An initiative to place, before the year 2000, a Seventh-day Adventist presence in every one of 5,234 population segments of 1 million constituting the world’s population at the time of the General Conference session in 1990; also to foster growth in areas with established work, reaching unentered municipalities and ethnic and language groups. The idea was launched by N. C. Wilson at the Annual Council held in 1986 at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and developed by a committee with world representation for adoption at the 1989 Annual Council and the 1990 session. R. J. Kloosterhuis and C. R. Taylor assisted in the planning stages. M. L. Ryan was called to lead in the implementation, and H. L. Butler to assist in the development of funds through donations.
Because the major challenges lie in the Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist populations of Asia and North Africa, study is needed to define approach and content, to unlock doors long closed to the gospel. For this purpose B. Schantz, J. Skariah, and C. Maberly were asked to direct study institutes to develop and test strategies for these three main bodies of religiously inclined people. The Center for International Relations was set up to facilitate placement of SDA lay professional people in government or business positions in countries in which the traditional type of missionary cannot obtain entry. The Global Mission Data Book, with input from all levels of organization, provided the point of departure, identifying location and numbers of Seventh-day Adventists in the world, and the 2,300 population segments of 1 million with no SDA members. More than 500 of these segments were involved in some kind of Global Mission activity by mid-1993.
As a secondary objective, the growth of the church in the four divisions with no unentered segments of 1 million is exemplified in the South American Division’s targeting the 4,176 unentered municipalities in its territory. Unentered ethnolinguistic and socioeconomic “people groups” are also vivid examples of outreach encompassed under the name of Global Mission. More than 12,000 such targets had been selected and more than 4,000 of them had been entered as part of the program by mid-1993.