This is an article from the January-February 1990 issue: I Will Do a New Thing!

Catch the Vision of Your Part in the Big Picture

Catch the Vision of Your Part in the Big Picture

Something’s happening. Something big, dangerous. —And you can be part of it.

God is doing amazing things in our world. He’s sending Navajo missionaries to the Laplanders, shaking up American finances for His worldwide Cause, blasting open the Iron Curtain, raising a movement of excited disciples ready to go anywhere and do anything. Followers of Jesus Christ are increasing by more than 70,000 every day. Eminent world watchers sense an upcoming burst of God’s power in this final decade of the 20th century, during these closing years of the second millenium.

And maybe your heart is restless to be a part of His big picture. Maybe you’re restless to catch a new vision for your life.

What Are You Doing?

Think over the energy you’re throwing into life now—trying to be the best you can be, trying to get ahead, to be a better Christian, a better family member, a better you. Why work so hard? Why ask so often for God’s blessing on your life?

If it’s to have a nicer, happier life, that’s not a bad goal. Especially since that’s what heaven will be—an easier, nicer existence. If that were God’s purpose for you right now, he would simply take you home to heaven , right? But in the here-and-now, biblical discipleship is never described as “nice” or “easy.”

The Cause

God does want to bless you. But not to make your life easy. He’ll bless you because He’s got a demanding job for you—a specific task, one that lays down rails to guide your major life decisions, to keep you from spinning your wheels in Christian self-improvement.

Go ahead: Break out of the Christian-culture idea that to join God’s family is to become part of a nice, privileged group. It’s more like being born into a family business—everybody is naturally expected to take part in the Father’s work.

Do you know exactly what the Father is about these days?

How many times have you heard or given testimonies about God’s wonderful plan for your life? Just how clear is that plan?

What are you doing here?

God’s Unchangeable purpose

Get a grip on your Bible. It’ll spell out how to break through to the crystal-clear, specific task God has for you in His historic purpose, in His “family business.” He does have a wonderful plan for your life!

When you dig into the simple Bible study in this box, you’ll notice that Psalm 67 is a perfect overview of God’s purpose:

God be gracious to us and bless us And cause His face to shine upon us That Thy way may be known on the earth, Thy salvation among all nations.

God blesses usThat all the ends of the earth may fear Him.

Not too hard to figure out that God has blessed us for a specific purpose, right? Notice too Jesus’ summary of Scripture and His role in it in Luke 24:44-47: “...that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

What you’ll see over and over in these passages about God’s purpose on earth are terms such as peoples, nations, families, tongues, tribes, the Gentiles or even Greeks—all signifying the idea of “people groups.” A people group, according to the US Center for World Mission, is the largest ethnic group within which the Gospel can spread without being stopped by language or cultural barriers.

Peoples Power

Survey your Bible concordance listings of the people-group terms listed above. And remember not to equate “peoples” with our idea of political “countries.” For example, the country of India has at least 3,000 distinct people groups within its borders. Irian Jaya has about 250 and the Soviet Union more than 500.

The 70 people groups formed at the Tower of Babel had split into about 60,000 by the time of Christ—when He commanded us to make disciples of every nation or, literally, people group. During the past 2,000 years, these groups have merged through progress in communication and trade into about 24,000 distinct people groups.

Twelve thousand people groups are currently being discipled. The other 12,000, mostly among the Muslim, Chinese, Hindu, Buddhist and tribal cultures, have no church among them and little or no mission work. There are about 12,000 peoples who have never been approached with the blessing of God’s redemption in Jesus Christ.

Who are the unreached people groups of our planet?

The nomadic Chang-pa of northern India, the Sundanese of Indonesia, the Engenni of Nigeria, the Ewenki of China, the Gilyak of Russia, the Fulnio of Brazil and about 11,994 others.

Where are they?

In the remote jungles of Irian Jaya, in the ethnic neighborhoods of Berlin and nearly every major metropolitan city in the world, on Native American Indian reservations in the United States, in restricted-access countries, in India, in....

Your Vision

If you have a vision to share Christ in your neighborhood, your town or even all of America, rejoice! Reaching your Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is critical. But keep in mind that America represents only 6% of the planet’s population—only 6% of God’s heart for the world. So clothe the needy and feed the hungry, witness across the street and stand up for righteousness in your society with an expanded vision of God’s whole heart for the unreached people groups in the uttermost parts of the world!

When you win your neighbors to Christ, equip them to join the Cause of reaching every people group with the Gospel. Directly or indirectly, be a part of God’s historic purpose to add to the Body of Christ those “purchased with His blood from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.”

God has a job for you, and it directly or indirectly has to do with the 12,000 unreached people groups of this planet.

God is carrying out His unchangeable purpose (see Hebrews 6:17) through His obedient servants around the globe. And the pace of completing that purpose is speeding up in this final decade of the century!

History Lessons

Historically, the modern movements to reach the ends of the earth with God’s blessing have occurred in waves. The first era, championed by William Carey in the late 1700s, penetrated the coastlands of the globe’s continents. The second, spearheaded by Hudson Taylor beginning in 1865, has penetrated the inland regions of every country on earth.

The third wave, responding to Cameron Townsend and Donald McGavran’s call to go to all the remaining culturally isolated “hidden” or “unreached peoples,” is surging to the breaking point in this last decade before the year 2000. Each wave has been characterized by student activism, revival and prayer movements. This third, final wave is no different.

You’re living at a very interesting point in the history of the world, in the unfolding of God’s unchanging purpose. Selah.

Christianity’s largest denominations have dedicated this decade to world outreach. Many Christian leaders believe these final years of the 20th century will witness the greatest spiritual harvest the world has ever seen.

Believers in various countries are “adopting” their share of unreached peoples to target. For example, Laitn American Christians are planning to send teams to 3,000 unreached groups. North American churches are targeting 6,000.

Christians worldwide are getting excited, realistic and specific about throwing themselves into the final era of God’s unchanging purpose.

Look What God Is Doing!

Especially if you’re in a dull little corner of Christendom, it’s critical you realize what God is doing these days around the globe. Here are a few highlights:

  • 3,500 new churches are opening every week worldwide.
  • In China, Christianity is growing by an average of 28,000 every day. Conservative estimates indicate there are 40-50 million Christians in that country.
  • The Church in Africa is increasing by 20,000 per day on the average; that continent was 3% Christian in 1900 and is over 40% Chrisitan today.
  • Worldwide, Christianity is growing at a rate of 70,000 persons every day.
  • In 1900, Korea had no Protestant church; it was deemed “impossible to penetrate.” Today Korea is 30% Christian with 4,000 churches in Seoul alone.
  • In Indonesia, the percentage of Christians is so high the government won’t print the statistic—which is probably nearing 25% of the population.
  • After 70 years of oppression in the Soviet Union, people who are officially Christians number about 100 million—5 times the number in the Communist Party and 36% of the population. In one Siberian city people are being baptized 24 hours a day!
  • God is creatively sending Chinese believers to reach Tibetans, Hondurans to reach North African Muslims and Navajos to reach Laplanders and places we can't mention.

Where the church has been planted, it’s growing like wildfire. The Good News is breaking loose worldwide:

  • More Muslims in Iran have come to Christ since 1980 than in the previous 1,000 years combined.
  • In AD 100, there were 360 non-Christians per true believer. Today the ratio is 7 to every believer. (See below.)
  • In AD 100 there were 12 unreached people groups per congregation of believers. Today, with 5 million churches worldwide, there are 416 congregations for every unreached people group! (See facing page.)

That’s what your God is doing. What are you doing?

The Remaining Task

While we’re working so hard to improve our lives, to deepen our fellowships, to seek God’s healing of our families and our land, let’s simply face the fact: We haven’t yet discipled about 12,000 people groups as Christ commanded us. Can we do it? Missiologists say that we can send church-planting teams into every one of these unreached groups within a seven-year period. To do it, we need:

  • 100,000 new missionaries,
  • to double our missions giving, and
  • more prayer—at least a collective hour per day for each new missionary.

Can we do it? It seems like an intimidating task. But God will accomplish His purpose. The gates of hell that lock in the unreached peoples of the world can’t stand against His church. At the end of time Christ will be exalted with the song: “Thou didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). So it’s only a matter of when and through whom.

The fact is that we have more than enough resources in America alone to complete the task:

  • Of the 70 million evangelicals in America, 17.5 million are aged 18-35. The 100,000 new missionaries needed are only half of 1% of these young people available just in the USA.
  • American evangelicals have a disposable annual income of about $850 billion. About one-fifth of 1% of that income—$1.5 billion—would support the needed 12,000 church-planting teams.
  • According to survey results, the prayer necessary would take only 2% of the time we evangelical Christians spend daily watching TV and shopping.

But this isn’t a job for just Americans. With 430 million other believers worldwide, obviously the resources are available. We can establish a church movement in every remaining unreached people group, and then help those new believers to evangelize their own people group. We can do it if we will.

Countdown

We’re 4,000 years into God’s promise to Abraham that all the people groups would be blessed with redemption, and the plan is intensifying. Hundreds of mission groups worldwide have set AD2000 as an arbitrary target date to finish the task of reaching each people group.

Since Jesus simply said, “This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the people groups, and then the end shall come” (Matthew 24:14), you might feel uncomfortable about AD2000 as a target date to see mission teams among each of the 12,000 unreached groups. —As if the year 2000 is then some prediction of the return of Christ.

Relax. The countdown of people groups to be reached by the year 2000 is simply an arresting way to suggest we can complete the Great Commission within a few years—if we will. At a world-level conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, 170 mission groups from 37 countries adopted the phrase “A Church for Every People By the Year 2000.”

But if date-setting feels awkward, imagine it’s 2041 and we can reach all remaining groups within seven years. Would 2048 be a less threatening target date than 2000?

But why wait? When every day 55,000 unreached die. The Bible says these very real people—individual by individual—are without God and without hope (Ephesians 2:12). Study this distressing fact in the Word. Then ask yourself, “Why wait?”

God has put it within our reach establish a church for every people group by the year 2000. And you can be a part of this urgent, historic, big-picture priority.

The Catch

There’s always a catch, you know. If the biblical mandate is so clear, if the big picture of what God is doing in our world is so exciting, if the 12,000 remaining groups can be reached within seven years, if millions are dying without God and without hope, why isn’t all Christendom buzzing with the news that we can finish the task? Because—here’s the catch—there’s a cost involved.

Obedience costs. Real discipleship costs. The price is giving up any small, local agendas that detract from God’s global cause. The cost is to forsake little lives. To give up claims of ownership to affluence and security. The requirement for ministries is to selflessly cooperate rather than needlessly duplicate efforts and compete for funds.

Obedience means shifting our expectations to being a blessing instead of just being blessed. Refusing to embrace the vision of being a blessing is the problem Haggai pinpointed as the downfall of Israel. (Read Haggai’s Old Testament book for a current-events update.)

The price of being a part of God’s global purpose is losing your life for His sake.

Active participation in the big picture of God’s plan is also dangerous. It’s the danger of signing on in wartime as a soldier who doesn’t “entangle himself in the affairs of everyday life” (2 Timothy 2:4). Battling the “powers and world forces” (Ephesians 6:12) that have bound these 12,000 groups for thousands of years means spiritual warfare; and warfare means casualties, body counts, blood, sweat and tears.

God’s big purpose on this planet is not a game. It’s not a spiritual health spa regimen to make you feel better. It’s war. And war is never nice.

Maybe too many of us have been led to believe that the Christian life is supposed to be nice—respectable, predictable and smooth. —That Christianity means blessings and lots of meetings. Or maybe we have counted the cost of real discipleship in God’s big plan. And then, God help us, we knowingly refused to obey.

But what about you? Is there any good reason you and your fellowship don’t take seriously your part in God’s historic purpose to disciple the nations? Have you—will you—align your life with God’s unchanging purpose? The task is realistic: Your church could “adopt” a people group and see to it that the countdown number is lowered to 11,999!

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