This is an article from the July-August 1992 issue: The Evangelical Free Church of America Launches Boldly into the Adopt-A-People Movement

Racing to the Finish!

An Unusual New Plan in the Evangelical Free Church of America

Racing to the Finish!

As an outsider to the Evangelical Free Church I have to say that I am impressed and thrilled by their new mission plans. These new plans mean the EFCA now joins the Baptist General Conference, the Christian and Missionary Alliance and a handful of other key evangelical denominations which have done the very unusual: they have developed competent and thoroughgoing proposals for major new impact on the most remote and untouched places and peoples of the world.Fog in the Local Church
The new EFCA plan really is revolutionary in view of the pessimistic fog at the local level.

To see what I mean, visit any ten local congregations randomly in America--of any denomination--and each time ask the first ten people you run into how they think their denominational mission program is getting along. You will encounter blank stares and disbelief that anyone would bother asking. Why?

Because Americans are constantly bombarded by negative information. Newspapers, radio, and television conspire to pound into Americans that most everything is going wrong all around the world! The total absence of news about the astonishing advance of the Gospel leaves the impression that things are going wrong in that area as well.

Thus, few Americans are prepared to believe the amazing positive reports of world Christianity--even though the Christian phenomenon has always been an astounding movement.

What IS the Real Truth?
One way to measure the amazing growth of the Gospel throughout the world is to ask the simple question,

How many years did it take for Bible-Believing Christians to number one out of hundred people in the world?

The answer is roughly 1430 AD--shortly before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

OK, then when did Bible-Believing Christians become two out of a hundred people in the world? The answer is, about the time our country was founded--1790, or about the time a better informed Columbus, William Carey sailed for India.

When was it four out a of hundred? Well, see the table across the page. The point is that the growth of true Christianity is rapidly accelerating.

There is something else here. If you count all types of Christians they make up one-third of the world's population right now. If you add the number of people very favorable toward the person of Jesus Christ in the Muslim world, it becomes over half of the world's population!

In addition, you can reasonably take note of the fact that even in a largely non-Christian country like Japan, two thirds of the population answered (on a government census) that they consider Jesus Christ the most important religious leader in history (note most Japanese are Buddhists--why didn't they say "Gautama Buddha"?).

If you go to India you will find countless millions of Hindus who are very favorably impressed by Jesus Christ.

Two Incontrovertible Things
All of this points up two crucial facts:

  1. Bible-believing Christians have grown to be an incredibly large force in the world today. Just think, a group of 540 million people ought to be able to accomplish almost anything they set their minds and hearts to do. Do you realize that "one out of ten" means 540,000,000 Bible-believing people in 7 million congregations?
  2. In addition, over half of the world--perhaps two thirds--has high respect for Jesus Christ.

Why can't we see this?

Well, most of us live among people who know about Christ but don't go to church. Since these neighbors of ours are defensive, we readily assume that non-Christians in the rest of the world are probably also opposed to Jesus Christ.

Guess what? The rest of the world is mostly a world that has not rejected Christ. The Christ-rejecting people of this world are those who say they are Christians but do not go to church…The Christ- rejecting people of this world are those who live within the range of the church, who have a Bible in their own language, radio and television broadcasts at their elbow, and who are not seeking to know more, who are running away from God!

No, most of the world will be much more friendly to Jesus Christ than the hardened souls who inhabit the the so-called Christian countries.

Travelling as I do between the "Christian West" and the "non- Christian world," I am constantly struck by the greater friendliness of those around the world who have hardly heard of Jesus Christ as compared to those in our own society who are defensive and sour on the subject.

This does not mean we should stop trying to help our neighbors find Christ.

It does mean that those who may be across the world (or right in Minneapolis sealed off by language and cultural barriers) who will eagerly accept him ought to have a chance, a bigger chance than they now have.

That is the reason for a mission board. The very nature of the language and cultural barriers that isolate us from the unreached peoples of the world means that the normal evangelistic skills of local churches will not suffice. We are talking about a remaining missionary task, one that requires serious language study, anthropological insights, in a word, a professional missionary.

Yes, the remaining unreached peoples of the world cannot be reached readily or they would already be reached. They are walled off. They are isolated to the extent that a professional agency is the best instrument for reaching them. Tourists and short-term workers can't handle it without special help.

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