November 01, 1990 by Ralph D. Winter

 Dear friends,

This issue of Mission Frontiers is about change:

• massive,
• ominous,
• mysterious,
• dangerous,
• wonderful,
• totally unexpected
• change
• change
• change
• change
• change

1. The entire IFMA/EFMA meeting in Denver was about change. See USCWM Executive Director, Greg Parson's article on pages 6-8.
2. The graphs showing Third World missionary explosion describe CHANGE.
3. Our final article is precisely about 15 more changes already happening in the 90s in the sphere of missions.

But possibly the most significant change we have ever been able to report in these pages is the "cloud the size of a man's hand" constituted by the cover story. You can't believe the trouble we went to get their striking, eight-page colored brochure inserted right into this issue of Mission Frontiers.

(If you do not find it in your copy it may have fallen out in the postal process. To send you a special copy is possible, see page 23)

Ho hum, what difference does it make if a small, mainly Swedish denomination decides to go after unreached peoples?

I believe the climate is right for this to be a case of dominoes. It does not take a big domino to topple all the rest.

Many things are moving in that direction already.

Many mission boards have shifted gears in the last ten years.

Almost all mission agencies today are moving from effective work well done in established fields into new thinking and strategizing about the Remaining Task in Unreached Peoples terms.

Some agencies, in fact, such as the International Church of the Four Square Gospel has been concentrating on Unreached Peoples ever since 1976, when an EFMA Executives Retreat emphasized Unreached Peoples.

And the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Board, one of the more progress missions today, has 50 specific peoples up for adoption.

The Christian & Missionary Alliance has for years (in Asia especially) been developing outreach to new fields from the churches they have already planted.

Recently the C & M A annual conference voted to take a close look at what all their 1,000 missionaries are doing around the world and see if they are in the best position to promote outreach to the remaining unreached groups. A major move!

Even so large and lumbering a denomination as the Lutheran Church- Missouri Synod voted some years ago to go in this new direction. But big ships take longer to change course.

Then what is so special about the Baptist General Conference now putting in their oar?

For one thing this is not merely a revolution down in a lowly denominational department of missions, this is a revolution from the top and bottom. As Bob Ricker says, the people in our pews are already reading about 12,000 remaining unreached groupsƒ

But don't let him kid you. Ricker personally is sold on this new emphasis.

But look, if a big denomination, even with a lot fanfare, went this route, most denominations, being small, could not necessarily follow. (The Southern Baptist Convention is already doing a lot of things along this line that smaller groups cannot easily follow.)

Ricker's challenge is a followable example.

--most vital Christians attend small congregations

--most leaders come out of small backgrounds

--most vital Christians belong to small denominations.

Small is beautiful don't you think?

Can you imagine a whole lot of denominational leaders seeing how practical, how thrilling, how energizing this new finish-the-job emphasis is?

What You Can Do!

Show your copy of your colored brochure to your pastor and ask him point blank if anything like that is in the wind in your denomination.

Then mail your copy to the denominational board to which your church is related. Mention your conversation with your Pastor.

Or, mail your copy to someone you may know in leadership in the mission mechanism of your denomination.

Get some extra copies (see order page) and place them with prayer in the hands of the right people. You may be surprised how much influence you have.

Remember that the anthropologists have discovered that 90% of all social adoptions of new ideas are by borrowing, not by invention.

Now that a small denomination is out to raise millions for a whole new dimension of outreach you are in a very influencial chain of events.

The little colored brochure is like a bombshell ready to go off in the right hands.

And, if you think of other ideas, tell us so we can pass them on.

The 72,000 people who will be getting this brochure happen to be a large and very influential group of church and mission leaders.

Meanwhile

During the very moments that we are going to press (Oct 25) the two London conferences mentioned on page 15 are going on. Both are extremely important, drawing people from all over the world. A phone call yesterday referred to these people as "the cream of the creamƒ"

Early in the week the Adopt-A-People conference, on its heels, some of the same people in the International Association of Centres for World Mission.

Some of the discussions are already being relayed to us, but in our December issue we will report in depth on final results.