America: The Overlooked Mission Field

For every face you see in America, Jesus paid a price...

According to a particular survey, only 29% of the American population are active, practicing Christians. The number of marginally unchurched individuals (people who have a religious affiliation but have never had an encounter with Jesus) comprises 30% of the population. And those who are considered radically unchurched (are of other religions or are atheist/agnostic) make up 41 % of the American demographic.

In other words, if you were to randomly pick 10 Americans and stand them side by side, only 3 of them would have any real relationship with Jesus Christ. The other 7 are on their way to hell unless someone shares Christ with them. Just think about that for a minute – 7 out of every 10 Americans are held captive by Satan, broken by sin, and are dying without a Savior.

During my teenage years, my family and I served as missionaries on one of the spiritually darkest continents in the world: Europe. When we moved to France in 1995, only 5% of the French population actually owned a Bible, and 20% of them were agnostics or atheists. In school, I was constantly asked questions like, “What’s a Bible? What’s a pastor? Who’s Jesus?” Despite its historical and cultural beauty, France was a very dark, oppressing nation. They needed the light of Jesus Christ.

Just recently, the Pew Survey released an astonishing statistic: The secular segment of America’s population has risen to 20%. That statistic – the same one we used to describe our missionary needs on the foreign field – now describes the United States of America. In this country today, 20% of our fellow citizens are so unchurched and so unfamiliar with the story of redemption, that they proclaim themselves as atheists and agnostics.  In fact, another research study discovered that the Millennial generation is the least exposed to the Gospel ever in the history of our nation.

In 1831, a French sociologist and politician by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to discover why America was such a prosperous nation. Among the many things he discovered was one primal ingredient: the churches, morality, and religious freedom we have in the United States. According to this statesman, it was America’s Christianity that made her great.

Today, we are a far cry from hearing church bells ring on every corner. The media is so ungodly these days that if a person stands for Christian values – even in his own church setting – he often gets a backlash from the public media. While working in a secular department store even in the “Christian” city of Tulsa, I was shocked to run into so many individuals who hadn’t been to a church ever in their lives. In fact, it is reported now that America is the 4^th largest mission field in the world – the 4^th largest!

Because missions is something ingrained into me as a child, my heart breaks for my own country. I’m almost in disbelief how much morality has declined in even the last 10 years I’ve lived here. The issues that were taboo just a decade ago are all acceptable today. What has happened to my home, my beloved America?

My dear Christian friends, I want to challenge you today to stand up for Jesus in this country. It’s becoming less and less popular to do so, but who cares about being accepted when the truth is at stake? Don’t just think of missions as something that has to be done in another country. Friends, the USA IS a mission field! And because of its importance and influence in the other nations of the world, if we lose America, we’ve lost the door to foreign missions.

Every soul in the USA matters. When we see pictures of foreign faces from far-away lands like Tunisia, Afghanistan, Zambia, Thailand, Russia, and Chile, our hearts break because we know they don’t know Jesus like we do. Each face, each map, each flag represents an untouched soul dying and going to hell. But when was the last time you looked at a face of an American and were broken by that same compassion? When was the last time you cried over a map of the United States and beheld our flag as a symbol of missions?

The Gospel is a message for every single person in the world. Jesus died for the Uzbek, the Frenchman, the Swede, the Guatemalan, the Honduran, the Hindi, the Buddhist, the Muslim, the African, the Asian, and the European. But He also died for the American. He died for the Rhode Islander, the New Yorker, that fashion designer in Los Angeles, the gang member in Tulsa, the financial genius in Wall Street, the unwed mother in the HUD apartment in Detroit. He died for the wacky treehugger in Colorado and for the coffee loving entrepreneur in Atlanta. His blood was shed for the politicians (Yes, even them!), the military, the government officials, the policemen, the teachers, the factory workers, and the elementary kids. For every face you see in America, Jesus paid a price.

As you go about your normal routine today, I pose this challenge today: Open your eyes to the faces of the Americans as Jesus sees them. What are their hurts, their needs, their hearts’ desires? And how can you present Jesus to them? I challenge you today to take a stand for God in this country, pray earnestly for our homeland and our leaders, and take Jesus with you today to your fellow American countrymen. This country needs you…and this country needs Jesus.