Three Percent of the World...

Three percent of the world's population resides in a country other than the one where they were born - more than 175 million people - reports the United Nations Population Division in a paper on International Migration 2002 (as reported in Business 2.0 magazine, February 2003, scroll down toward the bottom of the page).

The new UN data shows that almost 10% of the people in economically developed nations are now migrants.

The U.S. gained 1,250,000 immigrants in 2002; the U.K. gained 95,000, the report says, whereas China lost 381,000 emigrants, India 280,000 and Kazakhstan 200,000.

What this means for frontier mission is that increasingly the world is moving to us, and we'd better be ready for this encounter. Our neighbors are increasingly likely to be first-generation immigrants from countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Bangladesh, Korea, and China (as are my own immediate neighbors). We Christians have new opportunities to stand as witnesses of Christ before these actual neighbors who, in many cases, have never met an actual Christian.

Recently one Muslim neighbor and I were chatting, and I mentioned that I have the complete Koran on my Palm PDA, and that I'm trying to read through it to gain a better understanding of Islam. He replied, "If you have the Koran on your Palm, you are a much better Muslim than I am!" And so the conversation stage is set. Let's encourage each other to be ready to be "frontier missionaries" - and ambassadors of Christ - to the world moving to us.