On servants, stewards, revival and the greatest Gospel advance

Dear friends,

I hope you’ve been encouraged and challenged by this newsletter so far. Your feedback means the world to me — I’d love to hear from you! Simply reply to this email and let me know your thoughts.

Here are your bullets: thoughts, concepts, and questions to guide your leadership in mission, discipleship, and renewal.

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1. On servants, stewards:

“This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”

— 1 Corinthians 4:1-2

“There have been times of late when I have had to hold on to one text with all my might:‘It is required in stewards that a man may be found faithful.’ Praise God, it does not say successful.”

— Amy Carmichael

As we close out the year, let this sink in: we are servants, we are stewards and faithfulness, not success (in the worldly sense, at least), is what matters most.

The incarnation is the humility of God. The God who didn’t just become a man but humbled Himself to become a servant.

Let’s move into the new year with this truth at the forefront: worldly success is fleeting, but faithfulness to Christ echoes into eternity.

2. On revival and innovation in mission:

“Genuine innovation in mission will require spiritual awakening (charismatics), missiological reflection (theologians), cultural translation (missionaries and planters), technological breakthrough (tool-builders), and structural innovation (entrepreneurs and org builders). We need an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to all of them.”

— Tyler Prieb, Missional labs

See thread on X for more context:

Tyler has also written a great essay on Revival, Renewal and Mission. The big idea of the essay is that spiritual revival → innovation in mission.

“…revivals happen when the shedding of structural baggage and the hunger and desperation of a new generation reaches a fever pitch, centered in prayer and repentance. With that, we can anticipate the upcoming activation of latent missional energy.”

Read more: Revival, Renewal and Mission

3. On true eschatology and missionary obedience:

“The meaning of this ‘overlap of the ages’ in which we live, the time between the coming of Christ and His coming again, is that it is the time given for the witness of the apostolic Church to the ends of the earth. The end of all things, which has been revealed in Christ, is—so to say—held back until witness has been borne to the whole world concerning the judgment and salvation revealed in Christ. The implication of a true eschatological perspective will be missionary obedience, and the eschatology which does not issue in such obedience is a false eschatology.”

— Lesslie Newbigin, Household of God

4. On 50 unbelievable years of Gospel Advance and the remaining task:

Rebecca Lewis, daughter of Ralph Winter, has compiled a booklet of graphs and statistics documenting the “greatest gospel advance in history”. You can find it at Joshua Project.

Fifty years ago, Ralph Winter shook the evangelical world with his concept of “hidden peoples” — emphasizing the urgent need to prioritize cross-cultural missions to those who have never heard the Gospel and lack a self-sustaining indigenous Church movement.

In the five decades since, the Gospel has advanced more than it did in the previous 20 centuries, all the way back to Pentecost.

“Look at the nations and watch— and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.“ — Habakkuk 1:5

Rebecca Lewis writes:

“The greatest gospel advance in history came by focusing on God’s promise to bless all the families of the earth (Galatians. 3:8). At the first Lausanne Congress, in 1974, it was estimated that 60% of humanity lived in roughly 17,000 people groups with no known movements to Jesus and virtually no Christians.

By 2024 these Frontier People Groups had decreased to 5000 groups (25% of humanity). While the global population had doubled, followers of Jesus increased by 400%. The population in the remaining Frontier People Groups decreased by 0.4 billion.“

What GOOD NEWS!

And now the remaining Frontier Mission Task:

More than ever, we need workers and pray-ers with a laser-focus on the frontiers where the Gospel has not gone before.

“Ask of Me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” — Psalm 2:8

The nations are there for the asking. This is why one of the things we do with PEM is a quarterly prayer evening for the unreached. The next one is February 10th, 2025. Let me know if you’d like to join!

5. On the mission-less Church

“Missions are compulsory in a Church by its own high law, if it is to remain a Church. By the law of spiritual life the mission-less Church betrays that it is a Cross-less Church: and it becomes a faithless Church, a mere religious society and finally perhaps a mere cultured clique.”

— P.T. Forsyth

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If you’d like to support our ministry and learn more about how we’re serving the church through preaching and mobilization, let’s connect. Reply to schedule a Zoom meeting—I’d love to share our vision with you!

Thank you for reading!

Timo Anzalone
timoanzalone.com