... the challenge remains of peoples as yet unreached by any form of gospel message, of languages with no portion of the Bible in them yet, of millions of oral communicators who need to hear the Word in a form that does not rely on the written Word, of peoples whose only exposure to the Christian message has come along with horrendous violence done to them by nations they have been told are "Christian", or with a lurid immorality they cannot help but associate with the same Western cultures.
The missional challenge of reaching the ends of the earth with the gospel, so that the whole earth may be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God, faces us still with all its diversity and complexity. The evangelization of the world, in the fullest sense of both the words in that phrase, remains as urgent a priority for the church as it was when Jesus laid it as a mandate on his disciples before his ascension.
The earth, of course, is a globe that has no "ends". From a missional perspective, the "ends of the earth" are as likely to be found in your own street as far across the sea. The missional task of the church, in ... sending, going and supporting- is as necessary for local as for international mission.
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