Displaying items by tag: Outreach

Schools are shutting for the summer vacation, and hundreds of children’s holiday clubs and schemes will be starting - most of them run by local churches. Pray for God to give energy, wisdom and strength to the army of volunteers who will be giving up their time to share God's amazing love. Bible stories will be recreated in drama, storytelling, singing, and dance and reinforced through craft and games. Most of these clubs choose not to charge children to attend, believing that no child should miss out for financial reasons. Thank God for the round-the-year fundraising events that are held to meet the costs of these schemes, and pray that voluntary donations given by families during the holiday weeks will fill any financial gaps. May God protect every child from accident and sickness.

(Linda Digby, Prayer Alert team)

South Korea's president, Moon Jae-in, said on 20 June that North Korea should repatriate South Koreans and Americans detained in the reclusive country. American student Otto Warmbier, arrested for theft of a political notice while visiting North Korea as a tourist, was held prisoner for 17 months. He has died at a Cincinnati hospital just days after being released from captivity - in a coma, his parents said. Doctors caring for him said he had extensive brain damage. Three other United States citizens (ethnic Koreans) and six South Koreans remain in custody. President Moon deplored North Korea’s lack of respect for human rights, and said his government will make every effort to obtain the return of the detainees. US President Donald Trump blamed the ‘brutality of the North Korean regime’ for Mr Warmbier’s death. Several of those detained are Christian missionaries charged with subversion. North Korea defends its ‘sovereign right to ruthlessly punish’ US citizens held for crimes against the state.

A conference for prayer and mission leaders from across Europe is happening right now (4 to 14 May) in Herrnhut. They are evaluating the current position of mission to the unreached peoples of Europe and praying strategic, informed prophetic prayers for breakthrough. Pray for even more anointing of prophetic sensitivity on these leaders in the last few days of the conference. Pray for a mighty move of His Church moving forward with the gospel as a result of this event. May the prayers of God’s people pave the way for the gospel to be preached, with power and miracles following, in every European language and dialect. Pray for all the networking and connections that have happened through the course of this conference to be acted on with Holy Spirit anointing. It is crucial that these delegates connect more deeply and purposefully. May fruitful networking birth new initiatives this week through closer linking of the prayer and mission movements.

The Guinea Bissau Free Methodist work is led by Pastor Rito Mande. He first connected with Free Methodists after a mission trip by Cindi Angelo, a Brazilian missionary who speaks Portuguese (Guinea Bissau has historical and linguistic connections with Portugal). Cindi discovered Rito was a devoted follower of Christ and encouraged him in his faith. In 2015 Rito started leading an outreach to children, but it soon became a church for the whole family. Three other fellowships all started following the same pattern, and are now a part of the work. Nine leaders, young adults, help with these fellowships. Of the country’s 1,704,000 people, only 1.6% are evangelical Christians. The Joshua Project reports that 68.3% of the population are unreached. Their primary religions are either ethnic religions or Islam.

Algeria’s population is 40.3 million - 99% Muslim, 1% Christian. Literacy: 87% men, 73% women. The country was home to St Augustine, one of the Church’s foremost theologians (354-430). Christianity flourished between the fifth and seventh centuries but disappeared after Arab invasions. Since independence in 1962, an entirely local church has been born among the Berber people. Its astonishing growth in the last few decades is thought to be the fastest in the Arab world, with several thousand new believers baptised every year. Church growth is exciting and challenging. In this ‘first-generation Church’ there is a great need for discipleship, strong biblical teaching and encouragement for believers to live out their new-found faith every day. Such a radical change in their worldview means that new Christians are often left with questions and face many challenges. SAT-7 broadcasts across the airwaves, and is responding to this need with a range of programmes to encourage and disciple Algerian believers.

Some Christians study weather patterns over North Korea in order to choose the best time to launch helium-filled weather balloons, with a GPS transponder, carrying gospel tracts and New Testaments into the country. By including a GPS transponder, workers can track the paths and see where the precious payloads land. Another method of reaching the unreached involves radio broadcasts from South Korea. The North Korean government tries to jam signals, but frequencies are repeatedly changed and sharing the Good News continues. North Korean defectors read Scriptures over the air deliberately slowly so that listeners can write down passages of God’s Word themselves. These handwritten verses are the only Bibles that many will ever have in a nation where owning a Bible is only a dream for most. Also brave Christians hand out Bible tracts. John was detained for passing out gospel tracts in North Korea. Listen to his story by clicking the ‘More’ button.

New technology provides creative ways to distribute Scripture. One Wycliffe Bible Translation partner organisation plans to distribute 250,000 SD cards (ultra-small, high-capacity flash memory cards) in a language community in West Asia by the middle of this year. The Acts of the Apostles film and other Scripture media in the local language will go on the cards. Pray that many people will hear and respond to the Scriptures through this strategy.

The following is from a Pray for Scotland pdf: ‘We are in unprecedented times of change and upheaval. But, praise God, we are also in unprecedented times of opportunity and openness to the Gospel. In modern warfare, ground assaults precede air attacks to remove defences, supply lines, etc. So it is in the spiritual battle. As the ground troops, our task it is to take back the ground lost to the forces of evil. We do this through mission and outreach, through acts of kindness and compassion, through being “salt and light” where God has placed us in the workplace or other part of society, and in other ways. The air assault to prepare the way for the ground troops is our prayers and worship; two warfare weapons that change the atmosphere in our streets, communities, towns, and cities - removing obstacles to the advance of the Gospel, demolishing strongholds, replacing “heaviness” in the atmosphere with “lightness”, and opening hearts and minds to receiving the truth about Jesus.’

The Japanese are considered the largest unreached people group in the world, with over 120 million still waiting to hear the Gospel. Enormous hurdles stand in the way of the Japanese putting their faith in Jesus. Five of these hurdles are: - spiritual forces of evil, idolatry, and ancestor worship - the Bible and Christianity are viewed as Western and anti-Japanese - busy-ness and materialism - hopelessness, with more than 30,000 suicides per year - the Church's low influence in society. However, a low birthrate, an ageing society, natural disasters, economic decline and feelings of social isolation have provoked a recent resurgence in spiritual searching. The Japanese are now increasingly open to the Gospel, and many believe Japan is ready for an unprecedented awakening to the Good News of Jesus. Only a move of God will bring the freedom, joy, peace and hope that the Japanese desperately crave.

On Tuesday Bristol magistrates convicted two Christian preachers of public order offences, many believing they rode roughshod over principles of freedom of speech. They imposed a fine and costs on each of them, totalling £2,016. The case arose over an outreach in Bristol where Michael Overd and Michael Stockwell had preached the Gospel in front of John Wesley’s Chapel. They told the crowd that ‘the thief comes to kill, steal and destroy’, adding that people were on their way to hell because of their view of Christianity. It was decided that the inclusion of homosexuality in a list containing thieves and drunkards was abuse. Michael Phillips, defending, told the court the list of sinners was in 1Cor. 6:9-10. It was the same passage cited in the Appeal Court case of Alison Redmond-Bate, where important principles of free speech were laid down and her conviction set aside. There, as in this case, a hostile crowd gathered and police were called. There, as in this case, the preachers, not the trouble-makers, were wrongly arrested.