Mobilization: The Fourth (and Final?) Era of the Modern Mission Movement

Steve Shadrach

Hindsight is always 20/20 and peering into the rearview mirror of missions history, attempting to see it from God’s perspective, is a formidable, but exhilarating, endeavor. One modern thinker who has done a stellar job of helping us understand when, where, and how God has been at work over the centuries is missiologist Dr. Ralph Winter, founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission (now Frontier Ventures).

In his classic article, “Ten Epochs of Redemptive History,”1 Winter breaks the last four thousand years down into ten “super centuries,” four-hundred-year periods each characterized by a unique missions thrust. He labels the years 1600 to the present as the “Ends of the Earth” segment, believing we are in history’s tenth and final stage of God completing His mission to embed a gospel-sharing, national-led church in every remaining unreached people group on the planet. He shows how during the past 225 years there has been an ever-widening impact of the church and mission agencies identifying unreached groups and teaming up to take the name of Jesus to every corner of the globe.

The Four Men and Three Eras

Dr. Winter further expanded our thinking in his article, “Four Men and Three Eras,”2 highlighting the people and movements that spawned this final push to complete world evangelization. The three eras were the Coastlands, the Inlands, and People Groups. He listed four men who spearheaded each era. William Carey launched the First Era in 1792, sailing from England to spend forty years sharing the gospel along India’s coastlines. Hudson Taylor, a First Era missionary also from England, started the China Inland Mission in 1865 with a burden and plan to carry the good news from the coastal cities of China into the interior, thus inaugurating the Second Era.

Finally, Dr. Winter describes a Third Era, initiated in the 1930s by Wycliffe Bible Translators founder, Cameron Townsend, and missionary to India, Donald McGavran. They discovered the “peoples” of the world were not broken down into countries, but nations—which in Greek is ethne. These thousands of ethne across the planet were actually a myriad of complex and longstanding affinity groups, each with their own language, culture and religion. Consequently, Townsend, McGavran and other Third Era missionaries had to contextualize their message and approach to make the gospel most accessible and acceptable to each and every unique “unreached people group.”

So from 1792 to present day, shifting their focus from the Coastlands, to the Inlands, and finally to People Groups, mission leaders have been growing in their understanding of the most effective ways to finish the task of making “disciples of all nations.”3 Delving into the three eras, we can track how the Lord methodically expanded His kingdom. I have to admit, though, I felt sure this final era would be completed by now, wrapped up with a bow and presented to God like some kind of graduation gift. In fact, when I first met Dr. Winter in 1985 while taking the impactful Perspectives on the World Christian Movement4 course, we all believed the Great Commission would be fulfilled by the year 2000; totally done, finished, turn out the lights and go home!

Why Are We Still Here?

Yet here we are many years later still praying, still working, and still raising up workers to penetrate the thousands of remaining unreached groups who have never had the opportunity to respond to the life-changing message of salvation in Christ alone. Why is that? What is God up to? What are we to make of this delay? Dr. Winter informed us people in each of the three eras thought they were in the final era, God’s instruments to conclude His purposes. But the Father works at His pace, not ours. He decides when the job is done, not us. Could it be that behind the scenes, the Lord of the Universe is gradually, quietly, brilliantly initiating a Fourth Era, building upon the first three, providing us new insights to multiplying the gospel into the remaining unengaged people groups of our planet?

So, what is in the mind of God? Let’s ask the Lord to take our blinders off, to help us discover new and wonderful things He is doing. What if in God’s history books, that article is actually, “Five Men and Four Eras”? What if Dr. Winter himself is the fifth man, being used by the Lord to usher in a Fourth Era? An era not based on locations or categories like Coastlands, Inlands, or People Groups, but a fourth (and final?) era that’s simply a strategy—the missional, multiplying strategy of mobilization.

When Jesus said, “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,”5 He let us know the solution is more cross-cultural workers. But who are these new workers, and where will they come from? The answer was born in the Third Era. In the past sixty years, evangelicals have grown globally from 140 million to over 600 million, the vast majority being in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.6 But before missionaries are sent, they are first mobilized. Consequently, to see a mission sending movement to the unreached, there first must be a mission mobilization movement among the unsent. I certainly include my own country, but the “unsent” are the hundreds of millions of us Bible-believing Jesus followers around the world who have little or no mission vision. As this sleeping giant is awakened, the Fourth Era is simply: the mobilization of the church worldwide to rise up and play its strategic role in finishing the Great Commission. Imagine the whole church mobilized to send missionaries to the whole world!

What is Mobilization?

What do we mean by “mobilization?” Webster’s definition: “to assemble and make ready for war duty.”7 This secular description can be applied to the eternal, invisible spiritual battle taking place between God and Satan over the souls of men. Jesus, our Commander, is assembling His troops, and providing us with the training and resources to defeat the enemy and win the war. Dr. Winter believed Satan’s primary ploy was to keep God’s people blinded to the spiritual lostness of large portions of our planet’s population, causing billions to be cut off from ever hearing the love of Christ. Accordingly, Winter constantly exhorted believers with a mobilization message of “reaching” the saved as key to ultimately reaching the lost.

I once heard Dr. Winter shock a group saying, “Suppose I had a thousand college students about to graduate in front of me who asked me where they ought to go to make a maximum contribution to Christ’s global cause. I would tell them to mobilize. All of them!”8 I was stunned. How in the world could this former missionary try to talk people into not becoming missionaries? Because the need to sound the alarm is so great. Yes, some need to go as pioneer missionaries. But others need to exercise an unusual faith to actually not go to the mission field, but to assist the entire mobilization process. Winter knew mobilization would result in a multiplication of missionaries sent, proclaiming, “Priority one: More mission mobilizers … Anyone who can help 100 missionaries to the field is more important than one missionary on the field.”9 “Wouldn’t it be better to awaken one hundred sleeping firemen than to hopelessly throw your own little bucket of water on a huge fire yourself?”10 According to Romans 10:14–15 we all have equally important roles in the body, but if Dr. Winters point has any validity, it certainly demands we think differently.

A New Paradigm?

Recalibrating our approach with some Fourth Era reasoning is past due. Jesus issued the Great Commission almost two thousand years ago, and we are to continue to make disciples of all nations. We’re never done in that regard. If the third Era is about taking the gospel to all ethne, then the fourth era is about all the reached ethne remaining faithful to press on to finish the job. The world population is approaching 8 billion, yet four out of ten people are still cut off from the gospel.11 Dr. Todd Johnson, Winter’s son-in-law and director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell, released a disturbing statistic: “86% of all Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists will never meet a Christ follower.”12 Since reading that, I’m not sleeping well. Life cannot go on as normal, knowing billions of these precious souls will live and die, never even having the chance to hear the gospel. With all our bravado, entrepreneurship, technology, and resources, you would think we would have made more progress. Certainly, we celebrate the significant gospel advances the past one hundred years. Praise God! It’s obvious, however, to truly address this overwhelming need, a new approach is required.

Evangelical churches have been sending out foreign mission teams for hundreds of years, and yet the remaining task can feel overwhelming. Business as usual will not cut it anymore. Various missiologists broadly estimate we need an additional 100,000 long-term cross-cultural missionaries to break through these final frontiers. Dr. Winter spent forty years thinking outside the box, identifying and studying all the unreached people groups. Maybe it’s time to turn our attention toward the incredibly neglected unsent people groups of our planet. This is where the mobilizers come in. If the global evangelical church were mobilized to send out just one missionary for every 1,000 evangelicals, that would flood the unreached with more than 450,000 goers!13 This is the potential of the Fourth Era.

Jesus Is a Mobilizer

“A mobilizer is one who multiplies, disciples or mentors in missions. Jesus Christ was a mobilizer,”14 says Greg Parsons, Director of Global Connections for Frontier Ventures. Parsons highlights some of the things Jesus did not focus on. “He didn’t focus on planting churches, on evangelism, or theological education. Rather, His ministry concentrated more on the big picture than anyone.”15 In Matthew 9:36–38, Jesus exhorted us to pray earnestly for the Lord to send out laborers into His harvest. Why? Because His goal was to mobilize key individuals to carry on beyond Him; who would ultimately have a burden for the multitudes of lost people.

How about us? Have we overlooked the key Jesus was giving us in Matthew 9 to reaching the whole world? Could it be the Master was trying to show us focusing on the saved will ultimately result in winning the lost? Jesus first saw the great need (verse 36), but then concentrated His ministry on equipping more laborers. The Holy Spirit (the great Mobilizer) is seeking to enlist each of us to join God by investing our lives recruiting people and their resources to the person and purposes of Jesus Christ. If Dr. Winter really did unknowingly usher in a Fourth Era of the Modern Mission Movement, let’s understand and embrace it. He believed “the greatest mobilization effort in history is now gaining momentum, moving ahead with a quickening pace, with more goals … that are concrete, measurable, and feasible.”16 You may be ready to jump in, but beware: it will require you to think backwards, develop new prototypes, and operate differently than ever before.

Identifying the “Mobilization Gaps”

What are the critical components to making well-informed, prayer-saturated decisions regarding the most strategic way forward? Our organization, the Center for Mission Mobilization, has been working with respected missiologists and researchers from various countries to put together a Mobilization Index.17 It provides a wide range of demographics for 118 countries, including the fifty-seven countries that have 1 million or more evangelicals. One key statistic shows the gap between who could be mobilized and who actually is mobilized. These disparities are called “mobilization gaps.” Let’s look at Kenya, and the other twelve countries that make up English-speaking Africa, who have more than 130 million evangelicals. Our research shows there are less than 5,000 cross-cultural workers sent out from those thirteen countries.18 That’s one missionary for every 26,000 born-again believers; a huge mobilization gap! What if mobilization teams were placed throughout that region, seeking to raise up one cross-cultural worker for each 1,000 evangelicals? That would increase their missionary sending from 5,000 to 130,000 cross-cultural goers—the greatest missionary force in all of history!

Mobilization Targets the “Unsent” in Order to Win the “Unreached”

So how can we see new mission movements ignited throughout the world? Will it be through sticking exclusively with our familiar roles of church planters, evangelists, student workers, or theological educators? Or will we acknowledge God is up to something new, and affirm a critical category of workers is emerging—the mission mobilizers? Since Dr. Winter’s watershed message at Lausanne in 1974, most mission agencies have placed a priority on unreached people groups, and missiologists have spent decades studying every country, language, and culture to break down the remaining task into bitesize pieces. The assignment is clearly set before us, so why isn’t the global Church finished with world evangelization yet? It could be that God is handing us a new template He wants us to operate from to redirect many of our people and resources toward the “unsent” in order to mobilize national believers to reach the unreached.

Would you personally begin a journey to understand the powerful potential of mobilizing the unsent? What might this mean for your team, church or organization? It may take creative, even radical thinking to embrace this idea and intensely refocus your efforts to accomplish it, but the rewards could be seismic in their global impact. If you’re reading this and understand the purpose and power of mission mobilization, let’s ask ourselves a question: Do we have enough humility and dedication to embrace this indirect, yet supportive, role in this era of world evangelization? Will we be content to play our part in the global body of Christ, selflessly encouraging, investing in, and mobilizing the huge “unsent” portions of the body of Christ in our countries, helping many move past their self-perception as a mission field in order to fulfill their calling to become the greatest mission force this world has seen?

If you are considering missions, pray about the impact you could have by going to a “Christianized” nation to mobilize missionaries from there. This type of cross-cultural worker is called a frontier mobilizer. If you’re a missions pastor or give to missions, consider reevaluating your giving and sending strategies, pointing more of your people and resources toward mobilization. If you’re a mission agency, why not study our Mobilization Index to aid you in making strategic decisions regarding whether you should send missionaries or mobilizers to particular countries? If you’re already a mobilizer, but operating in the Global North, consider shifting your efforts to the Global South where 80% of evangelical Christians live.19 Yes, these brothers and sisters, who are now the majority of global evangelicals, are praying and working toward igniting mission movements. God could use you to help spur on spiritual tsunamis among the global church, where there are huge pockets of believers across the planet just waiting to be mobilized.

Know this for sure, this Fourth Era is not an ending, but an exciting new chapter of God’s great plan. It doesn’t disregard the past, but rather honors and builds upon it. If William Carey were alive, he would be thrilled to see a movement of 25,000 South Indians taking the gospel to their unreached countrymen in North India. Imagine the excitement of Hudson Taylor knowing 90,000 Chinese missionaries were saturating huge chunks of Asia with the name of Jesus. Cameron Townsend would wildly cheer on a flood of 130,000 missionaries sent from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and beyond. McGavran would express pure delight in 60,000 Latino missionaries launching to the Arab world.20 And without a doubt, Dr. Ralph Winter, a friend and mentor of mine, would find great pleasure in these nationalized, indigenous mobilization efforts. Why? Because this reserved and modest pioneer of the Fourth Era has always promoted a “we must decrease, they must increase” attitude toward the role of other nations to complete the task. It’s been a part of his DNA from the beginning, and it needs to work its way into our missional bloodstream as well.

What is the goal of the Fourth Era? A global mission mobilization movement in which the whole church rises up to powerfully advance Jesus’ Great Commission to the ends of the earth. Each of us has a strategic part to play. If not us, who? If not now, when? 

Dr. Steve Shadrach is Executive Director of the Center for Mission Mobilization, headquartered in Fayetteville, Arizona. The CMM has frontier mobilization teams spread across five continents. For resources, training, opportunities, partnering, or more information go to www.mobilization.org. Steve and his wife Carol have five children and five grandchildren.

Notes

1. Ralph D. Winter, “The Kingdom Strikes Back: Ten Epochs of Redemptive History,” Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, 4th ed. (2009): 209–227.

2. Ralph D. Winter, “Four Men, Three Eras,” Perspectives Series, Missionsfrontiers.org/resources. Adapted by Frontier Ventures from the article: Ralph D. Winter, “Three Mission Eras: The Loss and Recovery of Kingdom Mission, 1800–2000.” Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, Fourth Edition (2009): 263–278.

3. “Matthew 28:19,” The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Collins, 2012.

4. Perspectives is a ministry of Frontier Ventures (formerly US Center for World Mission). In 1974 Perspectives held its first missions training and education class called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. Since then, over 200,000 people in 18 countries have taken this missions course. Perspectives continues to play a vital role globally in mobilizing individuals and groups to active participation in the Great Commission. For more information visit www.perspectives.org or www.frontierventures.org.

5. “Luke 10:2, Matthew 9:37,” The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Collins, 2012.

6. Jason Mandryk, “The World: table named Global Evangelicals,” in Operation World: The Definitive Prayer Guide to Every Nation, 7th ed. (Biblica, 2010), 3.

7. Wikipedia, s.v. “Mobilization,” last modified February 6, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobilization.

8. Ralph W. Winter, “Editorial Comment,” Mission Frontiers, January–February (1995), http://missionsfrontiers.org.

9. Ralph D. Winter, “Is One Kind of Mission Work More Important Than Another?” Mission Frontiers, November–December (1991), http://missionsfrontiers.org.

10. Larry Reesor, “A Fresh Perspective on Mobilizing the Church,” Mission Frontiers, January–February (2000), http://missionsfrontiers.org.

11. www.joshuaproject.net/people_groups/statistics. See the definition of “unreached.” Joshua Project, a ministry of Frontier Ventures.

12. Todd M. Johnson and Albert W. Hickman, “Religious Demography and Mission Strategy,” International Journal of Frontier Missions 29, no. 1 (2012): 13–21.

13. A proposed initial benchmark for a “mobilized nation” is one which sends one missionary for every 1,000 evangelicals. If this initial benchmark were achieved on a global scale, the non-Western evangelicals who total approximately 450,000,000 (per Operation World, 7th ed.), would be sending 450,000 missionaries.

14. Greg Parsons, “Why Stay Here? Mobilizing the Home Front,” Mission Frontiers, January–February (1995), http://missionsfrontiers.org.

15. Parsons, “Why Stay Here?”

16. Ralph D. Winter, “Is One Kind of Mission Work More Important Than Another?” Mission Frontiers, November–December (1991), http://missionsfrontiers.org.

17. The Mobilization Index is a multicounty index compiling massive amounts of information from multiple reliable data sources measuring a variety of aspects of society in order to better determine the current status of missions activity from each country as well as indicate the countries with the largest untapped potential to send missionaries. The Mobilization Index attempts to use the latest and most trusted data sources available including Pew Research, Operation World, Joshua Project, Legatum Prosperity Index, and many more. However, we know that research must be updated and we welcome new data as it comes available. Currently, the Mobilization Index is in a Beta format, but it will soon be released to the public.

18. Total numbers for Anglophone Africa have to be added up, but they are all individually on the mobilization index, http://mobindex.mobilization.org/ as well as can be found in Operation World, 7th ed., by going country-by-country.

19. Jason Mandryk, “The World: table named Global Evangelicals % of Total Evangelicals,” Operation World, 7th ed. (Biblica, 2010): 3.

20. In this paragraph, the numbers of potential missionaries sent out follows the goal mentioned in an earlier endnote of one missionary for every 1,000 Evangelical believers in that country or region.