What is the 10/40 Window

What is the 10/40 Window?

The 10/40 Window is a section of earth running from northern Africa through the Middle East and central and eastern Asia, between the tenth and fortieth parallels north of the equator (see map on page 16). The area has several significant features that Christians must consider:

• This is where a majority of the world’s population lives. Even though that area represents only one-third of the earth’s land, it is there that almost two-thirds of the world’s population reside. The two most populous nations on earth are within this area: India and China, which collectively represent almost one half of the world’s population
• This is where the people who need the Lord are! More than 90 percent of the “least- evangelized” people on earth live in the 10/40 Window.
• This is where many of the world’s most spiritually receptive people live. The 10/40 Window is the birthplace of all the major world religions—Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. With the exception of Christianity, all other religions are strong in this area today.1
• This is where the hurting people are! The majority of the world’s poorest people—some 80 percent—live here. Even more important, more than 80 percent of the people in the world with the lowest “quality of life”2 live in this area.
• But unbelievably, in spite of these facts, Christianity spends less than 10 percent of its mission funds and mission efforts on this area.

Adventists and the 10/40 Window

The Adventist Church has always recognized the need to go into “all the world.” Since the mid-1980s, however, there has been an increasing emphasis on finding the still-unreached areas and peoples of the world, and diligently targeting them for mission work.

Several organizations have been in the forefront of this move. The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), with its emphasis on relief and development projects, consistently goes into parts of the world where other mission efforts would not be welcomed. Loma Linda University and its specialized medical and surgical teams have been able to take their gifts of healing to some previously untouched areas. Adventist Frontier Mission has focused its efforts on the “frontiers” of the world by doing its work in previously unentered areas.

In addition, since 1990 the office of Global Mission at the General Conference has spearheaded efforts to reach not just the countries of the world, but also the unentered population groups within each country. Many of them are in the 10/40 Window. In 1998, as a part of this global mission, nearly 20,000 Global Pioneers moved into unentered areas in their own countries to do pioneer evangelistic work on a voluntary basis, focusing on an unreached group for one or two years.