The Map of Mission Has Changed

If someone tried to draw a map today of the countries that send missionaries and the countries that receive them, they would quickly find that the distinction no longer holds. The world's missionary map is in constant motion. A field that once only received missionaries can, within a few decades, become a region that sends workers out, and the reverse can happen just as easily. Looking at this reality continent by continent helps us understand where the church stands today, and where its presence is urgently needed.

Latin America is perhaps the most striking example of this transformation. For centuries, the region was seen mainly as a receiving field, a destination for missionaries sent from Europe and North America. Today, however, the continent, with Brazil at the forefront, has become one of the most active regions in sending workers to different parts of the world, through movements such as COMIBAM. This shift also reshapes the question a Brazilian church needs to ask about itself: does it still see itself as a passive beneficiary of a faith that arrived from outside, or has it already taken up its role as a sending agent?

North America, for its part, presents a paradoxical reality. The region still holds the largest structure of agencies, resources, and missionary organizations in the world, yet it faces a growing loss of evangelistic vitality within its own borders. It remains a major sending center, but it also needs to be rediscovered as a mission field. Europe is undergoing a similar transformation. For centuries, it was the granary that trained and sent out most of the modern missionary force. Today, however, it has become one of the primary mission fields of the twenty-first century. It is a post-Christian continent, where ancient churches and historic landmarks stand alongside entire generations who have never personally heard the gospel.

Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced, in recent decades, one of the most remarkable periods of growth in the entire history of the Christian faith. Because of this, it can no longer be seen only as a mission field. The region has also become a sender of workers to other parts of the world, including to Europe itself. Asia, for its part, occupies a central place in the Great Commission. More than sixty percent of the planet's still-unreached peoples live on this continent, many of them within the so-called 10/40 Window. Oceania, too, presents a contrast that helps us grasp the complexity of the global picture. On one hand, there are islands that have been Christian for many generations; on the other, large urban centers growing ever more secular, where the Christian faith needs to be presented anew, almost as if being heard for the first time.

This panorama reveals, in the end, that contemporary mission is polycentric: it moves from everywhere to everywhere. There is no longer a single center from which the gospel radiates out to the rest of the world. Jesus's command remains exactly the same: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). What has changed is the means, the timing, and the places in which that command is being obeyed. And this fully includes the Brazilian church. It can no longer see itself merely as history's recipient of other peoples' missionary work. It belongs, in full right, to the church God is using to reach the nations still unreached.

A church can turn this global panorama into prayer and concrete action. It can choose, this very week, one of the continents mentioned here — perhaps the very one that usually gets the least space in its prayers — and take on a specific commitment to it: choosing a country, a people, or a real need, and interceding for it regularly. It can also research an agency or missionary movement mentioned in this history, such as COMIBAM, the missionary cooperation network of the Ibero-American countries, or Wycliffe, the organization dedicated to translating the Bible for peoples who still do not have it in their own language, and share what was learned with the congregation. This helps broaden the missionary vision of the whole church.

Finally, an honest question of self-examination is needed: is this church, today, closer to being a sending field or a needy one? Whatever the answer, there is always a concrete next step. It might be supporting a missionary already on the field, or taking up, with the same seriousness, the responsibility of evangelizing those who are still nearby.