Executive Editor’s Note: In the March 18 and March 25 issues of the Baptist Trumpet, the first two articles in this series traced how Europe became a launching point for global missions and how it later became a mission field itself. In this third installment, Derrick Bremer challenges us to rethink how we define “strategic” missions today, calling attention to places where the gospel’s absence carries global influence.
When William Carey stood before his Baptist colleagues in 1792 and pleaded for the evangelization of India, he did so with remarkable logic. The man was equally passionate and practical. “If we are commanded to make disciples of all nations,” he reasoned, “then we must go where most nations and people groups are.” India is teeming with people and languages, and that’s where Carey went. His appeal launched the modern missionary movement and gave churches a template for missionary strategy that has endured for centuries — follow the population, reach the unreached.
That logic was sound for his generation. But what if Carey were standing before us today? Would he still point only to places with the largest population? I believe the question we should be asking is: “Where does the gospel’s absence have the greatest global impact?”
Carey’s Strategy and Ours
Carey’s genius was in his time spent calculating. He studied maps, listed world religions, gathered statistics, and compared resources. Much of his time on the mission field was spent studying language within the mission community he helped build.
For more than 200 years, his numbers-based thinking defined “strategic missions.” In the 20th century, that framework matured into what many call the 10/40 Window, the global belt spanning North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, where most unreached people groups live. Rightly so, that rectangle of latitude and longitude has claimed our attention, as billions still live without access to the gospel.
We have an opportunity to build on the work being done in this important region by leveraging Carey’s strategic thinking. Ultimately, Carey’s principal appeal was to go where the need and potential impact were greatest. So, let’s extend his reasoning beyond geography and into influence.
The Places That Shape the World
When one nation sneezes, others catch a cold. In our age of media, finance, technology, and politics, culture spreads faster than people. The ideas that shape nations are exported daily through screens, policies, and purchasing habits. In that sense, the West carries enormous global influence — perhaps more than any other region.
London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Geneva may no longer be centers of Christian faith, but they remain centers of cultural production. Decisions made in those cities echo across the globe. The books people read in Nairobi, the music they stream in São Paulo, and the university model they follow in Seoul are all influenced by Western thought.
If the gospel is absent from the conversation in those influential hubs, the vacuum they leave is multiplied worldwide. Spiritual darkness doesn’t stay there — it spreads. Using Carey’s logic, that means the spiritual condition of Western Europe affects far more than Europe itself.
A Word of Caution for a Strategic Need
Affirming Europe’s need does not diminish the importance of mission work in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East. The church can walk and chew gum at the same time. The harvest is vast, and Christ’s command was “to the ends of the earth,” not, “to the ends of one window on a map.”
Every missionary generation has its blind spots. Ours may be the assumption that the West is either “reached” or self-sufficient. Together, we should recognize that from Belgium to Scotland, from Spain to the Czech Republic, millions live without a single known believer in their neighborhood or workplace.
To ignore that mission field because its people seem privileged is to misread the spiritual landscape. Sin and lostness do not disappear with literacy or indoor plumbing. The need is simply harder to spot. Recognizing that need leads to a closer look at where influence gathers today, the growing network of global cities.
The Rise of the “Global City”
In recent years, churches have begun addressing this reality through “international city” missions. They send teams to global crossroads where migrants, students, and professionals mix. The logic is the same I’m advocating — reach the influencers, then reach the networks they shape.
And it’s working. Churches are planting in London’s immigrant corridors, in Frankfurt’s business districts, and on university campuses across Europe. These efforts bless the global church and re-energize the missionary imagination.
But there’s a gap — one Carey himself might have noticed. While we focus on the cosmopolitan centers, countless smaller towns and villages across Western Europe remain gospel-deprived. The backroads, not the boulevards, are where culture quietly takes shape and endures for generations.
Backwoods and Boulevards
The gospel has often traveled fastest through pathways of quiet faithfulness. The early Celtic missionaries traveled along the coasts and through forests, building small communities of prayer before reaching the cities. The Reformation spread through rural preachers and printing presses as much as through university pulpits. Even in America, revival began in the woods and townships before it moved to urban halls.
We need missionaries who thrive in global cities and those willing to settle in the backwoods — pastors, planters, and neighbors who live long among the people, share meals, and patiently proclaim truth one household at a time.
It’s a dangerous road to travel when we force ourselves to decide between strategy and presence. The strategy is integrating both. The gospel must echo from cathedrals and cafes and whisper through farmhouses and forgotten villages alike.
The Unavoidable Confrontation
Carey’s India confronted him with temple prostitution, caste divisions, and widow burning. Those systems cried out for the transforming power of the gospel. The West’s idols — materialism as identity, freedom without morality, and social welfare as salvation — are no less real.
Missionaries must speak the same daring truth as Carey. No human system, however humane, can redeem — only Christ can. Christians called to Europe must expose counterfeit hopes with the light of grace. That confrontation will not be welcomed, but neither was it in Carey’s India.
Finishing What Carey Started
Carey’s appeal began with the conviction that the Great Commission was binding. His courage lay in obedience. If we share his conviction, we should have the same courage to expand our vision to where spiritual need intersects moral influence.
The effort to reach Western Europe seeks to ensure that the cultures shaping the modern world are once again shaped by the gospel.
Christ’s command remains our measure — “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19 ESV). That includes the crowds of Asia and the cafes of France, the villages of India and the valleys of Italy, the cities that export culture and the backwoods that preserve it.
Missions today must rebalance the strategy beyond the 10/40 Window because there is no place on earth beyond the reach of grace.
