ALL MISSIONARIES
All Missionaries in the World (Catholic, Protestant, etc.): 445,000 foreign missionaries [1]
Missionaries in the Reached World : 343,000 foreign missionaries (77%) [estimated]
Missionaries in the Unevangelized : 86,000 foreign missionaries (19%) [estimated]
Missionaries in the Unreached : estimated 15,000 foreign missionaries (3.4%) [2]
30:1
“Roughly thirty-times as many missionaries go to Reached people groups to work with Christians, as go to Unreached People Groups. Far less go to the Frontier People Groups, where there are as yet no believers. - R.W. Lewis [3]
CHRISTIAN WORKERS
Full time Christian Nationals Workers: 13.5 million workers [1]
MORE MISSIONS OBSERVATIONS
Only 1 of every 174,463 Christians goes as a missionary to the Unreached.
Only 1 of every 41,707 Protestant Christians goes as a missionary to the Unreached.
There are 57,053 Evangelical Christians for every one unreached people group.
Young people have traditionally led the way in going and there are roughly 21 million university students (2014).
CONCLUSION
Is God to blame for not "Calling" People to Missions?
If everyone is obeying God’s “calling” to be a missionary wherever they are then God is apparently calling 99.9995% of people to work among the half of the world population that already has the gospel, and calling virtually no one (.0006%) to relocate among the other half of the world population that are not Christian. You have a better chance of being in a plane crash than being one of the few missionaries to the unreached.
In light of God’s word, this seems unfathomable and it appears to be almost complete disobedience on the part of the Church worldwide to go make disciples of all the nations. Financially we are hoarding 99.99% of our income to ourselves and what little is given is mostly directed toward reached people groups.
The current status quo is to do virtually nothing to reach the UPG’s of the world. The percentages of man-power and money focused on UPG’s are almost undetectable they are so small. The amount of resources that fall off the Christian table for unreached peoples is more comparable ( we googled it…) with the number of skin cells you lose over a month’s time: something hardly worth calling a sacrifice of the body.
“Reaching the world with the gospel is not a resource problem, it is a mobilization problem. ”
SOURCES
[1] Center for Study of Global Christianity, Gordon Conwell 2024 Status update, See also World Christian Database, 2015,*Barrett and Johnson. 2001. World Christian Trends, pg 656
[2] *15,000 is the latest number for 2024, See also Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo, eds., World Christian Database(Leiden/Boston: Brill, accessed January 2022
[3] 2018, [R.W. Lewis Quote] International Journal of Frontier Mission, Clarifying the Remaining Frontier Mission Task, by R. W. Lewis, issue 35:4 Winter 2018, p164
See also Atlas of Global Christianity 2009. And 2001, Deployment of Missionaries
