Ralph D. Winter

Dear Reader,

Our purpose as a bulletin is to keep you abreast of the latest thinking and books related to the campaign to reach the final frontiers.

	Ralph D. Winter		Let Barney Ford’s statement on page 50 stir and sear your soul: you cannot rightly begin with the question, “Lord, what do You want me to do?” if you have not first pondered the question, “Lord, what are You doing.” Yes, it is more important that you fit into His work than that you get Him to fit into your work. What is His work? These pages this time present the broadest bird’s eye view we can muster.

But, do you ever feel like a child sitting in the lap of Einstein fiddling with a button on his vest—and failing to fathom what is going on in his mind? I do. I often feel that way.

At my age I now know more about more things in some depth than I have ever known before, yet I am dumbfounded at world problems for which I don’t see any answers. I have degrees in science and engineering, education, anthropology, and theology. On top of that I have taught macro-history covering 2000 BC to 2000 AD.

But as the diameter of our knowledge increases, the circumference of our ignorance increases far faster. Modern science looking into telescopes or microscopes is constantly reporting the unfathomable.

This issue of Mission Frontiers is a capstone of 20 years of perspective on where Bible believers around the world stand with regard to the Biblical command to declare God’s glory to all the ethnic peoples of the world.

Our managing editor, Rick Wood (p. 6) has made comments on the significant content of this issue. But as we go to press it is left to me to add my two cents.

Three of the lengthiest sections reflect the ministry of three major contributors to the success of global frontier missions in the last 20 years.

1. In the case of Luis Bush’s eight pages on “Where are we now?” (p.12) we allow the boldest, bravest, most extensive global network for evangelism that has ever existed—the AD2000 Movement —to give something like its final report before the close of the millennium at the end of this year. Yes, that is when the AD2000 Movement closes its offices. What an amazing and unprecedented ministry! Its functions will continue in part in the new Great Commission Roundtable (see p. 20).

2. In the case of the twelve-page summary on p. 22, “Finishing the Task,” we present a careful chapter written by myself and Bruce Koch who is on our staff. It is taken from the latest revision of the 800-page book, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. These pages also employ many diagrams but a slightly different approach, emphasizing not just where we are but how we are getting there.

This article reflects the work of a major enterprise, the nationwide network of centers (over 100 annually) which offer a sturdy college course by the same title as this book. Over 35,000 Americans have now taken that course under our direct sponsorship as well as uncounted others in the hundred schools which also use that textbook (the most widely used textbook on missions). If you would like to get a copy of this key book for your own, see the opposite page.

3. A third major entity, the largest general mission agency in the world, the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention, lends us its top strategist, David Garrison on p. 34. The IMB was on the ground floor of the Unreached People movement at the World Consultation on Frontier Missions held at Edinburgh in 1980. The IMB’s huge enterprise took a little longer than some of the smaller agencies to drink deeply of the new vision for ethnic peoples around the world, not just countries. But when it did react, it became as specifically focused on unreached people outreach as any of the smaller agencies which had picked up on this emphasis earlier. In some ways it has surpassed all others.

As you page through this issue you don’t need to deplore the divergent numbers of, say, people groups needing still to be reached or evangelized.

These differences arise because different researchers are counting different things. For example, Wycliffe has reasonably been counting the number of printed scriptures needed—and it is well known that different dialects can read aloud from the same printed text even though they may pronounce the words so differently that their oral conversion of the printed text will not be acceptable to the people of one of the other dialects being served.

This simple fact means inevitably that those who employ radio, audio cassettes or church planting techniques come up with a much larger number of “peoples” still to be reached—and for their purposes they count more groups.

We can at least rejoice that massive progress toward the last group to be reached has been made in the past 20 years!

RDW