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November 1990 The Dangers & Challenges of Change Consider the Global Prayer Digest "My Turn" Interview with Bob Ricker Part II Crucial Issues in Missions The "New Factor" of Third World Mission Agencies
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The Diminishing Task! --Across the centuries, the constantly decreasing number of non- Christians per committed Christian Non-Christian here means "people who do not consider themselves to be Christians." This number does not include people who DO consider themselves to be Christians and who have the Bible in their language but who may not truly know or believe the God of the Bible. Committed Christians here means people who read, believe, and obey the Bible, whether or not they are as active as they ought to be in world evangelization. The specific numbers here are correct within a small percentage, except for the earlier centuries. But the overall trend is what is unarguable, despite many gloomy statements to the contrary. Where do these amazing numbers come from? They were arrived at by the various contributors to the Lausanne Statistics Task Force, headed by David Barrett, Ph.D., who is the author of the World Christian Encyclopedia. The specific figures are in the table below. The numbers in the column on the right are those used in this diagram.
These are the numbers in the diagram above. Despite the rapid increase of world population, Christianity is simply growing faster than any other global religion when what is measured is its most relevant type of growth--the growth of committed adherents. All other types of statistics fall to the ground before the simple fact that humble people committed to God have, across the centuries, more or less constantly been gaining a higher and higher percentage of all the people on earth. Many people become fearful when they think about the global population explosion and somehow they cannot believe that the conquering power of the risen Christ is expanding even faster. But! This amazing growth will gain even greater speed if, in addition to all you see above, believers respond to the fact that the 500 million committed Christians today amount to about 7 million congregations, which is 583 congregations for each of the 12,000 remaining unreached people groups! And specific adoptions are being pursued by more and more Christians all over the world. See the apportionment figures on another page. Adoption by Jan '93, Engagement by Jan '94, Reach them by the year 2000! However, don't be confused by this question:
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