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Quantifying Opportunities to become Disciples
by David B. Barrett
How do we quantify evangelization? This question is one constantly posed to us. Documentation for our 'evangelization' formula was given both in the original World Christian Encyclopedia, and further refined in Our globe and how to reach it and subsequent issues of the AD 2025 Global Monitor. As this is the first issue of the Monday Morning Reality Check since the start of the new year, I am taking a break from our series on failures to look at the issue of evangelization, especially at the topic of "discipleship-offers."
Evangelization is contact with Christ. It is being faced with or confronted with the person and work of the Savior. It is being given an opportunity to follow Christ, to become his disciple. (A comprehensive examination of the word 'Evangelize' was published in our book, Evangelize! and is being recapped currently in the AD 2025 Global Monitor.) Ultimately, therefore, what the quantification of evangelization boils down to (at the human level) is measuring the various modes of contact that persons or populations have had with evangelizers--that is, with Christian believers and all their varieties of influences. In short, it means enumerating the duration, quality, and intensity of all conversations and awarenesses resulting from this contact with Christians, Christianity, Christ and the gospel.
Quantifying evangelization results from monitoring the interactions of 3 quite separate and distinct categories of people or roles. First, there are the activities of Christian evangelizers themselves, proclaiming the Good News in season and out of season. These activities can be measured as "witness-hours," or "evangelism-hours," the number of man-hours or woman-hours given to evangelizing. Second, this witness results in them functioning as Christian opportunity-givers, who give to others numbers of clear, unambiguous, specific opportunities or offers or invitations to become Christ's disciples; these events or occasions can be termed "disciple-opportunities." Third, the recipients of these occasions then become opportunity-receivers. These are all those who willingly or unwillingly find themselves faced with these opportunities to become Christ's disciples, whether knowingly or unwittingly, as well as whether for the first time, second time, or even multiple times. Note carefully that we are not at this point measuring response (which may range from hostility and rejection to acceptance, conversion and baptism). Measuring response is a separate subject and needs its own separate quantification.
How long does it take to evangelize a person?
To understand the process and this terminology better, consider 7 cases in
the New Testament where Jesus, the Master Evangelizer, gives 7 individuals
one "disciple-opportunity" each. Here they are, in descending order of
brevity with the biblical reference and the amount of time that each
encounter took, or takes to read:
Here we see Jesus contact and evangelizing 7 persons in an hour or less each (under one "witness-hour"), creating and then giving them 7 disciple-opportunities, and watching as the 7 each receives his or her opportunity or offer or invitation and then reacts to it.
How much time is enough to make such a contact into an adequate "disciple-opportunity"? This list of 7 brief biblical narratives suggests 15 minutes each may often be enough, everything else being in place. Generalizing to the whole world, across 20 centuries and up to 1998, and being very conservative, we could say that one whole hour is needed. During this hour, on average some 6,000 words will be spoken and heard. To be even more on the safe side, we could elaborate on this to say that before we could consider an individual to have become "adequately evangelized," he or she needs to have at least one clearly-focused evangelism-hour producing one disciple-opportunity, or a variety of other more general evangelizing activities producing up to 10 disciple-opportunities or offers or invitations. Note also that although individuals can avoid contact with Christ, once confronted by Christ he evangelizes them whether they want to be evangelized or not.
Six varieties of offering disciple-opportunities
In the Palestinian ministry of Jesus, we note 3 main modes or types of
contact through words producing disciple opportunities: (a) personal
words (personal evangelism); face-to-face meetings with an individual,
with conversation, the spoken word, shared words, dialogue; (b)
proclaimed words (public proclamation): Jesus' face-to-face preaching
and teaching of the proclaimed word to groups, crowds and multitudes; and
(c) written words: use of the written Word of God, in this case
Jesus' use of scrolls of the Old Testament (later to become hand-copied or
printed scriptures). Two millenia later, disciples of Jesus can add 3
additional modes: (d) printed words (printed media, apologetics, and
other literature, tracts, magazines and books); (e) visual words:
audio-visual scripture and literature (art, videos, films, movies); and (f)
electronic words: electronic media, broadcasting, radio/TV, also via
cassettes, CD-ROM and computers. We will shortly quantify these 6 modes of
evangelization, but first we will discuss how to enumerate hours spent on
evangelizing in general.
Three levels of evangelizing activity
In Jesus' ministry, he evangelized at 3 levels: (a) by his presence (who he
was and what he did each day), (b) by his unstructured witness as occasion
arose (such as before Pilate), and (c) by his structured preaching,
proclamation and teaching (such as the Sermon on the Mount, or his
parables). In the same way, we should recognize 3 synonyms for the term
"evangelization" which represent 3 different levels of evangelizing
activity: Christian presence, witness and evangelism. These 3 will then
enable us to measure by means of hours and words. The best way to understand
all these neologisms is to set them out as a series of definitions:
evangelizing activity: this refers to all activity spreading the gospel or demonstrating new life in Christ; quantified as the number of Christians involved multiplied by the number of hours each is involved or the number of evangelizing words uttered.
Hours spent by evangelizers:
presence-hours: "presence" means a Christian's indirect witness to Christ by life-style, quality of life, relationships, ethics; quantified as "presence-hours", the number of person-hours engaged in by all Christians in this mode.
witness-hours: "witness" means a Christian's direct spoken testimony to the Risen Christ, naming the Name, in unstructured situations as they occur; quantified as "witness-hours," the number of person-hours engaged in particularly by Great Commission Christians in this mode.
evangelism-hours: "evangelism" means a Christian's or a church's deliberate, structured, organized endeavor to present Christ and his gospel; quantified as "evangelism-hours," the number of person-hours engaged in, particularly by professional Christians--evangelists, pastors, full-time workers, and missionaries. Note that, as we are defining them, statistics of evangelism-hours are also included in witness-hours, and both form part of the presence-hours figures.
Received by audiences:
hearer-hours: the number of person-hours received (heard, viewed, read, perceived) by the audience being evangelized, this being enumerated as the total number of hours spent by evangelizers on evangelism multiplied by a media factor.
witness-words: this broad background measure gives the total number of all background person-words of all 3 evangelizing types (presence, witness, evangelism) disseminated to and received (heard, viewed, read, perceived) by those being evangelized, multiplied by a media factor, then multiplied by our standard rate of 6,000 words spoken per hour.
evangelism-words: these are the numbers of explicitly evangelistic person-words disseminated to and received by those being evangelized; enumerated as evangelism-hours multiplied by a media factor and then multiplied by our standard rate of 6,000 words spoken per hour per individual.
disciple-opportunities: specific opportunities given to individuals to become Christ's disciples; quantified here as conferred by at least one evangelism-hour per person. Also equivalent to opportunity-receivers.
Quantifying hours spent by evangelizers
With these definitions, we can now enumerate the situation of a people, a
city or other population. We therefore ask: How many hours or minutes of
evangelizing contact with Christianity, Christ and the gospel has this
population had? And, how many such hours does this population have each day,
and how many per capita per year? To understand our method and our results,
study Table 1 below as you read on below.
Table 1: evangelizing hours spent, hours received, words disseminated, offers made.
k=thousand, m=million, b=billion, t=trillion. All data as of 1992.
| 1. PERSONAL WORDS | Persons | Pr-h | Wi-h | Ev-h | Med | He-h | Wi-w | Ev-w | Dis-o |
| Christians | 1.8b | 10.5t | 2.6t | 327b | 001 | 327b | 63,000t | 1,962t | 327b |
| G C Christians | 530m | 3.1t | 775b | 96.5b | 002 | 193b | 37,200t | 1,158t | 193b |
| 2. PROCLAIMED WORDS | |||||||||
| Full-time workers | 4.2m | 24.5b | 6.1b | 766m | 010 | 7.7b | 1,470t | 46.2t | 7.7b |
| Foreign mission | 285k | 1.7b | 416m | 52m | 100 | 5.2b | 1,020t | 31.2t | 5.2b |
| Evangelists | 700k | 4.2b | 1.0b | 126m | 200 | 25.6b | 5,040t | 154t | 25.6b |
| 3. WRITTEN WORDS | Copies | Pages | |||||||
| Bibles (1300 pgs) | 51.4m | 66.8b | ---- | 5b | 010 | 50b | 300t | 300t | 50.0b |
| NT (300p) | 76.9m | 23.1b | ---- | 2.3b | 005 | 11.5b | 69t | 69t | 11.5b |
| Portions (25p) | 120m | 3.0b | ---- | 300m | 002 | 600m | 3.6t | 3.6t | 600.0m |
| Selections (4p) | 1.1b | 4.4b | ---- | 146m | 001 | 146m | 876b | 876b | 146.0m |
| 4. PRINTED WORDS | pieces | pages | |||||||
| Books (100p) | 3.0b | 300b | ---- | 20b | 001 | 20b | 120t | 120t | 20.0b |
| Periodicals (30p) | 1.0b | 30b | ---- | 2b | 005 | 10b | 60t | 60t | 10.0b |
| Tracts (3p) | 4.0b | 12b | ---- | 400m | 001 | 400m | 2.4t | 2.4t | 400.0m |
| 5. VISUAL WORDS (a/v) showings p.a. | |||||||||
| Jesus Film | 900k | ---- | 2.2m | 050 | 113m | 13.5t | 678b | 113.0m | |
| Other Bible/Christian films | 20m | ---- | 60m | 050 | 3b | 60t | 18.3t | 3.0b | |
| 6. ELECTRONIC WORDS | Items | Hours | |||||||
| Radio programs | 1,000 | 10k | ---- | 365k | 50k | 18.2b | 109t | 109t | 18.2b |
| TV programs | 400 | 4k | ---- | 146k | 100k | 14.6b | 88t | 88t | 14.6b |
| Computers | 119m | 250m | ---- | 100k | 10 | 1b | 6t | 6t | 1.0b |
| TOTAL HOURS, WORDS, OFFERS | |||||||||
| Personal words | 10.5t | 2.6t | 327b | ---- | 327.0b | 63,000t | 1,962t | 327.0b | |
| Proclaimed words | 24.5b | 6.1b | 766m | ---- | 38.5b | 7,530t | 231t | 38.5b | |
| Written words | ---- | ---- | 7.7b | ---- | 62.2b | 374t | 374t | 62.2b | |
| Printed words | ---- | ---- | 22.4b | ---- | 30.4b | 182t | 182t | 30.4b | |
| Visual words | 12.2b | ---- | 3.1b | ---- | 3.1b | 73.5t | 19t | 3.1b | |
| Electronic words | ---- | ---- | 611k | ---- | 33.8b | 203t | 203t | 33.8b | |
| TOTALS PER YEAR | 10.5t | 2.6t | 327b | ---- | 495.0b | 71,362t | 2,971t | 495.0b | |
| Per Annum Totals: | |||||||||
| Per global inhabitant | 1,980 | 491 | 62 | ---- | 93 | 13,464k | 560.5k | 93 | |
| Per non-Christian | 3,000 | 743 | 93 | ---- | 141 | 20,389k | 848.8k | 141 | |
| Per unevangelized person | 8,380 | 2,075 | 261 | ---- | 395 | 56,953k | 2,371k | 395 |
Let's assume the average Christian's conscious day is 16 hours (during the other 8 we're all asleep). That's 5,840 waking hours per year. In these, the Christian is expected to live as a disciple of Jesus, in 3 modes: to be (1) a Christian presence, incarnating his Lord and Master, actively in contact with people (we call the time he spends "presence-hours" because they are a passive form of witness or evangelizing); (2) secondly as Great Commission Christians to be a "martys" (a witness to Jesus and his Resurrection, spending active "witness-hours"); and (3) as an evangelist or evangelizer, actively spreading the Good News and passing on the gospel of Christ ("evangelism-hours").
Let's assume next that the average Christian's actively witnessing day is 4 hours in contact with other people, and his actively evangelistic day is 30 minutes. The 5,840 waking presence-hours thus include 1,460 active witness-hours a year, and this includes 182 evangelism-hours a year.
Now let's quantify this across the entire Christian world. There are 1.8 billion Christians across the globe. Together they spend 10.5 trillion presence-hours a year. Dividing by the total world population of 5.3 billion, this becomes 1,980 Christian presence-hours expended per inhabitant of the globe per year (5.4 presence-hours per day). Dividing instead by the world's 3.5 billion non-Christians, this is 3,000 presence-hours per non-Christian per year. Dividing by the 1,254 million unevangelized, this is 8,380 presence-hours per World A inhabitant per year. This should be enough to ensure evangelizing the world! Like the global supply of food and water, it's entirely adequate--if it's properly shared.
Part of the problem, of course, is that many Christians aren't active witnesses. So, let's sharpen our definitions by talking next about our globe's 530 million active, committed, Great Commission Christians--those who are actively evangelizing. They put in 775 billiion Great Commission "witness-hours" a year, or 146 per global inhabitant per year (0.4 hours a day), or 221 Great Commission witness-hours per non-Christian per year. Specifically on evangelism, these Great Commission Christians each do 182 evangelism-hours a year, totaling to 96.5 billion evangelism-hours annually. This can also be stated as 18.2 evangelism hours per global inhabitant per year.
An even sharper approach ensues when we consider only full-time Christian workers, who number 4.2 million. As full-time evangelizers they put in 766 million evangelism-hours yearly, or 8.7 evangelism-minutes per global inhabitant per year.
Finally, let's consider the world's 285,000 foreign missionaries (1992). They put in 1.7 billion presence-hours per year, or 0.48 presence-hours per non-Christian per year. Further, they also engage in 416 million witness-hours per year (0.12 witness-hours per non-Christian annually, 7.l minutes of contact each year, 1.2 seconds every day, or 8.3 seconds weekly). Lastly, they do 52 million active evangelism-hours per year.
To see what this means for a country, consider the world's most evangelized country, the United States of America with its 170 million church members. These produced 993 billion (passive) presence-hours yearly, or 3,970 hours per USA inhabitant. This includes 1,200 Great Commission witness-hours per inhabitant. And, the USA also produces the remarkable number of 124 evangelism-hours per capita each year (7 times the global average). This means that the average USA Christian continues year after year to be saturated with 124 additional disciple-opportunities which (because he is already a disciple) he does not need. It's exactly analogous to wasted food.
I thought when I first reviewed these statistics that this was ridiculous--I certainly hadn't received 124 opportunities to become a disciple of Christ! So, last year, I resolved that during 1997 I would track the total number of opportunities I did receive. Here's my total:
88... 2 salvation calls per church service (52 weeks excluding 8 when we
weren't in church for one reason or another--sickness, travel, etc).
08... 90-second radio spots broadcast by the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association over local Christian radio channels
95... 30-second radio spots expounding man's need for a Savior and inviting
listeners to become disciples
03... people distributing tracts in parking lots during Christmas &
Thanksgiving season (I ended up giving the tracts back and telling them to
give them to someone else as I already believed)
02... Viewed while watching specific episodes of CBN's "700 Club" program
01... Attending Christmas cantata designed as Gospel outreach while
visiting relatives in Minnesota
02... Evangelistic tracts received via Internet "mass mail blitzes".
TOTAL: 199.
Each of these were not "nebulous" offers, but rather specific invitations to become a Christian, to accept Christ into my heart, to become born again, etc.
I then asked myself, "Am I in a unique position?" To this I'd have to answer "No." After all, the salvation calls were given in church services that averaged 700 to 1,200 people in attendance; the radio spots were heard on radio stations with an average audience of 2 million; I can't have been the only person approached by the tract-distributors; CBN has a huge television audience; the cantata's statistics show it's attended by about 5,000 over the time of its showing.
Quantifying hours received by those being evangelized
Now comes a staggering increase in order of magnitude. We can illustrate it
from the Argentina Crusade of November 13-17, 1991. For it, evangelist Billy
Graham preached the gospel for some 10 hours--that is, he expended 10 of our
"evangelism hours." But for 5 nights, his words were received by a radio/TV
audience of 70 million nightly throughout Latin America. So his 10
evangelism hours instantly becomes 700-million "hearer-hours." (Our much
lower average media factor is used to compute the total of all such
evangelism in general.) Examining my example above, the 199 witness-hours
expended on me resulted in over 200,000 hearer hours--both the 199 I
received, and the 199 received by all the others sitting around me.
Quantifying words disseminated
Words mean power and action. The city of Washington, DC, USA is known to
produce each day 100 billion official words--spoken, written, broadcast or
published. That's 36 trillion words per annum. In the same way we can
measure the huge effect of evangelization through its words.
We return therefore to enumerate words, as a refinement of hours. This results in a somewhat different way of quantifying the amount of evangelization by counting the number of "witness words" and "evangelism words." These are words received by the target individual or population and which then evangelize them. The totals depend particularly on the different communication modes employed. Table 1 above lists the 6 varieties of words (modes of contact) and the 3 levels of evangelizing activity, and then tabulates the number of copies of the various media, number of standardized pages or broadcasts or showings involved, number of words involved, and the equivalent number of "hearer-hours" required to speak those words aloud.
Quantifying offers made
The final column of Table 1 refers to the related number of
disciple-opportunities. This gives the number of persons who have had an
offer of discipleship made to them. It is derived by dividing column 9 by
the average number of words required for a disciple opportunity, earlier
defined as 6,000. A brief illustration: evangelist Billy Graham preaches for
10 hours, but the 70 million who hear him actually get 4.2 trillion
evangelism words. Altogether these offer the audiences some 700 million
disciple-opportunities.
E% as a measure of extent of opportunity
The extent to which a people or population has received adequate
disciple-opportunities can be easily enumerated as E%=total of all disciple
opportunities received per capita. Allowance has to be made, of course, for
uneven distribution and the probability that many persons in the population
will have had not one but multiple opportunities. But it's a beginning in
precise enumerating and accounting. This E, it should be noted, is exactly
the same variable as our 20-year-old scale of demographic evangelization, in
which E = the number of individuals in the population who have each received
at least one disciple-opportunity and so have become adequately evangelized
and are now aware of Christianity, Christ and the gospel (expressed as a
percentage of the population).
Summary: "human rights" must include the gospel
So you've gotten through this huge treatise on numbers. What does it mean?
As Christians we affirm the whole range of the human rights of every
individual, every people and every population on Earth. In a plentiful
world, everyone has the right to a fair share of food, water, shelter,
clothing, energy, electricity, health, literacy, literature, education,
money, and also to their spiritual counterparts--salvation in Christ, the
Good News, the gospel, scripture, missions, literature, broadcasts,
churches, evangelism, witness, witness-hours, evangelism-hours,
evangelism-words, and disciple-opportunities. Everyone has the fundamental,
inalienable, basic right to at least one chance to become a disciple--a
minimum of one definitive evangelism-hour and one disciple-opportunity, and
then an ongoing right to the average global individual share of 62
evangelism-hours and 93 disciple-opportunities a year per person.
The basic problem is the same as with world hunger and starvation--the supply is vastly more than adequate but the distribution is criminally inadequate. Current distribution of the benefits of Christianity, Christ and the gospel is uneven, unfair, unplanned, chaotic and counterproductive. Nearly 2 billion individuals who profess themselves to be Christians get everything Christianity has to offer and 95% of all its tangible benefits; nearly 4 billion non-Christians get little of these benefits, and of these 1 billion get next to nothing.
Even in the United States this situation holds true. While Christians like myself receive hundreds of disciple-opportunities yearly, there are small blocs of unevangelized non-Christian ethnic groups like the Saudi Arabs and the Yemeni Arabs. We estimate that about 1 opportunity a year is offered to the roughly 5,000 Saudi Arabs (far less than 1 per individual Saudi!). The Somalis are perhaps the worst off, receiving less than 1 opportunity for every DECADE. This thankfully is beginning to change; at least one mission has privately told me of plans to begin planting churches among Somalis in the United States, and there may very well be more than I am not presently aware of.
Still, by and large we as missionary-minded Christians continue to direct 97% of all our evangelizing activity at others who themselves profess to be Christians. Will you fight to change this? The best way is to begin to contact your denomination's foreign mission board (or your church's leadership) and ask them what they are doing about recruiting for missions to World A and B peoples--most of whom are in the "10/40 Window," but many of whom are right next door.