Truth is... Fading.

The Lord spoke missions into my life by using the illustration of a European cemetery. The image of eight hundred year old gravestones plastered themselves in my mind. The idea of people being born and raised in the absence of truth shocked me. However, what became more of a reality is that it is totally preventable. All it takes is someone to present that truth. I want to provide a very real and present scenario for people who are struggling to see beyond the normative. A group of people who have once received truth but have since fallen away from that truth, raise a generation void of truth.

From the little I understand of missiology (the study of missions), I have come to know that modern missions exist to reach the Unreached People Groups (UPG's) of the world. The Joshua Project defines an unreached people group as "a people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group." With that said, I propose that these unreached peoples have tendency to shift according to generation.

Yes, we must bring the gospel to all persons of the world. Especially focusing on the 10-40 window (The area, longitudinal and latitudinal, holding the greatest concentration of UPG's.) However, I suppose that areas once thought to have been reached are in turn, falling away. Thus, if we continue to assume their being reached, it is only a matter of generations until that people becomes unreached.

Let us take into consideration the term "Post-Christian". This term denotes a society who has received a Christian witness but has since lost it or turned away from it. Europe has greatly become a Post-Christian society and the United States is following suit. The fact is, western civilization is a culture based upon rationalism and throughout recent history the church has done a poor job representing the rationality of Christ. As a result, spiritually malnourished nations continue to see rises in crime, suicide rates, and alternative forms of religion.

This map is provided by the Joshua project. It shows the worldwide advancement of the gospel in terms of a viable Christian witness. One can easily see the established nations such as the USA and South America, and the 10-40 window where most of the unreached people reside, However, let's focus on the "formative" or "nominal" countries. It is these countries I fear will be overlooked by most mission efforts.

Take Italy as an example. By this map, Italy has a nominal Christian witness, but what does that mean. Let's take a closer look.

According to Operation World, Christianity appears to be the dominant faith in Italy with a whopping 82.4% of the demographic. However, let's take a closer look inside the term "Christianity".

These numbers breakdown what has been clumped together as "Christianity". Roman Catholicism is the dominant religion in Italy with 96.8% of "Christian" makeup. However another study shows that only 5% of professed Catholic are practicing Catholics. The skew in numbers is due to Italy's rich Catholic heritage and most people, when asked, profess faith in the church of their heritage (much like Americans profess faith). Italy has been plagued by strong protestant division and as a result less than 1% of the makeup is deemed protestant. This spirit of division has caused Italy to have never experienced a Biblical revival and has caused the people to grow hesitant of a Bible believing church.

The seriousness of this situation is as follows:

• '70% of Italian communities have no established evangelical witness'
• 'Up to 10% (of expatriate missionaries) on average return for a second term.'
• There are 616 official religions in Italy
• There are an estimated 150,000 recognized fortune-tellers and psychics

According to Operation World, 2010 numbers for Italy reflect that there are 49,508,373 Christians.  That translates to 82.38% of the population.  However there are only 632,714 evangelicals, or individuals professing a transforming faith in Christ.  The numbers show an average decline of about .8% in overall "Christians", but an 1.9% increase in evangelicals.  This is due to the relentless onslaught of Islam, mysticism, and new age religions throughout Europe. However, as an answer to prayer, quantities of Roman Catholics are coming to a saving knowledge of Christ and joining the evangelical church. 

In the German monastery where Martin Luther came to the same realization, the Pope remarked on this movement;

"Faced with a new form of Christianity, which is spreading with overpowering missionary dynamism, sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian denominations often seem at a loss. This is a form of Christianity with little institutional depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little stability. This worldwide phenomenon . . . poses a question to us all: what is this new form of Christianity saying to us, for better and for worse?" 

The Pope makes a grand statement. It speaks truth of Catholics coming to faith in Christ, but also speaks truth to the average evangelical. (To read more about his comment, check out Chris Costaldo's Article Resembling the Pope’s Remarks.)

Friends, we can no longer assume that because a people group deems itself "Christian", that the security of their souls is safe. Instead, we must be mindful of persons who are trapped by the religious formalism of Christian sects. As missionaries deploy strategies to reach evasive and uncharted tribal groups, let us also pay specific attention to the gospel message that lives and dies with the generation that practices it.

IM - Presentation 2011 from IM-italian ministries on Vimeo.