Motivation for Missions

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Motivation for Missions

• The Gospel impact today is the greatest in the
  history of the Church.

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Purpose

• Made for a purpose
• God Himself lives for purpose
• Significance is to devote your life to a purpose
  that is larger than your life
• Especially the same purpose for which God Himself
  lives!
• Can we genuinely worship God and not be as
  concerned about the WORLD as He is concerned?

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American evangelicals are pluralists

• 57 of Evangelicals believe there are other ways
  to God
• Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted a
  massive survey on religion in America last year.
  35,000 Americans were surveyed
• David Van Biema of Time cited an disturbing
  statistic 70 of those surveyed agreed with the
  statement, many religions can lead to eternal
  life.
• 57 of evangelicals surveyed were willing to
  accept that theirs might not be the only path to
  salvation.

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Incredible Growth

• Several countries have reached 35 Christian,
  mostly Evangelical
• Whole countries have become open to the Gospel.
• More Christians have gone places, learned more
  languages, translated more Scriptures and
  established more churches than in any period of
  history
• With the population growth, more than 50 of the
  worlds population is alive today
• Yet Less than 1/3 of the Globe has access to ever
  hear the Gospel once !

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Non-Western Christians as a Percentage of all
Christians 1900-2020
1920
1960
1980
2000
2020
1940
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The Church in Africa

• Before the mid-1970s there were more Muslims than
  Christians in Africa
• Africa is experiencing the fastest church growth
• The largest churches are Catholic, Anglican and
  Methodist
• The crucial test for the African church in 21st
  century is how to respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic

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Church in Latin America

• 1900 barely 50,000 believers
• 2000 more than 40 million
• Most of growth among Pentecostal movements
• Largest population is Brazil (33 million
  evangelicals)
• Several cities over 10 million and one, Mexico
  City, over 22 million
• Hundreds of unreached people groups remain

Over 20 10-20 5-10 Under 5
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The Church in Europe

• Christianity has stagnated
• Massive unevangelized areas
• Mostly Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox

Roman Catholic Greek Orthodox Atheistic Protestant
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The Church in Asia

• 60 of Asias 312 million Christians actively
  witness
• Most of unreached peoples of world in this area

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Response of animistic tribes

• Pacific Islands 16 are Evangelicals converted
  from cannibalistic, stone-age people
• Hundreds of LA jungle tribes converted to Christ,
  yet hundreds more are unreached
• 10 million Quechua Indians in the Andes have
  begun to respond by the thousands after years of
  resistance

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Impact in Asia

• S. Korea is more than 25 Evangelical
• 3.75 million Evangelicals in the Philippines
• 9 million in Indonesia
• Great moving of God in India is paralleled with
  great persecution

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Impact in China

• Missionaries forced out in 1950 Communist
  revolution
• Est. less than 1 million Protestant members then
• In last 20 years est. more than 50-70 million
  have become Christians in an underground
  house-church movement amid serious persecution
• This is the largest turning to Christ in 2000
  year of Church history!

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65 nations 4 billion people 2/3 of the
worlds population 97 of those who have not
heard 30-70 unemployment 82 of the poorest
of the poor 3 of mission workers
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Church Spending Worldwide
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Until all have heard
Why should anyone hear the Gospel twice when so
many have not heard it even once?
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Percentage of Foreign Missionaries and percentage
of Religious world Populations
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Bible status in world languages

• 6500 languages spoken today
• 366 have the whole Bible in their language
• 928 have the NT in their language
• 918 have the gospel of John in their language

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Formerly Closed Countries Yielding Fruit

• Nepal, Turkey, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq
  are responding to the gospel
• Tentmaking missionaries are increasing as never
  before to have a platform for establishing a
  ministry in RAC.
• TESL
• Education
• Training Nationals in Certified Areas
• Business

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Missionaries from two-thirds World

• 1988 the number of foreign missionaries was
  36,000 and growing more rapidly than Western
  missionaries today they number more than 60,
  000.
• International students who convert to Christ in
  the US are returning to their country with great
  impact
• Koreans are the leading nation with over 2,500
  missionaries in other lands (most are ethnic
  missionaries

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Formally closed countries are opening

• Difficult or dangerous for foreigners
• Algeria
• Bhutan Iran
• Maldives
• N. Korea
• Sahara
• Somalia

• Some tent making ministry possible
• Afghanistan
• Bangladesh
• Comoros
• Mauritania
• Morocco
• Tunisia
• Yemen
• Libya

Scope for open Christian witness Cambodia Mongolia
Nepal Niger Thailand Turkey
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New Tools for World Evangelism

• Radio, now online transmission
• TV and soon online Christian TV productions
• Audio-visuals, computer projections and graphics
• Missionary aviation
• Computers
• Satellite transmissions, Internet connections
• Scientific linguistics
• Literature publications
• Christian Education, schools and colleges
• Church-based training tools
• Bible correspondence courses, Distance Learning

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Study of Missiology

• Research Centers are providing information and
  methodology that are effective
• Now we are able to train missionaries effectively
  in the latest technology
• Greater cooperation and partnering among missions
  has facilitated great expansion of the gospel
• Focus has encouraged the conquest of unreached
  peoples among the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and
  others

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New Paradigms

• American missionary leadership is changing from
  pioneers to coaches of national movements
• Churches are partnering with different groups to
  take personal responsibility for reaching cities
  and people groups
• Training of leaders is shifting from institutions
  to empowering local churches to train their own
  leaders for their own mission
• Tentmakers are becoming a new challenge of mixing
  business and evangelism
• Short-term overseas experiences become primary
  beginning of mission commitment
• House-church movements are sweeping areas
  previously closed to the gospel

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It isnt going to be easy

• Chinese character for the word crisis is made
  up of two smaller characters meaning danger and
  opportunity
• Businessmen slogan, No risk, no gain
• Paul said, for a wide door for effective service
  has opened to me, and there are many adversaries
  1 Cor 169
• Opportunities always run parallel to problems and
  crises

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Objective of the course

• To make every Christian a World Christian
• To clarify the myths and misunderstandings
  regarding missions
• Not everyone can be a foreign missionary, but all
  can be missions-minded
• We must choose Does God want us to be a sender
  of others to the world, or personally a goer to
  the unreached

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Five Dimensions of World Missions

• Biblical Dimension inductively formed
  convictions of truth
• Historical Dimension What God has been doing
  since Pentecost
• Contextual Dimension Understand what kind of
  world we have inherited
• Geographic Dimension Specific information about
  what missions has accomplished in each area of
  the world
• Practical Dimension How missions function
  through churches, missions, supporters and
  missionaries

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Indifference to being a world ChristianPeter
Wagner

1. Find yourself sitting on the bench while you
   could be playing a significant role missions is
   the cutting edge of excitement
2. You will loose authenticity as a Christian You
   say you love to worship Jesus, but you are
   disinterested in what He loves the world. This
   is hypocrisy!
3. You will be poorly prepared for the judgment day
   when He tests how useful we were to the
   advancement of the Kingdom of God

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Means of Mission Involvement

• Build prayer power, Mt 938, Beseech the Lord of
  the harvest to send out workers into His harvest
• Teach missions in the church and family
• Increase financial investment, 2 Cor 96, He who
  sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly and he
  who sows bountifully shall also reap bountifully
• Recruit new missionaries be a sender or goer,
  but always a recruiter!
• Send church or university teams on specific
  projects
• Organize churches to develop partnership projects
• Team up with 1-5 missionaries with prayer/finance

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Urgency of Mission Involvement

• 2.2 million go into eternity daily
• 67 have little or no chance to hear the Gospel
• Anyone who does not believe for any reason is
  lost forever! Jn 318
• J. Oswald Sanders, Our responsibility for the
  salvation of the heathen will be as great as our
  ability and opportunity to give them the gospel
  or to make it possible for the gospel to be
  brought to them
• Jesus passion is I will build my Church and the
  gates of hell will not prevail against it Mt
  1618 Are we with Him?