November 01, 1990 by

Talk about the need for leadership! Take a look (facing page) at the thousands of new missionaries being sent out by church movements established originally by Western missionaries. This does not even cover the picture in Africa, where a great deal of missionary activity is also growing strong.

There is really nothing new about this phenomenon, except that tt ss newly dawning on the home churches of missionaries from the United States.

The South Pacific islands are the best example of the impact of "mission field missionaries, â once a great part of the expansion of the Christian movement in that huge area of the world (now more than 75% Christian) has been the result of missionaries sent out by the mission field Christians themselves.

The celebrated COMlBAM movement in Latin America is in some ways ahead of anything in Asia or Africa, although the Asia Missions Association has been m existence now for 17 years, and the Third World Mission Association  (a world level organization) has existed for three years.

The Missions Commission of the World Evangelical Fellowship is also taking on new life. On the world level, it is analogous to the EFMA (until recently the Evangelical Foreign  Missions Association, but now the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies), which is related to the National Association of Evangelicals (in the USA) The Asia Missions Association and the Third World Mission Association, already mentioned, are parallel to the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association of North America, being simply unabated associations of mission agencies.

More and more Western mission agencies are taking into account this "third force," which in many ways is closer to the mission movement from the West than are the church congregations of the Third World.

It may be that the most powerful strategy in our day is to work with, for, and through these agencies!

Larry Pate's recent book, From Every People, is nor the most complete treatment in existence of the burgeoning modern phenomenon of the Third World Missions.

Patrick Johnstone, author of Operation World, adds his touch with his personal estimates of the number of missionaries who are cross-culturally in each of the selected Asian countries.

Caution is required, however, since the racing growth of evangelicals in Singapore, for instance far exceed the number given in Operation World, and thus the record for the lowest number of evangelicals supporting one missionary may be overstated in the graph below.