Awake or Asleep through Change?

That the world has changed in the last 40 years—is such obvious fact that only a Rip Van Winkle (who in the famous story slept for 20 years) would have missed it. Technological progress is one obvious area of change, as well as mobility and communication—all things that have made life easier, at least in

some ways.  A lot of things are possible that would not have been a generation ago. And mission work has changed as well. While our commission is the same: to take the Good News to all peoples, the way in which we do it has to be adjusted to the context.

So what are the biggest challenges for Kingdom-work today? Number one has to be security. Unlike the experience of Washington Irving’s fictional character (who missed the whole American Revolutionary War in his long siesta), unrest, conflict, and the spread of terrorism are becoming an almost daily event—and not just since 9/11. Mission work has always involved risk and danger, but it has become increasingly so. Governments, particularly those of Islamic countries, that used to be restrictive have become, in many cases, downright hostile to the spread of the Gospel in their territory. They won’t even give travel permits to Westerners—and certainly not if the individual in question enters the word ‘missionary’ on the visa application form.  Mission agencies—no matter how much philanthropic work they may have done in the past—are rarely welcome anymore. Development programs are not free of suspicion, either, and are often very critically examined. 

Mobility is another big factor, as well. 40 years ago you had to get on a ship or airliner to engage the Muslim world, but now they have become our neighbors. While only about 1% of the US population is Muslim, the figures are much higher for the UK, Germany, and Switzerland (around 5%), and the growth rate is relatively high. Churches in West aren’t sure what to do with this change. Muslims in their traditional countries aren’t secure, either—more and more refugees are crossing borders (see Syria and Iraq), and migrating even within their present ones, usually into the burgeoning cities, which are still mostly unreached. The prognosis is that by 2050, 80% of the world’s population will live in cities.

Some of this change is amazingly positive in nature—we have many new partners in the task of world evangelism.  In the 1980s, two-thirds of the world’s Christians lived in the Western hemisphere. In the intervening period, the church world-wide has grown, especially in Asia, Africa, and South America. Today more than two-thirds of the Christian population lives in what we call the ‘Global South.’ And what’s more, these churches are discovering God’s mission command and are sending workers, who in some cases are closer in culture and language to the unreached. They don’t always have the experience, nor perhaps the theological knowledge that the older, more established churches have accumulated over a long period of time. So networking with these new partners will be both a challenge, but at the same time, a great potential for church planting among Muslims.

Training and support for local believers is a very positive development—forty years ago ReachAcross workers were ‘sowing the seed’ among Muslims but now that seed has, at least in some cases, brought visible fruit. And increasingly Muslim background believers (MBBs) want to be involved in reaching their own people, despite the huge obstacles that they face. Mission workers—including at times Westerners—can help train and advise.

All of these changes are affecting the work of ReachAcross. The most important thing you can do for us now is to pray that we will be open to the Spirit’s leading, and keep to the vision the Lord has given us—‘helping Muslims follow Jesus’—wherever they may be!

Adapted from an article published in Aktuell and produced by ReachAcross Switzerland.