God is the God who sends. He sends his Son, his Spirit, and his people – us. Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, I send you” (John 20:21). We are not only sent ourselves, but as communities of faith, we send God’s people into his mission beyond where we are.
But where are we sending them? That’s what I want us to think about.
The Gospel Need in Australia
There is great need for the gospel here in Australia. With another census approaching, we are reminded that the last census was the first time that less than 50% of Australians described themselves as Christian, with more non-religious Australians than ever before.
There are lots of people in Australia who need to hear the saving message of the gospel, whether they have no religion, or tick the Christian box but still need to understand the depths of God’s grace.
Religious diversity in Australia is also growing. While Buddhism has somewhat plateaued, the numbers of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs are all increasing. Hinduism is the fastest growing religion by percentage, driven by many new people arriving from the subcontinent.
We need to help our churches embrace these opportunities for mission in our own backyard. How will we cross cultural barriers? How will we think like missionaries in our own communities? How will we commission people to plant churches in Australia, where people need to hear the gospel and be transformed by it?
Sent and Sending
This missional opportunity in our backyard does not exhaust our capacity or our mission responsibility. We need to continue to be God’s people who are sent to our communities, while also sending people beyond our communities and our nation.
What is our place in God’s global mission?
“This missional opportunity in our backyard does not exhaust our capacity or our mission responsibility.”
In John 20, we find the model. Jesus says, “As the Father sends me, I send you” (John 20:21), giving us a pattern for what it looks like to participate in his mission. Just as Jesus spoke God’s word and did his will, so we proclaim the message of Jesus and reflect his sacrificial service. Matthew’s and Luke’s version gives us the magnitude; we must go to all nations (Matt 28:19; Luke 24:47).
God’s mission is global, and we have a unique contribution to make.
The Gospel Need
So where is the gospel needed most?
First, I need to define my terms. What do I mean by gospel need?
I hope every Christian has a firm conviction that we all need the gospel. We all have spiritual need.
But gospel need is different from spiritual need. Spiritual need exists everywhere, in Sydney and in Uzbekistan alike. Gospel need is not the same in both contexts, because gospel need is about access. Can people hear the gospel message, and can they access gospel resources?
When we consider access to gospel resources and the gospel message, we see great gaps in gospel need.
Jesus’ Concern for Access to the Gospel
Scripture shows a consistent thread of God’s concern that the gospel be equally accessible to all people. Jesus says, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out” (Mark 1:38). Jesus tells his disciples to “ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field” (Matt 9:37-38). He sends workers not just for here, but for beyond.
“Scripture shows a consistent thread of God’s concern that the gospel be equally accessible to all people.”
From Isaiah to Jesus, God’s vision is to send his people as a light for the nations, to “the ends of the earth” (Isa 49:6, Acts 1:8). Paul’s ambition is “to preach the gospel where Christ was not known” (Rom 15:20), because he sees himself standing in the line of the suffering servant in Isaiah where “he will sprinkle many nations… for what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand” (Isaiah 52:15).
The goal is for the glory of the Lord to cover the world like waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9). At the moment, access to that glory is not equally available in all places.
Where Is the Gospel Need?
If we want to address this disparity of gospel need, where should we be sending people?
Ever since William Carey wrote about “the religious state of different nations of the world,” we have been asking that same question. There are many ways to look at this problem. I want to reflect on a few of these lenses, considering how they help us, where they may be too simplistic, and how together they can shape a more nuanced understanding of gospel need.
Lens 1: Non-Christian Population
One way to measure gospel need is simply to count non-Christians. China has 1.24 billion, India has 1.32 billion, Pakistan has 201 million, and Bangladesh and Indonesia each have millions more. By this measure, the task is simply to reach non-Christians and make them Christians.
Lens 2: Heard the Gospel
But our ministry is not just to make people Christians. We want people to have access to the gospel and its resources. So how is evangelism going? How many people have actually heard the gospel?
In 1800, nearly 75% of the world’s population had not heard the gospel. By 2000, that figure had dropped to under 30%, but it has since plateaued at nearly the same level. 30% of the world’s population still haven’t heard the gospel. That’s a huge gospel need. They’re very hard to reach for all sorts of reasons.
This leaves us with three broad categories. First, 2.6 billion people call themselves Christian, though many of them still need serious gospel ministry and do not fully understand God’s grace. Second, 3.2 billion people are not Christian but live where gospel access is rich. Third, 2.2 billion people remain unevangelised, neither Christian nor having heard the gospel.
These are still fairly flat categories. They give us a general sense that there is a lot of work to do, but not much clarity on where, what, or who.
Lens 3: Reached People Groups
Another lens is people groups. Many believe the biblical phrase “all the nations,” or panta ta ethne in Greek, refers to ethnic or ethnolinguistic groups, each reached to varying degrees with the gospel.
Joshua Project is the best known source for this. On the map below, every dot represents a people group, and its colour shows how well that group has been reached, from green for a strong Christian presence to red for far less reached. Altogether, these dots represent 8.169 billion people.
Now, if we focus only on the most unreached, those groups less than 0.1% Christian, known as frontier people groups, the number shrinks significantly, but still represents around two billion people, concentrated in India, the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe.
These are people groups with no Christians living among them. The only way they can hear the gospel is if someone comes in from outside, crossing significant cultural barriers to do so.
4. Access to Gospel Resources
These three lenses focus on the issue of being reached, but gospel poverty is not only about reached-ness or the number of Christians. It also involves access to gospel resources. I don’t mean Christian books and physical resources. What I mean is: how strong is the church there? What is its capacity? Where a group has very few believers, what stage is that work at?
The Joshua Project’s recent work on phases of engagement is helpful here, as it shows us where Christian ministry currently stands among a particular people group.
7 Stages of Church Gospel Need
- 0. Waiting. No gospel engagement is happening there at all.
- 1. Entry. Workers from other contexts are beginning to learn the language and culture and share Christ.
- 2. Evangelism. Culturally relevant gospel sharing is happening in significant numbers.
- 3. Discipleship. Disciples are being made and small groups are forming.
- 4. Local church. Churches have been planted and are gathering as local congregations.
- 5. Reproducing church. Local churches are planting second generation churches.
- 6. Multiplying church. Churches are moving into their third and fourth generations of church planting.
- 7. Sustained gospel presence. More than 10% of the population follow Christ in local churches, part of multiple mature, self-led networks.
These are new categories, so clear data is not yet available. But they also recognise that it is not only about which phase a group has reached, but also the strength of what is happening there, whether it is unknown, initial, growing, active, or flourishing.
This creates a more complete picture. A church in the multiplying category could still have very low levels of missional life, while a church in an earlier phase, where evangelism is thriving, might be full of life.
Lens 4: Our Role Defined by Gospel Need
Our role changes depending on the state of the gospel need. We need a nuanced understanding of gospel need across the world to know what our role in God’s mission should be.
One final lens comes from a demographer named Chris Maynard, who defined five categories of role: pioneer, partner, support, encourage, and challenge.
Maynard asked what would happen if every evangelical on earth was engaged in spreading the gospel, working toward one evangelical church for every 1,500 people in a city, or every 500 in a rural context. Based on the number of evangelicals in the world in 2010, this works out to roughly 50 to 100 people per new church needed.
His data is from 2010, so it is a little dated, though the overall picture has likely not changed much. Here are a few snapshots from his five categories with an example in each.
Pioneer
In Morocco, the gap is too wide for the local church to reach its own people. Based on the number of evangelicals there, they need somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 new churches, but have capacity to plant only 20 to 100. The only way to close that gap is for outsiders to take a pioneer role, coming in to preach the gospel from the grassroots and pioneer evangelical church planting.
Partner
In Japan, they need about 50,000 to 200,000 churches. The church there is bigger than in Morocco, but still faces a significant deficit, so outsiders are needed to partner alongside it.
Support
In France, they need 20,000 to 100,000 churches but have capacity to plant only 5,000 to 20,000. This is a significant deficit, though there is an established church to build on. Outsiders can support that church through training, encouragement, discipleship, and equipping, helping believers plant churches in their own context and wrestle with the challenges of secularism.
Encourage
Australia needs somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 more churches, and we have the capacity to plant that many, and more. What we need is encouragement, both to plant new churches here and to send people beyond our borders to serve countries with greater need.
Challenge
Brazil needs somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 more churches, but based on its number of evangelicals, it could plant a million. Brazilians need to be challenged to take the gospel out into the world, and praise the Lord, they are beginning to.
This helps us understand our role in God’s global mission and the task before us. The map below shows how the whole world breaks down using Maynard’s numbers. Countries in red have, based on their evangelical population, more capacity to plant churches than they need at home. They should be encouraged and challenged to support the church in purple nations, partner with the church in blue nations, and pioneer evangelism and church planting in green nations.
We have a role to play if we are going to join God in his global mission. That begins with understanding the people God has blessed us with. It also means continuing to look outward, giving thanks for what God has poured out on us, and asking how we can engage in his mission here and to the ends of the earth.
So what should we do? We should pray. Pray to the Lord of the harvest to raise up workers for his harvest field. Pray for wisdom, for the local church God has blessed you with, and for how you can participate in God’s global mission.
The desire is to see the glory of the Lord cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
Let me end with these words from Paul. “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.”
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Note: This article was adapted from a presentation given by Tim Silberman at the SMBC 2026 Global Mission Conference