President's Blog

What percentage goes to reach the 1-2% unreached?

July 29, 2024
by Steve Jones

Ever wonder how many people throughout the world have committed themselves to Christ’s mission to evangelize the world? How many missionaries have been sent? What are today’s global resources for world evangelism?

I came across this information from the “World Christian Trends” work done by the William Carey Library and researchers David Barrett and Todd Johnson. I thought you might be interested:

Classification of Christians 33 AD 1000 AD 2025 AD
Nominal Christians 0 40 million 1.7 billion
Active Christians 10,000 5 million 880 million
Pastoral workers 200 88,000 5 million
Home missionaries >100 17,000 1.2 million
Cross–cultural missionaries 100 900 300,000
Missionaries serving in the “Christian” world 0 1,100 300,000
Missionaries serving in the evangelized “non-Christian” world 0 400 200,000
Missionaries serving in the “un-evangelized” world 0 300 50,000

 

Global resources to complete the Great Commission

When it comes to resources to fulfill the Great Commission (evangelize and disciple) Christian resources do abound. This is a list produced from data collected in the early 2000s:

  • 1.88 billion professing Christians
  • 565 million professing Christians under 15 years of age
  • 648 million practicing Christians
  • 600 million weekly-worshipping Christians
  • 3.45 million worship centres (local churches)
  • 33,800 distinct denominations
  • 4,000 foreign mission boards or societies
  • 5,800 home-mission boards or societies
  • 23,000 para-church agencies
  • 400 medical mission agencies
  • 5,500 Christian hospitals
  • 30,000 Christian medical centres
  • 170,000 Christian elementary schools
  • 50,000 Christian high schools
  • 1,500 Christian universities
  • 4,800 seminaries or theological colleges (1.1 million seminary students)
  • 1.1 million ordained clergy
  • 5.52 million full-time Christian workers
  • 420,000 vocational full-time foreign missionaries
  • 1.1 million home missionaries
  • 26,100 new Christian book titles every year
  • 12,000 major religious (Christian) libraries
  • 53.7 million Bibles distributed each year
  • 120.7 million New Testaments distributed each year
  • 4.6 million Scripture portions distributed each year
  • 3 billion Christian books printed each year
  • 5 billion Christian tracts printed each year
  • 4,000 Christian radio/TV stations
  • 120,000 full-time personnel in Christian broadcasting
  • 3,000 evangelistic mass campaigns each year
  • 332 million Christians own a computer
  • 5,000 Great Commission computerized networks
  • 845 current global plans for world evangelism
  • 210 current global mega-plans for world evangelism
  • 57 current global giga-plans for world evangelism

Impressive, but dig deeper

Pretty impressive, eh? But the reality is that the vast bulk of these resources benefit mostly the “Christian world”. Even when it comes to foreign missions… 85% of personnel and money is devoted to “Christian” regions such as North America, Brazil, Kenya, etc.

The present annual cost of missions to Christian lands is $163 billion compared to the $250 million to send approximately 10,200 foreign missionaries to frontier fields (countries where less than 1-2% of the population self-identify as evangelical Christians).

We certainly need to continue supporting home missions and missions to evangelized fields. A strong home base is critical to completing the Great Commission, but we must remain vigilant and intentional about still giving a fair share to missions in those tougher, unevangelized fields. I imagine many of our church mission budgets may not represent this reality.

Fellowship International missionaries who need your support:

Currently these amazing couples are looking for partners to enable them to go to those fields that are the least evangelized (less than 1-2% evangelical).

Please prayerfully consider how you or your local church might come alongside any one or more of these missionaries in prayer and financial partnership. Thank you.

*initials used for security reasons