The figure of ninety-five percent was noticed in the discourse and seen to have come from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Email correspondence in October 2017 with Todd Johnson, the director, included this explanation of the fact that, “for the approximately 2.5 million evangelical pastors (including bi-vocational), only 5% have a formal theological education (undergraduate bible degree or master’s degree).  That means that about 2.3 million pastors have little or no training. We contrasted the approximately 5 million pastors/priests in the world (including bi-vocational) with the number that were likely to have formal training (undergraduate Bible degrees or Master’s degrees) and we estimated that it was not likely more than 250,000 (that’s 5% of the total). Of the 5 million, not surprisingly, the majority would be under our classification of Protestant, Anglican, and Independent churches (see our breakdown in the Atlas of Global Christianity, page 70). Based on this we estimate that there are approximately 4 million pastors in these three categories (non-Catholic, non-Orthodox). In 2010 there were 875 million Christians that fit this description. Of these, Operation World estimated 550 million were Evangelicals. Using a strict proportion there would then be 2.5 million Evangelical pastors. Of these only 125,000 (5% of the total) would have formal theological training. This is probably the best estimate that can be made without further research.” The Center’s publications also note that Christians in the Global South representing 60% of all Christians, but generate or access only around 17% of Christian income.