A SHIFT IN MISSIONS
By Alex Pettett, World Witness Executive Director
The mantra “from the West to the rest” denotes missions should occur from the greatest concentration of missionaries, in the West, to the rest of the world. This was the battle cry of the Western Church, which kicked off the Great Century of Missions in 1793, with William Carey’s departure to India. It ended in approximately 1920, when the Western Church saw the emergence of self-propagating churches in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Missiologists today refer to missions as “everywhere to everywhere,” recognizing that the Church has established itself in most nations, and each nation is now responsible for missions. In this way, the end of the Great Century of Missions is not a defeated Western Church exhausted from sending but rather, a victorious global church rising anew to fulfill the Great Commission.
Although the Gospel has spread far and wide among many nations, there are regions of the earth that have been significantly resistant and constitute many of the world’s “unreached peoples,”1 which, in sheer numbers, represent 3.5 billion people. An example of this is the Middle East and North Africa (a.k.a. MENA) region, which has the largest percentage of unreached peoples in the world.2 Research efforts on how to reach the MENA region are extensive. However, according to research by the Lausanne Movement, only 3% of global missionaries are serving among the people in this area.
In a recent survey conducted at the 2025 meeting of the ARP General Synod, our denomination ranked MENA as the region where World Witness should concentrate its efforts. Survey results showed that Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe tied for second place, and World Witness’ long-term strategy should be to plant churches among unreached peoples. The denomination indicated that the priority should be to disciple and train national church planters versus sending U.S. ARP church planters, as the pioneers.
This represents a significant shiſt in our denominational perspective on how to conduct missions. Does this mean we should no longer send U.S. church planters? By no means! If we are to raise up national church planters, we must send missionaries— not only to teach but also to disciple national pastors into church-planting roles. Discipleship takes place “life on life,” over the long haul. As author Greg Ogden stated, “You can’t microwave disciples. They are slow cooked through relationships, obedience, and time.” This means that we send church planters, as church partners, willing to raise up the national pastors to continue the work of the Great Commission.
All of this marks the critical importance of raising up nationals and helping them start their own national missionary agencies to begin reaching areas like MENA, where access is limited for most Westerners. This will be the way MENA eventually gets reached, and our survey results confirm this is the aspiration of pastors in the ARP denomination! Praise the Lord!
To that end, please pray with me that the Lord would raise up two World Witness missionary families or individuals to work with SEED Ministry, to begin deep discipleship in one of our most primed countries of service—Rwanda. Also, pray the Lord would help SEED Ministry identify national church planters with whom we may embark on new church-planting efforts. Lastly, pray the Lord would open doors to help us start a missionary agency in East Africa that can begin reaching the millions of Gospel-resistant people in the Middle East and North Africa regions. These are big aspirations that will only come about through prayer and the leading of the Spirit, so let’s pray!
worldwitness.org
1 2% evangelical and fewer than 5% professing Christian. 2 84.5% of the peoples in this area are unreached (Joshua Project).
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