Category: News Briefs

Source: International Mission Board, November 17, 2021

On October 29 in Kenya, IMB missionaries serving in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Asian Pacific Rim signed a memorandum of understanding solidifying the sending of missionaries from Asia to serve in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Daren Davis, the IMB leader for missionaries serving in Africa, said the signing of the memorandum is a historic step toward seeing Asians engage those in need of the gospel in Africa. Davis [also] acknowledged the decades of missions’ investment in Asian countries.

“We stand here today on the shoulders of those who went before us, people who labored in places where the name of Jesus was not known, and now, from those very places, rise up believers who are going to the nations for the sake of the gospel,” Davis said.

Jeff Singerman, who serves in Africa, said the brutal fact is that there are multitudes of unreached people on the African continent. He sees the signing of the memorandum as an answer to prayer. It is a building block to understanding that Christians from other nations can join the task of seeing African churches sending African missionaries.

Singerman said they will host multicultural training to enable missionaries from Asia to be fruitful and successful in the mission and in the calling that God has given them.

“This collaboration might be the greatest contribution the IMB can make in this generation of missionaries. In other words, facilitating connections with those [with] whom we work, so that they can understand their fulfilling and calling to the missionary task,” Singerman said.

Read full story.

Source: Baptist News, November 24, 2021

New research on American beliefs about some of faith’s hardest questions highlights both the nation’s biblical illiteracy and the chasm between what various Christian traditions teach. And it holds a few surprises about how people in the pew actually believe things contrary to their own church’s doctrine.

Pew Research in September dug into Americans’ views on theodicy (why do bad things happen to good people?), as well as their views on the reality of heaven and hell and how one gets to either destination. (See Few Americans Blame God or Say Faith Has Been Shaken Amid Pandemic, Other Tragedies).

While most of the questions produced clear majority views within the American populace, the detailed analysis among various iterations of Christianity reveals deep differences. And it turns out that the majority view on some questions may part ways with orthodox Christian teaching.

For example, 33% of American adults—including 30% of those who identify as Christian—believe in reincarnation. No major branch of Christianity teaches reincarnation, which also has no support in the biblical text.

Read the full story.

See also Bible App Installs and Use Show Global Bible Engagement Is on the Rise (Christian Newswire).

Source: Baptist Center for World Evangelism, November 5, 2021

According to Christian Schmidt, the international high representative in Bosnia, the nation is in turmoil and a real possibility exists that it will fracture. The Serb separatists want to recreate their own army, which would split the national force. There is a presence of international forces that have remained in Bosnia due to the Bosnian War, which ended in 1995. Should the Serbs withdraw their men from the national army, Schmidt warns that more international forces would be required within the country to prevent a descent into conflict.

During the Bosnian War in 1992-1995, it is estimated that 100,000 people were killed. The Bosnian genocide, which targeted Muslim men, killed over 8,000 in just three days. Should Bosnia again split in warring factions, many other people will die without a relationship with God. There is a great need for missionaries to take the message of the Prince of Peace to this nation so split by religious differences.

Read the full article with prayer points. See also Pray4Bosnia.com.

For more background and analysis, read In Bosnia, Fears of State Collapse and the Return of Violence (The New Statesman).

Unfortunately, Bosnia is not the only nation under such pressure. Need help keeping up? Justin Long’s Roundup is a good place to turn. He curates news with an eye for events that affect the unreached and ministry among them.

Source: Lausanne Movement, November 3, 2021

A disturbing analysis of 4.5 million tweets shows that falsehoods are 70 percent more likely to get shared. This shows it’s not only an inability to decipher what is true that makes fake news so prolific—we also find it alluring, sensational.

Despite being the bearers of good news, Christians are not immune to fake news. For example, in the days leading up to the 2020 election in the U.S., the most popular Christian pages on Facebook were being run by troll farms in Eastern Europe. These groups, which work cooperatively to produce and publish provocative and often angering content to social networks, reached nearly half of all Americans.

Our propensity for fake news reflects our propensity for fake forms of the gospel. A 2020 survey by Ligonier Ministries showed that a significant number of evangelicals have a profound misunderstanding about God. “Overall, U.S. adults appear to have a superficial attachment to well-known Christian beliefs,” stated the ministry.

Read more. The complete article includes other links and resources. You might want to watch their recent webinar featuring a panel of international ministry leaders talking about The Good News in a Fake World.

Also read The Five False Worldviews That Ensnare Your Church (Mission Frontiers) and Challenges for Mission in the Future (Kouyanet).

Source: Mission Network News, November 4, 2021

A Deaf girl born into a Muslim family found true community in a Deaf school nearby.

Her family didn’t know sign language, so she felt very alone at home. Rob Myers [of DOOR International] says, “A vast majority of them have grown up in homes where they can’t communicate well with their own parents. It’s very common for Deaf people to have an everyday experience where they’re sitting around the dinner table, and there’s talking and laughing and information being exchanged. And those Deaf kids are cut off from all of that information.”

One day, a DOOR International 2×2 church-planting team visited her school, and she learned the story of Jesus. Her family didn’t take well to her becoming a Christian. They kicked her out, but a Deaf church welcomed her in.

Eventually, her father, a devout Muslim, got sick. The Deaf church paid his medical expenses. Moved by their love, he too embraced Jesus.

Myer says, “In a lot of communities, deaf people are looked down upon, and they’re not thought of as even being capable of having faith or being involved in a faith community of any kind. So when a young Deaf person comes to faith, it actually can transform the entire family.”

Pray the rest of this girl’s family would also encounter the love of Jesus.

Read the full article. Note that less than 2% of the world’s 70 million Deaf know Christ. Learn more.

Source: Morning Star News, November 2, 2021

Two Christians were killed in an attack on a church service in southern Kaduna state on Sunday, October 31, with eight others slain in earlier assaults on predominantly Christian villages, sources said.

The lethal attack on Baptist worshipers in Kakau Daji village, Chikun County, also resulted in the kidnapping of dozens of Christians from the Sunday service, church leaders said.

“Two Christians were killed in the church during the morning worship service, and many others were taken away at gunpoint by the armed Fulani herdsmen,” Ishaya Jangado, president of the Kaduna Baptist Convention, said in a text message to Morning Star News.

Joseph Hayab, chairman of the Kaduna State Chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), lamented that the Nigerian government has been incapable of stopping such atrocities after years of attacks.

The full story also describes other recent attacks in the area. We looked for an update on this one (were the captives released?) but did not find one.

A related story adds, “To compound matters, a shutdown of state telecom services to help combat bandit activity is understood to have exacerbated the attack. The church was unable to call for help, whilst the bandits have reportedly asked for a higher ransom because they had to travel further for network service to contact the victims’ relations” (Open Doors).

For something more encouraging, read Elite Runner Uses Life Experiences to Establish Teen Challenge in Nigeria (Assemblies of God News) or, from elsewhere in Africa, An Imam Encourages His People to Read the Bible (World Venture).

Source: Baptist News Global, November 9, 2021

In South Africa, free analog-broadcast community television stations whose programming caters to low-income majority Black townships are broke. To keep the lights on, they take advertising money from startup Pentecostal pastors who promise bewildering miracles and changes of fortune for jobless audiences.

Anele Heli is a 20-something charismatic prophet-pastor in Cape Town, South Africa’s most racially and financially gentrified city. He goes by the moniker Sir Anele, and his weekly TV sermons on Cape Town TV, the largest nonprofit community channel in the city, attract thousands of viewers and thousands more offline. Worshipers are desperate for him to touch their heads and to ease their pain in a country with the world’s highest joblessness rate. “I’m here to change lives on TV,” Heli said. “My sermons heal diabetes, restore lost jobs, reverse divorces.”

Nearly a dozen dubious South African township TV prophet-pastors are on trial for rape, murder, extortion, immigration fraud, and “fake miracles” stunts.

Poor, majority Black township residents in South Africa can’t afford high-quality pay-per-view TV or home Internet broadband. Broke community TV stations are their only source of information. Therefore, fraudster prophet-pastors lie in wait for desperate township TV viewers beset by joblessness, lack of health insurance, or mental health ailments.

[Kudakwashe Magezi, a poet and tech critic in Johannesburg, explains] “Prophet-pastors recoup their money by performing TV ‘miracles’ and aggressively requesting cash donations to a bank account. Cellular phone corporations get a cut of the cash revenue from desperate viewers [through] text messages.”

Read the full story.

In this edition:

1. Understanding Frontier Unreached Peoples
2. Haiti: 17 Missionaries Kidnapped by Powerful Gang
3. Eritrea: 2 Elderly Pastors Imprisoned
4. Globally, Girls Exposed to “Shadow Pandemic” of Sexual Abuse
5. News Roundup: The Increase of Orphans Worldwide

Read or share the email edition or scroll down for individual articles.

Greetings!

Lately, I have been rethinking what the Church is and how God intends it to grow. I should have seen this long ago, but now I see the family motif as the best way to think about the Church. If the Church is a family, then might there be a better way to think about the unreached? As those with no church family?

This idea is not new; you may remember the Adopt-A-People movement. But what if we think of them as not adopted until they have a church family, or are “reached.” I doubt that missiologists will adopt (pun intended) new labels but my mind is made up. These unreached peoples or frontier peoples are simply orphaned peoples who need to learn of the Father that awaits their return.

My thinking started to change on this when I read Michael Heiser’s book, What Does God Want?

Whatever way you categorize the people of the earth, this interactive map at Joshua Project is amazing!  Read more about the Frontier Peoples model below.

Blessings,

Pat

Source: Joshua Project, 2021

Frontier people groups (FPGs) are unreached people groups with 0.1% or fewer Christians of any kind, and no evidence of a self-sustaining gospel movement. There are about 4,993 frontier people groups with a total population of 1,977,748,000. One-fourth of the world lives in FPGs and has almost no chance of hearing about Jesus from someone in their people group. About half the population of all FPGs live in just 33 groups, each with a population of ten million or more.

In frontier people groups, Christianity is often viewed as a competing foreign political and religious force that threatens to pull apart families and communities. Evangelism and church planting that encourage or expect individuals to leave their families reinforce these fears. FPGs are best reached through gospel movements that bring God’s blessing to heal and strengthen families and communities.

Read more about frontier people groups and access a large collection of related resources to help you understand and communicate these concepts. Be sure to check out the interactive map.

Looking for ways to inspire others for work among the unreached? Find some good tips in How to Tell a Dangerous Story (an article Missions Catalyst reader Heather Pubols wrote for Missio Nexus).