"From Melting Pot to Mission Field: United States Ripe for Cross-Cultural Harvest"

by Matt Walberg

Rapid growth in immigration to the United States by people from countries outside Europe may force many mission agencies to develop outreaches within the North American nation. While legal immigration dropped 13 percent to 800,000 people in 1997, a recent study conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies based on U.S.. Census Bureau statistics showed the number of immigrants living in the U.S.. has nearly tripled since 1970.

The study also showed that the 1990s are likely to become the highest decade of immigration in the history of the country.

In addition, many of those immigrating to the United States come from countries outside the Judeo-Christian background associated with Western Europe.

Roy Oksnevad, acting director of the Billy Graham Research Center's Institute for Muslim Studies, says cross-cultural missions within the United States was not as prevalent or needed decades ago, since the bulk of those immigrating to the United States were coming from cultures where there was a strong Christian influence.

Today, however, many immigrants are from countries where Buddhism, Islam or Hinduism is the prevailing religious tradition.
"We need to rethink missions," Oksnevad says. "We're actually needing cross-culturally trained and language-trained missionaries right here [in the United States]."

As more people from diverse ethnic, political and social backgrounds make the U.S. their home, the potential for society to fragment will grow, explains SIM Ethnic Focus Ministry director David Ripley.

According to Ripley, some experts predict there will be no dominant ethnic group in the U.S. by the middle of the next century, greatly increasing the potential for fragmentation. Without the unity Christ brings, the United States may experience the kind of civil war and unrest currently seen in the former Yugoslavia, Ripley says.

Oksnevad says cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Houston and Toronto, Canada, are seeing rapid increases in Muslim populations, as men and women from Indonesia, India, Pakistan and the Middle East immigrate to North America.

According to Oksnevad, there is a real need for people trained as cross-cultural missionaries to reach the first generation of immigrants from these nations and develop a strong church within the communities.

While there is a sizable number of Arabic-speaking Christians who can minister directly within their nationalities, few ethnic Christians exist within communities where languages such as Urdu are spoken, Oksnevad says.

As the world continues to change and as people groups move and shift, Oksnevad believes mission agencies will be forced to adapt and innovate in order to be effective. And the perception that the U.S. will continue to be primarily a "sending" country will have to change. "As far as the United States growing as a mission field, that is a reality," Oksnevad says.

This article is reprinted with permission from the March 1999 issue of World Christian magazine, a quarterly publication that exists to inform, encourage, provoke and mobilize this generation in obedience to the Great Commission. Copyright 1999 by WINPress. All rights reserved. Subscriptions are $14.95 per year in the United States, $19.95 in Canada and $27.95 in all other countries. To subscribe, call 708-524-5070 or e-mail WINPress7@aol.com.