Let’s play a numbers game…

The world’s population is headed rapidly toward 7 billion people. Of that number, perhaps 1.8 billion people speak some form of English either as a first or second language. America itself contains a mere 300 million residents. And of those 300 million only 2.5% (or about 7.5 million people) are Independent Baptists “in the evangelical tradition.” Not even all of those are fundamentalists as we understand them, but for the sake of argument lets assume they are.

If we take a step back, that means that of the entire population of the planet, fundamentalists make up 0.10% — the bulk of which are sitting at home in America stealing members from each others churches. And yet, somehow in every missions conference I’ve ever seen I’ve been told that Baptist fundamentalists missionaries are somehow the only hope that the world has to hear the gospel. My calculator tells me that if that’s the case then the majority of the world literally hasn’t got a prayer.

We can all be glad the congregation of the saints is a wee bit bigger than fundamentalism.