80% of the world’s evangelical Christians live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Over the last 50 years, God’s church has grown exponentially in these areas.

These regions have tremendous mission sending potential to help bring the gospel to unreached peoples, but they currently send only 20% of the world’s cross-cultural missionaries!

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This infographic provides a visual score for seven data points ranked on a 0 to 100 scale. Faded icons show scores for other countries on the mobilization index. See below for actual scores and country-specific insights.

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As college ministers on mission trips or at conferences, we gather students each morning and count. We all have that one student who makes us more like Jesus. We gather the group, we count, and then we leave the ninety-nine to search for the one who is late again, all the while fighting hard to rejoice when we find them, as Jesus rejoices.
The point is that we count what is important to us. Some people count their win/loss record on NCAA Football, others count their bank account, and others count countries they&rsquo;ve visited. For those of us giving our lives so the next generation hears and responds to the gospel, we count people.
And let me just say that nothing can bring more joy or dread than counting people. A full room of students brings energy and celebration, whereas a room with seating for many when only a few showed up can be crushing. It can be the adrenaline that fuels us or a heavy weight on our shoulders. How easily we can put our identity in whether or not still-developing, easily distracted young adults come to our events! It's a struggle we all face. The trick is to count the right things and not put our identity in them, as Jesus did!
Jesus counted people too. We see him count quite a bit throughout the gospels. The trick to a healthy ministry (and a healthy minister) is to count what Jesus counted and not count what Jesus ignored.

Jesus Did NOT Count&hellip;

Have you been there? &nbsp;You have a tough conversation in discipleship and call a student out on a sin or habit and then you don&rsquo;t hear from them again? &nbsp;You look up midway through the semester and there aren&rsquo;t as many at your ministry as before and it turns out they are somewhere else where the expectation is lower? It can be disheartening. &nbsp;Jesus didn&rsquo;t count those who left him. &nbsp;You shouldn&rsquo;t either. &nbsp;Don&rsquo;t get bogged down in the ones who wouldn&rsquo;t run the race with you, focus on the ones who are hungry and want to stay. &nbsp;Go with the goers.

This is it, this is the hard one. Jesus never counted who showed up to hear him preach. How many showed up at the Sermon on the Mount? We don&rsquo;t know. The Bible never says. Think on that for a second. The metric we most often value isn&rsquo;t even used by Jesus. You may say, but what about the feeding of the 4,000 and the 5,000? True, but the emphasis on that story isn&rsquo;t who he was teaching, but who he was feeding. &nbsp;If he hadn&rsquo;t served them through food, then we would never know the number. &nbsp;The emphasis of the story is the miracle of a sack lunch feeding so many, not the miracle that he could gather a crowd. How many times is the number of the crowd gathered to our worship service the litmus test we judge our church/ministry by as well as judge other churches or ministries by? We get wrapped up in how well we can fill a room or draw a crowd. We count heads every week hoping the number goes up and use this as a lead indicator if we are doing &ldquo;well&rdquo; in ministry. We have raised to first place something Jesus didn&rsquo;t even count. We need to recalibrate our definition of success.
Perhaps these numbers are not recorded in Scripture because Jesus knew this is where we most often place our identity. We struggle with despair when people leave us and we find value in the crowd. Listen, it isn&rsquo;t that these things aren&rsquo;t important, but it could be that Jesus was setting the example that in ministry, there are so many better things to count on, celebrate, and strive for to have kingdom impact.

Jesus Counted&hellip;

Jesus counted disciples. He counted the people in whom he would invest his life so the gospel would be passed on. Jesus made a conscious decision to choose men who would be &ldquo;with him&rdquo; so they would be trained and ready. In Master Plan for Evangelism, Robert Coleman writes, &ldquo;Jesus wasn&rsquo;t concerned with the masses, but men to lead the masses.&rdquo; How many disciples and disciple-makers are in your ministry? That number is one of your smallest numbers, but it determines your potency and ability to take the gospel message past the walls of your meeting space. How many in your ministry faithfully walk &ldquo;with him&rdquo; and are able to share their faith and teach others to follow Jesus? Count those people. Strive for that number to grow.

College students may not have disposable income, but they do have loads of disposable time. How can you leverage the fall, winter, spring, and summer breaks to send out your students as missionaries? How can you help your graduates realize there are people groups across the globe who need someone to share the gospel? University ministry is a built-in missions agency because everybody has to leave eventually! Your ministry could have a global impact as, year after year, you disciple students, help them develop God&rsquo;s heart for the nations, and send them out. Jesus was quick to count those he was sending out with the mission to share the gospel with new groups of people. We should be too!

In contrast to the Sermon on the Mount, the Bible is careful to make sure we know how many people Jesus&nbsp;fed. First-century Jews and college students apparently have something in common: they show up for free food! Jesus is careful to count how many people he served and provided for. There is care and detail taken to show that Jesus counts those who he has compassion on and serves. There are needs all across your campus. Sometimes we can be polarized in sharing the gospel or serving students on campus, but we clearly see with Jesus that he valued and counted caring for the soul of the person AND the physical needs of the person.

Who Should Have Been There, but Wasn&rsquo;t

I sometimes read this parable and think Jesus made a poor financial decision. He left the ninety-nine unprotected to chase after the one. And it may seem like that for many of us until we remember what it was like to be the one whom Jesus found. Again, we see Jesus isn&rsquo;t concerned with the group gathered, but with the one scattered. Steve Addison, author of The Rise and Fall of Movements, said there is nothing more dangerous to a movement than a full room because it is then that we relax and think we&rsquo;ve done our job and forget about the work still needed for us to do. Let&rsquo;s not ever lose sight of the number of students on our campus who are not walking with Jesus, disconnected from Christian community, separated and far from God. Let us keep that number in front of us, remembering at one time that was us.

I get it, people will ask you, &ldquo;how&rsquo;s your ministry going?&rdquo; The easy answer is to find the largest number and share it, but the Jesus answer is a little less flattering. The Jesus numbers are the disciples, missionaries, people served, and the lost. Jesus had a habit of counting our sending capacity, not our seating capacity. He calls us deeper to measure who we are producing, not how many. He calls us to deeper questions like, how will they know we come in Jesus&rsquo; name unless we serve in Jesus&rsquo; ways? It's a call to not despair when the narrow path doesn&rsquo;t fit well with some and to dig deep into our ministry and see how we are developing our students to do ministry on their own, not just at our events. It&rsquo;s the freedom to count what Jesus counted to maximize Kingdom impact instead of playing the numbers game.

Counting What Counts

Lessons from Jesus on Ministry Priorities

Clayton Bullion

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