This past week, a colleague explained to us the difference between a million and a billion. (Thanks Tim!) First, may we confess – we have a hard enough time visualizing a *million* of anything. A million seconds make 11.5 days. That’s a lot of seconds. But — wait. A *billion* seconds make 32 years. So if there were 3 *million* people living among unreached people groups, if we compared that to seconds, they would make up 34.5 days. That’s a lot of seconds. But the trouble is, there are 3 *billion* people living among the unreached. If translated to seconds (for comparison), 3 *billion* seconds make up 96 *years*!!! That’s *soooooo* many seconds. Put another way, if you could spend $1000 per day, it would take you 3 years to spend $1 million dollars. But it would take you *2,740* years to spend a *billion* dollars. Put yet one other way, if you stacked up one million one-dollar bills, they would be 358 feet high. A tall as 3 soccer fields are long. That’s huge. But if you stacked up one *billion* on-dollar bills, you’re dealing with a stack that is 67.9 *miles* high. There’s a vast difference between a million and a billion. There are 3 *billion* people living among unreached people groups. We’d better start getting our priorities sorted out. (Thanks again, Tim!)
Not related to missions, but another dollar bill perspective: a stack of 37 trillion dollar bills (advertised US national debt), with each bill being 0.0043 of an inch thick, would reach more than 2.5 million miles high. That’s enough to go to the Moon and back to the Earth 10 times. But those who shared those statistics said the actual US debt is 158 trillion dollars. The would be 42 travels through space from earth to moon and back! Just saying. But let’s get back to the lost! What a privilege to be about our Father’s business!
This is an important distinction to make. Ultimately, it’s too easy to say “billion”, when the linguistic difference is merely a single letter, but the mathematical difference is a thousand times.
For missions purposes, it’s important to be careful to mathematically correct (even if the numbers are general estimates). If we’re estimating the number of Muslims in the world, a generation ago, a round number was somewhere approaching a billion. However, I preferred to say “960 million” (even if the number was low), as using more syllables did a better job of communicating the magnitude, rather than the easier to pronounce rounding (up or down) of “billion”.
I don’t remember the latest estimates, but if the number is something like 1.6 billion, I still prefer to say something like “Sixteen hundred million”, because saying “billion” is too easy.