You don’t live until you become involved in something bigger than yourself. The following is a summary of AD 2000 Global Goals, as fashioned by global Christian leaders in 1989.
Note by Dr. Jay Gary, August 2002: The following is a summary of the AD 2000 Global Goals document. The original document, “Kaleidoscopic Global Action Plan,” was created by a 15-person working group, chaired by Dr. David Barrett, with me serving as secretary. It was presented to the Global Consultation for consideration.
The complete document, revised with the input of the Consultation, was released through New Hope Publishers under the title, Our Globe and How to Reach It, 1990. This summary was reprinted in The Countdown Has Begun, chapter 29. While most of these 109 goals were not reached by the year 2000, this was an unprecedented attempt by world Christianity to set goal goals and reach them. Its aim was to accept a degree of human responsibility for world evangelization that God has given to today’s church, without passing this responsibility onto succeeding generations or back to God.
Some apocalyptic doomsayers in the mid-’90s saw this as part of a New World Order conspiracy. These Fundamentalists had little foresight, much less charity to envision ideals, whether for the church or society. We are called like William Carey to expect great things from God and attempt great things for God.
This is a selection of 168 proposed Great Commission goals, each based on a stand-alone, self-sufficient definition of completing world evangelization. Together they show what an evangelized world in AD 2000 could be like if Christians met their current goals.
The listing is a collective compilation of final goals put forward by agencies and protagonists, in most cases separately. Each one is considered to be a final closure goal to complete an aspect of world evangelization by AD 2000 and to keep it completed beyond. In most cases, the phrase “by AD 2000” can be understood to mean “by AD 2000 and beyond.”
Each goal is based on a different, or even unique, definition of what it would mean to complete the unfinished task of the Christian world mission. Each represents a statement of what closure means in one or more of the 180 different and distinct dimensions of the concept “evangelization” and how it is measured and quantified. Together these goals take aim at the same overall target, expressed in the watchword, “World Evangelization by AD 2000 & Beyond.”
This listing of goals provides us with multiple measures of what it would mean to achieve world evangelization by AD 2000. It shows us what an evangelized world in the millennial year would look like. It is not necessary, of course, for all 168 goals to be achieved–by most people’s definition, only one such goal is necessary. To be safe, however, we can say that if only 10 or at most 20 of these goals were to be achieved, then (remembering that they interact synergistically) world evangelization would certainly be completed, by anybody’s and everybody’s definition.
Note that a number of the goals produced here originated in major languages other than English. Goals were sent to us in Bahasa Indonesian, Bengali, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Portuguese, Sango, Spanish, Telugu, and others. Meanwhile, the search for such goals goes on into 1989 and beyond.
In view of the agenda of the GCOWE 2000, we have two recommendations:
- that the Global Consultation decide, announce, and proclaim that all of these goals are our legitimate goals, and that we intend to press for the implementation of all of them; and
- that individual Christians, groups, churches, organizations, and agencies select one or more of the goals and concentrate on implementing just those, in collaboration with other Great Commission Christians and agencies that have similar goals.
Here is a selected Listing from the full list of 168 goals:
- Establish 15,000 prayer movements by 1995 in every city over 50,000 and on all 15,000 university campuses, thereby evangelizing the urban and academic worlds by 2000.
- Redistribute the great majority of Christian resources of manpower, money, and methods across the world’s unevangelized peoples and cities strictly according to need by 2000.
- Minister in the name of Jesus to all the world’s poor, destitute, sick, and dying, bringing Jesus to the poorest of the poor in every country and city on Earth by 2000.
- Develop creative approaches for total ministry directed to the world’s 2.4 billion children by AD 2000 through evangelism, education, aid and relief in all languages and in all 15,000 population segments.
- Insist on a final negotiated settlement and end to the stateless or homeless status of 60 million refugees on Earth, of whom half are children, by the symbolic 2,000th anniversary of the birth of the child Jesus as a refugee from political evil.
- See all 15,000 population segments on Earth by AD 2000 either entered (with resident missionaries) or engaged (with other deliberate but nonresidential modes) by at least one denomination or agency but preferably by several different but cooperating denominations or agencies.
- Engage, with foreign missionary presence and ministry, every closed country, unreached people, and unevangelized metropolis in the world by 2000.
- See at least two tentmakers become resident in every unevangelized people on Earth by 2000.
- Visit every home on Earth, leaving at least two gospel leaflets in its language by 2000.
- Enable by AD 2000 one million short-term youths every year to serve abroad for two weeks to a year as foreign missionaries, especially witnessing in closed or closing territories and cities.
- Record and make available a gospel message in every language on Earth by 2000.
- Expand broadcasted Christian programs, now in 2,000 languages, to 3,000 languages by 2000.
- Increase the Unevangelized World’s share of Christian broadcast hours from today’s 0.0 percent to 20 percent by 2000.
- Prepare or dub films on the Bible or life of Christ, specifically the JESUS film, in 500 languages and show them to the world’s entire population by 2000.
- Provide every people and population on Earth with a valid opportunity to hear the gospel by 2000 in a language they can understand.
- Send out one million native evangelists from among the thousands of native missionary movements in the Third World, to produce by 2000 a massive revolutionary Third Wave of missions across the world.
- Increase the Unevangelized World’s share of citywide campaigns from today’s nil to at least 100 (3 percent of total) by 2000.
- Deliberately exercise power evangelism in the world’s least evangelized and most hostile environments so that by AD 2000 power Christianity (gifted ministries of signs and wonders) is not enjoyed solely in Christian lands.
- Launch a movement on all 3,000 major university campuses in the world to help fulfill the Great Commission among the 60 million college students in the world’s 30,000 tertiary-level universities and colleges by the year 2000.
- Make at least a handful of disciples and plant a beachhead church within every unevangelized population segment on Earth (country, people, metropolis) by 2000.
- Begin 3.5 million new churches or house worship centers over the period 1988 to 1999, resulting in a global total of six million churches and, on average, one church by AD 2000 for every 1,000 persons, including peoples still unreached in 1988.
- Mobilize the entire world’s six million local churches and congregations to complete by AD 2000 the task of world evangelization in their localities and beyond.
- Have 200,000 Third-World citizens serving abroad as foreign missionaries by 2000.
- See annual distribution of Christian literature (tracts, leaflets, books, Scripture) reach two billion pieces per year, evenly distributed worldwide by 2000.
- Have adequate access to Holy Scripture by 2000 for every population segment on Earth, through written or spoken translations either in its mother tongue, in a closely related language or idiom, in a market or trade language, or in its lingua franca.
- Place a Bible in the hands of every family on Earth by 2000.
- Attain total world evangelization for the first time ever by December 31, 2000, but regard that milestone date not primarily as the end of the 20th century but as the beginning of the 21st with its years beyond.