The unknown war

Written By Pheaney

What was life like for the average American in World War 2? Other than Pearl Harbor, our own soil was never attacked, but the entire country lived in such a way to contribute to the winning of the war on foreign soil.*

I see a parallel today in that western Christianity has relative peace, lots of prosperity… and a war on foreign shores to see the unreached peoples of the world reached with the Gospel.

The unreached are not making a conscious choice about Jesus. They don’t have a choice because they haven't heard. Yet, here we sit … downloading more Christian podcasts (I know, I run one), fighting political battles, and getting more leadership training, while billions of people are going to hell without a chance to hear the truth of the Gospel.

The question is: What are we doing in our relative peace to contribute to this war effort to reach the unreached? 

And as I look around at our lives… even my own… I would have to say: "not much."

I think if we looked at the average American’s life in 1943, we would know pretty quickly that something was going on. Americans were called upon to save the fat from their cooking because it could be used to make glycerin, which was an essential ingredient in explosives. (As in don’t throw away the bacon grease after breakfast. Bring it to the local meat counter so your friend on the front lines has a grenade that explodes. I'm not making this up.)

If we really look at the average American Christian’s daily life, nothing about it would recognize that there are billions of people that do not have access to the Gospel.

First of all: We don’t even know about the war. It would be like an American in 1943 who had zero clue about Pearl Harbor or Adolph Hitler. That would be unfathomable. But most of us, as Christians, have no clue about the task at hand. And even if we do, we don’t live with an urgency that thousands are daily going to a Christless eternity.

Second, consider this question: Why did the average American in 1943 contribute to the war on foreign soil?  

Here to me, is the biggest key: They personally knew someone on the front lines.

The armed forces in America went from less than 200,000 people in the 1930s to over 16 million by the end of the war. 

Sixteen million people is over eleven percent of the US population at the time. (For sake of comparison, that number was about one percent during the highest deployment to Iraq that most readers would remember in recent times.)

You gave your bacon fat to help the war effort because you personally knew a friend or family member that would directly benefit. 

How do those rates compare to evangelicals reaching the unreached today? Sadly, it’s barely worth a comparison. The combined total of Evangelicals and Pentecostals on the planet is just over one billion (I chose those two groups because they are the ones we see most regularly involved in great commission work). Eleven percent of one billion would mean about 120 million people involved in front lines missions work to the unreached. Currently, there are only 430,000 foreign missionaries. We have 430,000 of the 120,000,000.

How many people do you know on the front lines of missions work, seeking to reach those with no access to the Gospel? When I first drafted this article, 0.88% of my Facebook friends could be considered in front-line missions work. Less than one percent.

What would it take to get to eleven percent of the people you know being deployed as front-line missionaries to the unreached? For me, it would mean that my home church would send ten people. Ten people that are currently not 'in ministry' would get sent to the nations. What if every church in America sent ten percent of its people?

What would it look like to live with a ‘wartime’ mentality all the time? How can we daily live with Matthew 24:14 and Matthew 28:18-20 as our marching orders from our Lord?

I'm no expert. Personally, I regularly lack the urgency I'm talking about. And I don’t want to give us a list, because it’s not that easy.  I want us to hurt for the lost in the world. I want us to cry out to God for guidance and for his heart for the lost in our neighborhoods and in the nations.

What I'm talking about will actually be harder than what the American public did in World War 2. In 1943 Americans were told to, made to, influenced to, and usally genuinely wanted to help the war effort.

To develop and maintain a gospel urgency, we need the Holy Spirit to affect our personal volition. We’ll have to live counter cultural, both to American culture and probably to most of our Christian culture.*

This may be my only post on the subject, or the start of a series. Either way, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to live life with a war-time mentality of gospel-urgency.


Sources and Notes: 

Pheaney
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