A career missionary couple offers their assessment of the changing face of being a missionary in today’s world.
By Chuck and Sherry Quinley
Some things will never change about missions:
• The pathetic condition of an unreached person searching for meaning and hope without finding it.
• God’s love for the lost.
• His determination to reach them with His offer of adoption and forgiveness.
• Our clear marching orders from Jesus that reaching and discipling the lost is to be the primary focus of the church and of all individual believers.
Being a Bible-believing Christian means committing ourselves– time, talent and money– to all of this.
But the world has greatly changed in the past 40 years. This demands a re-designing of the church’s mission to the nations. Here are a few of the changes we must address:
Where the unreached live.
We have very clear sociological data today and we know that 95 percent of the world’s unreached people live in Asia and the surrounding nations. Still, we continue the 100-year-old habit of sending no more than five percent of missionaries and money to this region. Churches, missions agencies and individuals need to prioritize the unreached above those who have abundant access to the gospel (85 percent of all missions work is done in nations four hours from the USA due to convenience and long-term relational ties. The simple fact is that these nations as a whole have 300 years of Christian witness while much of Asia has never seen one missionary).
How young the unreached are.
The average age in many Asian nations is less than 25 years. The harvest is young. Seventy percent of all conversions occur by age 14, and ninety percent by age 25. Does your church or mission spend the majority of its funds, staff and energies reaching those under 25? All over the world we need to make a serious commitment to younger forms of communication and community.
Where cultural influence now originates.
Question, “What is the most powerful force in shaping the lives of even the people of God?” Answer: Secular media. Even in the church, a pastor gets 45 minutes once a week. Then we all tune into media for hours every day. It teaches us our values, feeds us our opinion and influences our beliefs about politics, marriage, work, money, power, sex-you name it! This is even more apparent in those who are unreached. For them, media is the only voice they are hearing. The church has to get in on the conversation that is taking place all over this world on TV, radio, books, film and in the most important place of all-the internet.
How urban and poor the harvest is.
Today for the first time in human history, more people live in urban centers than in the countryside (up from only 10 percent in 1900). As Sherry and I travel through even the most remote places we find youth dressing and acting as urbanites despite being from tribal societies. Urban areas are places of great opportunity and great poverty, disease, crime and oppressive labor practices. Many of Asia’s great mega-cities have hardly any Christian witness.
Chuck and Sherry Quinley
Missionaries to Thailand
Project Number 0600031
© 2009 Church of God World Missions