World Christian Encyclopedia editor Barrett dies

RICHMOND, Va. — David B. Barrett, founding editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia, a former research consultant with the then-Foreign Mission Board and a pioneer advocate for people groups still unreached with the gospel, died Aug. 4 in Richmond, Va., after a brief illness. He was 83.

Barrett spent more than 10 years compiling and serving as editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia, which was published in 1982. In 1985, Keith Parks, president of the Foreign (now International) Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, engaged Barrett as a research consultant on the global status of Christianity. When that relationship concluded in 1993, Barrett continued to conduct research on global Christianity through the World Evangelization Research Center, which he had founded in 1965, and its successor the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (established in 2003), according to the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary obituary.

David Garrison, IMB’s global strategist and author of the book “Church Planting Movements: How God is Redeeming a Lost World,” worked closely with Barrett to present to Southern Baptists the challenge of reaching the world’s unreached people groups. Together they developed the new missionary role that came to be known as “strategy coordinator.”

“More than any other man, David Barrett showed us what the whole world looked like through the lens of the Great Commission,” Garrison said. “He showed us how God viewed the world, and particularly the unfinished task.”