Mobilisation and Today’s Mission Opportunities

Mobilisation is not a biblical word, but the idea of ‘all God’s people engaging with God on mission’ is most definitely biblical! God’s strategy to fulfil His passion of bringing His mercy to all the peoples and all the people of the world, has never changed – it is His people. We are God’s plan A, and God has no plan B!

With the incredible efforts of missionaries over the past 200 years, God has extended His church to every inhabitable continent on earth and to every country of the world. We are now more geographically dispersed and culturally diverse than in our entire history. The potential exists now to reap the greatest harvest ever and to reach the world’s remaining unreached peoples.

Positive signs of God’s people responding abound. For example, at our conference held earlier this year in Ghana, we witnessed West African Christians becoming increasingly energised towards mission to the more difficult to penetrate francophone and Muslim regions of West Africa.

The church is Asia is now very missional as is the church in Latin America and increasingly in post-communist Eastern Europe. In fact, the mission field of yesterday is arguably the most dynamic force for mission in today’s world.
The church in the west is also slowly awakening from its slump in mission efforts. Aided by this new era of world history defined by ‘globalisation’, the unreached have now made their way to the doorstep of the church.

As I write this article, I am coming to the final stage of a three-week European mobilisation trip. In Germany, for example, I discovered that in the last two years, 5,350 migrants (mostly Iranians) have come to faith in Christ. The church in many other western European countries are experiencing similar opportunities and encouraging responses.

In saying that ‘the harvest was ripe but the workers few’ (Matt. 9:37), Jesus highlighted the challenge each generation of the church would face. The problem will never be the unreached but the reluctance of the reached to engage with God on mission, to the unreached, in their generation.

Let’s make this the most willing and responsive generation of God’s people, ever!