The State of the Great Commission

This month, The Fourth Lausanne Congress will be gathering in Seoul-Incheon, South Korea and aims to be catalytic in advancing the Movement’s fourfold vision—the gospel for every person, disciple-making churches for every people and place, Christ-like leaders for every church and sector, and kingdom impact in every sphere of society. They recently published a 500-page report on the Current + Future State of the Great Commission.

The following “caveats” jumped out to me as I reviewed parts of it from a 35,000-foot level:

• The term “The Great Commission” associated with Matthew 28:19-20 is no older than a hundred and fifty years. It was Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), who first brought this to the frontlines of mission-speak. He had apparently borrowed it from the writings of a Dutch missionary, Justinian von Welz (1621–1688).
• Timothy Tennent points to the unprecedented 5,000 percent growth of independent indigenous Christian movements in the global south ‘from only eight million at the turn of the twentieth century to 423 million by the close of the century’.
• Over the past century, Christianity witnessed its most marked growth in Sub-Saharan Africa and its most marked decline in the Middle East, North Africa, and Western Europe.
• Mission is increasingly decoupled from its Western colonial legacy, with more missionaries coming from countries that lack Christian majorities.
• Only three percent of international missionaries go to the unreached (who compose 40 percent of the global population). Thus, 97 percent of missionaries are sent to people who already have gospel access.
• Nearly nine out of ten Muslims and Hindus in the world do not personally know a Christian. The lack of contact reinforces the notion that Christianity is a Western religion.
• Over 1,000 languages still lack a translation of even part of the Bible. Asia, Africa, and Oceania possess the majority of language groups still lacking Bibles.
• With the exception of the Orthodox, all other Christian traditions demonstrate trends of growth or stability in Africa and Asia in the coming decades.
• Today, significant numbers of Christians worldwide are responding to the biblical call to generosity by giving to their local churches and for fulfilling the Great Commission. Many are going beyond just giving financially to kingdom work.
• Because of 20th century European migrations, more Jewish people live in the United States than in any other country. Israel, however, is predicted to have the world’s largest Jewish population by 2050.
• Some Palestinian Evangelicals engage in dialogue with Israeli Christians and international Christian organizations to address the conflict and advocate for a just and peaceful resolution. Many radical Christians adhere to the principle of nonviolence, drawing inspiration from Jesus’ teachings on love, forgiveness, and turning the other cheek.
• A sharp divide is seen between the Global South and Global North regarding trust in religious institutions. In Global South regions, religious institutions are trusted above government, media, and business.
• The global church’s perceived greatest influence is on education. The church is perceived to have the least influence on finance and technology.
• A growing segment of the global population – including Christians – will have an entire season of life after working age. This generation is an untapped agent of gospel witness and in many contexts will increasingly represent those lacking gospel access.
• Over thirty years, extreme poverty has been cut in half globally even while the global population grew by over 2 billion people.
• Persecution is highest in parts of North Africa, Middle East, and Asia.
• The Global North, in general, has the highest protection of human rights with the Global South generally lower. Globally, human rights are more protected than in the previous centuries.
• Generally, Christians across the globe hold a more reserved position than the general population regarding the use of gene editing to change genetic characteristics.
• Screen time globally is increasing every year, having significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Youth spend more time online than any other generation. Overall, the average daily global screen time is 6:37 and climbing.
• In a 2022 Gallup survey of US Employee Work Locations, about a third preferred exclusively remote and two-thirds preferred hybrid, with only 6 percent preferring full onsite.
• Notably the United States has one of the largest differences between worship attendance (35-40 percent) and prayer engagement (50-55 percent). Additionally, in the United States, prayer is more common than in many other wealthy countries.
• The digital age has significantly contributed to Bible translation and Scripture engagement. The interplay of technological innovation, societal trends, and the global church’s adaptability will shape the future of Scripture engagement.
• A great strength of technology is the way it gives access to people and between peoples across distances and cultures. The church as a whole can consider in new ways how to reach people in remote areas instantly and how to convey the vast amounts of information we possess.
• Proclamation evangelism is here to stay but embraces the use of innovative approaches in the digital age to share the good news. The digital era we are accelerating into presents unprecedented opportunities for reaching people globally.
• Prioritizing interdisciplinary conversations is key to close this gap in the Great Commission. As we move deeper into this digital age, spaces for discipleship seem to only continue to grow and emerge.
• Europe stands as an important reminder that our current state and trajectory does not establish with any certainty the future of the church.
• The youthfulness of Africa’s population is perhaps its most strategic potential for the global Christian movement.
• Of the 27,000 globally-reported victims of exploitation and human trafficking, 81 percent of these were from Asia, of which three-quarters were from Southeast Asia.
• The whole family of the church discipled, empowered and equipped by God’s Word and Spirit, is called to a missionary task. A church that is ultimately not engaged in reaching its community and beyond, is a church that is both disobedient and dying.

May the Lord of the Harvest empower His Church, with a new generation of cross-cultural Jesus-followers to take His Gospel to the Ends of the Earth through this Fourth Lausanne Congress.