The age of the internet has brought on talk of the world being brought to one's doorstep. People who are thousands of miles apart have access to one another at any moment of any day. It's something quite extraordinary, and often taken for granted.

However, over the past couple of years, I've attended various conferences and seminars on Christian community development, missions, reaching diverse demographics, etc. And one thing that I've noticed is that even as this internet boom is bringing millions of people into close contact without even meeting, there is still a massive movement of people going on.

-Until the 1980's, Chicago was the largest Polish city. (Warsaw has reclaimed that title.) Regardless, Chicago still has 100,000 more Polish people than San Francisco has people.

-There are more Irish living in the U.S. than in Ireland. Further, the U.S. is the 4th largest African nation and the 3rd largest Spanish country.

In Queens, New York, there is a zip code with 133 nations represented.

And it's not just going on in America. Sure, there's still oodles and oodles of immigrants crossing our borders, but Europe and South America are seeing just as many. Take these facts for example:

-20% of Amsterdam is Indonesian.

-The largest Japanese community in the world (outside of Japan) is in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

-10% of churches in Buenos Aires, Argentina speak Korean.

-80 million Chinese live outside of China.

-Paris, with the largest metro-population in Europe, is 14% Algerian. Futhermore, 41% of Marseille, France is black.

I first came across some of these factoids about four years ago. Nevertheless, I still find myself doing double-takes when I read through them. It used to be that one had to cross the major oceans to reach an unreached people group or a different nationality. Now, with well over 40 U.S. cities that have a metro population of 1 million-plus, we don't have to even travel outside our own zip code.

In these uncertain times, as we American Christians seek comfort and safety in the form of our ethnocentric churches, suburban homes, and 401k's, there's literally a whole world right outside our door that needs to experience the love of Christ. Regardless if we're called abroad or stateside, there are unreached people groups and nations in our neighborhoods that need us to step out.