Chapter
1
New
World of Possibilities
When
Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was launched into
space in May 1991, he thought it would be a routine
three-month mission. Instead, he was delayed in
space for 11 months and returned to Earth to find
that the whole world had changed. The Soviet Union
that had launched him no longer existed. While Krikalev
orbited the Earth for 331 days, not only did the
USSR disappear, global Communism collapsed, the
Cold War came to an end and the territory he landed
in, Kazakstan, became an independent republic!1
Krikalev is like a lot of missionaries we've spoken
with lately. While I was gone, they say, someone
reorganized my denomination, dissolved my mission
and even changed the name of the Foreign Mission
Board!
Change
is sweeping across our world. Hold on to your hat!
To the question "What happened today?"
there are a million different answers. Some of these
are positive, many are negative. Each of them is
demanding a gospel response.
At
a rapidly accelerating pace, unseen forces such
as demographics, politics, commerce and technology
are conspiring together to sweep us into a new world
order. No sooner do we adapt to one set of changes
than another one is upon us. Let's look at some
changes and their implications.
Population
and Politics
Driving much of the rapidly changing world are sheer
demographics. The world is expected to reach 6 billion
inhabitants before the year 2000. Within another
half century, this number may nearly double to 11
billion before it is expected to plateau.2 Fueling
this growth is 32 percent of the world's population
below the age of 15! In less-developed countries
the percentage of individuals below the age of 15
is as high as 38 percent.3 Nowhere is this crowding
of planet Earth more pronounced than in our cities.
The pace of urbanization continues to climb today
with nearly half of the world's population (43 percent)
currently living in urban areas.4
This
human time bomb has led some sociologists, such
as Robert Kaplan, to predict a bleak forecast for
the coming millennium. Rather than looking to Europe
or the United States for future global realities,
Kaplan views the future through the lens of West
Africa over the past two decades. He predicts a
"world (that) faces a period of unprecedented
upheaval, brought on by scarce resources ..., overpopulation,
uncontrollable disease, brutal warfare, and the
widespread collapse of nation-states and indeed,
of any semblance of government." "Welcome,"
says Kaplan, "to the 21st century."5
Unfortunately,
many signs of the coming calamity are already here.
The world's chronic refugee population stands at
more than 13 million with a further 4.9 million
internally displaced persons.6 Ecological disasters
and global warming have led to floods in South America
and Africa along with ruinous fires in Central America
and Indonesia. Events in Rwanda, Liberia and the
Balkans have made genocide a household word. Hostilities
between Pakistan and India threaten to spill over
into neighboring countries, go nuclear and possibly
embroil the whole world. Meanwhile, militant Islam
rolls on unabated as extremists wage a jihad against
perceived Western enemies.
If
there is any good news for such a troubled world,
it's only in the hope offered by the gospel. Missionaries
can be assured that the need for them and their
message shows no sign of diminishing in the century
ahead!
Travel
and Tourism
Despite this bleak side to the future, there are
positive trends as well. The world is becoming increasingly
interconnected. Nowhere is this more evident than
in the arena of tourism and global travel by common
citizens. Americans spent more on tourism last year
than any other country, over $52 billion.7 During
1997, for example, Brazil welcomed some 2.2 million
tourists, while Spain, the second most popular tourist
destination in the world after France, saw more
than 45 million tourists.
Countries
that have long feared the outside world are opening
their doors today, but not necessarily to missionaries.
In 1997, an estimated 25,000 Southern Baptists visited
China as tourists, businessmen or as other professionals.
The allure of tourist dollars even led relatively
closed Cuba to welcome 1.2 million foreign visitors
last year, causing tourism to surpass sugar as the
No. 1 currency earner for the country.8
If
tourism is opening countries all over the globe,
could it be that God is trying to tell us something?
Can tourists be missionaries? Can missionaries be
tourists?
Communications
In addition to the flood of tourists worldwide,
the peoples of the world are becoming interconnected
through communications channels. Where formerly
people were insulated from one another by political
and geographical barriers, today they are engaged
in a flood of invisible interaction. At an international
conference in Berlin in 1998, Renato Ruggiero, executive-secretary
of the World Trade Organization, observed that "thousands
of miles of fiber-optic cables now join oceans and
continents together, as do the millions of sound
waves and electromagnetic signals that crisscross
the atmosphere above our planet. Twenty-four hours
a day this global network carries the world's business
contracts, currency transactions, medical information
and educational resources instantly across time
zones, borders and cultures." 9
A
network that can carry business contracts and currency
transactions surely can carry a more precious cargo.
Today's communications networks may be the equivalent
of the first century's Roman roads, allowing the
gospel to stream into places where missionaries
are restricted.
Today's
communications networks
may be the equivalent of the first century's Roman
roads, allowing the gospel to stream into places
where missionaries are restricted.
Commerce
This interconnected globe is creating the closest
thing yet to a single, borderless global economy--an
economy which will have profound implications for
the way national systems operate in the future.10
With NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, we
already can see the trend toward freer global trade.
By early next century, almost 60 percent of world
trade is scheduled to be tariff free.11 Already,
American companies employ roughly 3 million workers
in Europe alone. The implications of all this global
interconnectedness for Christian missions is enormous.
If we are able to enter the flow of international
business activity, virtually no country on earth
will be closed to us.
Computers
and Technology
It's hard to believe that only 30 years ago, in
1969, the ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency)
went online connecting four major U.S. universities,
and the Internet was born. Since that time, the
Internet has doubled in size almost every year.
Today, more than 50 million people are using the
Internet.12 In January 1997, an estimated 16 million
computers were connected to the Internet. The rate
of growth is so rapid, however, that by the year
2000 experts predict there will be 200 million computers
connected to the Internet. Small wonder that for
1982, rather than choosing a "Person of the
Year," Time magazine declared the personal
computer the "Machine of the Year."14
The
implications of this computer interconnectedness
are astounding. According to the Net.Journal Directory,
in 1997 there were at least 10,000 magazines and
journals available on-line.15 Already emerging satellite
downloads promise speeds that will be up to 14 times
faster than conventional 28.8 bits-per-second telephone
modems.16 This high-speed delivery makes it possible
to transmit the text of 35,000 full-length novels
every second. The cost of this transmission is virtually
the same whether it is going across town or around
the world.
For
gospel proclamation, this burgeoning computer network
truly has been a God-send. It has enabled us to
put the Bible in dozens of languages online so that
university students and private citizens in countries
around the world can down-load the Word of God in
the privacy of their own home or dormitory room.
Campus Crusade already has put the Jesus film in
more than 20 languages online for computer access.
Dozens more language translations of the Jesus film
are being digitized now and will be accessible via
the Internet soon.
Knowledge
and Action
Few would argue that the information age has resulted
in far more information than we can ever digest.
In addition to the remarkable opportunities afforded
by the technology and information boom comes additional
responsibility. As never before, Christians are
able to view the world in all of its complexity,
diversity and lostness.
Today,
we know that roughly 1.7 billion individuals living
in 2,000 distinct language communities around the
world have little or no access to the gospel. This
would have been news to any generation of believers
prior to our own. But for us, it is more than news,
it is a haunting reminder of the unfinished task
ahead. As the Apostle James reminds us: Anyone,
then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't
do it, sins (James 4:17).
The
International Mission Board is changing so that
we can take full advantage of today's possibilities
and meet the full range of tomorrow's challenges.
Despite the perils that lie ahead for believers
everywhere, the knowledge that millions are still
perishing in darkness carries with it a responsibility
to do whatever it takes to finish the course set
before us. Let's press on!
<Previous
page | next
page>
