By Phil Warren, Missionary To The Philippines

This post was originally published in the 2016 Spring issue of the GB Messenger. Don’t receive the Messenger? You can always catch the latest digital issue on the Messenger website, www.gbMessenger.org

When God empowered the church with the coming of the Holy Spirit it had an intended purpose. God birthed the church so that it would have a global impact by extending the Kingdom of His Son to every corner of the globe.

Before Christ’s birth it was prophesied by the angel, “And he will reign over Israel forever; His Kingdom will never end!” Acts 1:8 gives us this picture of an ever-widening impact from local to global. What began on the cross in Jerusalem will be extended across the world until He returns in glory and the earth as we know it will come to an end.

The church is on mission with God to extend the Good News of salvation to all peoples. The mission always begins locally but it was never intended to stay there. Every church is to do its part in this local to global impact by sending and supplying. However, it is imperative that we be strategic in our approach to make sure that we are good stewards of our God-given resources.

If we are to invest these resources, where is the best place that will make the greatest impact? If we look at the world we must see that the greatest opportunities probably lie in what is called the 10-40 Window.

The 10/40 Window is described by the Joshua Project as a “rectangular area consisting of North Africa, the Middle East and Asia and is approximately between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude”. The 10/40 Window includes the majority of the world’s Muslims (865 million), Hindus (550 million), and Buddhists (275 million). There are approximately 5 billion people in this region. It consists of over 8,000 different people groups and over 60% of these groups are considered unreached with the gospel. The population of these unreached groups is estimated to be almost three billion people. Three billion people waiting to hear and be invited into Christ’s ever- widening Kingdom.

As we examine the impact of the Gospel in this region there are several important considerations. First, from a historical and biblical perspective this is the region where God called His people to begin the faith journey with Him (there are approximately 17 million Jews in the 10/40 Window). Second, these are the least evangelized countries in the world. Third, the greatest numbers of unreached people groups and unreached cities are in the 10/40 Window. Fourth, the dominance of the three greatest non-Christian religions is in this block. Fifth, 90% of the world’s poorest of the poor live there. Last, there is a tremendous stronghold of Satan in the 10/40 Window and the horrors of evil are well documented.

When you read these statistics the spiritual darkness and human suffering is staggering. Yet it is into that very darkness that Jesus sends us out as light (Matthew 5:14). We must understand that darkness never wins over light unless the light never attempts to penetrate the darkness.

If we truly want to make the greatest impact as General Baptist then we certainly must focus our resources on this part of the world. We already have missionaries in the Philippines that have a population of 103 million and have 31 people groups still unreached.

We have a missionary in Hong Kong, China where the population is over 7 million with only 12% as professing Christians.

Now let’s focus a moment on India. India has a population of approximately 1.3 billion people and over 80% are Hindu and only 2% are evangelical Christians.

It has 2,142 people groups and 1,929 are unreached. This means that over 1.2 billion people need to hear the Gospel message. We have one young missionary couple, Jessey and Brittany Vemula, who are working hard and we have the established work by Prakash & Jemima Pamu, but we need more missionaries to go and more churches to send and support their efforts.

We have had long-term and short-term missionaries in Mainland China where the total population is over 1.4 billion people. Almost 20% of the world’s population lives in China and only about 8% are professing Christians. There are many roadblocks to sharing the message of Christ in this nation and the biggest is the Communist political leadership. However, it is estimated that 10,000 people a day are professing faith in Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately we have no missionaries in the Middle East or Africa. Islam is making gigantic strides into Africa and Asia and the only hope is for the church to be strategic, bold and unafraid. The only hope for these nations is the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

As General Baptist the opportunities for us to impact our world for the glory of Christ is now. We must be embracing the mission as our life and ministry. We cannot rest on what we did yesterday. We need new missionaries units to be sent. We need churches that have the vision to see the world through God’s eyes and heart. We need you. The world needs you. The 10/40 Window needs you.

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” — Romans 10 :14 NIV