"AD 2000" and the "10/40 Window": A Preliminary Assessment Robert T. Coote A year and a half ago the mission committee of our local church decided to adopt the Han Chinese in Laos for its special interest. First Baptist Church, Meriden, Connecticut, is but one of thousands of churches around the world that have had their interest in mission spurred by the AD 2000 Movement, with its em phasis on the 10/40 Window' and its goal of completing world evangelization by December 31,2000. It is time for an assessment. What was to be accomplished by the end of the century? Was it realistic to expect to establish believing communities in all of the several thousand unchurched people groups across the globe, such as the Han Chinese in Laos ? Was this just another case of naive American evangelical enthu­ siasm ? A high-profile campaign at the end of the millennium lacking depth and holistic integrity? A crass example of manage­ ment by objective? A dubious attempt to trigger the second coming of Christ by fulfilling the conditions of Matthew 24:14? First, it needs to be said that the AD 2000 program has not been confined to fiery-eyed evangelicals. American Baptists, of which our local church is a part, have focused on a number of people groups in Asia and Latin America. Top denominational leaders from the Presbyterian Church (U.s.A.) , the Reformed Church in America, and the U.K. Anglican Church were among participants who held an AD 2000 strategy consultation in De­ cember 1993 and who endorsed the AD 2000 watchword "A church for every people and the gospel for every person by the year 2000."2 In January 1989 mission leaders from fifty countries met in Singapore in the Global Consultation on World Evangelization (GCOWE) to consider marking the end of the century as a goalfor completing world evangelization. Representatives of the Roman Catholic communion were among the 314 participants. They too had sights set on the millennial year. Pope John Paul II, in 1987, had already proclaimed 1990-2000 the "Universal decade of evangelization, in order to put the Good News of salvation in the hands of every person before the dawn of the Third Millennium." The goal of the program was "a world more Christian than not by the year 2000."3 The AD 2000 Movement not only has been interdenomina­ tional in its constituency but international as well. In 1987 the individual who canvassed mission leaders to see if there was interest in launching an AD 2000 program was Thomas Wang, a Chinese, then serving as international director of the Lausanne Committee; he would soon become chairman of the AD 2000 Movement. The AD 2000 international director, Luis Bush, is the son of a British businessman who raised his family in Argentina and Brazil. Bush served as a pastor in EI Salvador and as director of Partners International before taking up the leadership of AD 2000. The two primary collectors of global data are British: David B. Barrett, director of World Evangelization Movement, Rich­ mond, Virginia, and Patrick Johnstone, research secretary for WEC International, Gerrards Cross, England. In July 1997, some 4,000 mission leaders and supporters of the AD 2000 project met in Pretoria, Sou th Africa, to strategize for a final push toward AD 2000 goals. Eighty percent were non- Robert T. Coote is Associate Editor oftheINT ERNATIONAL B ULLETIN OF MISSION­ ARY R ESEARCH andAssociate Director oftheOverseas MinistriesStudy Center. Westerners, and they largely paid their own way. The AD 2000 Movement has achieved a remarkable degree of effectiveness in involving the global, interdenominational Christian community. A Worthy Heritage Old Testament prophets envisioned a day when "the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14). In 1719 Isaac Watts responded to that biblical dream with the hymn "Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun." During the years of the Great Awakening in colonial America and in England, local revivals were seen as precursors to the worldwide extension of the Gospel, the "end of history," and the millennial reign of Christ.' William Carey was one of the first to marshal global popu­ lation data to demonstrate the need for foreign missionary ef­ forts . By the mid-nineteenth century mission researchers had developed a grid of shaded squares, each square representing a million people, with the non -Christian world indicated by the darker sections of the diagram," In the late 1880s this visual aid was employed by Fanny (Mrs. H. Grattan) Guinness, cofounder with her husband of the East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions (Harley House), and by Benjamin Broomhall, secretary of the China Inland Mission," Guinness titled her page "A Dark Picture." Broomhall's version was relieved by three white squares in the middle of the darkest sections to indicate Diagram recreated from Benjamin Broomhall, The Evangelisation of the World (1887) p. 6, showing the estimated population of the world. (Total world population 1,424,000,000 (each square equals 1 million). Protes tants, 116,000,000 ============== ============== Greek Churc h, m""~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ggggggggggg~~OO 84,000,000. 1ll111111111iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiililliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllill 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 Rom an Ca tholics, 190,000,000 . 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 111111111111111111 0 0 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 111111111111111111 111111111111111111111 1111111111 1 1 Jew s, 8,000,000. Mohamm ed ans , 170,000,000 . Mission Converts, 3,000,000. Heath en, 856,000,000. 160 I NTERNATIONAL B ULLETIN OF MISSIONA RY R ESEARCH three million "Mission Converts" out of 1,026 million "heathen" and "Mohammedans." A comment by the vicar of Islington accompanied the display: "Is it not a solemn fact that ... of every three persons walking on the vast globe, two have never heard of the Saviour?" This popular diagram from the nineteenth century appeared again in 1927. Pope Pius XI had called for a Holy Year missions exhibit to be held in Rome in 1925. Supervision and preparation for the event was entrusted to Robert Streit, O.M.1. (1875-1930), the pioneer Roman Catholic mission bibliographer. In follow-up to the exhibition, Streit produced Catholic Missions in Figures and Symbols. In this volume the diagram displays 1,726 squares, accounting for a world population of 1,726 million. Understand­ ably, this time it is the Catholic section-featuring 305 white squares-and not the Protestant that crowns the top of the diagram. The "Pagan" section is just under 50 percent of the whole, and "Mohammedans" account for another 14 percent. Streit's commentary reads: "[Christian mission is] only at the beginning.... For the sake of souls, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ gave His mission command two thousand years ago .... The religious map of the world should not be merely looked at but meditated upon on our knees before a crucifix. More than half of mankind is still sitting in darkness and the shadows of death."? Reviving an Old Dream Obviously the architects of the AD 2000 Movement had a great deal of history to inform their vision. One who played a major role in helping them to take history seriously was Todd Johnson, a member of Youth with a Mission (YWAM) and a son-in-law of Ralph D. Winter. Winter, founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission and general director of the Frontier Mission Fellowship, Pasadena, California, is known for his plea for the unreached peoples at the International Congress on World Evangelization, held in 1974 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Over the last quarter of a century Winter has been developing some of the key missiological concepts behind the present movement. The first half of the AD 2000 watchword, "A church for every people by A.D. 2000," was forged at a frontier missions consultation held in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1980, a meeting substantially inspired by Winter. Thus, thanks to his father-in-law, Todd Johnson has been breathing the air of AD 2000. He now serves as director of the World Evangelization Research Center in Richmond, Virginia, where he is a colleague of David B. Barrett and compiler with Barrett of this journal's "Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission," which appears each year in the January issue. In 1988Johnson published a monograph entitled Countdown to 1900: World Evangelization at the End of the Nineteenth Centurv" This is a detailed study of a late nineteenth-century campaign led by Arthur T. Pierson, editor of Missionary Reviewof the World, A. J. Gordon, founder of the Boston Missionary Training School (later Gordon College), and many others. Thanks to Johnson's essay, Pierson's ideas and passion for world evangelization have been quoted frequently by leaders in the contemporary move­ ment, including the declaration, "It can be done; it OUGHT to be done; it MUST be done."? Prodded by Matthew 24:14 The rhetoric of the AD 2000 Movement has given the impression that the church can expect Jesus to return as soon as it completes its assigned task of world evangelization-potentially, there- October 2000 fore, on or about December 31, 2000!A century ago Pierson gave a similar impression. He also was charged with advocating a program that fell far short of what Jesus intended by the words of Matthew 28:19-20. Pierson responded by stating that preach­ ing the Gospel to every creature was only "the initial stage of fulfilling the Great Commission." Pierson wanted "to see this world mapped out for God, to see a definite organized move­ ment for the occupation of the whole world for Christ.... Then, when evangelization is world-wide, we may bend our energies to deepening the impression which a first hearing of the Gospel has made."!" Eugene Stock, secretary of the British Church Mis­ sionary Society, joined in Pierson's defense: "[Pierson] has no sympathy with the scampering notion of a witness just telling the tidings of salvation once, and then boasting that Mt. 24:14 is fulfilled."!' In a 1892 editorial Pierson wrote, Dr. Gordon and myself firmly believe that "preaching the Gospel as a witness among all nations" means setting up churches, schools, a sanctified press, medical missions, and, in fact, all the institutions which are the fruit of Christianity and constitute part of its witness; but that our Lord's purpose and plan are that we should not wait in anyone field for the full results of our sowing to appear in a thoroughly converted community before we press on to regions beyond. Missions begin in evangelization, but have everything to do with Christian education, and the printing press, and the organization of churches, and the training of a native pastorate." In other words, while Pierson saw a direct relation between completion of world evangelization and the return of Christ, he did not intend his words to be understood as necessarily or certainly indicating that Christ would return just as soon as an initial proclamation of the Gospel had reached the world's last unevangelized community. And he acknowledged that making bona fide disciples of Christ entailed more than a quick an­ nouncement of the Gospel. His goal, in the final analysis, was a human one, not to be equated with fulfillment of the Great Commission. AD 2000 and the End of History In connection with the AD 2000 program, Ralph Winter has used the dramatic phrase "end of history." As Winter noted in 1986, the Student Volunteer Movement students in 1886 "looked for­ ward fourteen years to evangelizing the world by the year 1900. Dare we look forward fourteen years to accomplishing the same goal-the evangelization of the world by the end of the century? ... Can we believe that we are now on a new, final threshold leading to the End of History in the year 2000?"13 In the compilation of articles prepared for the 1989Singapore GCOWE (Global Consultation on World Evangelization) meet­ ing, Thomas Wang quoted Winter approvingly: "We believe there are ample evangelical resources . . . to make a serious attempt to plant the church within every people [group] by the year 2000.... We believe ... that the very end of history may therefore be near."!' It is difficult to imagine a statement more explicit than that of J. Philip Hogan, then director of the Assem­ blies of God Division of Foreign Missions, at the 1989 consulta­ tion in Singapore: "The end of this function is to bring Jesus back.f" Johnstone also endorses the connection: "Jesus gave the promise in Matthew 24:14 that when this task was accomplished, the end would come."16 These words resonate with the spirit of a long roster of evangelical mission leaders: Pierson and Gordon, A. B. Simpson, Hudson Taylor, Samuel Zwemer, Robert Hall 161 Glover, J. Oswald Smith, and others. This understanding of 97% O F P EOPLE IN THE L EAST EV ANGELIZED COUNTRIES L IVE IN TIlE 10/40 WL"l OOW. Matthew 24:14 received support almost half a century ago in The Blessed Hope,a landmark eschatological study by New Testament scholar George Eldon Ladd of Fuller Seminary.'? Nevertheless, in a September 1989 essay, in which Winter again speaks of "closure" and the "end of history," he emphati­ cally states that he is not implying any prediction: "Nothing could be more thrilling than to talk about finishing the Great Commission, or finishing what Jesus described as bringing us to the end of history, as this verse in Matthew [24:14] does.. . . [But] I don't believe we are interpreting scripture correctly if we assume that there is an inevitablelinking between completion and His return, although this verse may mean that. I certainly do not feel we ought to try to predict the date of His return, even if we feel w e can be certain what kind of work can be done by the year 2000."18 Bush has also asserted that he attaches no eschatological importance to the year 2000: "The year A.D . 2000 is not being announced as the year of the Lord's return or as the primary motivation for obedience to the Great Commission.r"? Winter, while reiterating his belief that the movement's goals can be achieved by December 31, 2000, recently declared: I know of no reputable mission agency which has ever spoken officially of completing the Great Commission by any particular date. The Great Commission is an undefined concept. . .. If [world evangelization] means evangelizing every individual PERSON by a particular date, it will be an ach ievement immediately undone one singl e second later as more children grow into the age of accountability, thus needing to be evangelized . That is, you can't "finish" evangeliza tion in this sense, ever . Well, what CAN be finished by the end of this century? Missions! . .. It would mean a "mi ssiolo gical breakthrough" [in the form of a viable believing community in] every group in the world ." Winter patiently insists, in countless writings and discus­ sions, that he reserves the term missions for the initial cross ­ cultural breakthroughs in previously unreached ethnolinguistic or socially or politically isolated people groups. The extension of a gospel witness after that point, in Winter's thinking, is evange­ lism (which is best carried out by indigenous believers). There­ fore for Winter the AD 2000 goal is to plant a church in every unreached people group, not to guarantee a presentation of the Gospel to every person. Once this distinction is understood, it is easier to accept his disclaimers about Matthew 24:14. Like Pierson, he is advocating what amounts to a human goal; if achieved, it will certainly help the cause of world evangelization, but Winter is not presuming how close it may come to fulfilling the implica­ tions of Jesus ' words. Sharpening the Focus: The 10/40 Window Benjamin Broomhall's generation used a rectangular diagram of coded squares to represent the world's need for the Gospel-the AD 2000 Movement has used the 10/40 Window. In July 1990, Bush and Pete Holzmann, a specialist in computerized mapping, found that the great majority of nations with miniscule evangeli­ cal populations formed a band of about 60 countries with at least half their area lying between 10 ' and 40 ' latitude above the equator. The countries within this rectangle extend across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, from Morocco to [apan." Bush imme­ diately saw the potential for a simple way to focus the Christian world's attention on the most gospel-needy part of the globe. At first glance, the resulting 10/ 40 Window seems to offer a Criteria: The 50 least evangelized countries ar e tho se with the smallest percenta ge of Evan gelical and Chr istian population. Source: Operation World , 1986. Aboveillustration has been reproduced from the AD 2000 brochure "The 10/40 Window: Getting to the Core of the Core," published in 1995. clean, concrete picture of the unfinished task. But in actual operation, th e window proves balky. How many countries and how many people are we talking about? The first promotion of the window appeared in the September-October 1990 issue of AD 2000 and Beyond, the magazine of the AD 2000 Movement. Here Bush explains that the window contains 62 countries and nonsovereign entities . (The latter include Gibraltar, West Bank, Gaza Strip, Hong Kong , and Macao.) Out of 55 least evangelized countries in the world, Bush continues, 50 are among the 62 in the window; and 97 percent of the 3 billion people in the world's 55 least evangelized countries live in these 50 lea st evangelized countries." As a measure of least evangelized, Holzmann and Bush or iginally settled on any country having less than 0.5 percent (l person out of every 200) evangelical population, but they did not publish this piece of the criteria . The most elaborate presentation of the window, a colorful, eight-page brochure entitled "The 10/ 40 Window: Getting to the Core of the Core," with commentary by Bush (repeated from his original text in 1990), came out in mid-1995. In small print under the map we learn that the (new) source of the data used to develop the map is Patrick Johnstone's 1986 edition of Operation World. The criteria for color-coding­ indicating least evangelized-is said to be countries "with the smallest percentage of Evangelical and Christian population," but again, the actual parameters are not stated. Later literature suggests that the parameters used were less than 2 percent evangelical and less than 5 percent Christian. This change to a double criteria, depending upon how it is applied, could result in numbers of Middle Eastern and other countries falling out of the net because of large populations of Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Coptic, and / or other Orthodox Christians. In other words, these large Christian populations might be viewed as "trumping" low evangelical populations, such as found in Por ­ tugal. The map itself shows significant revision . Spain is no longer identified as being at least half inside the window; Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan-which only recently had gained status as independent nations, and which are not at least half within the window-are added to the color-coding to include them among the least evangelized; evidently they are associated w ith the window, despite the violation of the original criteria. (The reader wonders, Why are they not also found in the accom­ panying list of countries?) Portugal has been removed from color-coding, apparently-along with Spain-no longer consid­ ered least evangelized. Eth iopia has been add ed to the color­ coded set. (Why now? Why not in the first place?) Inexplicably, Laos is not color-coded in either the 1990 or the 1995 version, 162 I NTERN ATIO NAL B ULLETIN OF MISSION ARY R ESEARCH • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• gh.t • • • • • • • From David HesselgraveMuslims. Magic and the Kingdom of God Rick Love This book combines folk N o r th America an d Beyo n d Planting Churches Cross-Culturally Planting hurches Cross­ Culturally ..... WCL775 WilliamCarey Library, paperback, 291 pp. Re ta il 'Who lesa le $12.00 Communicating Christ Cross­ Culturally An Introduction to M issionary C ommunication, Secon d Edi tion This revised edi tio n of David Hesse lg rave 's grea t w or k updates th e origina l an d in tera cts w ith the most recent liter ature on this inc reas ing ly important top ic. It h as come to be one of the most wi de ly used textboo ks 01' Ch ristia n cross -cu ltu ral com mu n ication . Zondervan , pap erba ck, 672 pp . !""!r--....__ In corp or atin g relevant sociologica l, anthropologica l, and h istorical insig h ts, Hesselgrave ex trapolates ten ph ases of cross­ cu ltura l ch urc h plan ting th at are faithf u l to Jesus' com ma ndmen t to make dis cip les and to Pa u l's mission ar y exa mple. Baker Books, paperback, 348 pp . Re ta il ' Wholesale $11.88 for Ch rist. These articles approach th e Islam, biblical pe rspectives, and stra tegies for chu rch p lan ting amo ng Mu lsims. In h is th eory on Mus lim evangelism Love tackles the ma jor issues of enco un te ring spi ritu al $~ Dis count $12.75 powers, con textua l­ iza tion, and leadership developmen t. Teache rs Contextualizationof Islami c subjects and practitioners in Mu slim coun tr ies enth usiastically w elcom e th is book. WCL443-6 William Carey Libra ry, paperback, 272 pp. Re t ail $tJl-:-99 Di sc ount $12 .25 'Whol es al e $11.38 Ministry to Muslim Women (A nd Edward Rommen) Th is classic textboo k b rings togeth er th e mea nings, p roposals, and tasks involved in cont extu alization . H esselgr ave and Romrn en exp lore th e h ist ory of contex tua liza tion in th e ch urc h and the Bible w hile also exami n ing th e p rop osals se t forth by p rom inent thinker s. Th ey concl ude th e book wi th th eir ow n d efinit ion &;.~O!! J I I Fran Love and [eleia Eckheart iii.ii• • • • a nd approac h to con tex tua liza tio n.Longin g to Call Th em Sist ers $~ D isco u n t $13. 00Edi ted b y Fra n Love an d [e leta Eckhea rt th is boo k is a compi lation of rea l-life experiences by wo me n actively in vo lved in reaching Mu slim wo me n ques tio n of th e gos pe l and Islam fro m a fema le persp ective, and hel p Ch ris tia ns com e to a bett er und ers tan d ing of th eir Mu slim sis ters . WCL338-3 William Carey Library, paperb ack, 288 pp . Retai l $t6-:-99 D isc ount $11.25 'Who lesa le $10 .31 The Bible in Cross-Cultural-.-.,....---:---:....",.. socia l-cu ltura l creation of Western Ch rist ian ity. Too ofte n Scrip tu re is read 'illililiiiililiillas if th e eve n ts took place ou tside of Reta il $~ Disco u n t $23 .75 'Who lesa le $22.06Perspective Ja cob A. Loewen In th is w ide-ra ngi ng vo lume Loewe n clearl y shows that th e tru th of God's Word is for all peopl e. This wor k forces Wiruamus to confron t the relat ion ship between Go d's Word and human lan gu ages, cultures, an d h istor ies, no t least of all th e Carey . . · · · · · Libraru cu ltu ra l and h istor ical con texts. Loew en ch allenges us to thin k more d eeply a nd consi de r ou r ow n cu ltura l contexts wh en we read and in terp ret th e Bible. He raises important ques tions th at Book Publisher and Dist ributor must be an sw ered in th is era of a cross -cu ltu ral, glob al church. WCL266-2 William Carey Lib rar y, pap erb ack, 334 pp . P.O. Box 40129, Pasadena, CA 91114 Ret a il $~ Di s cou n t $15.2 5 'Wh ol e s al e $ 14.99 I-BOO-MISSION orders@wc1books .com 'Order thr ee or more of the same title an d pay who lesa le although it falls below both the Christian and the evangelical parameters. Albania is color-coded in both versions, though it falls almost entirely outside the window. Benin, Burkina Faso, Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Sudan, and Taiwan are not color-coded in either the 1990 or 1995 versions, though they fall below the evangelical, if not the Christian, parameters. The accompanying commentary says there are 61 (not 62 as we were told in 1990) countries in the window, 50 (not 55) least evangelized in the world, and 37 (not 50) least evangelized in the window. We are left to speculate that the new authority for the data (Johnstone), combined with the new double criteria em­ ploying Christian as well as evangelical percentages, combined further with redefinition as to what countries are associated with the window, together have the net effect of reducing the number of least evangelized countries within the window from 50 to 37. Despite this reduction in the number of countries, the text still asserts, "Those 37 countries comprise 97% of the total population of the 50 least evangelized countries!" (p, 2). In other literature on the window, not all of it originating from the AD 2000 international office but rather from numerous other agencies participating in the movement, we read that there are 65 countries in the window; that the criteria of least evange­ lized is (1) less than 2 percent Christian, (2) less than 2 percent evangelical, (3) less than 5 percent Christian and less than 3 percent evangelical, and (4) less than 5 percent evangelical. The number of unevangelized persons in the window is also given variously. Are they 2.9 billion (97 percent of the 3 billion cited in 1990), 2 billion, or-as stated by Patrick Johnstone-1.3 billion, maybe even under a billion." Over the last five years, I have seen 75 different nations named as least evangelized and identified with the 10/40 Win­ dow. That is twice the number given by Bush in the primary source of 1995. What one ends up with is a irregular map (no longer a "window") that looks very much like the map used on the cover of Samuel Zwemer's 1911 publication The Unoccupied Fields of Africa and Asia, or the stylized map employed by Bryant Myers in his The Changing Shapeof WorldMission (MARC/World Vision,1993). I grant that the 10/40 Window may indeed have been useful as a generalization (Holzmann's intention). But as a sympathetic reviewer trying to take the original parameters and descriptions at face value, it was enormously frustrating! Progress in Reaching the Unreached? The AD 2000Movement added a second phrase to the Edinburgh 1980 watchword: "and the Gospel for every person." Winter presumably would not have endorsed this complication to the original, narrower focus on a church for every people. Bush, however, expressed the sense of the majority when he wrote, "The expected result is the presentation of the gospel to every person in every nation and people group and the establishment of a church planting movement in every country and people group by the year 2000."24 Similarly, in the goal of a century earlier-the completion of world evangelization by 1900-proc­ lamation to all (whether or not conversion resulted) was the desire. In his time, Pierson surely was naive about how difficult it would be to physically reach all people and present the Gospel in a way and in a language they would understand. But AD 2000 advocates have argued that contemporary means of radio, cas­ sette, TV, and video, with the tremendous strides made over the Noteworthy----------------. Personalia Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, has ap­ pointed Veli-Matti Karkkainen of Iso Kirja College in Finland as Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theo­ logical Seminary, Pasadena, California, the chair previously held by Dr. Miroslav Volfe Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan, has appointed Roger S. Greenway, Professor of World Missiology, as Chief Operating Officer; the seminary has also appointed Ruth A. Tucker, a contributing editor to the INTER­ NATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, as Associate Profes­ sor of Domestic Missiology. Brian Stanley, director of the Currents in World Chris­ tianity Project at the University of Cambridge, England, has been appointed Director of the Henry Martyn Centre, Westminster College, England, effective September 2001. Stanley is the successor to Canon Graham Kings, a contribut­ ing editor to the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RE­ SEARCH, who has been appointed Vicar of Islington (London) at S1. Mary's Church. Sebastian Kim, who is completing doc­ toral studies at the University of Cambridge, will serve as interim director of the Henry Martyn Centre during the aca­ demic year 2000-2001. Nancy Heisey, secretary of Mennonite Central Committee's Theological Education for Five Continents pro­ gram, has been named president-elect of the Mennonite World Conference. The first-ever person to hold the newly created position, she will take office at MWC's 2003 assembly. Died. H. McKenzie Goodpasture, 70, Emeritus Professor of Christian Missions at Union Theological Seminary, Rich­ mond, Virginia, June 26. A former president of the American Society of Missiology, Goodpasture taught church and mis­ sion history at Union for thirty years until retirement in 1996. A graduate of Union in 1955 and University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1960, he served as administrator of Protestant Theological Seminary, Lisbon, Portugal, from 1960 to 1965. Announcing The Asociacion Latinoamericana de Misionologia, an asso­ ciation for Latin American missiologists, held its founding meeting during the first Simposio Misionol6gico Latinoamericana, May 22-26, 2000, in Cochabamba, Bolivia. "We see mission not as an obstacle, but rather as one of the most effective paths to Christian unity, searching together how to arrive at a common witness to the Gospel," declared John F. Gorski, M.M., a member of the association's four­ member Executive Board. Thirty Roman Catholic missiologists from Latin America, including representatives from Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and Paraguay, participated in the conference. With "Christianity in China: Growing on Holy Ground" as its theme, the U.S. Catholic China Bureau, Seton Hall, New Jersey, will hold its eighteenth national conference November 10-12 in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Nicholas Standaert, S.J., Catholic University, of Leuven, Belgium, will deliver the keynote lecture. For details, email chinabur@shu.edu. 164 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH last century in communications, Bible translation, and global mobility, make the modem version of the goal feasible and realistic. Winter's people-group emphasis, it seems to me, carries the greater weight, if for no other reason than that it unmistakably requires contextual incarnation on the part of the messenger. If every person is to have a bona fide opportunity to hear the Gospel in his or her own language and cultural idiom, Christian mission must first establish a beachhead via a well-trained, cross­ cultural, incarnational mission team. Once a small believing, indigenous community is established, the opportunity for in­ creasingly wider, effective evangelism will develop through the witness of local believers. Such breakthrough ministries are not often achieved in a few months or even a few years." Winter argues that it is only the positive response to the Gospel that assures the messenger that the message has indeed been heard and comprehended. Accordingly, the existence of new, indig­ enous, believing communities is the only reliable way of measur­ ing progress. (Why this line of reasoning didn't give Winter pause about embracing A.D. 2000 as a target date I cannot imag­ ine.) Therefore, for the purpose of this assessment, I am inclined to discount the"every person" dimension of AD 2000' s goal and focus rather on progress in reducing the number of unreached people groups. At the Lausanne International Congress in 1974, Winter suggested that world population was comprised of about 24,000 people groups, and that nearly 17,000 were still unreached, with no indigenous, viable, reproducing church in their midst. He estimated their population at about 2.4 billion. At Lausanne II, held fifteen years later (1989) in Manila, 12,000 was announced as the remaining number of people groups ("mini-peoples") to be reached, with a population of about 1.8 billion (world popu­ lation had increased by more than a billion in the intervening years)." A simplification of categories, offered by Barrett and the Lausanne task force, focused on what are labeled "ethnolinguistic peoples." This recalculation produced a global total of 11,000 to 12,000 groups, with only 2,000 ethnolinguistic peoples unreached." Following Lausanne II the AD 2000 Adopt-a-People Clear­ inghouse went back to a version of the mini-peoples category and came up with 6,000 unreached." This list was made available to the 4,000 participants at the second GCOWE conference, held in Seoul, Korea, in May 1995. Subsequently the process of settling on the AD 2000 list took one more step, namely, the decision to concentrate on groups having populations of 10,000 or more, in the hope that a witness established in those groups would ultimately filter across social boundaries to smaller groups of similar cultural background. This approach produced a list of about 1,700 unreached peoples, defined as having less than 5 percent Christian and less than 2 percent evangelical population. As a result of on-going research, the list finally settled out at just under 1,600 groups.29 Now, today, what can the AD 2000 Movement report? Luis Bush provides a comprehensive and admirably forthright report in the June 2000 issue of MissionFrontiers,pages 13-19. He states that there are a little more than 1,100 groups still lacking a minimal believing fellowship of 100 members; these figures indicate progress on the order of 500 groups newly reached in the last decade. As for the remainder, about half have a church planting team on site or in preparation, and a further 200 to 300 are on the "committed " lists of various agencies. Only 265 groups are left without any mission initiative on the horizon. A complete picture must also keep in view groups with populations number­ ing less than 10,000. Bush reports that some 7,400 of such smaller groups remain without a viable, indigenous church. Conclusion Space limitations prevent proper recognition of the tremendous movement of prayer that was stimulated and facilitated by the AD 2000 Movement. And the educational impact on the world Christian community is surely incalculable. Many hundreds of thousands have a greater awareness of the urgency and chal­ lenge of the Great Commission than they did ten years ago. In terms of the watchword's focus on a church for every people, relatively modest but real progress appears to have been made. A definitive assessment will require a more seasoned view twenty or more years from now. The confusion generated by ever-shifting numbers and missiological emphases makes it im p ossible to express a truly confident evaluation. The AD 2000 Movement involved many more leaders, re­ searchers, organizations, publishers, and major initiatives at the grassroots level than could be acknowledged in this brief article. One cannot review the literature without concluding that an absolutely enormous amount of effort, talent, prayer, and de­ voted service has been invested in the AD 2000 Movement. Nevertheless, there are major areas of disagreement over theory and biblical interpretation that could not be addressed here. In addition, the advances recorded over the last decade are admit­ tedly limited." And there are younger leaders within the move­ ment who are contemplating radical reconceptualizing of what is involved in fulfilling world evangelization as implied in the Great Commission. One is reminded of a remark of Bishop Stephen Neill: ''We plan extremely well. But it may sometimes happen that our plans and God's will are not the same." ?' Notes·-------------------------------------­ 1. The 10/40 Window refers to a band of countries extending from the west coast of Africa to Japan, lying between 10· and 40· latitude above the equator, and considered by mission demographers to be the area of the greatest concentration of unevangelized peoples. 2. Unsigned report, Mission Frontiers (U.S. Center for World Mission) 16, nos. 3-4 (March-April 1994): 14-15. 3. Tom Forrest, "The Strategy of Evangelization 2000, " New Evangelization 2000, no . 4, 1988. The hope was to "give Jesus the 2000th birthday gift most pleasing to him : the world for which he died . .. won for him!" Forrest's article was reprinted in Towards AD 2000 and Beyond: A Reader, compiled by Luis Bush, Jay Gary, and Mike Roberts for the (Singapore 1989)Global Consultation on World Evangelization by AD 2000 and Beyond. October 2000 165 4. J. A. De Jong documents the connection Christian thinkers have made between missions and the coming of the millennial kingdom of Christ in As the Waters Cover the Sea: Millennial Expectations in the Rise of Anglo-American Missions , 1640-1810 (Kampen: J. H . Kok, 1970). 5. For example, see Joseph Hassell, From Pole to Pole: A Handbook of ChristianMissions,for the Useof M inisters,Teachers,andOthers (London: James Nisbet, 1866). 6. Mrs. H . Grattan Guinness, The Wide World and Our Work in It (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1886), p . 13. Benjamin Broomhall, The Evangelisation of the World . A Missionary Band: A Record of Consecration, and an Appeal (London: Morgan and Scott, 1887), p. 6. 7. Streit, Catholic Missions in Figures and Symbols , Based on the Vatican Missionary Exhibition (Rome: Society for the Propagation of the Faith, 1927), p. 45. 8. Todd M. Johnson, Countdown to 1900: World Evangelization at the End of the Nineteenth Century (Birmingham, Ala.: New Hope, 1988). This monograph appeared in a "provisional version," prior to the New Hope edition, in International Journal of Frontier Missions 5, nos. 1-4 (January-October 1988), under the title "The Crisis of Missions: The Historical Development of the Idea of the Evangelization of the World by the Year 1900." Citations are based on the IJFM version. 9. Ibid., p. 61. 10. Ibid., pp. 17, 70. 11. Ibid., p. 75. 12. Dana L.Robert, "The Legacy of Arthur Tappan Pierson," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 8, no. 3 (July 1984):122. 13. Ralph D. Winter, "The Student Volunteers of 1886, Their Heirs, and the Year 2000," International Journal ofFrontier Missions2, no. 2 (April 1985): 152, 173. This essay was presented by Winter at a conference of the Institute of American Evangelicals, held in Wheaton, Illinois in June 1986. Despite its 1985 dating, the cited IJFM issue was published after the 1986 conference. 14. Thomas Wang, "By the Year 2000," in Towards AD 2000and Beyond, p.2. 15. J. Philip Hogan, remarks presented at GCOWE, Singapore 1989, as printed in Jay and Olgy Gary, TheCountdown Has Begun: The Story of the Global Consultation on AD 2000 (AD 2000 Global Service Office: Rockville,Va., 1989), p. 129. 16. PatrickJohnstone, Operation World(GrandRapids:Zondervan, 1973), p.26. 17. George Eldon Ladd, The Blessed Hope (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956). In the penultimate chapter, Ladd writes, "The Church ... has a task which is divinely given ... : world-wide evangelization and the gathering of the saved into the body of Christ. ... Christ is tarrying until the Church has completed its task. When Matthew 24:14 has been fulfilled, then Christ will come. There is no more notable 'sign of the times' than the fact that the greatest impetus in world-wide evangelization since apostolic times has taken place in the preceding century. The world is nearly evangelized; anygeneration whichisreally dedicated tothetaskcancomplete themission. The Lord can come in our own generation, in our life-time-if we stir ourselves and finish our task" (p, 148). See also a second Ladd volume, The Gospel of the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959). A chapter from this volume is reprinted in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, ed. Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 1992), chap. A7. Nearly half a century after Ladd's book, we find the same stance set forth in the Dictionary of Evangelical Missions, M. Scott Moreau, ed., in the article "Eschatology," authored by Edward Rommen. Matthew 24:14 features prominently in the essay. 18. Winter, "Unreached Peoples: Recent Developments in the Concept," Mission Frontiers 11, no. 8-9 (August-September 1989):16. 19. Luis Bush, "Announcing the Second Global Consultation on World Evangelization," AD 2000and Beyond 1, no. 1 (March-April 1990), p. 28. Also see Bush's article"AD 2000 and Beyond: A Church Growth Initiative," Global Church Growth 29, no. 3 (July-August-September 1992), p. 4. In spite of these disclaimers, many readers will continue to wonder, especially given Bush's recent announcement of a final consultation, to be held in Jerusalem December 27,2000, to January 2, 2001. The purpose of the Jerusalem gathering, he states, is "to hasten the day of [Christ's] return by presenting the gospel of the kingdom to every people, tribe, nation, and language. Once this is done, the 'end' will come (Mt. 24:14)." See "Celebrate Messiah 2000," Mission Frontiers 20, nos. 7-8 (July-August 1998):29-31. 20. Winter, Mission Frontiers 19, nos. 5-6 (May-June 1997):3. 21. Holzmann, in e-mail dated February 19, 1997, to Michael 0'Rear (president of Global Mapping International), describes the mapping experiment. The criteria used included countries with half or more of their mass inside the 10/40 window and having less than 0.5 percent evangelical populations (lout of 200). Exceptions were made for China and India, which were included despite having more than 0.5 percent evangelicals, because of their huge non­ Christian populations. Holzmann stresses that the map was "intended as a useful generalization." 22. The countries outside the window and considered to be among the least evangelized because of very small evangelical populations are Belgium, Poland, the former Yugoslavia, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Somalia. See map in Luis Bush, "Getting to the Core of the Core-the 10/40 Window," AD 2000andBeyond 1, no. 5 (November-December, 1990):29. A clearer reproduction of the map will be found in Global Church Growth29, no. 3 (July-September 1992):5.Since there are said to be 55 least evangelized countries in the world, with 50 of these inside the window, there should be 5 outside the window. On the map, however, 6 countries are marked as least evangelized outside the window. 23. Johnstone, Operation World, 1993 edition, p. 27. "Between 800 million and 1,300 million people still need to be given their first opportunity to respond to the gospel." Notice that Johnstone here includes the whole world, not just the 10/40 window. 24. Luis Bush, "AD 2000 and Beyond: A Church Growth Initiative," Global Church Growth29, no. 3 (July-September 1992):4. 25. Barrett and others have observed that much of the non-Christian world remains non-Christian not because it has not heard the message from dedicated and able messengers but simply because up until now the Gospel has been rejected, and the breakthrough is yet to come. (See,for example, Stan Guthrie, "Just Saying No," Evangelical MissionsQuarterly34, no. 2 [April 1998]:218-23.) In the providence of God, how many more years or decades or centuries remain to be invested? Simply setting a chronological goal is not enough. 26. The reduction to 12,000 sounded like progress, except for the fact that Winter had already gone on record as having agreed to the lower figure to accommodate the aim of the Lausanne task force to simplify the categories. See "The Finishable Task!" MissionFrontiers 11, no. 3 (March 1989):11, in which Winter writes, "We are being asked ... to set aside our [larger number] for a somewhat more optimistic estimate of 12,000which, it is hoped, will create a simpler, clearer picture for the public." 27. The figure of 2000 unreached peoples was first published in the Lausanne II workbook, 1989; the most comprehensive treatment is found in Barrett and Johnson, Our Globe and How to Reach It (Birmingham, Ala.: New Hope, 1990), P: 26. The 2,000 figure is also found in Frank Kaleb Jansen, Target Earth: The Necessity of Diversity in a Holistic Perspective on World Mission (Kailua-Kona, Hawaii: University of the Nations; Pasadena, Calif.: Global Mapping International, 1989), p. 141. Johnstone arrives at 1,000 groups with "little outreach" and 3,915groups with "some outreach." See Operation World, 1993 edition, p. 27. 28. Whether this was an actual reduction due to progress among the original 12,000 or simply a simplification of categories is not clear. Winter saw it as the latter. He writes that the ultimate challenge probably still ranges upwards of 11,000 culturally diverse groups, "even though all those groups can be listed under 6,000 accepted names for groups." ("What Is an Unreached People Group?" Mission Frontiers 15, nos. 1-2 [January-February 1993]:21.) 29. Dan Scribner, "Identifying the Peoples where Church Planting Is Most Needed," Mission Frontiers 17,nos. 11-12 (November-December 1995):12-14. Pages 12-23 present a list of 1,685 peoples. A few months later a list of 1,739 was published in IJFM 13, no. 2 (April­ June 1996):95-106. Subsequent research reduced the list to just under 1,600.See Luis Bush, "Where Are We Now?" MissionFrontiers 22, no. 3 (June 2000):18. 30. David Barrett actually increased his estimate of the world's unevangelized population from 18 percent in 1998 to 25 percent in 2000. See his "Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission" in the January issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, January 1998 as compared to January 2000. 31. Stephen C. Neill, "A Revolutionary Church," in Renewal andAdvance: Christian Witness in a Revolutionary World, ed. C. W. Ranson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh House Press, 1948), p. 82. 166 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH 1 I Charles Van Engen I - T heql ogy 9f M iSSiOri ·i . I I I ,J. Paul Pierson History of Mi ssion and ' _. L atin American Srudie I I .t­ I 1... . .i .."" 1-' I ntercultural Communication . , I! 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