Oscar Amaechina, the president of Afri-Mission and Evangelism Network in Abuja, Nigeria, will never forget the day he thought his life would end.
”I remember there was a particular mission field where we were ministering to people, and some people came to kill us,” Amaechina told The Christian Post. “They confessed that they were there to kill us. We saw them with their machetes, we saw them with their swords, and we believed that that was our last breath. We thought we were going to take our last breath and go.”
While staring death in the face, Amaechina and his fellow missionaries decided to offer one last act of kindness to their persecutors.
“We gave them rice, gave them spaghetti, gave them cream and soup … and they moved away from us,” he recalled. “They returned, and one of their leaders spoke to us through an interpreter and said, ‘We were here to kill you. Since we are poor, no one has ever given us gifts, but because of these gifts, we want to become Christians.’”
The assailants’ instant change of heart, Amaechina said, both shocked and amazed him.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he shared. “And we led them to Christ. It was wonderful, it was awesome, and it was an eye-opener. Since that day, we have never resisted showing kindness. There’s power in kindness and love. And that is what we believe in ministry.”
The full story includes a 15-minute video interview with Amaechina talking about ministry in Nigeria.
According to Humanium.org, more than 100 Iranian children die from famine, street fights, and illness each month. These aren’t the only dangers threatening Iran’s next generation.
In an unexpected move, Iranian leaders recently acknowledged the exploitation of children. However, Heart4Iran’s Jennifer Shamoon says the data is vastly underestimated.
“Iranian officials reported about 4,600 children were living in poverty and collecting garbage on the streets of Tehran to sell,” Shamoon says. “When Iranian officials announce a number, you can double it because they’re not telling the truth. They’re trying to mask everything.”
[Recently] a state-run media outlet blamed poverty for increasing child marriages. Zahra Nejad Bahram, a women’s rights activist, told the outlet:
“We are witnessing the rise of child marriage in society. Some officials openly encourage child marriage. According to published statistics, the number of child marriages in 2020 and spring 2021 has increased sharply in different parts of the country.”
“When there isn’t a strong family, these people (children) are not being protected, and they are being abused in different ways,” Shamoon says.
The full story includes links to sources. Note that officials claim up to 95 percent of at-risk children are Afghan refugees.
Each morning, Bae wakes up and starts her day in a rustic shack in a rural village somewhere in the mountains of North Korea. Her husband is groggy from the short night of sleep, and she can hear the rustling of the other people in her house getting ready for another day in the fields.
She hopes she’ll meet her work quota picking crops. She doesn’t want to risk additional punishment or the loss of her brief moments during the day when she can forage food. The government provides food for people like her—but just enough to keep them alive to work.
Finally, at dusk, she finishes her day. She gets another meal—some watery soup and, if she’s lucky, some rice—and returns to her home. And then Bae gets to her real work.
She waits for the moon to go behind the clouds, then silently pulls on her cloak. She slips out of the front door, careful to close it quietly so the neighbors don’t hear. As she makes her way through the village, she sticks to the shadows and steals back to the forest.
But this time, she isn’t foraging for food—what she’s after is even more important. She finds the tree with the gnarled roots and scrapes away a thin layer of dirt. She pulls out the plastic bag and tucks it under her cloak, returning to her cabin as quietly as she left.
When she gets home, her housemates are waiting—they’ve already covered the windows with blankets and lit a small candle. From the bag she dug up, she pulls out a book. She opens it and begins to read, in a voice barely above a whisper: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” It’s another day in a North Korean church.
Want to know something funny and a little embarrassing? I will probably check Mailchimp a gazillion times the day this article drops to see how many opens it has had and how many links were clicked. I’m neither proud of this, nor apparently sufficiently disciplined to stop doing it. Turns out my checking makes no difference in the numbers.
Other numbers are a little more important to count. I’d better mind the minutes until the kids’ bus arrives or I risk leaving them stranded on the road. And I count the minutes until my wife gets home because her return makes me happy.
There’s a whole realm of health numbers getting counted in these early days of the New Year: How many calories did you consume? (Too many.) How many ounces of water did you drink? (Too few.) How many steps did you take? (You’re averaging fewer steps this week than last!) Ack!
In Psalm 90, Moses asks God to “teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.” I like that a lot, especially this time of year. I want to be thoughtful about the days of life remaining to me. I want to number them well so that the relationships and results of my life comprise a wise and acceptable offering to God.
Here are some of the numbers I’m puzzling, grieving, and rejoicing over as 2022 gets rolling.
1. Only 50% of people have returned to church.
It depends on whose stats you get behind, but it looks like up to half the people who were attending church before COVID started haven’t come back. Granted, Omicron is wreaking havoc and some are wisely staying home to guard their weakened immune system or the people they live with.
But is there more at play? When I look up at the camera that streams my church’s services and greet the people who are attending via Facebook, I sometimes wonder, “Have you just found it more comfortable to stay at home?”
I also wonder how many people found, in COVID, the opportunity they’d been waiting for to hit the road. It’s like when the person you were dating went away for the summer and you found that absence didn’t make your heart grow fonder, but rather made your determination stronger; you finally admitted it was over.
What does this decline mean for missions? Have offerings dropped a similar 30-50%? Will support need to be cut for overseas workers? For domestic missions? And what is God up to in the midst of this?
Maybe God is using COVID to prune the Church. Maybe some of those who’ve opted not to drop their bums back in Sunday morning seats will lead the way to new forms of church. I cherish the way God redeems things that seem lost to me. I just sure hope he does so soon because this next number is also weighing heavily on me.
2. More than 400 Muslim people groups are unreached and unengaged.
Research of growing validity shows that 422 Muslim people groups have no one on the ground in their midst who speaks their language and is working their tail off to catalyze a movement of reproducing disciples. In this way, they are unengaged. Further research says that non-Muslim unengaged groups (Hindu, Buddhist, others) number 1,180.
Unengaged peoples are certainly not the only thing God has on his heart. But I hope he’s planting Pauline ambition in many intrepid souls to, preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else. And may that passion, conviction, and focus burn so brightly and deeply that like Paul, they are “hindered” from doing anything less.
The Bozo people of Mali are on that list of 422 and they’re recently on my heart. They live as nomadic fishermen. I wonder what it will take to take them off the list. Who can embody Christ in their midst? Who can find a way to live like they live and speak as they speak? Who can demonstrate and teach the good news in such a way that it is irresistibly good to the Bozo?
I don’t know.
But I believe that list of 1,602 unengaged groups will drop to zero. There’s growing, though still slight, momentum. A website focused on the unengaged is nearing beta testing. God’s people are praying, seeking, studying, and collaborating. It’s going to happen. (Ping me if that makes your heart race a little!)
3. 60, 17, 9, and 8,000 people.
You’ve probably heard about the fire in a Bronx apartment building on Sunday. Sixty people were injured, and of the 17 who died, nine were children. What I didn’t know until last night was that most of the dead were Gambians, some of the 8,000 or so Gambians who live in the US. Most of them are Muslim. I know little about Africa, but I’ve had wonderful interactions with Gambians. Please join me in praying for those suffering as a result of this fire—Gambians and others as well.
4. Muslim Connect is five!
This week I’ll send the 260th edition of a short weekly email I write to help us think about Muslims the way God does and love them as Jesus does. It’s called Muslim Connect and, aside from brushing my teeth, is the most consistent thing I’ve ever done. I thank God for the health to do this and for the people who read it. If you don’t get Muslim Connect, please give it a try. At 300 words, it will only debit your week a couple of minutes. In the process of doing so, it might provide a timely bit of encouragement, a practical tool, or even a wry chuckle. Check it out and sign up here. (If you do so soon, you’ll be on board in time for the Five-Year Celebration Giveaway!)
5. Got 2022 book goals?
Are you going for one a week? One a month? One? Even though I know leaders are readers, I fall short in this area. I often find myself reading for thrill rather than skill. I’m not sure Jesus is super impressed that I made my way through the entire Joe Pickett canon in the past 18 months.
This year I hope to read more books that will edify rather than simply excite. My pastor, our elder board chairman, and I are currently making our way through Tod Bolsinger’s book on adaptive leadership, Canoeing the Mountains. I recommend both the book and the practice of reading books with good buds. It multiplies the impact.
I also hope to drop in a couple of novels written by non-Western people of color. Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie helped me deal with my prejudice against Nigerians. I could use a lot more of that.
What are you planning to read? What would you recommend to me and other Prac Mob readers? Take a second and drop us your thoughts.
We’ve no idea what this year will bring, but we know the one who has our backs. May God bless you with health, perseverance, and absolutely astounding kingdom success and joy in this new year.
If you have been a Missions Catalyst reader for long, you may have heard us use the phrase “Heaven’s headlines.” Every January, many publish lists of the year’s top stories. What if Heaven had such a list? We like to think it would include some of the stories we highlight.
If I had to choose a top story for 2021, it might have to do with the North American missionaries delivered from captivity in Haiti. Even as this group was eventually delivered, others are still held hostage in Haiti or in danger of kidnapping in Haiti and other countries.
We can continue praying for another American missionary, Jeff Woodke, kidnapped in Niger five years ago. I will be using songs from the Haiti story to pray for Jeff and for his captors, the beautiful desert people of the Sahel. Please join me. You might use a little-known song by Rich Mullins, I Will Sing, to get you started.
The Haiti hostages and their churches, colleagues, and friends depended on singing and praying to get them through their ordeal.
Watch the former hostages sing a scripture-based song that got them through the ordeal at 17:25 in the video below.
Hear a spokesman explain the role of singing in their tradition starting at 45:46 and join the staff in singing “Nearer My God to Thee.”
This time of year you may also see articles with the “best photos of 2021.” What would capture Heaven’s eyes? Maybe some of these (Religion News). Please pray for the people and countries in these images.
Source: Christian Aid Ministries, December 20, 2021
Watch the December 20 CAM press conference and give God the glory for preserving and delivering this group of missionaries, pictured below shortly after they were reunited in Florida.
Iran’s Supreme Court has ruled that nine Christian converts serving five-year prison sentences for their involvement in house churches should not have been charged with “acting against national security,” in what has the potential to become a landmark ruling.
While the ruling is not enough on its own to set an official “precedent,” nevertheless it has the potential to influence all current and future cases involving Persian-speaking Christians.
The ruling, handed down on November 3 but only communicated to the Christians’ lawyers [November 24], states explicitly that their involvement in house churches and even the propagation of what is referred to as the “Evangelical Zionist sect” should not be deemed against national security.
This is significant, because in each of the cases involving the more than 20 Christians currently incarcerated in Iran for their involvement in house churches, the charges amounted to “actions against national security.”
Musfar (not his real name), was recently arrested after the police conducted a surprise raid on his home. Musfar has been handing out Bibles throughout his nation to secret believers and the police have been waiting to arrest him for months.
When the police raided his home, they searched everywhere for his secret stash of Bibles. Musfar’s apartment is small and he had over a thousand Bibles stacked in one of the most obvious locations. Surprisingly, the police found the location of the Bibles, looked directly at them, but never made any motion to touch them, pick them up, or examine them. It was almost as if the Bibles were invisible to the eyes of the police.
Is it possible that the police never saw the Bibles? Could their eyes have been blinded?
Musfar was taken to jail and accused of distributing Bibles, but the police could not provide any evidence, because they were unable to find the Bibles.
Our BTJ partners living in this closed country were able to get access to the apartment in the middle of the night after Musfar’s arrest and retrieve the Bibles. We now have several hundred Bibles to hand out in this country that desperately needs the Word of God.
As the Bibles are delivered, the people are being told about the amazing miracle of the invisible Bibles.
Last year, believers worldwide stayed connected with their home groups and church fellowships by going online, even though COVID-19 restrictions kept them physically apart.
The online church provides more than convenience in the Middle East and North Africa. Sometimes, it saves lives. “I think about the moms who’ve come to faith, and they’re married to someone who is a non-Christian,” MENA Leadership Center CEO Jennifer Murff says. “It’s very dangerous for them and their children to just step into a local church.”
“In many countries in MENA, it’s illegal to change your religion. The digital church provides an outlet [where] they (new believers) can continue to grow in their faith and get discipled until they can step into a physical location,” Murff says.
