved the world that He gave his one
and only Son, that whoever believes
in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
As long as we are alive and
have breath in our lungs, those of us who have already heard the good news must
continue to expend a portion of that breath
to witness, so more of God's children can be saved.
5.
Because if we don't win those of our global
neighbors who hunger for change, other less
desirable forces will. Increasingly
we see human hunger and need providing an opening for evil farces to move in.
To see this truth, we need only to look at the rapid fashion that Communism and
non-Christian religions filled the spiritual vacuum in many former colonial
African nations since 1960.
Spiritual hunger, in my opinion, is basic to the human condition. God Himself creates spiritual hunger in every person. The Lord God says in Amos 8:11, "The time is surely coming ... when I will send a famine on the land-not a famine of bread or water, but of hearing the words of the Lord" (Living Bible). Once that hunger is aroused, or-more accurately-once a person is made aware of its existence, the need will be filled somehow, by whichever religion or ideology is most persuasively represented to the person who hungers. Conversely, if Christianity is not effectively represented in the area when that hunger is experienced, the opening may pass forever.
Because
Christianity's adversaries are increasingly ruthless. If you
are a resident of
Elsewhere it may be voodoo, or religions that subject adherents
to drastic forms of discrimination and even direct physical abuse.
In recent history, the
wanton murder of hundreds of thousands of Christians in
7.
Because only changed lives can change
society, and only a changed global society
can truly live in peace. This is
a personal favorite of mine, because it relates to my conviction since
my conversion three decades ago that we can achieve "horizontal" peace in the world only as we increasingly,
one-by-one, achieve "vertical" peace
with God. On a practical level, there is surely no doubt that some of
Christianity's strongest global competitors teach violence and strife:
militant, fundamentalist Islam, dictatorial Communism, anarchism, and of
course the many quasi-religious forms of terrorism which permeate our world.
8.
Because Christian missionary work, in its
many forms, is still one of the satisfying adventures of all. Never doubt
the sheer excitement of working in foreign
countries to help others find salvation.
These then are the eight
reasons, any of which would be sufficient justification for pursuing global
evangelization through our financial
support, through our prayers, and through actual service abroad.
To summarize: We need to reach out to the non-Christian population
abroad .
·
because it's biblically
right.
· because we care about these people and their salvation.
·
because if we delay,
billions of non-Christians may lose not only
their chance of eternal salvation, but their opportunities for more
satisfying lives here and now.
These,
then, are the reasons all Christians should support the most vigorous possible evangelization effort to all parts of
the world.
Next question: Is that goal
being achieved?
QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND REVIEW
·
Why are New Envoys needed at this time?
·
What's the difference between the
"unreached" people and "unreachable" people (those living
in restricted-access countries)?
·
Give five reasons why you feel global evangelism
is required.
Documentation and
Notes
1.
Barrett, World Christian Encyclopedia, p.
3.
2.
By A.D. 500,
22.4 percent of the world is believed to have been Christian. This dropped to
19 percent in 1500, then rose to 23.1 percent in 1800.
3.
Barrett, p. 4.
4.
Barren, p. 826.
5.
John A. Holzmann,
"1.3 Billion 'UNEVANGELIZBD' or 2.4Billion 'UNREACHED,' " in
6.
The concept of "openness" and ways it
can be measured will be discussed in some detail in chapter 6.
7.
Ralph D. Winter,
8.
The total numbers of closed countries and closed
people groups vary from source to source. A
list of restricted-access countries which is current as of this writing
is included in chapter 2.
9.
Barrett, p. 17.
10.
Barrett, p. 17.
Originally published as “Chapter 1” of the out-of-print
volume, GOD’S NEW ENVOYS IN THE 21ST
CENTURY: THE
MANDATE FOR THE
GLOBAL
Used with permission by author.
Published in www.globalmissiology.org in Featured
Article, January, 2007