Missions or Dog Food?

I recently received the following information that I can't seem to understand, nor explain. I will let the statistic speak for itself. How will we explain this when we stand before our Saviour who commanded us to, "Go and make disciples of all nations...."

from John Rowell’s “To Give or Not to Give” (Authenic, 2006:101-102) that only 6% of evangelicals tithe and that only 5.4% of tithes go to missions. Of that 5.4%, most is spent on administrative accounts and only .02% of a $270 billion income for evangelical churches actually is used on the totally unreached (that is about 54 million dollars). Break this down to a $1,000 bill and that means 2 cents went to reach the unreached! Compare that with what was spent on pets in 2005 in the U.S - 35.9 billion was spent on pets in 2005. A decade ago it was just 17 Billion (TIME, Feb 4, 2008:18). Does it bother us that 60% more money spent on pets than on missions?

It might be time for the North American church to start trying to figure out how to explain this...

Some suggestions:

"Oh, I didn't hear you...I thought you said to "Go and make big fancy churches with high-paid staffs..."

"Oh, I thought you said..." Go and build successful careers so you can spend your money on nice houses, fancy vacations and the latest electronic toys..."

"Oh, I thought you meant that just the disciples were supposed to do this...that I was free to do exactly as I wanted with my life."

I think that unless things change quickly we are going to have some major explaining to do.