Missions Catalyst

Well over half the world's people live in just these ten largest countries.

Increasingly I wince slightly whenever I hear the 'Only 3% of missionaries go to the unreached' stat wheeled out. Why? 4 reasons, but others will have have more: 1) Western missionaries, they should say. Those stats only recognize western-style missionary sending. That's not how much majority world mission works, so they just get ignored. 2) It ignores the bigger picture. Many of us working hard in places like Uganda helping to develop mission-sending mentalities there are lumped together in the 'not interested in the unreached' category. 3) Globalization and urbanization make these stats increasingly without solid foundation. If a Western missionary is working in Cairo, or Addis, or Jakarta etc. how can they be classified as working with reached or unreached? That's not how global, multicultural cities work. 4) The stat implies that 'unreached' is a fixed category, enshrined and agreed upon and categorically different from 'the reached'. Yet it's a man-made construct, based on decades old sociological concepts from a simpler time, and has declining relevance amidst the migratory, multicultural, globalizing megatrends of today's world. Despite the above I still use the term 'unreached' at certain times and in certain contexts. It's a simple, striking and relatively well-understood term to express something significant, and that's rare in missiology (and not easy to replace). I'm not trying to pull anything down here. But I think if we do use such terms, let's do so with a good dose of humility, missiological understanding, self-awareness and recognition of these (and many more) issues involved. And let's not use the term as part of a 'guilt-trip missiology'. What do you think?