INDONESIA: AirAsia Crash Kills 41 Members of an Indonesian Church

Source: The Gospel Coalition, January 5, 2015

One of the largest church networks in Indonesia, Mawar Sharon Church, lost 46 members in the recent crash of AirAsia Flight QZ8501.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, and only seven percent of the population is Christian. Yet almost one-third of the victims in the crash were Indonesian Christians.

According to CNN, the church members weren’t heading to one event and didn’t all necessarily know one another, having attended services at different churches mostly around Surabaya.

Philip Mantofa, pastor of the Mawar Sharon Church in Surabaya, was shocked when he found out that 41 of the victims were from his church. Another congregation, Bethany Church, lost five members of the same family.

Another church, Gereja Kristen Indonesia Ngagel, a Presbyterian congregation of around 2,000, also lost members in the crash. Florida Rambu Bangi Roni said three members of her church—two adults and their child—died on the flight.

“The tragedy of AirAsia is a reminder,” she said. “We don’t know what time we will die.”

» Read full story (also reported in other sources).

WORLD: Status of Global Mission

Source: The Long View, January 6, 2015

Every year in the January issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, the Status of Global Mission is published. This table is particularly important for succinctly laying out the global trends over 150 years (1900-2050) and locating our current position among them.

Christians (of all kinds) presently number 2.4 billion; Muslims, second, number 1.7 billion. Christianity is growing at 1.35% per annum—good news, in that it is faster than the population. But Islam is growing at 1.88% per annum—faster than Christianity. The trend line does not envision a point when Islam becomes the largest religion—even by 2050, Christians will likely number 3.4 billion vs. Islam’s 2.0 billion.

The number of missionaries dropped from an estimated 420,000 in 2000 to an estimated 400,000 today. What is more disturbing is a new line added to the Status this year—the percentage of non-Christians who know a Christian: 14%. This means that 86% of all non-believers do not personally know a believer from whom they can receive good news.

The percentage of the world that is unevangelized dropped from 54% in 1900 to 29.3% today, and is projected to continue to drop. This is good news. Unfortunately, due to population growth, the absolute number of unevangelized individuals has grown: from 880 million in 1900 to 2.1 billion today. And it is continuing to rise: to 2.3 billion by 2025, and 2.6 billion by 2050. The end of the task continues to recede away from us.

» Read full article from The Long View. The article and table to which it refers (which includes all kinds of useful statistics with up-to-date numbers) is also online and free, but you’ll have to register with the IBMR for access.

UKRAINE: Churches Launch Yearlong Campaign for Evangelism and Discipleship

Source: Crossfield News, December 21, 2014

As snow falls outside, most of the people milling inside Central Baptist Church [in Kiev] keep their winter coats on. The parkas testify to the financial crunch that Ukraine has suffered with its recent civil strife and the concurrent economic slump. As tensions with Russian-backed separatists in two eastern provinces have heated up, churches like Central Baptist have turned the heat down to save money.

Today’s crowd of about 120 people has come to help kick off Mission Ukraine, a yearlong evangelism training effort organized by leaders of several Ukrainian Protestant denominations and Minneapolis-based GoodWORD Partnership. The goal: Train leaders across Ukraine in evangelism and discipleship. Those leaders then will teach people in their churches how to share their faith and, in turn, help the anticipated new believers to follow Christ and share their faith.

Mission Ukraine organizers hope to train people in as many of Ukraine’s 10,600 Protestant churches as possible before next fall. This in a country that began 2014 in relative peace but ends it mourning more than 4,700 deaths and more than 500,000 internally displaced people, the result of fighting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

» Read full story, which includes pictures and interviews with church leaders. Does this story sound familiar? We included an earlier report about the campaign in one of our November editions.

» See also another story from Ukraine, Now Is the Time for the Church to Shine (Operation Mobilization). And thanks for praying for Ukraine, a nation standing at the crossroads.

MIDDLE EAST: A Change of Hearts

Source: Wycliffe Associates, January 2015

“Paul” lives in one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a Christian, a place so volatile that it cannot be named. He has survived multiple assassination attempts since turning to Christ more than a decade ago. But this time, it appeared that his attackers would surely succeed.

There were three of them—men armed with lead pipes and rods—and they meant business. In a flash they unleashed a furious beating not meant to harm, but to kill. As their weapons delivered blow after blow, Paul was not filled with hate for his attackers. Instead, Paul was saddened by the fact that these men were lost and without Jesus. So he began praying and urging them to turn from their sin toward Jesus. Imagine that! With the shadow of death looming over him, Paul was inviting his would-be assassins to experience a life of freedom in Christ.

What happened next is difficult for us to fathom—but not for Paul. He has seen God’s faithful intervention too many times to count. One dropped his pipe and fled. The other two, with tears in their eyes and hope on their faces, dropped their weapons as they dropped to their knees and began pleading with Paul to tell them about Jesus Christ.

God is clearly at work in this highly dangerous region of the Middle East, and He is using people like Paul to help bring His message of love and redemption to men, women, and children who are looking for the answer to their emptiness.

» Read full story. See also another inspiring article from this issue, Why Would This Jesus Come to Me?

WORLD: Praying for the Nations

Source: Missions Catalyst

Want some fuel to feed your prayers for the world as a new year unfolds? Prayercast calls prayer “the number one way to reach people.” We hope you’ll pray in response to what you hear from news sources like Missions Catalyst, missionary prayer letters, and of course the topics, places, and people God has put on your heart and brings to mind. But if you want to pray more systematically, here are a few other tried-and-true tools to help.

Prayercast: Videos invite you to pray along with Christians from every nation and are supported by additional materials, including current news feeds and “quick facts.”

Operation World: A research-based prayer guide to every nation; also available as a book and helpful as a reference.

Global Prayer Digest: A daily dose of stories and information about the world’s peoples, especially the least reached; read online or subscribe to emails or a paper edition.

World in Prayer: Prayers of petition and thanks in response to changing global situations.

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