Multiply Missions
Offering 2025

Worldwide mission work has seen phenomenal success in the past two centuries. In my lifetime alone, the absolute number of believers has soared. In 1965, 90 million people identified themselves as evangelical believers. Today, that total is almost seven times higher at 625 million. Adjusting for population growth, this means that the percentage of evangelical believers has increased by nearly 280 percent in only sixty years!

Additionally, the number of countries with an established evangelical presence has exploded. In 1800, 99 percent of all known evangelical believers lived in Europe and North America. Today, the majority live in Africa, Latin America, or Asia—a direct result of mission work in these regions. If current trends hold, 85 percent of all evangelicals worldwide will be from the global south by 2050.

In the early 2000s, RI shifted our focus from Latin America to unreached people groups in northern Africa, the Middle East, and southeast Asia. In these locations, where Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are firmly entrenched in cultural and familial structures, sharing the gospel has been very tough going. Most people are quite resistant to the gospel and not as quick to respond in faith as nominal Roman Catholics or people from traditional animistic religions have been. Our workers can labor for decades and only see a few people come to faith. In the midst of closed hearts and few followers, it can be easy to wonder if the fruit is commensurate with the effort.

Dear brothers and sisters—it is so worth it! As Samuel Zwemer, the “Apostle to Islam,” wrote in 1911, “Does it really matter how many die, or how much money we spend opening closed doors and occupying different fields, if we really believe that missions are warfare and the King’s glory is at stake?” We should not be surprised at how hard things are. After all, in His first parable, Jesus warned us that three-fourths of our efforts would fail—choked by thornbushes or fallen on shallow soil and rocky ground. Yet we know that when seed falls on good soil, it produces 30, 60, or 100-fold what was sown, overwhelming our losses elsewhere.

The church of Jesus Christ is doing extremely well in the parts of the world where missionaries took the gospel two hundred years ago. Yes, two centuries is a long time to spend removing rocks, tilling soil, and planting seeds—but look at the harvest! Jesus is building His church, even when our labor is slow to produce fruit. Jesus is building His church, and the gates of Hell are not able to prevail against it.

I invite you to take this centuries-long view of missions, undeterred by short-term setbacks or slow initial progress. I implore you to join RI’s work as a sacrificial sender, willing to invest your earthly treasure toward a spiritual victory. You can do so through a contribution to the MultiplyMissions Offering—in person at Multiply Conference, via mail, or directly online at rosedaleinternational.org/mmo. Your financial support allows our workers to press forward for the glory of the soon-coming King, who is infinitely worthy of every sacrifice.

In Jesus,

Jerry
Vice President of Finance

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