| No. 10 | [ Home Page ] [ Index ] | August 1991 |
New Editorial: Innumeracy-2 (continued)
Don't be a missiological innumerate!
A tendency to drastically underestimate the frequency of coincidences is typical of innumerates. Consequently they attribute great importance to correspondences of all sorts that they come across without being interested in clear statistical evidence.
Many correspondences simply don't stand up to logic. For example, to be absolutely certain that at least two people have the same birthday you would need to gather 367 people (366 days if you count February 29 and one more person in case everyone gathered matches one day of the year each). What if you only wanted to be 50% certain of this fact_ It would seem logical that 183 or half of 366 would be the answer. But the answer is 23. In other words, if you randomly gather 23 people, half the time two will share a birthday. This is perhaps obvious only to the numerate who work with probabilities.
People also confuse correspondence with causation. For example, it has been found that where people drink more milk the cancer rate is much higher. One might deduce that drinking milk causes cancer, but this is not so. As it turns out wealthier people with health-threatening lifestyles also drink more milk. The side effects of affluence cause the cancer.
Innumeracy is often the result of two misconceptions. First, the impression that mathematics is cold and abstract. This tends to be true in pure mathematics but is not generally true when one thinks of the myriad of daily experiences built around numbers and math (counting change, reading sports statistics, cooking with precise amounts of ingredients, calculating how long it will take to get somewhere, etc).
Second is the feeling that numbers somehow depersonalize humansdiminishing their individuality. Quite to the contrary, if you think about it, identification numbers enhance individuality by their unique nature. There may be two John Smiths, or Muhammed Alis, or Wan Lees, but they all have unique ID numbers.
Others are concerned that statistics will somehow predetermine our future. But normally, rather than constraining, they empoweras tools to be used for anyone who knows how and has some application that requires them.
Mission at a standstill
Totaling over 7.2 million, the Uygurs are the third largest of the 55 minority groups in China. There is still no Uygur church though they are found in the USSR, Afghanistan, Australia, Germany, India, Turkey, Indonesia, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the USA. Work is now in progress on a new Uygur New Testament. The question remains whether the relatively large Han Chinese Christian population surrounding the Uygurs in Xinjiang province, the expatriates also working there, and work among the dihtmlora Uygurs will result in them being reached with the good news of Christ (China prayer letter, April-May 1991:1-5).
An urgently-needed paradigm shift
Will the current popularity of the concepts of unreached peoples and the least evangelized peoples result in a paradigm shift or will it continue in the realm of rhetoric_ Everything depends on whether churches and agencies take definitive action that translates into emphasis on these needs. A mission agency's token presence among unreached peoples is a contradiction in terms. These peoples should always represent the first priority of all agencies that are truly mission in character. We know that the paradigm shift has not occurred because even superficial monitoring shows that nearly all agencies are heavily deployed among Christians. Even in that context, the agencies are not taking the logical step of encouraging those Christians to reach out to the least evangelized. All talk of evangelizing the world by the year 2000 is merely that until most agencies deploy most of their personnel among the non-Christian world of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, et alii.
The unknown reptiles of World A
During the Persian Gulf war, biologists discovered that there was no manual in any language on the subject of reptiles and amphibians in the Middle East. A team quickly rushed into print a 175 page identification manual, which included a section on how to treat bites by the 23 species of venomous snakes in the region. Specific anti-venoms are needed for treatment of bites so positive identification of the species is critical. The manual was published by the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles and was underwritten by a grant from the Saudi Arabian government (The chronicle of higher education, Feb. 6, 1991:A5).
Gulf crisis scars higher education
Besides massive physical destruction to 10 universities in Iraq as well as those in Kuwait, many others have lost ground in higher educationparticularly Palestinians. 40 percent of the 19,000 students in Israeli-occupied territories have already had to meet in underground programs. Also, over 500 Palestinians teaching in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf countries now feel unsure of how welcome they will be in the wake of the conflict. Institutions in Egypt and Saudi Arabia are also bound to suffer because of the massive costs of the war. Their ability to fund university programs will be severely limited and universities in Egypt in particular face overcrowding because of fleeing students (The chronicle of higher education, April 3, 1991:A1).
40 countries lose over 1% of GNP as result of Gulf war
Six UK-based relief agencies are calling for help in 40 countries that have suffered the equivalent of a natural disaster as a result of the Gulf war. The U.N. defines this as the point when influences beyond the country's control cause the loss of 1% of the country's GNP. The direct cost of the Persian Gulf conflict to these countries was in excess of $U.S. 12 billion. In 16 countries the impact of the war exceeded two percent GNP; Jordan, Yemen, and Sri Lanka have lost up to a quarter of their GNPs (EPS, 91.03.55).
Irish foreign missionaries
According to a recent survey by the Irish Missionary Union, there are 4,498 Catholic missionaries working at present in 88 developing countries. This number is 9.39% lower than 1986 and 14.2% lower than 1981. (There are 186 missionaries from other Christian churches in Ireland). 73% of the sisters are in Africa. Of the priests, 786 are in South Africa (though 112 are retired), 480 in Nigeria, 447 in Kenya, 233 in the Philippines, and 195 in Brazil (International fides service, March 13, 1991:96).
Third-World Catholics in ad gentes missions
Younger churches in the Third World are already catching the frontier missions vision according to International fides service (March 27, 1991:NE 114). "In the ad gentes missions today there are more than 3,000 missionaries from Latin America, which has also 2 Institutes for Foreign Missions (in Colombia the Xavier Missionaries of Yarumal and in Mexico the Our Lady of Guadalupe Missionaries); over 2,500 missionaries from Asia (Filipinos, Indians, Koreans, etc) which has a number of missionary institutes also ad gentes (3 in India, 1 in the Philippines, 1 in Korea); and a few hundred Africans (Nigerians, Zaireans, Burundians, Ghanaians, Togolese, etc). Nigeria has its own Missionary Institute of St. Paul', and Africa has as well the Congregation of The Apostles of Jesus' with 350 members, and Congregations of Missionary Sisters."
Video conferencing on the rise
Tight budgets and the tense situation in the Persian Gulf gave many companies a good excuse to cut back expensive travel and attempt video conferences. In the U.S. alone 2,500 conference rooms are equipped for video teleconferences. U.S. Sprint rents facilities for those who don't have the equipment. Sprint operates in 29 countries. An hour-long conference call between Miami and Los Angeles costs about $450.00; between the U.S. and London is about $1,000 an hour, U.S. and Tokyo $2,000, and U.S. and Australia about $2,400 (John Naisbitt's trend letter, March 14, 1991:4-5).
Comments on Global Diagram 43
[= World Christian Trends Diagram 45].
This month we give another example of the value of numeracy in mission the need for missions-minded Christians to be mathematically literate. In the diagram opposite, we set out statistics of Christian workers, then using a relatively simple statistical analysis we arrive at startlingeven staggering new conclusions which should profoundly disturb everyone working for world missions. To understand our thesis, all you have to do is to work slowlyat your own paceline by line through the text and the figures until you suddenly see what all the figures mean.
International sharing as a "global blood bank"
In the year 1900, Christianity had 62,000 foreign missionaries. These worked primarily in non-Christian countries. Over the 90 subsequent years, they have quadrupled to become known as the international sharing of personnel in mission. In the process, however, scores of Christian countries are draining this global systemthis "global blood bank"to benefit themselves even though their own home ministries are numerically adequate.
Today the Christian world supports some 4.2 million full-time Christian workersbishops, clergy, ministers, pastors, monks, brothers, sisters, administrators, et alii. Some 285,000 of these are shared among the world's countries as foreign missionaries. We can regard this force as analogous to a blood bank: sending countries donate blood to it, countries in need receive blood from it. Altogether some 100 Christian countries supply personnel, but 45 more supply nothing.
Auditing the role played by each country
The diagram takes a hard look at the 78 major missionary-sending countries of World C (itself defined as all countries with church members over 60%). Each is ranked here by S, its citizen missionaries sent abroad per million of its population. These data (in bold in the center columns) are then shown in the context of 2 additional variables for each country: N (national or citizen Christian workers at home per million), and M (foreign missionaries received from abroad per million).
7 categories of sending, receiving, and sharing countries
The graphic below then classifies countries into 7 categories by how they share out foreign missionaries. (For a colored world map showing how this global system benefits non-Christian countries, see Global Map 5 in World Christian encyclopedia, 1982:867).
3 new categories: donating, draining, and looting countries
The 78 countries can next be further divided into 3 superimposed categories of involvement in world mission: (a) 21 donating countries (nett blood donors, donating more to the global system than they take from it); (b) 20 draining countries (nett blood drainers, taking more from the global system than they contribute to it, though not in unreasonable quantities); and (c) 37 looting countries (nett misusers of the global system by taking vast quantities of blood, quantified as M>350).
The "global blood bank" has been 90% diverted
Our overall conclusion is that the Christian world's foreign missionary enterpriseits elite force of 285,000 professional missionarieswhich is supposed to be the church's cutting edge force for evangelization in contact with the non-Christian world's 3.5 billion non-Christians beyond the church's boundaries, has been largely hijacked, drained, and looted (probably inadvertently) by the 145 strongly-Christian countries in World C. Publicly these all support the goal of foreign missionsto assist the non-Christian world. But in practice 124 of them benefit from the services of more of the world total than they contribute to it. They are ransacking the meager resources of the foreign missionary force in order to prop up their own home ministries.
What can we do to rectify the situation_
Let's get an in-depth discussion going on two basic questions, bearing in mind how small the "global blood bank" is in reality. 1. What sort of countries actually need foreign missionaries_ Of course, there are scores of factors involved. But, as numerate Christians attempting to get help from statistics, let's cut through all these by replying: Countries actually in need of foreign missionaries are those whose citizen home workers per million are very low, less than 150 (N<150). 2. What sort of countries do not need foreign missionaries_ Answer: Countries whose citizen home workers per million are very high, more than 1000 (N>1000, and probably even those with N>500) do not really need the services of foreign missionaries, or should not. Reason: citizen workers are numerous enough to promote Christianity in their own World C countries without siphoning off scarce resources that non-Christian countries need far more.
To familiarize yourself with the many conflicts around the world see A world record of major conflict areas by David Munro and Alan J. Day (St. James Press, 1990, 373 pp., $85.00).
Cities and Caliphs: on the genesis of Arab Muslim urbanism by Nezar Al Sayyad (Greenwood Press, May 1991, $40.00) examines the extraordinary characteristics of Islamic urbanism and the process by which cities were physically transformed by Islamic culture, religion, and its leaders.
Gary L. Ward edits Independent bishops: an international directory (Apogee Books, 1990, 524 pp., $65.00) which documents the tangled web of 19th and 20th century attempts to found churches not connected with major traditions.
Michael J. Crowe provides a compact volume of annotated original documents on the Copernican revolution in Theories of the world from antiquity to the Copernican revolution (Dover, 1990, 229 pp., $5.95).
Finding groups in data: an introduction to cluster analysis by Leonard Kaufman and Peter J. Rousseeuw (Wiley-Interscience, 1990, 342 pp., $49.95) contains many useful exercises and applications in the field of clusteringnow used in artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, medical research, and political science.
In a sophisticated study of American Indian demography, The Cherokees: a population history (Nebraska, 1990, 237 pp., $35.00) by Russell Thornton, the effects of disease, warfare, forced removal and internal political organization on traditional Cherokee culture are examined.
Dr. Philip Stine, Translation Services Coordinator for the United Bible Societies, shows how the presence of the Bible in a culture affects the church in that society in a new book he edits entitled Bible translation and the spread of the church: the last 200 years (E.J. Brill, 1991, 154 pp., $43.00).
Tom Sine's Unleashing a wild hope: a wake-up call to the 21st century (Word, 1991, $12.99) challenges Christian leadership and laity to respond to the problems of the 90s with creativity that expresses biblical hope as opposed to despair.
Tired of the same old cosmology_ See Eric J. Lerner's The big bang never happened (Times Books, 1991, 544 pp., $21.95) for the view that electromagnetic forces on plasma, not gravity, explain the origin of the universe.
If you are only able to read one book on India in your life make it Stanley Wolpert's India (University of California, 1991, 304 pp., $24.95).
In the context of New Age thinking, Marsha Sinetar introduces "positive structuring" techniques to help with problem solving in the future in Developing a 21st-century mind (Villard: Random, 1991, 192 pp., $18.00).
Mister Touch by Malcolm Bosse (Houghton Mifflin, 1991, 502 pp., $21.95) takes you on a post-apocalyptic trip in America after most have been killed by a virus. The story follows the migration of a gang from New York to their new home in Arizona.
On Bedouin Arabs see The Bedouin of Cyrenaica: studies in personal and corporate power by Emyrs Peters edited by Jack Goody and Emanuel Marx (Cambridge University Press, 1991, 320 pp., $47.50).
A guide to remote sensing: interpreting images of the earth by Stephen A. Drury (Oxford University Press, 1990, paper $39.95) shows ordinary readers how to interpret satellite photos of the earth.
Thomas Berger's Changing the past (Penguin, $8.95) is a novel now in paperback. The head copy editor of a New York publisher is offered the chance to change his life by coming back as a millionaire, a comedian, and a talk-show host.
Defining mission
In Missionasia (First quarter 1991:2) the meaning of the term mission is examined from two viewpoints. First, mission is "Christian ministry across cultures". Second, it is "any outreach with an evangelistic purpose, whether cross-cultural or intracultural". It seems to us that both of these definitions miss the essence of mission which concerns the status of the people that is being ministered to. Mission basically must involve Christians making contact with non-Christians, with a definite priority on those furthest from the gospel.
Where does Science news get the news_
Science news editors reveal their primary sources of their stories in the latest issue. Items come in "mostly from scientific meetings and journals; less often from congressional and governmental hearings, tips from scientists themselves and press conferences. We receive more than 300 publications at Science news, many of them peer-reviewed journals. Ordinarily, at least two writers scrutinize each of these publications, searching for significant new findings and emerging trends. Following science where the scientists themselves get information keeps us at the forefront" (Science news, April 13, 1991:227). And so our own methodology goesdoggedly tracking down world evangelization news wherever it can be found.
Expert system congress to be held
The World Congress on Expert Systems will be held in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. from December 16-19, 1991. The congress will provide the first international forum for both scholarly and practical issues in expert systems technology and applications. World leaders in expert systems from the U.S., Canada, Israel, Mexico, Europe, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, Australia, South America, and Africa will present thirteen tutorials, thirty panels, and more than fifty technical paper sessions (AI expert, April 1991:14).
AI on a chip
Artificial intelligence has made a major step from software to hardware. Rex, a product of International Chip Corporation of Columbia, South Carolina, U.S.A., is supposedly the world's first custom microprocessor inference engine. Normally engines are encoded in software but this one is embedded on a chip. It can process 1.67 million expert-system rules in one second. Applications are limitless including a new Optical Character Recognition (OCR) chip that will be able to read two pages of data in one second (AI expert, April 1991:33-38).
Statistical analysis of warfare uncovers interesting trends
In the 1970s researchers at the University of Michigan created a data base to find statistical associations between warfare and various economic, political, and social factors. Today this computerized storehouse of information is called the Correlates of War project. It includes information on 118 wars (defined as conflicts leading to at least 1,000 deaths) and more than 1,000 lesser disputes from the early 1800s to the present. The data shows that both the "peace through military strength" and "peace through military alliances" are seriously flawed assumptionsactually promoting war rather than preventing it. More hopeful findings show that democracies, though often at war with nondemocracies, rarely do so against other democracies (Scientific American, April 1991:25-26).