Loving our world!

Mission Maker Magazine recently come out with their latest magazine (and best one to date)!  You can find them on the web at http://www.missionmakermagazine.org/ ; it has a fascinating section on stats and figures.  Did you know that 9 of the top ten least evangelized cities in the world are located in one country?  That country is Afghanistan.  The only one outside of this country is located in Sahara in northwest Africa.   Wow, it makes it pretty obvious that there is a need to support cross cultural workers in central Asia!

 

It seems that after the Wednesday prayer service that some people didn’t quite understand how to pray for the various areas we brought up.  So I just wanted to take some time to explain.  The world is split into reached and unreached.  Meaning that a certain percentage of the globe has been touched by the gospel message (52%) and also has ready access to the gospel.  The unreached portion does not have a ready access to the good news (or none whatsoever).  Of the unreached areas, there are several large groupings of people.  The largest is of course the Muslim bloc where 20% of the world’s population can be grouped.  The Middle East, North Africa and Indonesia are primarily where we find this bloc.  The second largest with 15% of the world’s population (1,054,000 people) are considered Hindu.  India and Pakistan is where these groups are mostly located.  The Buddhist bloc is obviously located in Asia as is the Folk Chinese bloc.  The Tribal people (native groups of people with independently derived religions, usually animist, or worshiping the perceived creation around them –i.e., sun, moon, stars, water, spirits, etc) are only 3% of the world’s population but still command 230,700,000 people who haven’t embraced God’s word. 

 

In the Muslim world, there are 306,238 people per missionary compared to 798 in the Christian bloc.  That is a huge difference.   Again, how can they hear without someone preaching to them?  And how can they preach unless they are sent.  (Romans 10:14b-15).  My cry is that each one of us would be involved in missions by Going and serving, if not by Going, then by PRAYING, and lastly, by Sending.  Helping a missionary financially or with your time makes all the difference to our small army of missionaries.  But most of us haven’t considered our role in this battle.  Will you pray about how you can respond?  Are you available to whatever God would desire from you whether it is Going, Praying or Sending?   Maybe he won’t send you to Afghanistan, maybe he wants you in St. Pete, but are you available and willing and poured out to do whatever he might ask of you?

 

Pray about it.