New Missionaries Dispatched Across Yesterday's Christian Nation, Today's Mission Field
The United States is no longer a Christian nation, but a mission field, said North American Mission Board President Robert E. Reccord during a recent commissioning service.
The United States is no longer a Christian nation, but a mission field, said North American Mission Board President Robert E. Reccord during a recent commissioning service.
A crowd of some 1,800 people watched 143 new missionaries and chaplains get commissioned to be dispatched across their own native country - what Reccord identified as the fourth most "unchurched" nation in the world.
"The United States has gone from being a Christian nation to a mission field," he said, according to Baptist Press. "The U.S. is now the 13th largest country receiving missionaries from other countries. Some 224 million people in North America claim no relationship to Jesus Christ."
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While America has been known as the number one nation sending missionaries all around the world, more Christians from foreign nations are dispatching people to be missionaries to Americans.
Dan Clymer, executive director of Restoration House Ministries, which helps start up small ethnic churches in the New England area, also noted how the United States is today the 13th largest receiving nation of Christian missionaries, including Hispanics, Brazilians and Asians, from around the world.
"They're way ahead of us," Clymer said in an earlier report.
Christianity Today recently reported the Western mission movement slowing down while South Korea is increasing its missionary displacement with predictions of it taking over America's number one spot as the nation to send out the largest number of missionaries.
"On average, our Anglo churches are not growing, but Asian and Hispanic churches in the U.S. are growing by double digits," said Reccord at the commissioning service.
"One out of 10 in the United States today is foreign-born," he continued. "One out of five kids has a parent who is foreign-born. America is becoming more diverse all the time."
After painting the reality of America, Reccord challenged the congregation at First Baptist Church in Spartanburg, S.C., saying, "Either you're a missionary or a mission field. You are one or the other."
The newly commissioned missionaries and chaplains will be sent out to 31 different states, four Canadian cities and Canada's Northwest Territories.
