Will We Fail Again?
A Look Back at the First “Call to Disciples Everywhere” And Why They Failed.
This article is excerpted from the compilation of previously printed works by Todd Johnson and Ralph Winter.
-- edited by Rick Wood
One hundred years ago many Christians believed that the world could be evangelized by the year 1900. At no other time in history, it seemed, had the opportunities been so great. One missions-minded pastor, A.T. Pierson, tirelessly pursued this vision from the 1870s until 1895 when he was forced to state, "We are compelled to give up the hope."
Will we, in a few short years, be forced to give up all hope of completing world evangelization by the year 2000? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain. In almost every respect this task is many times easier to accomplish today than it was in 1885 when A.T. Pierson mounted the platform in Northfield, Massachusetts to lay his challenge again before the Christian world.
A.T. Pierson was given the platform, the man who had four years earlier, with no great effect, sounded a cry for world evangelization by the end of the century 20 years away. Now he was about to speak to an august audience of 1,000 key people, flanked by the noted evangelist D.L. Moody himself. With forcefulness and passion Pierson laid down his challenge. "If 10 millions out of four hundred millions of nominal Christians would undertake such systematic labors that each one of that number should in the course of the next 15 years reach 100 other souls with the Gospel message, the whole present population of the globe would have heard the good tidings by the year 1900!" Moody's instincts were awesome. He jumped to his feet, cutting Pierson off, and motioned to the audience, "How many of you believe this can be done?" The crowd roared its approval. Moody, a practical man of detail, appointed a committee of six and joined it himself. This small group hammered out an eloquent document within three days, entitled "An Appeal to Disciples Everywhere," which was approved at a subsequent evening meeting by a massive voice vote of the same influential audience.
Thus, to our knowledge, for the first time the idea of the finishing of the task of global evangelism became publicly understood by influential leaderrts as a feasible, reachable, do-able task. Do- able, but would it be done? The same document called for a world- level conference at which global plans could be made. The following year, Pierson's influential book, Crisis in Missions (by which he meant a crisis of opportunity), came off the press, and the brief, eloquent document "An Appeal to Disciples Everywhere" was duly placed in the appendix. (See page 16 here for the text.) Moody himself had already created a tidal wave of Gospel concern in Britain. Some of the most illustrious families of highest society found this uneducated American from a tiny rural town capturing the souls of their finest university sons and daughters. Nothing in America paralleled the shock wave throughout England (January of 1885) when the "Cambridge Seven" sailed off to work with the China Inland Mission. It was somewhat like the LA Lakers team being decimated by half its players joining Operation Mobilization, or if Paul Newman were to join Frontiers as a candidate for field service in Morocco.
One of those fine young men, J.E.K. Studd (C.T. Studd's older brother) came across the Atlantic at Moody's invitation to canvas college campuses in this country as the Cambridge Seven had done in Britain before sailing. "The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions" was one result, building without any doubt on the home influences of the women's missionary movement plus the growing impact of the remarkable, church-based, young peoples movement called Christian Endeavor (still the world's largest evangelical young peoples movement), itself a product of the women's movement, with a strong missionary emphasis built into every local group.
J.E.K. Studd got to this country in time to be one of the six on that committee to draw up "An Appeal to Disciples Everywhere." He went back to England and no doubt had a hand in the great world missionary conference three years later--London 1888--which might have appeared to be the global planning event for which the Northfield document had called. This same Studd himself became mayor of London later on.
Those were heady days. But the 1888 conference was already planned when the Northfield closure call was drawn up. But since the 1888 conference consisted of a popular audience, church people and well- wishers, it did not (and perhaps could not) lay plans for world evangelization. Moreover, the popular audience did not in themselves have the necessary structures to carry it off.. There was a distinct reticence in some circles to speak of such things. The very existence of a popular conference may have displaced the possibility of the kind of business-like conference called for by the document "An Appeal to Disciples Everywhere."
Today, looking back, it is hard to doubt that what was proposed to be done by 1900 actually could have been done. It was do-able back then, but it is much more do-able today. World population has grown almost four times as large since then, but evangelical resources have grown over ten times as large, have shifted largely to the non-Western world, and are based now in every part of the globe.
Why Did They Fail?
In essence, however, three shattering blows destroyed the very real possibilities faced by those in 1890. There was a mighty distraction in the public sector, as a newly confident America flexed its muscles, driving our border out to the Pacific by pushing four new states through the Senate in a single month--to get the jump on Canada. We reached out and took the Philippines, half of Western Samoa, and would have taken Cuba had things turned out right.
There was dissipation of resources. Those were the days historians call the "gay nineties," and for good reason. These were parties that in today's currency would exceed the type put on by the late Malcom Forbes, that we read about a few years ago, costing over one million dollars for one night. Unfortunately, evangelicals were involved in some of them.
There was also destruction of mission rationale. When distraction and dissipation have done their work, there is nothing left but rationalization. As in the days of Noah, so was it to be in the days when the great challenge stood right before them.
As no other generation, we find ourselves nearing rapidly the "blessing" of all the remaining peoples on the face of the earth. We happen at the same time to find ourselves nearing rapidly the end of the first millennium in history which has ever had a global awareness.
Actually, the year 2000 as a completion date is not the most crucial goal. If we can learn anything from a century ago, we can learn that long before the end of this century, namely about 1995, the mobilization for the year 2000 will begin to look reasonable or not. How do we know this? It was about five years before the end of the 19th century when leaders began to realize that the crisis of opportunity had been lost. I shall never forget the haunting words of A.T. Pierson, "We are compelled to give up the hope"--a statement he made in 1895. But even so, by 1900 everyone was still in high spirits-- enormous energies had been set in motion which would soon eclipse all previous attempts at mobilization for completing the task.
Some of the Key Points
In understanding the efforts of the last century, there are some key points of strengths and weaknesses that we can learn from.
- The idea of a needed division of labor, of parcelling out the job, was well understood. In America, Canadian Societies were to be responsible for 40 million souls, the (U.S.) Congregationalists 75 million, Northern Baptists 61 million, Northern Methodists 150 million, etc.
- A hundred years ago the definition of the remaining task still revolved around simply the evangelizing and the converting of individuals. Groups were not part of strategic goal setting, and no doubt the significance of cultural diversity within countries was not sufficiently understood. Now the Latin American division of labor builds on peoples. This seems to be more realistic and specific than any plan that is geographical or based on so-many-individuals.
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The London 1888 conference, as well as other conferences like New York 1900, were huge, popular meetings, and did not allow mission leaders to plan together. John R. Mott, who first pioneered that kind of mission-leaders conference, following the pattern of field conferences of missionaries in Shanghai and Madras, put together the Edinburgh 1910 Conference. The International Missionary Council, a planning body, was one of the results. Unfortunately, the IMC was so closely tied to church leadership that it eventually suffered the maladies of liberalizing tendencies in the related bodies and was eventually totally merged, and essentially submerged into the general, non-missionary concerns of the World Council of Churches.
The lesson? Conferences of non-operational leaders are not going to generate operational strategies. This would tend to be true of most Lausanne Conferences, where the clear purpose is to attract church leaders to thoughts of more serious evangelization rather than to assist mission leaders to make plans together. - There has been intergenerational alienation then and now. Kefa Sempagi's book A Distant Grief tells about the young, college-grad Student Volunteers coming to Uganda and discovering that First Era missions had produced pastors without college education. The culture shock of this younger generation did not allow them to read the experience nor to hear out the quickly outnumbered older mission leaders who had understandably provided this kind of church leadership. Pastors were pushed out of their pulpits, new pastoral leaders were denied ordination, and in general, things were set back enormously. In our day many fields, perhaps most fields except within the virile Pentecostal movement, now reveal a similar emphasis on seminary training beyond college. This is one of the factors most inevitably impeding church growth.
- The concept of a mobilization "window in time" arises from the fact that those who framed the 1885 Appeal for closure by 1900 really only had ten years in which the necessary mobilization effort would have to be built. By about 1895 it became apparent even to A.T. Pierson that "we are compelled to abandon the hope," one of the most poignant phrases in mission history--something that may well again need to be said in about 1995. At this moment, with 1994 rapidly approaching, we have only a few short months before it may become too late, and we will fail again.
Can We Succeed by the Year 2000?
One hundred years ago they failed to reach the world by 1900. Today we are still faced with a world that needs to be evangelized. But can we succeed where they failed?
If Pierson rightly saw his world as one that could speedily be reached, what can be said for our world a hundred years later? How difficult would it be for us to finish the job today? There are six areas of comparison that may provide the answer to this question.
1. Population
In January 1889 Pierson calculated the unevangelized population of the world at about one billion. He asked for 10 million true believers to reach them. This was a ratio of 1 to 100.
Today we figure the number of true disciples is somewhere around 540 million. The unevangelized population, including the nominal Christians is close to five billion. That means that in the next seven years each true disciple needs to reach only 10 people. Therefore, in terms of population, the job of world evangelization is ten times easier than it was in 1885.
2. Technology
One hundred years ago major advances in transportation and communication gave mission leaders of that day much to dream about with respect to bringing the gospel to all nations. In the 1880s it was possible to go just about anywhere in the world with speed and in relative comfort compared to the arduous journeys of mission pioneers like William Carey.
Today we can travel anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours. With satellite communications, televised messages can reach every point on the globe at virtually the same moment. We can send messages to people by electronic mail and talk directly to them by telephone.
If railroads and telegraphs challenged our forefathers to greater faith, should not supersonic jets, satellites and fiber optic telephone systems inspire us to new heights of expectation for the future progress of world evangelization.
3. Mission Agencies and Personnel
One hundred years ago there were 5,000 missionaries in approximately 200 mission agencies. They were almost exclusively from the Western world. These missionaries had to face tremendous hardships merely to get where they wanted to go.
In another vein, although mission agencies met together at a number of large conferences, for the most part they tended to strategize and work by themselves, thereby limiting the progress of world evangelization.
Today, the estimates of the number of missionaries in the world range from 150,000 to 200,000. A large and fast-growing contingent of these missionaries are from the non-western or Two-Thirds World. In just the last two years, 10,000 new missionaries have been added from the Two-Thirds World. Proportionate to the size of the remaining task, there are eight times as many missionaries today as there were in 1890.
"Networking" is a new term created to describe the kind of cooperation and coordination of activities that increasingly characterizes the efforts of mission agencies in pooling their talents and energies toward their common goal. The burgeoning networks of the AD2000 Movement are the best example of these exciting new relationships that hold such great promise for world evangelization.
4. Money
One hundred years ago the church was spending a great deal of money on itself. A small portion of the income of Christians was going toward missions. Pierson said:
"There are thirty or forty millions of Protestant Church members today, and twelve millions of dollars is the utmost aggregate sum that is given to foreign missions by these Christians; whereas, if everyone of them gave one cent a day, it would amount to over one hundred millions, and if every one of them gave three cents a day, it would yield over three hundred and twenty five millions a year.
"There is something wrong when in the coffers of British and American Christians, there lie 25 thousand millions (25 billion) of dollars, and God cannot get for the whole work of foreign evangelization more than twelve millions of that immense sum!"
Today, just as it did 100 years ago, the church dedicates a mere pittance of its income to missions. David Barrett in his "Annual Statistical Table on Global Missions 1988" wrote, "Only 0.1 percent (of all Christians's income) goes toward outreach abroad, and under one-tenth of this goes toward outreach to the unreached non-Christian world.
According to this same chart, the 25 billion Pierson said was in the coffers of Christians in 1890 has now risen to over $8.2 trillion. Even taking into account the effects of inflation, today's figure is at least 50 times what it was in 1890. Compared with the larger non- Christian population to be reached, the church as a whole today has a financial base almost 20 times what it had in 1890 to finish world evangelization.
5. Students
In the 1880s and '90s, the YMCA was powerful and supplied many people willing to go themselves and to mobilize others for missionary service. But Christian Endeavor, which would eventually affect millions, was just getting started in 1881. The Student Volunteer movement wasn't launched until 1886 and made little contribution to world evangelization before 1900.
Today, we have Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ with its mission emphasis, and the Navigators and hundreds of other student groups that build missions into their discipleship program.
Specialized groups like the Caleb Resources seek to serve young people by increasing their mission vision. This next year they anticipate exposing over 25,000 students to mission vision through the Caleb Resources traveling team ministry.
Student movements, obviously, are not limited to the Western world. Thousands of Two-Thirds World students have committed their lives for overseas service. We don't have to look to the dawn of the 21st century to find adequate numbers of missionaries to finish the job. They come from every part of the world and are ready to be deployed today. We must simply make sure that the Church sends them out with ample resources.
6. Research
In the 1880s and '90s mission leaders had to speak in broad terms and generalities about what needed to be done to finish the task of world evangelization.
Robert Arthington of Leeds, England, for example, suggested there may have been anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 unreached tribes in the world...though he wasn't sure.
Today, we have massive computer databases with great quantities of information on all parts of the world. The disciplines of anthropology and sociology have opened doors of understanding into many previously unknown and unreached peoples.
A number of mission leaders have said they believe it is no lack of research that holds us back from completing the task. Hundreds of unreached peoples have been catalogued. Yet many remain untargeted today.
Will We Fail Again?
A Matter of Faith and Obedience
What, then, is holding us back from completing the task of world evangelization? Can we succeed this time where our ancestors failed 100 years ago?
Looked at through the eyes of faith, the task that confronted our brothers and sisters of the nineteenth century was not above their means: they simply failed to rise to the challenge. Today the task is much less daunting.
We have examined six critical criteria and seen that we have all that we need in order to complete the task. These resources are more than enough to complete the task if the body of Christ world-wide will only release them for the effort.
We do not want to underestimate the difficulties involved, but there is no compelling reason we must fail to reach the world by the year 2000. If we will rise to the occasion, we could see a church for every people by the year 2000. Let us not fail again to complete the task. It is only a matter of faith and obedience.
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