July 7, 2015

Stats & Mission

The 10/40 window is the name given to the region of the world that poses the greatest challenge to Christian mission. The name derives from the fact that most of the countries in the “window” include territory between roughly 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude, comprising an imaginary window on the world. It includes North Africa, the Middle East and most of Southern, Southeast, and East Asia—and exactly one third of the world’s population. Here live the majority of the world’s Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists; here are found the world’s least-evangelized countries, and the greatest number of unreached people groups.

Since 1989, mission in the 10/40 window has been a world church priority; since 1993 the world church has collected separate statistics for its countries. So, after a quarter of a century of prioritizing the 10/40 window and 20 years of statistics on the region, how are we doing?

Figure 1 compares the total membership in the 10/40 window and the world church, in 1993 and today. The number of Seventh-day Adventist church members in the nations of the Window has increased by 225 percent; it rose from 10.5 percent to 14.9 percent of world membership.

Figure 2 shows the ratio of Seventh-day Adventists per million of the world’s population in the 10/40 window, outside the 10/40 window, and in the world as a whole, and shows how these ratios have shifted from 1993 to 2013. It reveals that even though the number of Adventists in the 10/40 window countries has increased significantly, we could be doing better given the population increase in the same countries and that the rate of increase in the window relative to total population is much less than in the world as a whole.

Although the 10/40 window is a stated priority for the world church, there is still much to do before growth there even begins to approach growth in the rest of the world. Figure 2 suggests there is a case to redistribute resources from some countries outside the 10/40 window, where growth relative to total population is very dynamic, to the countries of the window, which, like the Macedonian man of the apostle Paul’s vision, need the help of the world church.

Although the 10/40 window is a stated priority for the world church, there is still much to do before growth there even begins to approach growth in the rest of the world. Figure 2 suggests there is a case to redistribute resources from some countries outside the 10/40 window, where growth relative to total population is very dynamic, to the countries of the window, which, like the Macedonian man of the apostle Paul’s vision, need the help of the world church.
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