In my recent readings of scripture, two texts, one Johaninne and the other Petrine, have really grabbed my attention and cemented my personal resolve for speeding up the completion of the Lord Jesus’ Great Commission to His Church, the very reason Kwiverr exists.
First, John
In revisiting John 4, Jesus’ disciples return with some fast food for lunch and find him chatting with a Samaritan woman; they urge him to eat something. Jesus, however, responds thus, “…I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples say to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” Jesus then releases this banger of a response: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:32-34). In other words, Jesus’ survival, sustenance and satiation, his nourishment and fulfillment came from not only carrying out God’s will (the missio Dei) but also finishing the mission of God. While I hear a lot of Christians wanting to do God’s will, I rarely hear them speak of finishing it.
Finishing His will doesn’t mean God’s desires or purposes run out. Finishing His will for us is the gospel of the kingdom of God preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations (people groups), and then the end will come (Matthew 24:14). And that, is doable; that, is finishable, under God. We know there are 17,400 people groups in the world. We know 10,000 of them have been reached with the gospel and 7,400 remain unreached. It has taken us 2,000 years to reach 60% of them, let’s finish the remaining 40% in this era of supersonic air travel, ubiquitous social media and all kinds of other incredible technology, including AI tools! What are we waiting for? One of our core values at Kwiverr, therefore, is ‘finishing the finishables!’
Then Peter
The Petrine scripture I also came across almost concurrently was from 2 Peter 3:12. Apostle Peter had just made clear that what seems like a whole millennium of ‘slowness’ of God is just the equivalent of one day in His sight and that rather than slackness, this was God’s patience at work, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to be saved. Reminding believers that the Day of the Lord will come unexpectedly with full destruction of the elements and the earth by fire, he then pulls out this admonition like a warrior does his sword from its sheath: “… You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming” (2 Peter 3:11-12). Again, countless Christians I know seek to live holy and godly lives in anticipation of the day of God but do not seem to realize they can actually hasten its coming! From my Chemistry days I can tell that right there is a catalyst, “a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change.” In general parlance, a person or thing that precipitates an action or event is called a catalyst. Christians can be catalysts to speed the return of Christ!
Kwiverr Combines John and Peter
At Kwiverr, finishing the task of world evangelization and closing the Great Commission is our raison d’être. World evangelization is “The effort to ensure that every person on Earth has the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.” The Great Commission is “a modern nickname for mission. It comes from the mandate of the resurrected Jesus Christ to His disciples, sending them to spread the gospel to all creation and make disciples of all nations as His witnesses in the power of His Spirit, just as the Father sent Him” (Perbi & Ngugi, Africa to the Rest 2022, xxiv).
Our vision is ”to see ministries to/by/with internationals, locally and globally, become disciple-making-leader-forming-church-planting-marketplace-impacting movements to close the Great Commission within our lifetime.” Consequently, we are on a mission to “drive deep reflection and radical research into paradigms and praxes, and in spaces, that catalyze ministries into movements to leave no people or place unreached.”
Everyone and Everything Christian Should
The mission of God cannot be additive anymore; it ought to be multiplicative and even exponential. We need every mission component in movement mode: prayer movements, disciplemaking movements, church-planting movements, leader-forming movements, marketplace-impacting movements. This is because at the fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Seoul, Korea in 2024 (September 22-28), we were reminded that Christianity’s share of world’s population is about a third, and has remained static–or is it stagnant?—at that same mark for over 100 years! In fact, it would’ve significantly shrunk but for the tremendous growth of the Global South.
In 1910, 66 percent of the world’s Christians lived in Europe; today only 26 percent live in Europe. The Global North (defined as Europe and Northern America) contained over 80 percent of all Christians in 1910 falling to under 40 percent by 2010. And in 1910, less than 2 percent of all Christians lived in Africa, but 100 years later, that number had jumped to 20 percent of global Christianity (Christian Post). And today, Africa is the continent with the most Christ followers in the world.
Peter Crossing of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity submits that, “This 100-year shift is the most dramatic in Christian history.” But what has not changed is where the financial resources are, it is claimed. According to Crossing, “Finances are still firmly in the (global) North; 60 percent of Christians live in the South, but they have only 17 percent of Christian income” (Christian Post).
Conclusion of the Matter
Irrespective of which side of the equator the manpower or moneypower is dominant today for Christ’s missionary mandate, only those with mindsets to mobilize movements and catalyze the call to complete the task of world evangelization—thus speeding the coming of Christ and his perfect reign on earth—will matter. It’s time not just to do God’s will but to finish it. It’s time not just to look forward to the return of the Lord but to speed up its coming.
That’s where catalysts come in. For where there is a will there’s a way, even with no money or few men. And in this case, especially when beyond human capacity or currency there is the agency and urgency of the Spirit of Pentecost who makes us empowered witnesses to the Christ event to the ends of the earth. He is the Catalyst-in-Chief. There’s no stopping us now. Yes, you can! Yes, under God, we finish the task and hasten the Lord’s return to reign and rule on earth as He does in Heaven. Only if we are awake and aware, wise and willing.
https://www.globalrize.org/globalrize-ranking-2024-the-unreached-in-seven-world-regions/
https://joshuaproject.net/resources/articles/has_everyone_heard