Power Shifts: Five Forgotten Strategies For Expanding God's Kingdom

1

How Can We Multiply the Harvest?

Each year, about

60 million people die

worldwide; about 17

million will go into

eternity without hearing

about a Heavenly Father.

That’s equal to 46,575

people per day, 1,940 per

hour, 32 per minute, and

about one every

two seconds!

Please think deeply about the following statistics. Each year, about 60 million people die worldwide. Of these, about 17 million will go into eternity without hearing about a Heavenly Father who loves them and sent His Son to purchase their salvation! That’s equal to 46,575 people per day, 1,940 per hour, 32 per minute, and about one every two seconds! ¹

For most of us, these are shocking statistics. For me, they scream Emergency! This is the worst human crisis on earth. Many of these people have never rubbed shoulders with a Catholic, Orthodox, or Evangelical Christian. Yet the very last words of Jesus were,

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

Obviously, contemporary ministry must change, and we need a new army of missionaries that will cross the dark chasm of culture, political, and language barriers to reach the ends of the earth, that is, the 3.14 billion people who live in 7,066 unreached people groups* around the world. The Great Commission of Jesus, in all the Gospels as well as Acts 1:8, and these contemporary statistics, represent the greatest humanitarian need and social justice issue confronting the church today.

Now, let’s admit right up front that traditional missionary methods have enjoyed a certain level of success. After all, the first Christians were from the Jewish community. For them, accepting Jesus as their Messiah had absolutely nothing to do with cross-cultural outreach.

But if you are from a Gentile ethnic background, clearly you are a believer today because, somewhere along the way, someone stepped across cultural barriers to proclaim the Gospel where it had not yet been heard. You may be the product of a family that came to the Lord many, many generations ago. But your salvation is still the long-term result of some type of missionary outreach. In the 2,000 years since our Lord’s ascension, when He gave the Great Commission to go into all the world and make disciples, His followers have successfully built His Kingdom in vast regions of this earth.

Yet, despite that success, we also have huge regions left almost entirely unevangelized. Only God knows the actual number of individuals who remain untouched by the gospel.

Accounting for the Status Quo

The world’s current spiritual environment demands that we make an accounting for the missions status quo. Despite our earnest efforts, statisticians say that over 41% of our global population of 7.6 billion people have yet to hear about God’s gracious offer of salvation. That includes the people we mentioned before, who have the potential to die without ever meeting a Christian of any kind. It also includes those who live in cultures where the gospel has perhaps been presented, but not in a culturally relevant way that most people can understand.

During His ministry on earth, Jesus told His disciples,

The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. (Mt. 8:37–38)

Obviously, we need to pray for more laborers to accept the responsibility of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth.

And we need not pray gently. The word translated send out in the original language actually means to eject, cast out, drive out, or expel.² That means we are to intercede on behalf of the nations, asking God to drive believers out of their comfort zones and into service and ministry to others.

But is that all God wants us to do? I think not. The Parable of the Sower, found in Matthew 13:1–23 and Mark 4:8, gives us intriguing hope for multiplied bounty in the spiritual harvest, 30, 60, and 100-fold.

Exponential Harvest

You may think that agrarian thinking is not relevant to you. After all most of us know little to nothing about farming. However, living in an agrarian society, Jesus often used agricultural terms and stories to illustrate the principles of His Kingdom. These stories and principles still speak to us today. In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus compared the gospel to seeds scattered by a farmer. Some seed fell along a path, and birds descended and gobbled it up before it had an opportunity to sprout. Other seed fell on rocky places and sprang up quickly, but then it died because the stones hindered the growth of the supporting roots. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked out the young seedlings. But some seed fell on good soil. These seeds grew and produced a tremendous harvest.

The spiritual lesson of this parable seems to be fairly easy to interpret—the yield depends on the quality of the soil. That’s what we’ve always heard, right? Yet, as I pondered this parable, I saw an important point that I had missed before. You see, the good soil was pretty much all the same. Jesus made no distinction in its quality or its preparation. Yet, even in the good soil, the harvest varied. Jesus said, It produced a crop —a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown (Mt. 13:8).

What made the difference? Why did some seed reproduce itself thirty times, while other seed exponentially multiplied that harvest, reproducing itself even one hundred times?

That question is the focus of this book. God alone makes this world’s spiritual harvest fields ripen at the correct time. Yet He invites us to participate in the process of clearing away obstacles, sowing spiritual seed, and bringing in the crops. In that process, I believe we can hasten or slow the rate at which we are accomplishing the task our Lord gave us just before He returned to heaven—the task of taking the gospel of His Kingdom to every people group in the world.

Agricultural Lessons

In biblical days, people farmed by sheer muscle and willpower. They cleared fields, tilled soil, planted seed, harvested crops, and prepared grain—all by hand. In some regions of the world, people still farm that way. But in Western industrialized nations, modern machinery, fertilizers, hybrid seeds, and irrigation systems have dramatically increased the yield of grain on an acre of land.

In missions, we must willingly follow that example. We need to quit patting ourselves on the backs for our thirtyfold harvest and start looking for ways to harvest a hundredfold yield. We must rethink some of our basic ideas about taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. Just as farmers have increased their yield by accepting and using new implements and tools, we need to be willing to give up our teams of oxen, so to speak, in favor of tractors and combines. We need to examine and evaluate our methods and open our hearts to new patterns of thinking. I call these dramatic, foundational modifications strategic power shifts.

More Than Toffler’s Power Shifts

Many people are familiar with the book, Power Shifts, by Alvin Toffler.³ It discusses power moving from here to there, or from this person to that person. In other words, Toffler says a power shift occurs when one group of people loses power and another group gains power, such as in a political uprising. Let me say up front that, while I refer to this definition because so many people are already familiar with it, this is not how I define power shifts for the missions community.

I don’t believe we necessarily need a shift of power from one place to another or from one person to another. Rather, I believe we need to do the equivalent of hitting the shift key on a keyboard, or even a font change on a computer. We need to quit settling for power and move instead to POWER. We need to leverage our resources to a new level and exponentially multiply the results we see on the mission field.

More Than a Paradigm Shift

Power shift is not

the same as a "paradigm

shift." Paradigm relates

to our worldview, and it

is the sum of our "mental

filters," through which

we define reality.

I also need to note that my use of the term power shift is not the same as a paradigm shift. Paradigm became a hot-button term in the 1990s. It was used so much that sometimes I wonder if we even really agree about what it means, so let’s go ahead and define it.

Paradigm is a Greek word that, until recently, was used most frequently as a scientific term. In present-day usage, it means a pattern, an outline, a theory, or a perception. More loosely, it is an assumption or a frame of reference. Paradigm relates to our worldview, and it is the sum of our mental filters, through which we define