The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) is not just a great idea, it is a commandment. It is the last message Jesus left to the disciples before he ascended into heaven. As Jesus was about to leave the earth in bodily form he made this last statement so it would be fresh on the minds of his followers to be sure it was not neglected. So if you claim membership in the Royal Priesthood of the order of Melchizedek, citizenship in the kingdom of heaven, heirship to the throne who's name is written in the book of life, don't you think it is appropriate you do your part in fulfilling this command? Remember the parable of the minas; Luke 19:12-26. If we want to have places prepared for us that where he is we may be also, God expects us to be productive and steward this command righteously to expand the hegemony of his kingdom before his return.Â
To completely fund the completion of the Great Commission, missiologists estimate that a reallocation shift of less than 1% of total Christian income, or a redistribution of roughly 15% to 20% of existing global mission budgets, is required. [1, 2]
Because global Christians collectively earn trillions of dollars annually, the financial "gap" to fund frontier missions is surprisingly small. Research from the Joshua Project, The Traveling Team, and Radical breaks down the specific shifts needed across different giving metrics: [1, 2, 3]
1. Shift Within the Existing Missions Budget
The Current State: Out of roughly $45 billion to $75 billion spent globally on "foreign missions," only about 1.7% ($1.4 billion) goes to Unreached People Groups (UPGs). The other 98.3% stays in areas that are already heavily evangelized. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Required Shift: Missiologists estimate that the baseline cost to deploy enough frontier workers to establish a self-sustaining church network in every UPG is roughly $4 billion to $5 billion annually. [1]
The Needed Percentage Shift: Churches and mission agencies would only need to reallocate roughly 6% to 10% of existing global mission funds away from reached countries and directly into frontier, unreached areas. [1, 2]
2. Shift Within Total Church Giving
The Current State: Out of every dollar a believer puts into a church basket, about 82% stays within the four walls of the local building (salaries, facilities, utilities). Only 0.1% to 1% of total church budgets ever reaches a UPG. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The Required Shift: To cover the $4+ billion baseline without touching local staff salaries, local churches would need to adjust their internal budgets so that just 4% to 5% of total church giving is intentionally locked for UPGs. [1, 2]
3. Shift Within Total Christian Income
The Current State: Global Christians earn over $42 trillion annually, yet give only a fraction of a percent of their total earnings to unreached fields (about $1 out of every $100,000 earned). [1, 2]
The Required Shift: Data published via Bethany Global University indicates that if evangelical Christians shifted just 0.03% of their total personal income specifically toward church planting in UPGs, the Great Commission would be fully funded. Put another way, it requires an extra $6.63 for every $10,000 a Christian earns to fully back the necessary workforce. [1, 2]
The consensus among global missions strategists is that finishing the Great Commission does not require a financial miracle; the global church already holds roughly 14,000 times the resources needed. It simply requires a strategic awareness shift to fix the distribution bottleneck. [1]
If you are interested, we can look closer at how the missionary workforce itself is split between reached and unreached areas, or explore strategic giving models used by modern networks to fund native church planters directly. [1]