How did you become passionate about missions?

• JD grew up in a small town in south eastern Kentucky where he was a part of a church that was very focused on God’s Word. He came to faith at a young age and shortly thereafter felt God leading him to pastoral ministry.

What are some of the elements that God has used to grow your passion for global mission?

• An understanding of what it means to be a disciple – a personal walk with the Lord, spending time with Him daily and seeking to die to self.
• We need to be intentional about looking at the world that God has created and thinking about how to intentionally live out a life on mission.

Why do we need a book on trends and why now?

• Proverbs 19:2 “Even zeal is not good without knowledge, and the one who acts hastily sins.”
• Evangelicals have the zeal for God’s glory and to see the church multiplied. We are students of God’s word but we also need to be students of God’s world.
• The purpose of this book is to raise awareness of the church and help them ask, “How do we live in light of these matters?”

Can pressure points be positive?

• Yes, pressure points aren’t all negative. A positive example of a pressure point affecting global missions is the growth of the majority world church.
• Pressure points can also be neutral – they are just a part of the world in which we live.
• Water pressure has been called one of the world’s most deadly forces, but without it we wouldn’t have running water in our homes.
• Whether positive, negative or neutral, as kingdom stewards, how do we move forward on mission today in light of these pressure points?

Unreached People Groups – What are they?  Why is it important?

• Over the past 40 years we have done a great deal to understand the reality that there are large groups of people around the world that are considered unreached, and we are developing strategies to reach them
• A people group is a group of people who share a common language, ethnicity, and social identity. There are 11,000 people groups in the world today.
• A people group is considered unreached when it is less than 2% Christian. There are 6,000 that fall into the category that are unreached.  About 3,000 of these are also considered to be unengaged – this means there is no intentional strategy to reach them.
• There is still a massive number of people who don’t know Jesus.

What insights do you have about how we should react to unreached people groups?

• Our current priority is not on the unreached and unengaged people groups. We are still spending most of our resources on reached people groups.
• We need to change our priorities – where we are spending our money, where we are sending our missionaries and our other resources, such as time.

What do we need to change?

• We need to move past an intellectual understanding of the Great Commission – it needs to affect our strategies and how we manage our finances.
• When we look at the missionary God in the Bible, and we look at the world full of the lost, and we look at our actions, we see that we need to make changes and shift our focus.

What is the trend you call migration and how is it affecting global missions?

• 3% of the global population lives outside their country of birth.
• The 20 century is called the Age of Migration – the numbers of people on the move are massive. We continue to see this trend in the 21
  • Many people move looking for better jobs, education and quality of life.
  • Others come as refugees as they are forced out of their countries due to war or famine.
  • We also have students who are studying internationally.
• Many of these people are coming from unreached people groups and are now living in North America. These unreached people groups are living across the street from us!
• Migration is a great opportunity for missions. The mission field is coming to us.
• The greatest needs and opportunities are still outside of North America and so traditional missions should continue and yet at the same time there is something “missionally malignant” when we are willing to get on a plane and go across the world to bring the Good News of Jesus but we aren’t willing to cross the street to engage those who have not heard.

• Many people in the North American church have not heard that unreached people groups are here, in our cities and neighbourhoods. We haven’t been telling our churches that the unreached people groups are here.
• In Canada, there are at least 180 unreached people groups. In the USA, there are at least 360 unreached people groups.
• There is a need for both missions abroad and missions at home.
• There is a massive need for an integrative strategy for reaching unreached peoples in our neighbourhoods and across the globe. Gone is the day whereby we have dichotomized the world into North America and the rest of the world, domestic and foreign.  This line is now blurred.