The History of Research in Protestant Missions

Research has been a part of Protestant Missionary work since its inception. It will be seen that research has been a significant factor in launching each new wave of Protestant Missions.

Outline:

1. William Carey
2. Hudson Taylor
3. Early 20th Century
4. 1964-Present

William Carey

The heart of William Carey's "An Inquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens", published in 1792, provides "A Survey of the Present State of the World." This section is the heart of Carey's work in that this is the third of five sections. The first two sections covered the biblical and historical basis for mission. The fourth section answers objections to foreign mission activity and the fifth section concludes with suggestions of how Christians can use means to advance Christ's Kingdom. Carey's "Survey of the World" includes eight pages of tables that present the estimated geographic area, population and a description of the spiritual condition of the people for every country in Europe, America, Asia and Africa. Carey concludes this section with a two page summary. Carey uses a factual basis to help readers understand the great extent of spiritual darkness in in the world at the end of the 18th century before challenging the Body of Christ to action. This publication essentially launched the Protestant Missions Movement in the 19th Century. View Carey's "Inquiry" on line here.

Hudson Taylor

Hudson Taylor in "China's Spiritual Need and Claims", first published in 1865, used maps, graphs and statistical analysis to develop his thesis that the interior of China was largely neglected by Protestant missionaries. Taylor begins this book by stating "The writer feels deeply that, as a faithful steward he is bound to bring the facts contained in these pages before the hearts and consciences of the Lord's people. He believes, too, that these facts must produce some fruit in the heart of each Christian reader. The legitimate fruit will undoubtedly be — not vain words of empty sympathy, but—effectual fervent prayer, and strenuous self-denying effort for the salvation of the benighted Chinese." Taylor's main argument is built on a province by province survey of China, indicating the population and number of Protestant missionaries. Seven of hte eighteen provinces had established mission stations. Eleven did not. Taylor provides the population to missionary ratio for each province and compares this to the situation in England and Scotland. Quite a contrast! The seventh edition of this book, published in 1887, contains a colored map that shows the locations of mission stations in China, Appendix A that lists the name, sending organization and beginning year of ministry of each Protestant missionary in China. Appendix B is a statistical summary of Protestant Missions in China. Included here are the name of the missionary society, date of mission, number of men, wives and single women, native ordained ministers, communicants, pupils in schools, and contributions by natives. In "China's Spiritual Need and Claims," Taylor skillfully blends spiritual motivation with factual information. This publication was instrumental in launching the second wave of Protestant missions, to the interior of continents. See Wikipedia

Early Twentieth Century

During the first decades of the twentieth century statistical surveys and directories of Christian mission were periodically published. Research information like list was used to monitor and promote the missionary enterprise.

The Edinburgh World Missionary Conference of 1910 was called "to consider missionary problems in relation to the Non-Christian world" and it's clarion call was "the evangelization of the world in this Generation." John R. Mott, leader of the Student Volunteer Movement, was the chairman of the conference. Eight commissions conducted research and prepared position papers for the conference. These papers were published in eight volumes. The first volume pertained to "Carrying the Gospel to the Non-Christian World" (452 pages).This report, which took two years to prepare, presented a country by country report of the status of evangelization and was compiled from extensive on correspondence with field missionaries.

The report has four main sections. The First Section articulated "the Opportunity and the Urgency of Carryingthe Gospel to all the Non-Christian World. The second section provides a "Survery of the Non-Christian World. The outline for China is suggestive of the material for each country..

1. The field to be evangelized
2. The people to be evangelized
3. How far evangelization has progressed
4. Difficulties in the way of wide evangelization
5. The evangelistic task remaining to be done.

Significant factual data is provided to detail the above mentioned subjects. Other sections of this report focused on the "Factors in Carrying the Gospel to all the World", and "Findings of the Commission." The closing remarks emphasize the urgency to carry the Gospel to the whole Non-Christian World, especially the "unoccupied" regions. The commission realized that a more detailed survey of "unoccupied" regions was needed. An appendix provides "Suggestions for a World Survey of Missionary Occupation" e.g. additional research was deemed necessary. Overall this volume is an outstanding work, combining up-to-date, factual information with a prophetic call to action. View this report on line.

A companion volume to this Edinburgh report, providing additional information. was prepared by James S. Dennis, A Statistical Atlas of Christian Mission (1910, 172 pages). View this report on line. Dennis based this report on his earlier works, notably Foreign Missions after a Century (1893), Christian Missions and Social Progress, 3 vols. (1897-1906), Centennial Survey of Foreign Missions (1902), See the Dictionary of Missionary Biography for further details about James Dennis, missionary, author, teacher, and statistician.

The work that came out of the Edinburgh conference was updated in 1925 and 1938. John Mott was again involved as the chairperson of the International Missionary Council. The preface to the 1938 edition, edited by Joseph I. Parker, notes that preparing The Interpretative Statistical Survey of the World Christian Mission of the Christian Church (323 pages) took three years - and this was considered too short a period of time to correspond directly with field missionaries as was the case with the 1925 survey. Instead contributors relied on organizational and denominational reports. This volume is filled with statistical tables related to the Growth of the Protestant Church since 1900. Information was provided on subjects such as The Church on the Field, Foreign Staff, Agencies, Finances, and Education. Parker also edited a companion volume,: The Directory of World Mission (1938, 255 pages), which provides information about all known missionary agencies at the time. This work was an update of the 1933 Directory. Gathering and analyzing this type of information was no doubt a monumental task.

1964 - Present

The last fifty years has seen a significant contribution of research to the missionary enterprise. Some of the more significant contributions to missionary research in this era are described.

Operation World

Patrick Johnstone wrote the first prayer guide in 1964, focusing on 30 nations. In 1974 the first Global Edition was produced. Ralph Winter and George Verwer (OM) promoted this edition. Operation World is periodically updated and now is in its seventh edition. The global data base that supports this prayer guide is vast. For laymen, Operation World is probably the most consulted resource concerning the state of global Christianity.

The Mission Advanced Research and Communication Center (MARC)

The Mission Advanced Research and Communication Center (MARC) was founded in 1967 by Ed Dayton as a division of World Vision after the 1966 Conference for World Evangelization in Berlin. MARC served the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, by collecting and publishing data about "unreached people". Four volumes of people group profiles were published from 1979-1982. The Unreached People profiles were important in giving a face to the Unreached People Group Movement and assisted an important transition from a geographical focus in missions to a people group focus for mission, which was championed by Ralph Winter at the Lasaunne Congress in 1974. MARC published another four volume series on "World Christianity" (1979-1981) covering the Middle East, Eastern Asia, South Asia, Central America and the Caribbean. This series took a geographical approach to describing the remaining task in these regions. Both the "Unreached People" and "World Christianity" series are examples of "Harvest Field" research.

In 1968 MARC took over the publication of the "Mission Handbook: North American Protestant Ministries Overseas." from the Mission Research Library, which began the Handbook project in 1953. The Handbook provides publication gives data about missionary organizations from North America, primarily Canada and the United States. This is an example of Harvest Force Research. This publication continues, though by a different publisher.

MARC also published other mission studies, notably "From Every People: A Handbook of Two-Thirds World Missions with Directories, Histories/Analysis" by Larry Pate (1989). This work was one of the early studies of the missionary sending being done by churches outside of Europe and North America. Pate was an OC International Missionary and was assisted in this research project by Larry Keyes, then OC's President, and other OC Field Personnel.

The Fuller School of Evangelism and World Mission

Donald McGavran, known as the Father of Church Growth, founded the School of Evangelism and World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1965. McGavran was succeeded by C. Peter Wagner. Field research related to Church Growth was an important element of the program. Cultural Anthropology was another important part of the curriculum. Students performed many field studies in the course of Masters and Doctorate level work, which greatly expanded the knowledge of the Church Growth in cross cultural contexts.

DAWN

OC Missionary, Jim Montgomery, was instrumental in launching the Disciple a Whole Nation movement in the Philippines. In 1975 the Filipino Church leaders set a goal to establish a church in every barangay (the smallest administrative unit) in the Philippines by the year 2000, a goal requiring a total of 50,000 churches. This was a big goal for a country that only had 5,000 Protestant Churches at the time. Research was a significant element of the DAWN process. Good initial results in the Philippines led Montgomery to begin a separate organization, DAWN. Saturation Church Planting initiatives or DAWN projects were initiated in numerous countries, many with outstanding results. Roy Wingerd prepared the DAWN Research Manual, which continues to be a standard resource for field researchers. (This resource is found in the Resource Download/Training section of this website.)

World Christian Data Base and World Christian Encyclopedia

David Barrett developed the World Christian Data Base and published World Christian Encyclopedia in 1982. The second edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia was published in 2001. This work is now continued by a team of researchers led by Todd Johnson at Gordon Comwell Seminary's Center for the Study of Global Christianity. Yearly statistical updates are published each January in The International Bulletin of Missionary Research www.internatinalbulletin.org These resources have become the standards reference materials for mission and academic research.

The International Mission Board

The International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention has a strong emphasis on mission research. They have developed their own data bases of unreached people groups and provide prayer profiles, maps and reports on the Global Status of Evangelical Christianity (GSEC), which is similar to the Joshua Project rating scale. Some of this information is available to the public at public.imb.org/globalresearch David Garrison of the IMB was one of the first to document Church Planting Movements in that began to appear in the 1990's and continues to describe the factors that contribute to Church Planting Movements. The IMB has been a leader in applied missionary research.

Natural Church Development

Christian Swartz has advanced our understanding of church health.. His first book on the subject, Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches (1996), was based on a survey of 1,000 churches in 32 countries from all six continents. The number of churches surveyed now surpasses 70,000 churches See www.ncd-international.org for more information.

Joshua Project
The Joshua Project provides a significant service to the Body of Christ by providing basic information for all people groups. The online data base is a treasure trove of information. www.JoshuaProject.net This data base also includes information about disciple making resources available in the target language. A scale has been developed to monitor the disciple making progress of each people group. Mobilization of prayer for unreached people groups is also a primary objective of the Joshua Project. The Joshua Project began in 1995 as a part of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement. From 2001 through 2005 Joshua Project was at different times informally associated with Caleb Project, ICTA and World Help. In 2006 Joshua Project became a ministry of the U.S. Center for World Mission.

Conclusion

This brief survey shows that research has played an important role in the mission mobilization and strategy development since the modern missionary movement began in the last decade of the 1700s. Reviewing the primary source documents is an enlightening exercise that adds a deeper perspective to the researcher's current work.