The 5 Biggest Global Great Commission Stories of 2025

Happy New Year!

I am at the tri-annual Urbana missions conference in Phoenix, AZ. Tonight is the final night of the conference… and 2025. This conference has been pretty great with a clear focus on the global Great Commission. I look forward to having communion with 7,000+ others to welcome the New Year. It has been a refreshing few days here to see the interest level of these college students in what God is doing around the world.

Here are five stories that I felt got the most attention in missions in 2025. These are, of course, tainted by my perspective writing from the US. I am sure there are bigger stories elsewhere around the world.

Persecution in Nigeria

Nigeria’s population is roughly split half Christian, half Muslim. Islam was birthed in violence, and today the northern part of Nigeria continues to experience death and destruction at the hands of Islamists. Christians are routinely kidnapped, killed, and persecuted.

It is hard to get accurate and up-to-date figures about how many people have been killed. Estimates vary, and my quick research using a few different AI platforms resulted in numbers from about 3,000 to 11,000. The most likely number sits in the middle of that range. This means that Nigeria had more martyrdom in sheer numbers than any other country in 2025.

Because of the overall demographic picture in Nigeria (sustained growth through the next few decades), Nigeria’s Muslim and Christian populations will continue to grow. Evangelicals continue to be a significant part of this growth, and despite the persecution, the Nigerian missionary movement continues to grow. They are also bravely reaching out to the Muslim North. Pray for them.

Closure of the PCUSA Missions Agency

Religious institutions have incredible staying power and are hard to kill. The PCUSA’s mission agency is an example of this, living long past its due date. This has been the proverbial “slow train coming” for quite some time. In the 1920s, the mission agency that would eventually be the PCUSA’s primary sending arm was about 1,600 missionaries strong. In February of 2025, that had fallen to 60 workers, and the denomination formally dissolved the “Presbyterian Mission Agency.”

This closure marks the end of a long, slow march. This the exclamation mark of that story and deserves to be noted.

A Refocus on Mobilization

In contrast to the fading mainline missions movement, two important and large denominations are focusing on growth. The Assemblies of God World Mission has set a goal of increasing their missions force by 4,000 over the current number of 2,569 over the next eight years. The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention is seeing its most significant growth since cutting their force in 2016.

We do not have good statistics showing year-over-year mobilization numbers across the entirety of the US church (it is very complicated), but there are positive signs showing a resurgence of mobilization interest. Agency growth is also being influenced by an end to Boomer retirements (they have mostly aged out). The recent mobilization survey that Missio Nexus completed shows positive net growth as well. 2025 could be the year we point to as the marker of renewed missions sending.

Revival?

As I type this, I am in Phoenix, AZ, for the Urbana missions conference. I was here about two months ago meeting with church leaders who told me that many churches have seen an increase in attendance. I hear similar reports from across the country. The church I attend in Florida has certainly experienced a rise in attendance, particularly in the weeks following the Charlie Kirk assassination. My wife and I have realized that most of the new faces are in their 20s.

Across the pond in England, there has been much talk about the “Quiet Revival.” Documented by the Bible Society, it notes that attendance at churches was up by 4%, and most of that growth was young people, and men were more likely to attend church than women.

I believe it is a bit early and too anecdotal to get overly excited about revival (thus I titled this with a question mark). As far as news stories go, though, it was big in 2025. It could be that we are on the brink of a revival. Past missions movements were driven by young people, and if this trend continues, it will have global consequences.

The Adoption of AI in Mission

AI has moved from a cool new idea to implementation in global missions. There has been a bit of concern about its use in ministry, but in 2025 AI has gone mainstream and was among the most important topics discussed by missions leaders in 2025.

The obvious application has been in Bible translation, where large language models are being trained to produce first-draft translations. Another use is language learning for missionaries. It can assist not only in practicing language skills, but one organization is using AI to test the spoken proficiency of its workers. There are those utilizing AI in evangelism and outreach as well.

Interest in AI at conferences and missions events is off the charts. At the annual Missio Nexus conference, we had to ask the hotel to remove a wall partition during a session to accommodate the number of people that wanted to attend.

Thanks for reading to this point. If you think I left something out or want to add something, feel free to comment below.