Statistics

When Christianity first began, it was a small crowd following Jesus who traveled throughout Galilee performing miracles and sharing the Good News. Through the working of the Holy Spirit, Christianity has become the largest religion in the world. Out of over 7 billion people in the world, 2.3 billion, or 30.9%, adhere to the Christian faith.

Although this is a great milestone, there is an even greater challenge that our faith is facing. Namely, the Church of today seems to have turned a blind eye to those who have never heard of the Gospel. In fact, 70% of evangelical Christians have never even been told about the 1.6 billion unevangelized people in the world. (World Evangelization Research Center) How are we supposed to take the Gospel to the unevangelized if we don’t even know about them?

This is an important aspect of the ministry of Global Commission Partners. GCP believes that educating the Church about the unevangelized, where they are, how we can reach them, etc. is crucial for fulfilling the Great Commission. Although the church has made great progress in evangelizing the world, the statistics here show that there is still a lot of work to be done.

The World and Christianity

• Despite Christ’s command to evangelize, 67% of all humans from AD 30 to the present day have never even heard the name of Jesus Christ. (Baxter 2007, 12).
• In the last 40 years, over 1 billion people have died who have never heard of Jesus, and around 30 million people this year will perish without hearing the message of salvation. (Baxter 2007, 12).

During his time on earth, Jesus said, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come.” – Matthew 24:14. The word “nations” here does not refer to countries. In the original Greek, the word is “etnos”, meaning ethno-linguistic groups, or people groups. The world today has almost 10,000 people groups; more than 4,000 of these people groups are considered unreached. In other words, more than 40% of the world’s people groups don’t have sufficient access to the Gospel.

In AD 100 there were 12 unreached people groups for every congregation of believers. Now there is 1 unreached people group for every 1000 congregations. (Winter et al., 3) Why then are there still more than 4,000 unreached people groups? The fact is that the Western Church, which has more than enough resources to evangelize these people groups, has grown preoccupied with local work and has refused to place a priority in reaching these unreached people groups.

Although there are a growing number of ministries that are beginning to raise funds for evangelizing the remaining unreached people groups, GCP is different in the fact that we work exclusively with unreached people groups. God’s vision for GCP is to tell the Western Church about the unreached, raise funds, and send these resources to native ministries that are reaching those people groups that don’t have access to the Gospel.

Money and Mission Stats

• 86% of all unreached people groups lie within the region called the 10/40 window, which is between 10 and 40 degrees north and from the west coast of Africa to the east coast of Asia. (Joshua Project)
• 70,000+ people die everyday in the unreached world without Jesus. (Baxter 2007, 12)
• 60% of unreached people groups live in countries closed to missionaries from North America. (The Traveling Team)
• 818 unreached people groups have never been targeted by any Christian agency ever. (World Evangelization Research Center)

“If ten men are carrying a log — nine of them on the little end and one at the heavy end — and you want to help, which end will you lift on?” William Borden

Obviously, the answer would be to help the man by himself in the heavy end! However, for some reason when it comes to world evangelization, many western Christians don’t see it that way. GCP believes that the biggest problem in missions today is that the majority of the western church’s resources are being spent on evangelizing places that have already been evangelized, while almost no resources are going to the least reached places. In fact, only 1% of all Christian giving is going toward evangelizing unreached people groups.

Another factor to consider here is native missionaries. These missionaries know the local languages, understand their culture, and can’t be deported. Moreover, they can be supported at a fraction of the cost of a foreign missionary. These workers represent the most effective missionary force ever seen, yet they only receive 10% of the resources given to evangelize unreached people groups. In other words, out of every $100 in the western church, only 10 cents goes to native missionaries working in unreached people groups. This is the reason why GCP works exclusively with native missionaries that are spreading the Gospel inside unreached people groups. We believe this is the most effective way in finishing the great commission.

10 Cents per $100

• 40% of the church’s entire global foreign mission resources are being deployed to just 10 oversaturated countries. (World Evangelization Research Center)
• Christians make up 33% of the world’s population, but receive 53% of the world’s annual income and spend 98% of it on themselves. (Barrett and Johnson 2001, 656)
• The Church has roughly 3,000 times the financial resources and 9,000 times the manpower needed to finish the Great Commission. (The Traveling Team)