Hi, someone told me that there is quite a big difference between the number of males and females working as full-time missionaries overseas (i.e. significantly more females)...but i can't find any stats to back up the claim...anyone know? and while we're at it...anyone got any other interesting, surprising, shocking missions stats / facts? thanks ;-)
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I am responsible for looking after 53 missionaries. Barrett & Johnson were right - 54% of them are female (counting wives/mums as missionaries). However, of the single ones, 86% are female. Go figure!
No the Barrett/ Johnson findings don't reflect my experience at all. I have a theory- as most of the men in missions are married, perhaps their wives are counted "wife and Mum" rather than "missionary". That is the only way I can justify that figure.
Interesting stats? Wilma Davies of All Nations says that countries with the highest numbers of those reporting themselves as Christian are first the US, second Brazil, third China, and fourth Nigeria. Percentages would figure differently (Brazil is 98% and China just 5.7%) so Korea isn't in the top ten although it is at 35%. As she said of the growing church in the "global south", "Although mostly small and poor, it is enormous and rich!"
In many places and kinds of work there are many more women than men... but if you add together all kinds of missionaries everywhere the trend is not so strong, as Mike points out. Wonder how they get those figures? But here are some more anecdotal things I used in a paper on the topic. (You can forgive my Americanisms, I hope.)
A. The Significant Presence of Women in Missions
In spite of the challenges women in many times and places have faced by following God’s call in missions, they have followed him in numbers. By 1910 more women than men were serving in missions. (1) In the coming years the numbers of women would continue to climb until women in some areas outnumbered men by 2:1. (2) Statistical studies on the topic are few, but one in the late 1980s, a survey of 19 mission agencies representing 20,333 missionaries, showed that 56 percent of them were women, with unmarried women outnumbering unmarried men six to one. (3) A more recent report, from 2002, found that some 54 percent of Southern Baptists’ 5,241 missionaries were women, about a fourth of them single. (4)
In short-term missions as well as in situations that are considered too dangerous to send families, including many areas with a Muslim majority, the foreign mission force is composed largely of workers who are single, and a majority of these laborers are women. Representatives of Frontiers, which works solely in the Muslim world, report that they are seeing women respond to the call in great numbers. In 2002 women comprised 75 percent of their short-term team applicants. (5)
Anecdotal evidence produces similar numbers. In a 2002 personal interview, a woman working with Operation Mobilization reported that of the 100 people working with her agency in one Asian country, 60 were women and 40 were men; and in ratios that seem fairly typical, these included 35 married couples, 25 single women, and five single men. Colleagues currently studying in Yemen say the expatriate community in their city includes 26 couples, two single men, and 21 single women. We must conclude that women have a significant presence in the mission force: not that of a minority, but a majority.
(1) Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya (Grand Rapids: MI, 1983), p. 232.
(2) Tucker, p. 232.
(3) Howard Erickson, “Single Missionary Survey,” Fundamentalist Journal, January 1989, p. 27, cited in John Piper’s Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), p. 23. The foreword to this book, which addresses single men and women, includes some very helpful thinking on the topic of singleness and includes thoughts from a number of single missionaries throughout history.
(4) Mary Jane Welch, “Obedient and Faithful,” The Commission 65:5 (July-August 2002), p. 8. Also available at www.archives.tconline.org/Stories/JulyAug02/obedient.htm. The Commission is the magazine of the International Missions Board, the mission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Most of the articles in this issue deal with missionary women serving in challenging mission fields.
(5) Frontiers, www.frontiers.org, accessed March 15, 2004.
I have seen a statistics that much denomination has only biological growth and migratory growth.
but what is required in Mission is exponential growth or geometric growth like 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048 and on and on. Much of the so called people who want to substitute the message of the cross with their sugar coated talk and activity do have growth which fades away quickly. Any growth needs to be sustained and organic-self multiplying or else it is for a short time man driven. Unless the Lord build the House the laborers labor in vain.
consultant.stephen@gmail.com http://www.discipleshipcentre.org.in
Really? Now that's surprising, and doesn't reflect my experience at all! Most of the missionaries I know are married, then there are a substantial number of single women missionaries among my friends and I, personally, only know one single man on the field...
Shocking mission stats/facts?
Hi, someone told me that there is quite a big difference between the number of males and females working as full-time missionaries overseas (i.e. sig…
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Interesting stats? Wilma Davies of All Nations says that countries with the highest numbers of those reporting themselves as Christian are first the US, second Brazil, third China, and fourth Nigeria. Percentages would figure differently (Brazil is 98% and China just 5.7%) so Korea isn't in the top ten although it is at 35%. As she said of the growing church in the "global south", "Although mostly small and poor, it is enormous and rich!"
but what is required in Mission is exponential growth or geometric growth like 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048 and on and on. Much of the so called people who want to substitute the message of the cross with their sugar coated talk and activity do have growth which fades away quickly. Any growth needs to be sustained and organic-self multiplying or else it is for a short time man driven. Unless the Lord build the House the laborers labor in vain.
consultant.stephen@gmail.com http://www.discipleshipcentre.org.in
Really? Now that's surprising, and doesn't reflect my experience at all! Most of the missionaries I know are married, then there are a substantial number of single women missionaries among my friends and I, personally, only know one single man on the field...