As the church enters the last quarter of this century, there is a new sense of reality and urgency about the missionary task.

From Reformation times reference to the missionary mandate of the Great Commission has raised serious questions.

Does the world need 120,000 North American missionaries by the year 2000? All along it’s been assumed by missions strategists, recruiters and promoters that the way to reach the unreached is to pump more North Americans into the realms of the unevangelized.

It is a great calling and privilege to be a missionary. It is my joy to have rubbed shoulders with hundreds of foreign missionaries over the past two decades. By and large, they impress me very positively.

There is a need for a different understanding of “missionary” than what many people have.