Paul Tipped the Balance Toward the Frontiers

by Anonymous

I don’t think any advocate of the priority of frontier missions (mission to the unreached peoples, to the least-evangelized, or to World A, which roughly corresponds to the 10-40 Window) would disagree with Michael Pocock that ministry to each of his four categories is valid Christian ministry.

I don’t think any advocate of the priority of frontier missions (mission to the unreached peoples, to the least-evangelized, or to World A, which roughly corresponds to the 10-40 Window) would disagree with Michael Pocock that ministry to each of his four categories is valid Christian ministry.

Paul was a frontier missionary. Today’s frontier missionaries, like Paul, will most likely, in the course of their work, find themselves working among all four categories. Send your missionaries to the Tajiks of Afghanistan and they will evangelize the unreached, teach the newly reached (as soon as the Lord grants converts), correct the misled (false teachings can emerge very quickly—the New Testament gives proof to that), and serve the unfed (most World A fields are places of severe poverty; Christian missionaries will not close their eyes and hearts to the suffering they see).

The most compelling point of Romans 15 is that Paul was willing, eager even, to hazard the outrageous risk of leaving behind the churches of the Eastern Mediterranean to pioneer the new field of Spain. Imagine! Leaving behind such young churches, some already riddled with strife and ungodliness, with such young leaders, threatened by dangerous false teachers, in lands where only a tiny sliver of the people were Christians. How alarmed we would be if a missionary acted in such an irresponsible way today! Here is the Pauline model of balance: tipped precipitously toward the frontiers, even saying of the earlier, scantily occupied fields, there is no more place for me to work in these regions (Rom. 15:23).

I agree that today’s missionary force is imbalanced, but imbalanced in the exact opposite directions from what Pocock’s article implies. At present, World C (the Christian world) has 27 percent of the world’s population and 91 percent of the world’s missionaries, while World A (the unevangelized world, those who have yet to hear the gospel, in any form, for even the first time) has 32 percent of the world’s population and only 1 percent of the world’s missionaries. Is this good? Is God pleased? Even if we were to dismiss the Pauline priority of the frontiers (God forbid!) and deploy simply on the basis of fair distribution by population, the number of missionaries in the 10/40 Window would swell dramatically.

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