A Sad But Hopeful Number
5 Reasons Why We're Not Making Progress on Sharing the Good News
Back in 1985, the number of people without access to the Gospel of Jesus Christ was estimated to be 1.44 billion. I was saddened today to learn of the 2020 estimate: 2.30 billion. This means we’re losing ground when it comes to giving every person on the planet the opportunity to hear, understand, and believe the Good News. Millions of people are passing into a Christless eternity. How do we respond?
With all the technology, money, tools, human resources, and strategies available to the global church today, why haven’t we made better progress? Why are there still 2.30 billion people desperately, yet unknowingly, waiting for their first chance to hear? I suggest five reasons:
- We are selfish. Most believers spend more than thirty times on personal entertainment than what they give to help reach others for Christ annually.
- Our personal comfort is of off-the-charts value to us. Reaching most of the remaining people and places is simply dangerous and inconvenient. Frankly, we run from danger and don’t like to be inconvenienced, right?
- Others can do this hard, sensitive work. Most of us would rather write a check to support someone else to do this instead of getting our hands dirty or see our children engage in getting theirs dirty.
- Compromising, we bow our knees to the gods of this world. This is about prioritizing the accumulation of temporal possessions, using more time for social media than we do for prayer, and making gods of sports, money, houses … and the list goes on. Too often we adore what this world offers, leaving only leftovers for Christ.
- We just don’t care. A man claiming to follow Jesus exclaimed about a large and often threatening religious group, “I don’t care about those people. They can all go to hell.” Use any label to describe the kinds of people we don’t like, and this picture becomes clearer. While we may not hate them, we are doing little if anything to demonstrate the love of Jesus to them.
If these five assertions are true, where is the hope? It’s in those faithfully seeking to make of their lives an eternal investment. It’s rooted in the agape love of Christ, which has filled and regularly overflows from the lives of his deeply committed followers. It’s directly linked to the power we experience when the Holy Spirit fully owns us. It’s manifest when we care about the needs of others more than our own. It’s built on the legacy of those who have given their lives for the sake of Christ and others, of whom the writer of the book of Hebrews says, “The world was not worthy of them.”
Throughout One Mission Society, we are seeking to cultivate and promote self-sacrifice in the Christ-given mission of taking the Gospel globally to every person. Personal comfort is not the first priority in this work; sharing him with others is. Refusing to be silenced, we believe we’re not all called to preach, but every one of us is called to reach. Passionately committed to worshiping only one Lord, our care and deep concern for people far from him should pull us from the sheets every morning.
Most essentially, this hope is in Christ himself. The grave could not hold him. He is our resurrected and living Lord! In his power, for his honor, and compelled by his love, may the number of those who haven’t heard gradually move to zero. Let’s pray and work to see this happen as soon as possible. This is Christ’s last command, his due. May we be filled with deep faith and hopeful expectation as we carry out his mission!
Bob Fetherlin, One Mission Society Global President