A Current Crisis in Missions

There are between 450,000 and 500,000 full-time occupational missionaries on the globe. This does NOT include pastors or church staff. There maybe up to 600,000 if we consider the few thousand unknown cases of missionaries in poorer regions where there are no records of their work. Let’s assume there are a lot more than recorded and round that number to 1 million. There are close to 7 billion people on the earth with about 550-650 million evangelical, born again Christians. Each person that this number accounts for, has the job of reaching the other 6.5 billion unbelieving people. Do these numbers seem waaaaaay off to you? They should. This basically comes down to only 1/5th of 1 percent of the Body of Christ is presently engaged in full-time missions.

Given the size of an average church in America, which is about 90 people, you would have to visit 18 churches to find ONE full-time occupational missionary. This is in no way down playing those that are actively spreading the gospel at their jobs or communities, but this is about people that have given up everything and given their lives to reaching people that do not know Jesus. 

In the 10/40 window, land that stretches from Northern Africa across the Middle East and into Asia, is the home to 88% of the world’s unreached people. These places have no Gospel access. Depending on how you define unreached, the ratio of Gospel worker to an unreached person is somewhere around 300,000 to 1. Imagine getting off a plane, knowing that your work load is 300,000+ people. No pressure there! 

Of every $100 that is given to missions worldwide, only 0.05 cents is given to those workers in the 10/40 window. 

This is an issue that we, the Church, have to face and deal with. We can’t keep putting our heads in the sand and forget these parts of the world.

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Author: Amy Thomas, SRC Missionary in Training