BY JON L. DYBDAHL
World Mission Department, Andrews University

ou can respond to the 10/40 window better if you feel it in your heart.

Watch a constant line of worshipers filing through a temple honoring the Hindu elephant god Ganesh, after walking all afternoon around the city and not seeing a single Christian church.

Awaken every day to the Muslim call to prayer and never hear a church bell ring or find a local Christian radio station.

Speak to an old villager who looks puzzled and confused when you ask him if he's ever heard of Jesus Christ. This is what it means to be touched by the 10/40 window.

10/40 Window--Showcase of Need
This "window" (called so because of the roughly rectangular shape that it has) is the territory that extends from 10 to 40 degrees north of the equator and sweeps from north Africa through to China and Japan, and includes all of non-Christian Asia.1 This particular area has been singled out for special mission attention because it constitutes the core of the challenge for world evangelism.

Although 60 percent of the world's population--3 billion people--live in the 10/40 window, only 18 percent of all missionaries work there.2 Bryant Myers calls this area the "least evangelized world."3 Nine out of 10 countries with the largest non-Christian populations are in this window.4 The need is great for other reasons as well: more than 80 percent of the world's poorest people (those making less than $500 a year) live there. This spiritual and material poverty touches all areas of life.

This is also the heartland of the three largest non-Christian religions--Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. These three religions were born in the 10/40 window and have their greatest strength there. Thirty-four Muslim countries, seven Buddhist nations, and two Hindu countries are present in the window. Only a person who has attempted to share Jesus with committed adherents of these religions can appreciate the challenge to evangelism they present. Only 2 percent of the population in this area of the world is Christian.5

10/40 Window--Shining of an Opportunity
Although the challenges are tremendous, history and providence have opened doors. Increased mobility, modern communications, desire for trade, and economic growth have made access to many of these areas easier than ever before. Christians, because of their focus, have become creative and have found new ways to reach out. In the face of challenge, God has provided new opportunities to get His message out.

What does this new special focus for mission imply for Seventh-day Adventists? While many things could be mentioned, five stand out.

1. New vision. Much of Adventist mission work in the past has focused on bringing the Adventist message to those with a nominal Christian background. Even in non-Christian countries such as India, missionaries usually went to the Christian minority with their message. To center on the 10/40 window means that we must adopt a clear view of mission as reaching the non-Christian world. So in connection with the church's Global Mission initiative a decision was also made to set up study centers to analyze the major non-Christian religions--Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism. We now have centers at which outreach specialists are hard at work researching and supervising projects meant to facilitate mission to these groups of people.

2. New methods. Doing things the same old ways--even if they work in our culture--may not get results in the areas of the 10/40 window. We must be open to new evangelistic methods, alternative worship forms, and innovative ways of explaining and packaging our basic beliefs. We cannot simply be open to them, but we must invent and promote them as well. Creative thinking must take place outside the traditional Seventh-day Adventist box if we expect to reach this major block of people.

3. New training. When we were sent as missionaries to the 10/40 window country of Thailand, I found that my college and seminary training in America had not been appropriate to the task I'd been assigned. I had learned to show from the Scriptures why Saturday was the Sabbath and why people didn't go right to heaven when they died. But I'd learned nothing about reaching Hinayana Buddhists with the message of Jesus.

Even in many non-Christian countries the training of workers takes place in a Christian thought context. Evangelistic series feature the same sequence of topics that are covered in North America and Europe. Bible studies designed to lead people with a Bible background to Jesus are simply translated and given to Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims. And we wonder why so few respond. The key books we use to train people about Adventist doctrine are set in the context of inter-Christian dialogue and apologetic and were never designed to answer the questions of non-Christians. Not only must those we send to the non-Christian areas be adequately trained; we must supply appropriate tools for the task.

Recent Bible lessons specifically designed to present Jesus to Buddhist Cambodians were not only warmly received but soon sold out. Many other Christian groups bought and used them as well. We need a massive drive to produce Bible studies, evangelistic sermons, pamphlets, and training manuals designed to reach people living in the 10/40 window.

4. New patience. In some nominal Christian areas a two-week evangelistic series may be enough to bring people to a full understanding of the gospel. In Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic areas such a hasty approach is rarely, if ever, sufficient. A longer time frame and different methods are clearly called for. Instead of choosing an area based on the number of baptisms thought quickly attainable, we must pick unreached areas where large numbers of baptisms may not initially be so readily available. The emphasis needs to be on planting churches and establishing bodies of believers.

The recent Global Mission and North American Division emphasis on church planting is certainly appropriate for the 10/40 window. To share the gospel in new 10/40 window areas requires a sustained long-term commitment of people and money resources.

5. New dependence on God. Simple lip service to the need of prayer and the presence of the Holy Spirit is not enough. Here the great controversy between the forces of good and evil is a daily battle, not just a theological concept. We must turn to God in serious intercession for the spread of His message in this area.

Our friends Brian and Duang Wilson are laboring to plant a church among the Mien people in the mountains in north Thailand. Recently I received an e-mail from Brian concerning a Mien couple. He writes:

"Turns out that she and her husband have offended the spirits and there is nothing left for them to do. . . . The family and some of our villagers are asking that we pray for them. They said they heard God was stronger than the spirits. If God does not help, both the husband and the wife will die. . . . Others have offended the spirits in the same way as this couple and have died unexplainedly."

Such battles are real spiritual battles that all believers must join in if we expect to see the hope of Jesus' return find a place in the hearts of people in the 10/40 window.

10/40 Window--Singing a New Song
I recently spent two weeks in India. My most vivid memory of that trip is of the humble house church in a lower economic area in which I preached. More than 40 people packed into the living room area. The service had life. Although the words and tunes were unfamiliar to me, I loved the singing. A drummer beat out a local Tamil rhythm, and the pastor used a tambourine while both children and adults joyfully clapped.

At the end of the service, perhaps in my honor, the pastor announced a traditional hymn to be sung in English. It fell flat. The drum was silent. The tambourine was not used. Clapping was absent, and the children's voices were still. Only a few could follow as we limped through that closing song.

It suddenly struck me that this is really the story of God's call to reach the 10/40 window. We have to let people sing a new song--their song--if we want the gospel to touch their hearts. If we want to be part of it, we must learn that new song, or at least encourage them to sing it. To try to teach people simply to sing our song, in our way, to our tune, will never do. Maybe those who learn that new song now will find it easier to sing the ultimate new song in the presence of Jesus and the Lamb (Rev. 5:9).

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¹ I say "roughly" because while the area can be drawn as a window-shaped rectangle, its actual territory only approximates that form.
² Van Rheenan, p. 209.
³ Bryant L. Myers, The New Context of World Mission (MARC, 1996), p. 16, 18-20.
⁴ Myers, p. 33.
⁵ Ibid.