March 01, 1989 by Ralph D. Winter

Dear fellow believer,

It is a genuine privilege to know you are a believer. I can’t quite imagine you would be hopeful enough to read this bulletin at all if you were not one of that great and growing host of redeemed people across the world today whose lives have been invaded by the presence of Christ and the blessed hope of His Return. (See pages 10-11 to see just how great that host now is!)

As usual, there are many exciting things to tell about.

First, don’t miss out on the “tough love in world evangelization” book which we highlight this time—that’s one possible title for it. It is tough, it is personal, it is global. You can use it with friends who are on the fence about their personal commitment to world evangelization.

But then, “breathtaking” is the word for George Otis’ detailed grasp of what is actually going on behind the headlines in this earthquake region of Central Asia, “Transcaucasia” as we’ll learn to call it! Could God raise up “an evangelical firebrand within the Armenian Apostolic church”? Can you imagine anyone cheering the Armenian tragedy? It’s all there. And you’ll see the remarkable spiritual implications as well… And there is even more to this story. Somehow, in the turmoil of the 1st and 2nd World Wars, literally hundreds of tiny communities of believers were forceably scattered out all across Soviet Central Asia. They are now awakening to their missionary task. But we must reserve some things for later.

Read carefully the many different items clustered on page 17. And does page 16 speak to you personally?—I truly hope it may!

Now, there are a number of things coming up in more detail in our next issue. I’ll at least mention them here in advance. This will take up more of this page than there is left, but I can continue over to the next page as well:

1. A three-day Adopt-A-People Symposium drew over 40 mission leaders from all across the country—Christian Missionary Alliance, Assemblies of God, Conservative Baptist, many others. New agreements now exist for many aspects of this new movement of great potential. And agreement was reached on a new Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse, which will be set up so as to interface closely with Global Mapping International activities here on this campus.
2. Presbyterians—that is, PC(USA)—are on the move. Over 60 key pastors and denominational leaders interested in the area of missions gathered two weeks ago, some to hear from the new head of the Global Mission Unit, and some to attend a two-day meeting of the Advisory Committee for the denomination’s Frontier Mission Fund. Over a million dollars has come in to the latter already, partially through the use of a Presbyterian version of the Global Prayer Digest. This fund is very precisely and technically defined as outreach to truly Unreached People Groups. See photo on page 17.
3. The Christian and Missionary Alliance has voted as a denomination to survey all their fields to see what is being done in relation to Unreached People Groups. Dr. Samuel Wilson was asked to hold field meetings in different parts of the globe for this purpose. This denomination, with (Editorial, Cont.) 1,400 missionaries, is already one of the most progressive in its routine involvement of the energies of national churches in true missionary outreach of their own. Probably no other global mission agency has a better record in this respect.
4. Congregations interested in sending teams to the field will be interested in a low-key fellowship that calls itself the Antioch Network. Its 5th meeting in three years brought together representatives from 15 congregations for two days, meeting at the Evangelical Free Church of Tempe, Arizona. For details, you may write to George Miley, 3050 Roseann Avenue, Escondido, CA 92027.
5. The new LCWE Statistics Task Force (of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization) is trying to bring into a coherent picture all of the various “numbers” and definitions related to world evangelization. Last issue we reported that our 16,000 number for unreached people groups had tentatively been agreed upon. But now, after further consultation, we have all agreed on 12,000. I have, in my writings in the past, referred to a 3,000 estimate, which included items like “Cantonese” (which includes at least 25 mutually unintelligible sub-dialects) as “a hoping for the best” estimate, and my own number of 16,000 as a “preparing for the worst” estimate. Rather than the public being exposed to both high and low estimates, the 12,000 figure is what we have now agreed to publish when just a single number is given.