Lausanne World Pulse – Urban Articles – Learning from Ants: A Look at Evangelists and Cross-cultural Missionaries
By Justin and Heidi Long
What we need are not individuals who can evangelize large numbers, but people who can ensure that large numbers are and continue to be evangelized and discipled and that communities continue to be transformed. In other words, we need Roberts, Amys, Gladyses, Adonirams, Hudsons and Samuels who can identify and serve the Pauls, Patricks, Georges, Johns and Billys within other cultures.
Back to our original question—how many do we need? Let us assume any given missionary team can mentor a local church planting movement that will impact at least 100,000 people over the space of a decade. If so, we arrive at a simple number: about forty-three thousand such teams are needed (see the chart1).
How we recruit and send that many teams is a question we will address in the next issue.
| Name | Unevangelized | Evangelized Non-Christian | Teams Needed |
| WORLD | 1,849,722,854 | 2,468,121,056 | 43,178 |
| AFRICA | 222,816,389 | 254,174,136 | 4,770 |
| Eastern Africa | 43,080,556 | 65,760,569 | 1,088 |
| Middle Africa | 9,461,624 | 10,237,230 | 197 |
| Northern Africa | 88,935,669 | 84,380,581 | 1,733 |
| Southern Africa | 1,193,130 | 8,134,617 | 93 |
| Western Africa | 80,145,410 | 85,661,139 | 1,658 |
| ASIA | 1,590,549,735 | 1,976,330,729 | 35,669 |
| Eastern Asia | 543,932,954 | 850,376,910 | 13,943 |
| South-central Asia | 751,457,089 | 783,448,570 | 15,349 |
| South-eastern Asia | 187,108,214 | 249,812,980 | 4,369 |
| Western Asia | 108,051,478 | 92,692,269 | 2,007 |
| EUROPE | 25,162,182 | 146,060,373 | 1,712 |
| Eastern Europe | 12,094,810 | 68,590,481 | 807 |
| Northern Europe | 2,075,620 | 15,095,314 | 172 |
| Southern Europe | 4,497,993 | 20,522,772 | 250 |
| Western Europe | 6,493,759 | 41,851,806 | 483 |
| LATIN AMERICA | 4,538,383 | 36,634,438 | 412 |
| Caribbean | 387,522 | 6,863,714 | 73 |
| Central America | 941,339 | 5,013,973 | 60 |
| South America | 3,209,522 | 24,756,751 | 280 |
| NORTH AMERICA | 5,901,825 | 49,138,679 | 550 |
| PACIFIC | 754,340 | 5,782,701 | 65 |
| Australia-New Zealand | 546,893 | 5,145,271 | 57 |
| Melanesia | 195,345 | 555,979 | 8 |
| Micronesia | 5,929 | 33,876 | 0 |
| Polynesia | 6,173 | 47,575 | 1 |
Endnote
1. Unevangelized and Evangelized non-Christian totals come from the World Christian Database.