I can hear someone asking ‘Window?’! Its not what you think it is. This is is no operating system but ,rather a labelling.
The 10/40 Window concept highlights these three elements: an area of the world with great poverty and low quality of life, combined with lack of access to Christian resources.
According to Wikipedia,it is a term coined by Christian missionary strategist Luis Bush in 1990 to refer to those regions of the eastern hemisphere located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator, a general area that in 1990 was purported to have the highest level of socioeconomic challenges and least access to the Christian message and Christian resources on the planet.
The window forms a band encompassing Saharan and Northern Africa, as well as almost all of Asia (West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and much of Southeast Asia). Roughly two-thirds of the world population lives in the 10/40 Window.
10/40 Window is populated by people who are predominantly Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Animist,Jewish or Atheist. Many governments in the 10/40 Window are formally or informally opposed to Christian work of any kind within their borders.
Yet these vast fields of human life are still groaning for the manifest presence of God through the church . Human population in these nations is ever-increasing and so is the number of souls waiting to be reached for Christ. Indeed the fields are already white for harvest and now, the Lord of the harvest is already creating room through the instrumentation of technology ; especially the social network platforms!
A current report from cyberschuulnews ,an internet newsletter claimed “with the proliferation of internet particularly broadband provision in emerging economies, a study has revealed that user numbers [in these economies] are overtaking Western Europe and North America. “Of these group,internet users in the Middle East and China (the main 10/40 window population) are the busiest and most enthusiastic.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and China emerged as global leaders with around 55% of the sample populations found to be highly engaged in the internet, compared with only 42% in the UK and the US. It showed how much time people in this region spend online and their attitudes to technology.These people have been seen to spend more time on social networking than e-mail. Also with increased mobile access these people are more likely to post [and view] blogs, photos and videos online and value internet access.A study also found that 61% of people with internet access used it daily. That provides a good percentage of these people waiting to be reached via twitter, face book ,d.e.l.ic.i.o.u.s , and what have you. If we fail to reach out to them, someone else [a bad one, at that] will.
It may interest you to know that, of these people group, China’s internet population of more than 400 million and by far the world’s largest online population, usage is mainly driven by entertainment features - instant messaging and online music, videos and games .
This should bring us to the question of ’how do we reach this lost people-group with the principles of Christ?’. Surely its high time we rode on the wave of technology by designing entertainment contents: Music ,Videos,Computer and Video games to spread the timeless gospel through the vehicle of entertainment! Free distribution of Bibles may be disallowed and even banned but we can redesign our gospel advance approach; infiltrate their rank and file with the timeless truth ; using technology.
Now may the prophets of God arise with animations ,computer games and various web skills to take this mountain for the Lord. Or better still with alacrity,seek to acquire the requisite skills in this regard wherever any is wanting.Let music prophets,animation apostles and all believers with creative and iT competences rise and take their places to reap the already ripe harvest fields of the earth.
This great window of harvest must never be left to close! We must enter in…! And like he did Elijah,the Spirit of God still asks this generation of believers, “Who will go for us?”…
