World Mission of the Church - Lesson 6

Dr. Timothy Tennent
World Mission of the Church
WM601-06
Great Commission Passages in the Gospel of Mark
Lesson Transcript

Good morning. Lucas, I see you there smiling. Would you be kind enough to pray for us? Thank you. Heavenly Father, we thank you for gathering us together. Bless us as we open your. If you look at it. And as we talk about many of the issues that face us. Amen. Thank you. Yesterday, just to kind of recap where we where we are. We completed the first phase of the exit Jesus of our text. And one of the many points we made was this emphasis on nations. We took some time to deflect some of the theological challenges related to pluralism and inclusive ism that took us a day and a half to deal with that and try to at least point out some parameters of response as evangelicals. Then we we began to look at some of the implications in terms of mission strategy for the word ethnic. Now, actually, that lecture yesterday, in many ways, in fact, I used to actually that was actually given much later in the course. But I found that when we go to the Book of Acts, it's actually helpful to have that discussion in mind because when we looking at one of our texts, again, another biblical passage to show you again the biblical basis for some of the strategic discussion. And there are actually is a number of things. There are no other things in Acts which I would like to share with you as well, which I'm going to refrain from, because on Monday you're going to have a wonderful presentation on this theology and book of acts related to questions that are asked in the Book of Acts by a guest lecturer.

[00:02:04] So I'm going to refrain from that, but I will focus on this passage. Annex 11. Just to be clear, what we what we said by way of conclusion and what we didn't say the Great Commission as a whole contains in seed form, I think virtually the entire ministry, the church, the Great Commission as a command is not limited to the missionary call or missionary task at all. It involves the, for example, Christian education, the churches and, you know, discipleship and everything that we we would think of of as legitimate ministries within the life of the church are in some ways responding in obedience to the Great Commission. So the Great Commission is quite a rather large kind of all encompassing command of the church. I guess this class is interested in making sure we see the full scope of it. So we're really more interested in looking at what it means to say we have completed the task without necessarily delimiting other kinds of task along the way. So we have focused a lot on the unfinished task of the Great Commission. And I did feel and I do feel very strongly that one of the problems is that we do things we call missions, which are actually not part of the full extent of this. And so we have hidden peoples or unreached peoples that are not being reached. I think it's helpful to use the distinction of evangelism for monocultural work and missions, for cross-cultural work and the things within that. As I said yesterday, between regular missions and frontier missions, just so we can be clear what we are doing Since the word missions does not appear in the New Testament, I am not at all insistent that we use the word missions in the way I'm using it.

[00:03:56] I mean, I'm not gonna die on that hill. I find that to be the most effective way to call the whole enterprise the witness of the church and to subdivide evangelism from missions and even missions, frontier and regular. But if you find other terminology is more helpful for you and your ministry. Praise God, I have no problem with that. But to neglect the distinction and to pretend that when we're doing monocultural work or even e to work, that that somehow is going to fulfill the Great Commission is a problem. It's a huge problem and we have to address that. And so that's actually the problem. I'm trying to highlight more than a fight over terminology. It's like the word inerrancy. I mean, the word I remember when I came through early on, the word was always infallibility. Then they found that the word infallibility was being misinterpreted. So they went to an error and say it's that that's the way it is. You have to fight for the meaning of words as best we can. And sometimes that means going to a new word. And I hope that we don't have to do that. And certainly we we have this problem, the word nations. I'm going to now come back to Book of Acts. And this in everything you see here on the overhead is on this handout. So you should already have before. You don't need to write this down. What I want to show you in the New Testament is at least one example of how this worked itself out. And if you recall when we discussed x18, I made it clear that I felt very strongly that we have neglected the ethnic aspect of x18 and we have viewed it in pure geographic terms Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, uttermost parts of the earth as a.

[00:05:38] Geographic progression. Certainly that geographic geographic progression is there. But to view it as only geographic, I do think it does violence to the Book of Acts theologically enough, hopefully show you why this morning just to kind of bring us into Acts 11 and see where we are. What happens is, you know, in Acts seven, we have the defense of Stephen, which culminates in the first Christian martyr when Stephen is stoned to death. And you'll notice there that the apostle Paul or Saul of Tarsus, of course, is holding the cloaks and the end of the chapter when they stoned to death. And in chapter eight, verse one of acts, we're told that a great persecution breaks out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles are scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Now, that is the transitional point where we're relocating from Jerusalem to Judaism area. So it happens interestingly via persecution. It doesn't happen because someone said the Lord commanded us to go to Judea, Samaria, so let's do that. It happened through via persecution. It's amazing how the Lord uses persecution at times to fulfill his work. Again, it's part of the fact that the Lord will not be outflanked even in the face of persecution. I think we've seen this today in the Chinese church. I mentioned already here that the 21st century is the it will be the century, I believe, of the rise of the Chinese church globally. And it won't really matter whether or not the communists are in or out of power. It's going to happen because this is the church is not limited by the political considerations that are around them. So this persecution breaks out and there's a scattering going on. Now, at this point, there are a number of theological things that must take place, and the book of Acts, as he structures it in order to get us to the Gentile mission.

[00:07:47] So the most important would be Saul's conversion, because here he is part of the persecution. So he there's a number of digressions that go on. And then following chapters, including Saul's conversion, Chapter nine, and then the Marvelous encounter with Cornelius and Peter, which I will refrain from talking about, because that will be discussed by Roland Verner on Monday. Well, when you get to Chapter 11, verse 19, please turn there and I want you to compare Acts eight one with Alex 1119 and you can clearly see that this is where the thread is picked up because Acts eight one says on that day, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem and talked about the scattering of the All but the Apostles acts. 1119 Now, those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen minus of seven traveled as far as do, that doesn't add up. So this is the writer picking up on the persecution and carrying this story to the next step. All right. Now, this is where we have a very important point, because this group that's scattered travels geographically to Judea and Samaria. There's no question of the geography of what's happening here. They were in Jerusalem. They were persecuted. Now they're in Judea, Samaria. So if geography was the only point here, then you could say, praise God. The church is now down in Judea, Samaria, preaching the gospel, but it tells us that they traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Now, that is very, very important. This is this is so normal. This is so I mean, this rings of authenticity because when we travel, when we go places where merely attracted to those that are like ourselves, this is the whole homogeneous unit principle, which we'll look at later.

[00:09:53] This is part of the gospel most naturally spreads along people within your own people group. So at this point it's very natural for Jews who've been persecuted to share with other Jews they meet in these other places. We had the same thing in India, where Carol ites from southwest India travel to North India and they gather congregation other carol lights. Because they speak their language, they know their food, their customs, their culture, everything. It's the most natural thing to do, but it's not having an impact on North India. It's have an impact on other South Asians, Indians who happen to live in North India in the same way Jews who were no longer in Jerusalem were now being impacted by the message. So there is no cross. Cultural communication going on in verse 19. There is simply gospel communication going on. This is e one communication. This is due to Jew, but verse 20 highlights. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks, also telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that is step one and this example of church planting in the Book of Acts, somebody crossed a cultural barrier. Now, Acts 11, 19 and 20 has been called by many mis geologist and biblical scholars in general as the most important theological moment in the Book of Acts. And yet we just read right through it often or we don't recognize. The amazing thing is that we're not told the names of the folks who did this. This is a really amazing theme all through mission history. If we had time, I would love to take about 3 hours, which we're not going to do, and just tempted to do it, take 3 hours and watch you through highlights from the whole history of missions from this point all the way through to the present.

[00:11:58] And you can see how these unnamed people, these more marginalized peoples, are bringing the gospel through cross frontiers into these new huge breakthroughs. Oftentimes when you want to look at what's happened in the life of the church, you have to look to the margins. And this is an example of this. The apostles were not part of the scattering. The passes are still in Jerusalem. That was clear from Acts eight one. So here we have unnamed disciples who began to address the gospel of Greek. So this is the first intentional cross-cultural communication of the gospel. We have the, of course, the Cornelius household, and we have the Ethiopian eunuch, or God is kind of sovereignly acting more or less running ahead of them. But this is the first time you begin to find a group of people who intentionally address the gospel to Greeks, and the Lord's hand is upon them. And a great number of people believe, in turn to the Lord. It almost anticipates the language of Romans 15. How can I call upon the Lord to whom they have not heard? You have almost the whole chain here that they're sent out, in this case by persecution. They preach the gospel, people hear it, they believe it, and they call upon the Lord. So that is almost reflected in the way this is described in Book of Acts. The cycle here in Acts is first, the Gospels preach cross-culturally and the whole of the Book of Acts. Obviously the Gentile mission of the Apostle Paul, which erupts from all of this Antioch is the sending churches will see presupposes the significance of this event when they speak the gospel to Greeks also. So here you have the gospel being communicated across cultural boundaries.

[00:13:43] This becomes the great breakthrough which creates not only Paul's mission, but the crisis of the Jerusalem Council, where they have to deal with it theologically. But this is the whole matrix and framework of how acts is unfolding for us. This is why I believe that to look at the movement in Acts one eight is merely geographic misses the theological point that Luke himself makes. And it wasn't just that they geographically relocated to the larger Judea Samaria area, but they actually began to address Greeks in that area. So that's what happens is step one. Step two, as you can see in beginning in verse 21, you have the beginning of a church being planted. At this point, it's not called a church. But very quickly on, there's several places where it begins referred to as a church. And we know from church history that the Church of Antioch became the most vibrant church of the second century. And by the end of the second century, there were a quarter of a million believers in Antioch. So this becomes a people movement really to Christ and Antioch. This is not a small thing. They realize that they are they have a responsibility to these new believers and notice how clearly they are obeying the great Commission in their interest and commitment to disciple the new believers. They don't just say, okay, we've had an evangelistic flashpoint here. Great things have happened. Let's now go to the next town. They don't do that. Instead, they encourage them and then they go. And Barnabas, ironically, is the one that goes down and checks this whole thing out. Now, why Barnabas? This is maybe a little side point, but why would Barney's have been chosen by the apostles to go down? And find out what these guys are doing.

[00:15:41] Do you remember where Barnabas is from? Someone said it all. Go ahead. Be bold. Right. Cyprus. Good for you. Barnabas is from Cyprus. So these are people from Cyprus and Cyrene that had done this. So the people on Jerusalem's. Okay. We got some Cyprian who are out there kind of going wild. What are they doing down there? We haven't given this a thorough. We've not we haven't told them. Could do this. We got go check it out. Here are the apostles behind the curve, as it were, and what God is doing. So the disciples or the apostles, We've got to go check it out. So Barnabas goes down there and they send somebody of that same group. This shows you how powerful ethnicity is and the way people communicate and talk. So Barmouth goes down there and he could talk tomorrow. These were his people from Cyprus. What's going on? They explain and what goes on. He's gladdened by it. He encouraged them, of course, he said of encouragement. And then they go to Tarsus. To look for Saul. And Saul, of course, is from Turkey. Tarsus is in modern day Turkey. So they go get Saul and they bring him to Antioch. And for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul meet with the church and taught great numbers of people. Can't you just hear Jesus saying the words, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you? They are obeying exactly precisely what Christ said, make disciples. And this is actually the first place where we have this. The disciples were called Christians at Antioch. Now, obviously, this is important theologically because they're not called Jews anymore because we have had a breakthrough among the Gentiles. You can't call them Jews anymore. We have to find new vocabulary.

[00:17:44] The vocabulary of describing the people of God is no longer sufficient. This is no longer a subset of the temple. A few Jewish people who believe that Christ is the Messiah that goes on with the and ice and a few other groups that cling to this idea that this is a Jewish thing. It's only for us. And they finally concede the fact that maybe the Gentiles are only allowed in to fill in the few number of Jews who rejected and you know, they all they're very, very slow to accept what Acts 15 declares that, no, the walls are breached. The gospel is now spilling out into Gentiles and it can very easily overwhelm the number of Jews that have received the gospel, which is what happens numerically. So you have the gospel being preached, the church being planted in Acts 721 1126 The believers are disciple. This is exactly what we find Christ calling them to do. And then notice and Acts 13 how the cycle is complete because are commanded by the Holy Spirit to send Paul and Barnabas out and Acts 13 one it opens up that now there is a church at Antioch and notice the language is used to describe the church, their profits, their teachers. This is not just a group of believers. These are people in disciple and they've discovered their gifts. It's a multiethnic church, we know, because we can see people with names that are tied into Judaism as well as into gentile names. So there they are in verse two, worshiping the Lord and fasting, and the Holy Spirit speaks to them and calls them in verse two to set apart from me, Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them, so that they fasted and pray.

[00:19:36] They place their hands on them and sent them off and thus begins the first missionary journey, or I call it church planting journey of the Apostle Paul. Now first of all, can you imagine if you had a thriving church? Things are going well. God's moving. People are coming now. I mean, disciple. And all sudden the Holy Spirit speaks one day at your church meeting and says, Send both of your pastors out. Now, think about it in today's terms. I can see you're saying I don't bear witness to that or rebuke that word? What are they saying, Your tradition or that wasn't in the liturgy? The liturgy has been disturbed. This would not go over very well in most churches today because we don't properly disciple. So what happens is we create dependency models in the church so that the church is massively dependent on us as the pastors. First of all, we have often solo pastors, which is unknown in the New Testament. So we have a situation where the church is dependent on us for all their preaching, teaching, leading to instruction, everything. And so, of course, we can't go off on the mission field because we're indispensable. When I was a pastor, I taught at my church early on. I guess my first year or so there, I'd like to be gone six weeks every year to teach in India. Well, that went over like a lead balloon. Did he want to do what They were just totally against advice of? Well. The whole point is indispensable. You'd be surprised. It took a little while. And, you know, eventually they weren't up to the idea. Took a few years. I went for like two weeks and three weeks, and finally I got it built up to six weeks.

[00:21:30] But what's so interesting about it is that they found out that when I was gone, things went great. It was when I was back that all the troubles happened. You know, I got things stirred up, man. Let him go away six weeks and have some time in India and things will be great. Well, give us time to breathe a little bit. It's great how the Lord shows us that we're indispensable. We're very dispensable. So Barb and Star are sent out, and the church place their hands on them and fat and fast and prays for them and sends them out. And. And every time all these church planning journeys that go on, Paul returns and reports to the Church of Antioch. That's his home church he's sent out. There's no witnessing by Paul out in the larger Roman basin Mediterranean basin that's disconnected from the church. He is sent out by the church. He plants churches not just, you know, kind of willy nilly evangelism that's not connected to anybody in any group or community or anything. And then he comes back and reports to the church. He's accountable. All of this is there. And it's not just in the Book of Acts. You find the same thing happening with the church at Colossi, where they're going out. Paul never went to Colossi, and he had this marvelous conversation with Paul and the closeted church to tell them what's happening and how this these believers from Ephesus sent people out to plant the church in colossi. Paul strategy was mainly to plant the church in the urban areas and not that church plant the church in smaller surrounding areas. Very strategic decisions are being made by Paul and again, relying on the Holy Spirit. The machine man called him over and told him to turn left, not right.

[00:23:16] And so these kind of things are all present. So there are a number of things in acts that tell me that we are on the right track in our understanding of what's happening in terms of cross-cultural communication, the role of discipleship. This is how the Great Commission should be interpreted. In fact, if you're interested in reformation history, one of the great little stories is the debates about how to interpret the Great Commission, because it was not interpreted theologically for most of that time. It was interpreted as a great text to give us baptismal formula, great text to prove the data of Christ. A great text proved the Trinity, but it wasn't interpreted theologically. And you had this marvelous scholarship by Erasmus who shows that the way we know how they understood the Great Commission is to see what happens. Book of Acts. And you have the Anabaptists who clearly understand the implications of the Great Commission to go to new places and new peoples and preach the Gospel. The whole struggle over a proper interpretation of the Great Commission texts is huge in the history of Christianity and in our other courses. We actually develop this story much more carefully and we show you historically how the Great Commission has been interpreted throughout history and how the Church took some time to rediscover the missing logical import of especially the Matthew 28 text, but all of the great Commission passages. Okay. So if you look at the Book of Acts, in light of our discussion yesterday, you see the importance of this communication across two new ethnic new nations and you see the Gospel is being commended in the texts for breaching the walls of their own isolated communities and letting the church celebrate the true diversity, which is found in John's vision in Revelation, in several places where he sees people from all tribes tongues and language worshiping the lamb.

[00:25:17] So that's already happening. That future reality, the not yet of the kingdom is already breaking into the present order. And so the church is experiencing and is living out and is extending the full glorious diversity of the church and the present age. And so though we live in an age of ethnic division and separation and infighting, all of that, the church should be the place where this is bridged and celebrated in ways that are exemplary of the coming kingdom. And we find that happening right here in the Book of Acts. Yes, John, asserting that. Far less than would go to the larger cities. And that is basically the reason I argue that has because the Apostle Paul at one point says in Romans when he's talking about going to Spain, which of course never got to because of being arrested and sent to Rome, but his plan was to go into Spain and his reason was he said, we have no more place to work in these regions. Now, that's a shocking statement. Paul has painted churches around the Mediterranean basin and now he says we have no one place to work. Well, it has to be rooted not in the empirical data of, you know, the whole Roman basin has come to Christ or there's churches now in every city. But Paul was talking strategically. He was talking strategically that I have delegated to these churches. It's like the 5% rule. You know, there may be 95% unbelievers, but we have sufficient church planting in strategic areas in the Mediterranean basin that we can now extend to the further westward in this people movement, essential, which is happening around the whole Mediterranean basin. So because of that, I do believe that we can, though it's not clear always exactly why Paul goes to certain cities.

[00:27:12] And, you know, I don't think the strategy is as clear as some would like to make it. But I think it's clear that Paul is following certain strategic lines of thought in his own mind about where he goes and how we preach the gospel. We see, as you'll find out Monday, the way Paul addresses the gospel is very much impacted by who he's addressing. So you see, Paul is very sensitive to the context he's in and how I preach the gospel, and that'll be shown to you clearly on Monday. Dr. Vernon Sorry, mine is a frog in my throat. That may be true. That's not what I'm saying here. That's a sub sub point. Or maybe what I'm saying. I guess the main point I'm saying here is that in the Book of Acts, we have a model for how church planning took place. We find a number of things that reinforce themes we've already pointed out. Number one, that the church is extending itself beyond the cultural boundaries, and they're not happy with keeping themselves just within the Jewish enclave. They get thrust out by the Holy Spirit to breach these walls and the emphasis on discipleship. And also, we're finding the fact that this all leads to new laborers being sent out. And again, if you ask your church, how many laborers have you sent out now, how many checks have you written, How many people have you sent out in cross cultural ministry? It's shockingly few. And so you have a church like Park Street or places like that that, you know, have this tremendous, powerful record. But that is really a model for churches that that's relatively rare. And therefore, it's important for churches to recognize and actually, most missionaries don't come from these big churches.

[00:29:01] They come from small churches statistically. So if you have a small church, there's no reason why a small church cannot be a major part of the support of a missionary, especially one of your own homegrown missionaries is raised up and sent out. And that's part of the way this would be applied, I think. So I'm more interested in pointing out at this point the cross-cultural aspect of this, the discipline, the sending out than necessarily the urban or rural, though that's there. But that's a secondary point. Yes. When you give an account of this. How does Paul's basic tactic of usually going to the Jews first and the God fearing Gentiles and then now? Well, yes, you're right that there's covenantal reasons for that. The covenantal priority of the Jews to hear the gospel first. But we saw and how Paul at one point decides, okay, we have given them opportunity, they reject it. Now we're going to turn it to the Gentiles. So Paul does make a decided shift to his ministry address will now be addressed to Gentiles. But in the Acts 15 counsel, he does not. And even more, even his discussion with the with Peter about the Cornelius event. Paul is not condemning those like Peter who have a ministry to the Jews. He's that's wonderful. So, again, I'm really careful not to put in the tension here. Local evangelism among your own people, group and cross-cultural work. My point is not saying that cross-cultural work is more important than monocultural evangelism. I am not saying that in this class. In fact, I think our priority is first and foremost, even in our contexts, not to mention the Jewish covenantal priority, but even in our own context. Our first priority is to make sure that our people group is sufficiently reached.

[00:30:53] That is to say, evangelized, exposed to the gospel. At that point, though, that's where I have my problem. We live in a people group that's sufficiently evangelized. We then don't turn to cross-cultural work. We then say, Let's just keep doing it even more and there's no end to what can be done here. And so we end up neglecting the cross-cultural aspect. So I'm not trying to put a priority on the cross-cultural on the monoculture. I'm just saying we can't neglect the cross-cultural. Does that clarify what I'm saying? It does. Is the number ever going to be more than that? Well, I guess the answer to that question would be found in church history itself, and we would have to ask the question reverse and say, looking back over the missionary community, do we find that these people that have learned languages and planted churches around the world, are they an exceptionally gifted people in a way that would be, you know, have a bar that would be we need to really kind of call out maybe these select people for this task. And what we find is what we find as we look at pastors and see directors and choir members and everything else, you have a wide variety of gift among missionaries. And the amazing story is how God has used and blessed and honored those who have obeyed him. I think the problem is not with ability, but with obedience. I think we need to have more people who would seriously sit in the presence of God and say before him, Lord, I'm prepared to go wherever you would call me to go. That's a dangerous prayer. In the end, by implication, the answer that prayer is not okay. Therefore, you'll end up going to you know, you don't know what the Lord may lead.

[00:32:39] But I'm saying I think we need to be open to that and be prepared to obey him in that. I think that's the problem. I mean, the old saying is God is not looking for ability, but availability. And I think that actually is a fairly sound statement that if Paul says not many wise, not many mighty, but God has chosen the foolish things the world to shame the wise. William Kerry didn't even have a college education, have fulfilled far less education that anybody in this room had. William Kerry actually didn't even have a high school education. He went out and translated Bible to 27 Indian languages. Remarkable, because God gave him that ability. So I think you'd be surprised at what could be done. But maybe it's not your academic ability. God bless you. Well, it's a good it's a pastoral point. I mean, certainly we're seeing difficulties and problems today and in all areas of ministry, including the pastorate and other areas where we don't seem to have the cohesiveness and the longevity among families and family life and the standards that we perhaps would want to it to embrace and see happen. So are there problems with missionary retention? Are some families mission feel having difficulty? Yes. Part of that is the church's fault for not caring for the missionaries properly. When you're home, you do have more support structures. You have your family, extended family. And when you are living in Mongolia, it can be very difficult. And so those things are there. And I think that affects how we prepare people. I think preparation is important. That's part of why I'm here at the seminary. I think it's important to prepare people properly and to give them as much preparation as possible.

[00:34:25] But I still think the reason someone either stays or does not stay in the mission field or the pastorate is probably not as much about. What we teach them here and what they're equipped to do here as other kinds of considerations regarding their walk with the Lord, that it's difficult to communicate, at least in a classroom environment here. So we have spiritual formation issues that we have to deal with. And I think that the West is not as prepared as we could be to talk about in our churches the sacrifice and suffering for the gospel sake. And therefore, if your mentality is looking for a comfortable place and a good salary and a pension plan, then you're it's not going to be something that's going to be attractive to you. And I think we have to react to our home, my mindset to think about laying everything on the table for the gospel sake. Any other questions or comments? Probably go to the next part because we now want to move to some historical considerations. And then number six, I have the bottom, the 20 largest cities in the world, United Nations listing in the World Almanac, listing which are slightly different. This is according to the year 2000, To give you some feel for the largest cities in the world, Tokyo number one, according to the Almanac, Mexico City. Number two, Mumbai. Number three, Sao Paulo, number four. It's a big difference from the the United Nations listing New York, Lagos, Los Angeles, Calcutta, Shanghai, Buenos Aires. This is really, really fascinating because we need to see the fact that the Western cities are absent. You have Los Angeles in New York. North America, not a single European city appears. If you look at the new handout, the one that passed out just now, it actually gives you the population in the year 2000 and the population in the year 2025.

[00:36:27] This is projected by David Barrett and Todd Johnson in our World Christian Research Center here, as well as the number of Christians and then the percent of Christians in that those cities. But if you look at the year 2025, look at this, the number one most populated city in the world will be Mumbai. Bombay will actually finally pass Tokyo, Lagos. So here you have a country in the subcontinent. Number two will be Lagos, which of course, capital, Nigeria, West Africa, not the political capital, but the economic capital. And then then Tokyo number three, 28 eight, and Karachi in Pakistan, 24 eight, in Dhaka in Bangladesh, 23 eight, Calcutta, 21, then Mexico City, 21, Brazil 22, Paulo 28, Shanghai 20, and then Delhi 19. So you have actually three cities from India in the top ten. Your 2025 is why I said India will pass China around this time period as the most populated country in the world. So it's quite remarkable if you begin to look at the sheer statistics and the great numbers. And this is why I think it is important we'll mention some more later. But the urban emphasis has got to be more and more in our mind, because if you actually compare to 1900 list, you would see the great cities of the world in 1900 were mostly found in Western Christianized evangelized places. When you go to 2025, you can see it's the heart of the Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim world. And one other thing real quick. I don't have this before you, but on the same database, I pointed out the most unreached cities in the world. And it is quite amazing, the top 20 most unreached cities in the world in terms of the numbers of people to numbers of Christians, which could be no Christians versus like huge numbers of people.

[00:38:45] But listen to these cities. How many of you have heard of these cities? Paro, Thimphu, Laayoune, Kunduz, Wazir Abad, Chadi Kaa, Baglan Arabiya, Mazar e Sharif may have heard of that Mali, Kandahar, and then a long list of names that you may or should be aware of, because every one of these in Iraq, Baku, Bonn, all Amara, Allana, Soraya, Khaled there were near us. So on to our Ramadi, I'll quote a ha. And then from Iran, the road virtually of this top 20, about 17 of the top 20 least evangelized cities in. The world are found in either Iraq or Afghanistan. I mean, take, for example. You may never heard of her ovia, but it has 1 million people in Afghanistan and it's the number of Christians. There is 0.01%. The need to focus on the strategy and I think Paul's work of looking at this strategically is quite amazing and important.