← The Unfinished Mission
Contents · 41 / 41
  1. Copyright and Edition Notice
  2. Introduction: The Mission That Is Not Finished
  3. The Mission
  4. The God Who Sends
  5. Blessed for the Nations
  6. Jesus and the Nations
  7. From Jerusalem to the Ends of the Earth
  8. What Does It Mean for the Mission to Be “Finished”?
  9. How Christianity Became Global
  10. From Apostles to a World Faith
  11. Mission, Empire, and the Modern Missionary Movement
  12. Christianity Moves South and East
  13. From “The West to the Rest” to “Everywhere to Everywhere”
  14. Mapping the Unfinished Mission
  15. What Does “Unreached” Actually Mean?
  16. Where Gospel Access Remains Least
  17. The Many Muslim Worlds
  18. South Asia: Religion, Caste, and Community
  19. Beyond the Religious Label
  20. The Secular and Post-Christian Frontier
  21. The Language and Scripture Frontier
  22. Cities, Migration, and the Moving Mission Field
  23. Why the Gaps Persist
  24. The Allocation Problem
  25. The Hard Places
  26. The Distance Problem
  27. When Mission Becomes Peripheral
  28. The Calling Question
  29. The Problem of Short Horizons
  30. When Mission Goes Wrong
  31. What Faithful Mission Requires Now
  32. The Local Church as the Missionary Horizon
  33. Contextualization: Faithful Gospel, Local Form
  34. Local Ownership and Global Partnership
  35. Missionary Formation and Member Care
  36. New Pathways Into the Missionary World
  37. The Whole Church and the Unfinished Mission
  38. Conclusion: Faithful Until the End
  39. Methodological Note: Statistics, Categories, and Source Freeze
  40. Glossary
  41. Selected Bibliography

Publication

Selected Bibliography

~3 min read

Andrade, Nathanael J. The Journey of Christianity to India in Late Antiquity: Networks and the Movement of Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Orbis Books, 1991.

Escobar, Samuel. The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone. InterVarsity Press, 2003.

Etherington, Norman, ed. Missions and Empire. Oxford University Press, 2005.

Hanciles, Jehu J. Migration and the Making of Global Christianity. Eerdmans, 2021.

Hay, Rob, et al., eds. Worth Keeping: Global Perspectives on Best Practice in Missionary Retention. William Carey Publishing, 2007.

Keener, Craig S. Acts: An Exegetical Commentary. 4 vols. Baker Academic, 2012–2015.

McGavran, Donald A. The Bridges of God. World Dominion Press, 1955.

Moo, Douglas J. The Letter to the Romans. 2nd ed. Eerdmans, 2018.

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans, 1989.

———. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Rev. ed. Eerdmans, 1995.

Robert, Dana L. Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

Sanneh, Lamin. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. 2nd ed. Orbis Books, 2009.

Schnabel, Eckhard J. Early Christian Mission. 2 vols. InterVarsity Press, 2004.

Stanley, Brian. The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Apollos, 1990.

Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith. Orbis Books, 1996.

Welsby, Derek A. The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia: Pagans, Christians and Muslims along the Middle Nile. British Museum Press, 2002.

Wilken, Robert Louis. The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity. Yale University Press, 2012.

Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission. Zondervan Academic, 2010.

———. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. 2nd ed. IVP Academic, 2025.

Contemporary Data and Reference Sources

International Mission Board. PeopleGroups.org. Definitions, people-group research, and engagement categories.

Joshua Project. Global people-group counts, definitions, frontier and unengaged-unreached datasets. Accessed August 2026.

Lausanne Movement. State of the Great Commission. 2024.

———. The Seoul Statement. 2024.

———. Global Voices Report. October 2025.

Open Doors International. World Watch List 2026 and methodological documentation. 2026.

Pew Research Center. How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020. June 9, 2025.

———. More Countries Had Elevated Levels of Social Hostilities Involving Religion in 2023. June 15, 2026.

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. International Migrant Stock 2024: Key Facts and Figures. 2025.

———. World Urbanization Prospects 2025. 2025.

United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. 2026 Annual Report. 2026.

World Christian Database / Center for the Study of Global Christianity. Status of Global Christianity, 2026, in the Context of 1900–2075. 2026.

Wycliffe Global Alliance / ProgressBible. Global Scripture Access statistics. Updated August 2026.

World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission. Contemporary mission, partnership, and locally centered mission resources. Accessed August 2026.