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, published by Paternoster, is part of a set of prayer tools that aim to help Christians lift world evangelization to the Lord. Johnstone and Mandryk carried out another complete survey on all the world’s denominations to put together a picture of the world at the dawn of the new millennium.

All non-confidential Operation World data are available on a searchable companion CD that also offers Web site links, color maps and graphics and the World Fact Book. Also available is Window on the World, a 221-page full-color prayer guide for children. Other companions to Operation World include a wall map and desk calendar.

As a missiologist and numbers cruncher, he’s poised to spot trends. The world has seen a 200-year advance of the gospel since William Carey went to India. Over that time, Johnstone says the momentum of evangelical growth has just picked up. In 1887 after 100 years of Protestant mission work, about three million people had converted from “heathen religions,” as they were then called, to become Christians. “The figures for 2000 for the number of evangelicals in the non-Western world were 300 million,” he said, “and we get something of the astonishing scale of that advance.”

Most of that growth has been over the last 20 years, Johnstone said. “And the greatest growth, we find, has been in the 1990s,” he said. What he describes as an “astonishing decade of opportunity for the gospel” was bracketed by two momentous events, both of tremendous gospel significance: The tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. “In the middle of that was the AD 2000 and Beyond Movement, one of the most dramatic global focused efforts on world evangelism,” Johnstone said. “It really had quite astonishing catalytic results.”

Another factor that caused tremendous change in the 1990s was the advent of the Internet, which has caused news to spread at lightning speed. That’s meant quick diffusion of news of persecution, which, contrary to what many believed after Communism fell, has in fact worsened around the world. “The Internet has done more to publicize more quickly when Christians come under pressure,” Johnstone said. “There are numerous networks that pass this information on to Christians for prayer. We can hardly estimate the effect of both mobilization of prayer and mobilization of action when necessary to speak out about it.”

Among mission trends Johnstone sees emerge is “a more biblical ecclesiology” as old forms of Christendom are fading. “That means where Christianity, faith and politics all get so churned up together, you have secular methods for running churches,” he said. “Many people are questioning this. We’ve got to get back to a more wholesome view of the church where missions, training and the local congregations-all these components-are seen as the church.

“Everyone’s groping for a better way of doing church, of doing missions. We’re making many mistakes but I see we’re beginning to talk about it, and we need to do so to do a better job.”

The church has a tremendous geographical challenge. “The 10/40 Window was highlighted by the AD 2000 and Beyond Movement,” he said. “Many people complained that this was too simplistic. Sure. But it was excellent for publicity. Many more people now know about the 10/40 Window than the AD 2000 Movement that created it. That’s good publicity.

“Missions have changed their strategies and have changed their focus to the least reached. This must continue.”

Johnstone remains concerned that the focus on the Year 2000 may have dissipated somewhat by so many other challenges. “We must not lose sight of the overall goal of completing the church that God wants to be forever with him in heaven,” he said. “But we have the tremendous challenge of the major religious blocs in the 10/40 Window-the Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims. With all of them they face a crisis of credibility. I believe this is going to give us opportunities, the like of which we’ve never seen before.”

His case in point: Indian Dalits’ increasing rejection of Hinduism. “The very idea that in India, 300 million Dalits are openly beginning to turn their back against any form of Hindu contact or oppression, and they’re wanting to choose other religions,” Johnstone said. “It’s going to radically change the face of India. And if we Christians handle it right, they could become Christians.”

Johnstone says the church’s third challenge is ethnic. “During the ’90s we had the first published list ever of all the languages, peoples, ethnic groups, the breakdown of every country-this is widely available for the first time,” he said. “This means that we can actually know, make sure that within a reasonable time ahead that we make disciples of every people on earth, which is a basic condition of the completion of the task in the New Testament.”

Many evangelicals have lost their fear of being involved in social action and holistic ministry. The fourth challenge, Johnstone said, is getting Christians involved in helping relieve physical suffering. “A whole new range of challenges have come to the fore in Christian work: children at risk, disadvantaged women, a massive increase in refugees, the advent of AIDS, the arrival of new diseases and old that haven’t yet been defeated.”

Johnstone cites the fifth challenge as a moral one. “We haven’t really faced up to the fact that we follow absolute truth,” he said. He quotes Indian apologist Vishal Mangalwadi, who said the Enron disaster was probably far greater than the disaster of the Twin Towers because it strikes at the very heart of our society. “Capitalism has to be built on trust,” he said. “If we can’t trust the capitalists anymore, we’re in for a disaster.”

“We’ve got to deal with the corruption in our own world. And we must face the whole moral collapse.”

The last challenge: “To finish the task Jesus gave us to do, and this we must keep as our primary focus,” he said. Given that Operation World is a key tool for Christians praying and working to finish that task, why isn’t it released annually? “If it were [released] before the year 2008, I’d be surprised,” Johnstone said. “I know that seems late in our fast-moving world, but basically, if you hold off for six or seven years, it needs a massive rewrite-an entirely new book. But if we were to do it in three or four years, people would say, why do I have to buy another book? It would be a publisher’s nightmare.”

Another factor in the intervals between editions is Johnstone’s method for building the statistics in five-year periods. “For us to do another Operation World, we’d have to use year 2000 statistics,” he said. “It wouldn’t work. If we aim for projecting figures for 2010, it would fly better.”

Another thing Johnstone won’t do is publish incremental changes, simply because of his rule of thumb that all numbers must add up to 100 percent. “All the statistics are an integral whole,” he said. “If we change one statistic, it’s no longer consistent. We prefer it to be a statistical snapshot every five to ten years, and we don’t change it unless it’s in the form of a footnote.”

Why, too, has Operation World’s author announced that this edition is his last? “If there’s to be a continuity of ministry, I must pass it on while I’m still active and well,” said the 63-year-old Johnstone, a Brit. “That is why Jason Mandryk, a young Canadian WEC missionary, is a co-author. He’s only 31. I poured everything into him so that he has the basic knowledge and equipment to carry on. We’re trusting that a team will build around him for a future edition.”

“I didn’t want to project that on others in case it didn’t work out. But certainly the way things are developing, I anticipate it happening.”

May 10, 2002