Today’s post was written by Dr. George Martin, M. Theron Rankin Professor of Missions and Associate Dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at Southern Seminary.
I have to be honest. I spend little time thinking about South America. This admission will probably come as a shock, certainly a great disappointment, to my colleague, Dr. David Sills, who has so faithfully ministered there for so long. I was struck by this realization when, recently in a Ph.D. seminar, a student presented a paper on Buenos Aires, Argentina. (I must make another confession: I was not even sure how to spell the city’s name; I looked it up!)
It’s not that I never think about South America. Nor do I fail to pray for South America, at least occasionally. Probably, my failure to think and to pray more in regard to South America is due largely to the fact that I so often focus on Asia and Africa. To put the matter another way, my plate is already so full with concern for Asia and Africa that I struggle to heap up onto that plate additional continents – sort of like a plate of spaghetti already so full that no more noodles can be put there.
I recall once reading an anecdote from the ministry of Charles Spurgeon. (I cannot remember the source. In fact, if anyone can provide the source, I would very much like to hear from you.) As I remember the story, Spurgeon, wearied under the heavy load of ministry at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, confided in a friend that he sometimes just wanted to board a ship, cross the Atlantic, and shepherd a small mission somewhere out on the frontier of America.
All of us involved in ministry, I suppose, can empathize. Sometimes the plate becomes so full with personal, family, and ministry responsibilities! And, then, in the midst of all this, someone comes along and reminds us: “Oh, yeah, you are also responsible for the world.”
I struggle to juggle and balance it all; how about you? With regularity, I pray for some cities. But there are those for which I never pray specifically. So big a world! So many cities! They’re just sort of out of sight and out of mind. After all, my plate is already so full!
The aforementioned student had so passionately pleaded for Buenos Aires. Previously, I had thought little about Buenos Aires, let alone pray for the city. And what about the “100 Gateway Cities in the 10/40 Window?” Cities such as Kabul and Algiers and Dhaka and Cairo and Calcutta and Jakarta and Tokyo and Karachi . . . well, you get the point.
The world’s population is moving to the cities. In the year 1800, according to the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C., three percent of the world’s population resided in urban contexts. In 2008, for the first time, the world’s population was split evenly between rural and urban. I have seen projections stating, at the end of the present century, that 95% of the global population will be urban, a reversal of the numbers from only three hundred years previously!
What is the significance of these numbers? At the very least, we had better be clearing our plates, for if we do not reach the cities with the gospel, we will not reach the world.