"Our gathering here every three years is a huge family reunion of those who are completely dedicated to the cause of Christ all over the world in fulfilling our Lord's Great Commission, and those who are inspired and called as a result of their attendance! Our hearts are broken for those who have no access to the Gospel; our minds cannot conceive of the pain and suffering of our persecuted Christian brothers and sisters around the world; and our souls long to have the courage to truly live out an 'unconditional yes' in response to God's callings on our lives."

Keynote speaker Fred Markert said that of the seven billion souls on the planet, 33 percent are Christian, but mostly nominal. Some 38 percent have access to the gospel, but choose not to act on it, with 29 percent having no access to the gospel or a Bible at all. "Only three percent are evangelizing the last group," he told a stunned audience. "Only one out of 1800 missionaries is ministering to this latter group." China recently announced that Christians now number 130 million, outnumbering Communist party members of 70 million."

"One of the top leaders in international relations theory said the 21st century is the growth of the Church of Jesus Christ globally. It's impacting governments and politics. We need to start listening to it. I'm excited when non-believers are recognizing the power of the growth of the Church."

Markert cited Rodney Stark, who as co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, had just released The Triumph of Faith and says that everywhere in the world the Church of Jesus Christ is growing and we're seeing great victories for the Lord Jesus.

"In Thailand, for every 100 Thai people born, 103 people accept Jesus Christ. This is what's happening everywhere in the world. In Thailand, this wasn't true even five years ago. The Church wasn't growing. God is doing an amazing thing.

"I'm an Anglican, I'm also part of the largest Christian mission in the world, it's called Youth With A Mission. We call it Y-WAM for short. In Y-WAM we do a thing called Discipleship Training School (DTS) in that we take young people of all ages. We take these young people through three months of intensive discipleship, followed by two months out in the field in missions. It has become the largest discipleship program in the world. We've discipled more than six million people through this Discipleship Training School.

"We now have a Discipleship Training School (DTS) at my Youth With A Mission center in Colorado Springs, where we train Anglican youth. In 2004, there was great tsunami that hit the Phang Nga Province in Thailand, the most unreached part of Thailand, where there were no churches whatsoever of any kind. When the tsunami hit, we said we need to get people out of our Heroes DTS from our "Heroes Discipleship Training Schools," to train them to be radical Christians in the world.

"Bishop Bill Atwood, of the ACNA International Diocese, my bishop, oversees this particular Discipleship Training School, and he has recognized it as the gold standard of disciplining missionaries and young people."

Looking at the global picture, Markert said that, in 1970, there were 1.2 billion believers globally, but in 2014, there were 2.6 billion. "The Church, the global church, has more than doubled in the past 40 years. It's just amazing. No other religion has experienced that."

Markert said that the numbers of "Spirit-filled" Christians, sometimes called "renewalists" had grown dramatically. In 1970, there were 63 million, but in 2014, there are now 710 million people filled with the Holy Spirit after their conversion. "This is the fastest growing part of the Church. In fact, because of this great growth, renewalists have become 11 times larger in 40 years. This is the growth that is driving the massive expansion of the Kingdom. All the growth in China, all the growth in Africa and all the growth in Latin America, is renewalists or Spirit-filled, or whatever you want to call it."

Markert said that this branch of the Church, is the largest stream of Christianity and will be 75 percent of global Christianity by 2022. God is going to release more of the power of the Holy Spirit on the planet. We're going to see awesome things in the coming years."

The growth of ISIS, and Al-Qaeda, didn't freak him out, because God has prophesized that the knowledge of the Lord will be as deep as the oceans. "This is the Kingdom we're part of; the God we serve."

Markert said that in China, the Chinese leadership recently announced that right now Christians outnumber Communist Party members in China. "It is awesome. Eighty-seven million Communist Party members versus 130 million radical believers in Jesus in China. God is turning China upside down. Everywhere in the world, the Church of Jesus Christ is growing.

"The only thing hindering the growth of the Kingdom is not enough missionaries. Every single place missionaries exist, the Kingdom is growing explosively. It's a lack of missionaries which is our biggest challenge.

Markert told a story about a group of young radical Anglican missionaries who went through a DTS training, then went out to India for two months and had a dramatic impact in a Muslim community.

"We put them on a plane to Mumbai (Bombay) India, and they went into instant culture shock. One of our Indian missionaries met the team at the airport and put them up in a hotel overnight, and the next day took them out to the Maharashtra State in India, because God is moving with great power in India. They began evangelizing and immediately saw results. They evangelized and saw hundreds come to Christ."

"There are 10,000 converting from Hinduism and publically baptized, every single day in India. This is illegal, but it is happening every single day.

Markert said that for the first 1200 years of Islam, there were no church planting movements. "We saw individual Muslims get saved, but not formed into churches and then we saw those churches multiplying. It's called "spontaneous multiplication of churches. The very first one was in 1885."

From 1980 to 2000, there were 11 church planting movements started, but from 2000 to 2012, there were 69 church planting movements for the first time ever in all of history in the Muslim world. It is in all nine geographical sections or houses of Islam, including West Africa, North Africa, Turkestan, East Africa, Arab world, Persian world, Western South Asia, Eastern South Asia, and Indo-Malaysia. This has never happened ever in history, so we are living in the time of the greatest harvest we have ever seen in the Muslim world. It is amazing."

Markert said YWAM needed 200,000 brand new young missionaries if they are going to get the gospel to the darkest parts of the world -- the two billion who have never heard the name of Jesus ... the 1,700 languages which don't have a Bible.

"We have to do our part as Anglicans. I'm a global strategist. I work with the Center for the Study for Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Hamilton, Mass. And we have strategized this out. We, as Anglicans, need to come up with one percent of our 18 to 25 year olds out of the Anglican Church in North America as missionaries. The young ones, they will change the world. We need to send them to the Muslim world where the unreached are."

Markert condemned present day values and the drift from the Body of Christ, citing Ted Haggard's book, The Jerusalem Diet, and others like it, which are better read than the Bible.

"I was looking at a map of The Unoccupied Mission Fields of Africa and Asia a few years ago. There was a map and the Great Commission all around it. The map of The Unoccupied Mission Fields of Africa and Asia a hundred years ago was the 10-40 window (land located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator, encompassing Northern Africa and much of Asia, basically the Muslim world). That map of the unreached has not changed in 100 years. What will the map look like in another 100 years? The answer to that question will be what you do as a result of this conference. Our only hindrance is the lack of young people coming as missionaries."

For more on this conference you can read Jeff Walton's piece here: http://www.virtueonline.org/ridgecrest-nc-anglican-missionaries-facing-task-unfinished

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