What is the Great Imbalance?
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- Опубликовано: 21 окт 2024
- How can we get closer to accomplishing the Great Commission? We must first consider the Great Imbalance. The Great Imbalance explains the imbalance seen with the number of resources given to the reached compared to the unreached. In this video, the Great Imbalance is explained to understand how our resources impact the Great Commission.
This is eye opening. Thanks for sharing
May the Lord have mercy on us!
Thank you so much for this excellent missions awareness video
Help me Lord to go.
you gone yet?
You guys should post this video to your Facebook page, so that it can be share-able. Such a good, clear picture.
Powerful video! But please cite sources. I'd like to use this as a presentation so I need to be able to give credible sources. Thanks!
Great teaching, very clear and inspiring. Is it available in German or do you allow me to translate it?
Are there any copyright issues with using this video? Planning on showing it on a Sunday morning during Gathered Worship.
Arise, let the church arise....
Good message, wrong in presentation.... while yes "reached" and "unreached" matter, the more important binary statistic is "Saved" and "Unsaved". While the statistic of 3% of Christian missionaries go to unreached people groups, the other 97% very much matter as well; for even in the "reached" areas most people are not saved, and many have never even heard of Christ. The intention of the video is well placed, but the overall presentation is misleading.
You make a good point that the other 97% of missionaries "very much matter as well." And while Saved and Unsaved is perhaps the most important distinction, we don't have direct control over this since we can't save anyone ourselves. But the distinction between those who have access to the Gospel, and those who don't, IS something that we have direct control over, simply by moving the salt and the light around to places where people don't have an opportunity to hear of Christ. Not hearing of Christ, and not having an opportunity to hear of Christ, are two different things. The Great Commission is all about changing the latter of these, as that is something within our stewardship to change. This is why God wants us to keep moving outwards to spread his message further. Matthew 10:14 and Acts 13:51 remind us to move on after Gospel rejection, because it matters that everyone gets a chance to hear (Romans 10:14). Also the missionary heartbeat is for the "regions beyond" (2 Cor. 10:16) where no one is working and where Christ has yet to be presented (Romans 15:20). So we honour missionaries who are working in Christian areas, doing important tasks like Bible translation, Church renewal ministry, and serving in areas like justice and development. But there is a risk of DE-mobilizing workers for the unreached, so we also plead for the Body of Christ to see that the proportion of missionaries among the unreached needs to shift, so every ethnic group can hear the good news (Matthew 24:14).
I think you misread Matthew 28. Jesus commanded us to disciple every ethnicity. Obeying that command seems to necessarily entail giving attention to ethnicities that are yet entirely untouched by the gospel.
Suppose there are 10 ethnicities in the whole world (there are a lot more than that, but just for the sake of example) containing 10 people each. And 9 of those 10 ethnicities are 100% saved. But nobody in that last one ethnicity has ever heard the gospel. So out of the 100 people on earth, 90 are saved. That's an enormous percentage of the world saved! But is that what Jesus commanded us to do? No. Because there is an ethnicity with no disciples in it, and he told us to disciple all ethnicities. In this hypothetical world, God's promise to Abraham is not yet fulfilled when he promised Abraham that he would use him to bless all nations. And the picture in Revelation 7 of every tribe, language, people, and nation is not yet true. For Revelation 7 to happen, every ethnicity and language must be discipled.
Obviously, obviously, of course it's very very good that so many people are saved. No arguing with that. That's evangelism! Tell people the gospel!
What exactly did Jesus command in Matthew 28? He commanded us to disciple every ethnicity. That's missions! Disciple every nation!
Evangelism is a work that the church does in the community where it exists. The church shares the gospel and reaches its neighbors, leads people to Jesus, disciples them, trains them to do the same.
Around 40% of the world's population, though, has no church in its midst. Missions is the work of establishing the church where it isn't. Evangelism is reaching the lost. Missions is reaching unreached nations and establishing the church so that the work of evangelism can continue there.
Alternatively, suppose that 2 out of 10 people are saved in all 10 ethnicities. That's only 20 people out of the 100 people in the whole world. That's fewer people saved than the prior example. But in this example, (1) God's promise to Abraham is possibly fulfilled, and (2) there is a church in the native culture and language of every human being on Earth so that by the work of evangelism, all can be reached.
Until there is a church in every culture and every language, there are people who do not have the option to hear the gospel, even if they wanted to.
40% of the world doesn't know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows a Christian. All lost persons matter. But not all lost persons are equally lost. Some have churches in their neighborhood. Others worship the Vishnu and have never been with a hundred miles of a believer.
@@dugw15 "All lost persons matter. But not all lost persons are equally lost."
???
Yes they are, lost is lost; that's my whole point. Just because someone is living in a neighborhood with a church down the street doesn't change the simple fact they are lost.
So thanks for proving my point.
@@ZSMacLean Did you read anything else I wrote? Context clues will tell you that I'm using "lost" as a different meaning than "unsaved".
I didn't at all prove your point. I seems like you selectively understood what I said. But I probably do the same thing with others' words when I'm coming from an issue from a different angle.
Let me remove the word "lost" and try that again.
Everyone who's unsaved is equally unsaved and in equal need of Jesus. Not all unsaved are equally far from the gospel, and not all are equally in need of human effort to reach them.
Any response to anything else in my prior message? The parts that can't be construed as proving your point? What about the exegetical point about Matthew actually commanding us to "disciple all the ethnicities"?
@@dugw15 Concerning Matthew 28, you and I are in full agreement; all ethnicities (in fact all people) are to be evangelized. And it should go without saying that has not occurred.
My whole issue with the video is that it puts missionaries into two categories: 1) the 97% who are witnessing to the reached; and 2) the 3% of missionaries who witness to the unreached.
There are no degrees of lost, just as there are no degrees to salvation; its' fundamentally binary, you either are or are not. That's my whole argument. Populations in the "reached" areas are just as lost as those in the "unreached" areas. Sure more missionaries to the unreached parts of the globe would be nice, but honestly that's not our purview; it's God's. He opens those doors, He directs His shepherds to the unreached, its all on His time. Is there a need, absolutely! But there's just as much of a need to save your neighbor as there is to save a person you've never met (or even knew existed).