US-minted Missionary Coin: Head’s we’re Wretched, Tails we’re Dead

American Evangelicals have a proud history of sending missionaries to reach the lost with the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. These missionaries have seen a lost world that needs the Lord and have dedicated their life’s work to proclaiming God’s love throughout the world. Those who have responded to this call have usually been gifted, trained, and sent by and through American churches and American mission agencies.

Very often mission agencies have identified target areas are in the greatest need for the good news. Mission agencies have developed statistical analysis to assist in this process. This has recently been demonstrated by what is known as the 10/40 window.

“The 10/40 window is an area of the world that contains the largest population of non-Christians in the world. The area extends from 10 degrees to 40 degrees North of the equator, and stretches from North Africa across to China” http://1040window.org/what_is.htm).

Many mission agencies have set the 10/40 window as their highest priority, and with good reason: “95% of the people living in the 10/40 Window are un-evangelized. Many have never heard the Gospel message even once” http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/1040.htm#facts. And with two-thirds of the world’s population living in this window, that 95% represents a statistical cry for a new wave of Christian missionaries.

But are we equipped to go? While most would argue that the West and the United States in particular has an abundance of churches and many have heard the gospel, we live in an age of increasingly skeptical, secular people in these very churches.

Many churches are closing: my understanding is that everyday nine churches close their doors in the United States. Of the churches that aren’t necessarily struggling to stay solvent, how many are spiritually alive? While the 10/40 window is clearly in need of the gospel of Jesus, America is showing itself to be spiritually impoverished. Like the church in Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-20), we say we “are rich…and have need of nothing” yet we are “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (verse 17 NASB).

Jesus’ next words in verse 18 are poignant: “I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.” It is difficult to avoid seeing the parallel between Laodicea and America. Before we can toss in another mission coin into the 10/4o window, American Christians need to take a hard look and see if we ourselves are not wretched and poor and naked.

From what I’ve seen, the people of 10/40 don’t need our brand of materialistic Christianity—they need Jesus the Messiah, the One who died for them, whom God raised from the dead, the One who transforms them into the image of Christ—and I am increasingly convinced that America does as well (again).