November 01, 1990 by

Across the centuries, the constantly decreasing number of non- Christians per committed ChristianNon-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.
1.DATE  2.Non-Chr.  3.Com.Chr.  4. Trend
100 AD      180  0.5  360
1000 AD  220  1  220
1500 AD  344  5  69
1900 AD  1,062  40  27
1950 AD  1,650  80  21
1980 AD  3,025  275  11
1989 AD  3,438  500  7

Row 4 = row 2 divided by row 3

The above numbers in rows 2 and 3 are published by the Lausanne Statistics Task Force.
Note: figures in rows 2 and 3 are millions.

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:

"According to your figures the number of non-Christians increased from 3,025 to 3,438 million in the last nine years. Yet the Committed Christians only increased from 275 to 500 million. That is, there are 413 million more non-Christians and only 225 million more committed Christians. How can you say that Committed Christians are growing faster?" Answer: 413 is 13.7% more in nine years, and 225 is 81% more in the same period! And this "overtaking" rate has been going on a long time--just look at the diagram again.