The world is a waffle. The U.S. Center for World Missions is using that illustration to explain the challenges of worldwide missions in the 21st century. “Mission-minded people have thought for a long time that the world was like a pancake, and the Gospel was like the syrup. As long as you poured enough syrup, eventually the whole pancake would be covered with it.”

The assumption seemed sound. Send enough missionaries, preach the gospel to enough people, and get people saved. Eventually, the Gospel would fill the whole earth. But it didn’t work out that way.

The U.S. Center for World Missions shows the flaw in the theory by looking at Africa. The church has been sending missionaries and mission money to that continent for hundreds of years. Some parts of Africa are full of believers. Other parts are still quite resistant to the Gospel. Why is that? It’s because the earth is not a pancake but a waffle.

Waffles have pockets and barriers. Syrup can’t go from one to another pocket easily. That’s a perfect illustration of what’s happening with the Gospel in various parts of the world. It fills certain areas but isn’t able to cross barriers to reach other people groups. The nature of these barriers varies. They may be racial, religious, social, economic, or linguistic.

The U.S. Center for World Missions estimates there are probably 24,000 pockets of people groups. That is like a square waffle that has 156 pockets on each side. Moreover, they estimate that about 8,000 of those pockets of people groups have not been reached with the gospel. This is the great challenge of the 21st century.

We need to get the gospel to each of these pockets with prayer and an effective ministry strategy. It won’t be easy. Learning how to overcome these barriers will also be a great challenge in the 21st century. We will need praying hearts and keen minds to reach the world for Christ.