The UNARGUABLE FACTS

-by Doug Perry. [Kansas City businessman]

Forgive Us, God!! Big Government. Big Business. Big Oil. Big Tobacco.

BIG CHURCH. The Church has become part of the problem.

We're not living like Christ. Of course they think we're hypocrites - because we ARE! Forgive us, God. "Scarey Stats"

We fully expect you to stomp away mad, but you might want to consider that our only effort here is to point out facts about how big the problem has gotten.

This is a compilation of the scariest, most embarrassing, most shocking statistics and information about the Church and it's affairs. Somebody is going to have to stand before Jesus one day and explain their role in this. We don't want it to be us - or you.

We don't quote anything haphazardly without having good documentation and sources.

The FACTS:

38 countries are primarily unevangelized. (i.e. 1.6 billion souls)

Assets of the Church:

US Christians control TRILLIONS in assets while at any given time

200,000,000 Brothers and Sisters starve.

78 countries each have Great Commission Christians whose personal incomes exceed US$1 billion a year.

Financial Fraud in the Church:

Annual church embezzlements by top custodians exceed the entire cost of all foreign missions worldwide. Emboldened by lax procedures, trusted church treasurers are embezzling from the Church $5,500,000 PER DAY. That's $16 Billion per YEAR!{For reference: TOTAL Christian spending on foreign missions is only $15 billion. God forgive us!}

Criminal penalties against clergy in sexual abuse cases now exceed $1 billion, causing a number of churches, dioceses and denominations to be forced into bankruptcy.

Wasteful Spending by the Church:

· 95% of all church budgets in the US are spent on our own comforts and programs. Less than 1% is spent on evangelism to the most unreached.

· 40% of the church's entire global foreign mission resources are being deployed to just 10 over saturated countries already possessing strong citizen-run home ministries

· More than 90% of all Christian materials are in English, but only 8% of the world speaks English.

· All costs of ministry divided by number of baptisms per year. Cost per baptism in India - $9803 per person.

· Cost per baptism in the United States - $1,550,000 per person.

· Every year the churches hold a megacensus costing $1.1 billion, sending out 10 million questionnaires in 3,000 languages, which covers 180 major religious subjects

· 91% of all Christian outreach/evangelism does not target non- Christians but targets other Christians in already-evangelized countries or people-groups.

· Each year,180 million Bibles and New Testaments are wasted - lost, destroyed, or disintegrated - due to incompetence, hostility, bad planning, or inadequate manufacture.

Missions and the Church:

· Some 250 of the 300 largest international Christian organizations regularly mislead the Christian public by publishing demonstrably incorrect or falsified progress statistics.

· Christian triumphalism - not as pride in huge numbers, but as publicized self-congratulation - is rampant in most churches, agencies, and ministries.

· It costs Christians 700 times more money to baptize converts in rich countries (eg. Switzerland) than in poor countries (eg. Nepal).

· Percent of Christian resources in countries that are already more than 60% Christian - 99.9%. Percent spent in countries where less than half the people have EVER heard of Jesus - 0.01%.

· It is estimated that Christians worldwide spend around $8 BILLION dollars PER YEAR going to the more than 500 conferences to TALK about missions. That's more than TWICE the total spent DOING missions.

· Everywhere on Earth can now easily be targeted with at least 3 of the 45 varieties of effective evangelism.

· 818 unevangelized ethnolinguistic peoples have never been targeted by any Christian agencies ever.

· Out of 648 million Great Commission Christians, 70% have never been told about the world's 1.6 billion unevangelized individuals.

· The 3 least cost-effective countries over 1 million in population for Christian outreach are: Japan, Switzerland, Denmark.

· The 3 most cost-effective countries over 1 million in population for Christian outreach are: Mozambique, Ethiopia, Tanzania.

Denominations of the Church:

· Currently there are over 33,000 Christian denominations in the United States.

· A huge new Christian nonconfessional megabloc, the Independents or Postdenominationalists, is growing rapidly and numbers 19% of all Christians.

· These 386 million Independents in 220 countries have no interest in and no use for historic denominationalist Christianity.

· From less than one million in AD 1900, Pentecostals/ Charismatics / Neocharismatics have mushroomed to 524 million affiliated (-with unaffiliated believers, 602 million).

Growth of the Church:

· The country with the fastest Christian expansion ever is China, now at 10,000 new converts every day.

Persecution of the Church:

· More than 70% of all Christians now live in countries where they are experiencing persecution. In some cases EXTREME persecution.

Global Population Issues:

· 124 million new souls begin life on Earth each year, but Christianity's

· 4,000 foreign mission agencies baptize only 4 million new persons a year

Unreached Peoples:

· Out of 648 million Great Commission Christians, 70% have never been told about world's 1.6 billion unevangelized individuals.

· Despite Christ's command to evangelize the world, 67% of all humans from AD 30 to the present have never even heard of his name.

Martyrdom:

· Over the last 20 centuries, and in all 238 countries, more than 70 million

· Christians have been martyred - killed, executed, murdered - for Christ.

· More Christians have been martyred in the last 100 years than all other years since AD 30 combined. Had Enough Yet?

It gets worse.

· We’re stuffing the Fattest and starving the Hungriest!

This is meant to be just a plain, direct reporting of how miserably, horribly, devastatingly badly we – the Christians in the West – have mismanaged the massive.

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· gifts which God has entrusted to us

Doug Perry. [Visit his website- http://whathavewedone.org

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[Sources: 1) An AD 2001 reality check: 50 new facts and figures about trends and issues concerning empirical global Christianity today. (from Table 1-1 in World Christian Trends, William Carey Library, David Barrett & Todd Johnson.)

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