Looking to Tomorrow's Frontier

by Richard Haney, Executive Director

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

—Acts 1:8 (NLT)

After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands. And they were shouting with a great roar, 'Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb!'

—Revelation 7:9-10 (NLT)

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In 1974, mission strategist Ralph Winter sounded a call for the Church to engage with the frontier. What is the frontier? It’s the places and peoples unreached with the Gospel due to lack of Christian witness. Winter maintained that the frontier went beyond national borders. Unless someone also crossed over linguistic and cultural barriers, people on the frontier would likely never hear the Good News of Jesus.

As Frontier Fellowship enters its 40 th year, we’re filled with a fresh calling to the frontier mission vision—a call that extends to the whole Church. It is simultaneously the push of the Spirit to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8) and the pull toward history’s great climax when disciples from every nation, tribe, people and language will gather in worship (Revelation 7:9-10). These past 40 years have held dramatic global changes, so we again ask ourselves: What is the frontier of mission today? How is the Church called to respond?

Our staff gathered virtually in May to consider these questions. We were guided by Dr. Todd Johnson. He’s the Eva B. and Paul E. Toms Distinguished Professor of Mission and Global Christianity at Gordon- Conwell Theological Seminary and co-director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC). The following highlights from our conversation with him energize us as we consider how God is calling us to engage in frontier mission for the next 40 years and beyond.

BEYOND BOUNDARIES: THE FRONTIER TODAY

More than 2.2 billion people in the world (28%) don’t have adequate access to the Gospel, according to the CSGC. They also count over 4,000 people groups in which the majority of the population lacks access to the Good News. These two concepts— frontier mission and unreached people groups—are closely linked. We asked Dr. Johnson how we can best understand this global status of frontier mission today.

Defining lack of Gospel access has multiple approaches: individuals, people groups and countries. The concept of people groups has always been complex and multi-faceted, but it is still critically important because the anchor is language. Despite rapid global changes, unreached peoples still speak languages and live in communities that have little or no access to the Good News of Jesus. The frontier people group focus of the last twenty years has been on unengaged peoples, where nobody has ever gone before. These efforts have been fruitful, and the overall number of unreached and unengaged peoples has dropped.

However, a significant portion of the 2.2 billion individuals with no access to the Gospel today are in very large unreached people groups and are grossly underserved. More attention should be given to underserved, unreached peoples.

There is good and bad news when it comes to the current status of reaching the world’s unreached peoples. The good news is that fewer people groups today remain unreached or unengaged, as frontier efforts begin to yield good results and the Bible is translated into new languages. However, population growth among unreached peoples is outstripping missional efforts. Thus, the number of unreached people groups is diminishing but the total number of people who have no access to the Good News is growing. Dr. Johnson addressed these mixed trends in light of recent shifts in frontier mission priority.

Today, with an increasing concern in the Church for post-Christian Europe and the US, the definition of unreached is often confused with a priority or rationale to reach people we would really consider unchurched. That’s important, but it’s not frontier mission. I remember a conversation in which the argument was made that the non- Christian in Switzerland is just as lost as the non-Christian in Afghanistan. Someone else pointed out the difference: ‘Both people are lost, but the person in Switzerland has a map and the person in Afghanistan has no map.’ The post-Christian West isn’t really unreached, because there are so many resources available to them such as access to scripture and Christian neighbors.

The CSGC provides this stark reality: 87% of Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims worldwide don’t have a personal relationship with a Christian. We asked Dr. Johnson to expand upon this trend, especially in light of what it means for frontier mission and Christians living in the West.

It’s so fundamental to Christianity to have personal contact, because of its incarnational nature. It’s a crisis—a strategic crisis—that people on the frontier don’t have contact with Christians. But what is the Western Church’s role in frontier mission if we’re not paying attention to fundamental things like love, compassion and hospitality at home? In the US, we need to better understand other peoples’ religions. We also need to get to know people of other faiths personally, have them in our homes. There is great opportunity for personal contact, but one of our weaknesses as American Christians is that we’re confused about who we are with regard to sharing our faith and respecting the faiths of others. This is why broad-based education in our churches is an important part of frontier mission mobilization.

CHANGING CONTOURS, SHIFTING STRATEGIES

Frontier Fellowship recognizes the enormous shift that has occurred in global Christianity, with a greater proportion (67%) of Christ-followers now living in the majority world, or Global South. Increasingly more cross-cultural workers will be trained and deployed from the majority world. Brazil, South Korea and Nigeria, for example, are each currently sending over 20,000. We asked Dr. Johnson about how the strategy of frontier mission changes with this new configuration of global Christianity.

Christianity’s shift to the South is due in part to the success of frontier mission but fueled by the work of indigenous people sharing the Gospel with their own friends, families and communities. Missionaries are now going from everywhere to everywhere. The corresponding increase in ethnic and linguistic diversity of Christianity is living evidence of Christianity’s universality. When I was serving with YWAM in a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand, I was the only American in the group among Malaysians, Filipinos, South Africans, Swiss and more. I’ll never forget once when we shared the Gospel, one of the Cambodians finally said, ‘Who are you people, coming from all these different countries around the world?’ It’s a fundamental barrier to frontier mission when people think Christianity is a western, white religion—but this was like a living delegation from global Christianity saying, ‘This faith is a faith for all peoples, and here’s the evidence right in front of you.’

A long-held value and strategic practice of Frontier Fellowship is helping churches engage the frontier through partnerships with indigenous Christians doing church planting, training and equipping workers, Bible translation, storytelling, literacy programs and more.

We believe that together we can do more than we can apart, and that loving and serving one another is an essential aspect of our witness on the frontier.

The mutuality of these relationships is transformative, especially as we learn from our global family. Dr. Johnson shared his thoughts with us on the value of partnership in mission.

The Church has a face that is so diverse now. Partnering with people who represent this diversity is a good strategy and builds on the shift of Christianity to the Global South. We’ve sometimes been in a hurry in frontier mission, and when you’re in a hurry you don’t always have time to build a global coalition. We need to put a step between ourselves and the frontier by asking, ‘How can we bring others into this conversation before we show up?’ I know it’s not that simple, but I think we’re getting closer to where we should be as a global body of Christ.

One of our mobilizing strategies for local education and action is encouraging Christians to embrace the opportunity to befriend immigrants. Refugees, international students, scholars and other immigrants make up almost 14% of the US population, offering huge opportunities for Christians who want to practice hospitality and friendship.

It makes sense to build bridges and networks with immigrants and refugees— to say, ‘We’re a global organization both in who we interact with as Christians, and in who we try to reach around the world.’ Wherever they are, diaspora Christians can be partners and diaspora frontier peoples can be groups that you’re working among. We should always be investing in refugee and immigrant communities through hospitality and genuine Christian witness, not drive-by evangelism.

ENGAGING IN FRONTIER MISSION’S FUTURE

Learning the what and why of frontier mission usually precedes knowing the how. Deeper comprehension of the astonishing fact that so many peoples still lack any way of hearing about Jesus, reading a Bible or visiting a church motivates us to action. Involvement in frontier mission flows readily from a sense of justice and compassion.

Ask yourself: should not every person in every culture get a chance to hear the Good News? If Jesus has made a difference in my life, don't I want others to experience His transforming grace?

Frontier Fellowship believes every follower of Jesus is called to partner with God and one another in making the Good News of God’s Kingdom known to those still waiting. And we’re committed to helping you find your role in frontier mission as we move into our next 40 years. To be sure, the future of frontier mission is bright with the promises of God!