Displaying items by tag: unreached people

God is moving the Body of Christ to prayer. The prayer and mission movements are connecting as we see in May 2019 three major prayer thrusts aimed at the unreached.

“Year of the Frontier” May 2019 through June 2020 focuses prayer on the largest people groups with the least access to the gospel—May 2019 highlights the largest 31 groups, all over 1 million population. Joshua Project, Global Prayer Digest, the Ethné Movement, the 24:14 Coalition and many others offer a myriad of resources to facilitate effective, fervent, specific prayer.

More on this year-long effort next month, but check out the Nov/Dec 2018 issue of Mission Frontiers Magazine to read more and connect with resources:

http://www.missionfrontiers.org/pdfs/MF40-6_Nov-Dec_eBook.pdf . Also, don’t miss the new podcast by Alliance for the Unreached: https://alliancefortheunreached.org/podcast/

For more than twenty-five years now, the annual 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World calls the church to make a deliberate but respectful effort to learn about, pray for and reach out to our world’s Muslim neighbors.This international movement began in 1993 and coincides annually with the important Islamic month of religious observation — Ramadan, a time of the year when Muslims are much more deeply aware of spiritual matters. This year we pray May 6 to June 4.

It was launched by a group of Christians who felt inspired to challenge the way they understood Muslim people. What if they saw Muslims in the same way God does? While media sound bites about Islamic extremism can too easily incite anger, fear and even hatred towards Muslims, these believers seek to resist this temptation to generalize, and instead, resolve to respond and pray with the mind and heart of Christ. The editorial work for this prayer movement was initially coordinated in Australia, then in France, then in Germany and then in the UK. The North American edition has been published continuously since 1993 by WorldChristian.com.

“It is not our intention with this prayer focus during Ramadan to disparage Islam or Muslim sentiments in any way. We recognize that humans and the Muslim world are far too complex to simply condense or explain with a mere booklet. However, at the same time, it is our sincere desire that Muslims the world over would have the opportunity to freely understand and consider the Good News — Jesus Christ.”

Thousands of ministries and churches from many denominations participate regularly. Many participants have commented on how much they have learned about Islam, and how their negative attitudes about Muslims have been changed as they read about, prayed for and even reached out to Muslims. Here are suggestions to consider:

• Order additional booklets (bulk-discounts start at 10 copies) to hand out, or to sell: https://www.worldchristian.com/product/30-days-muslim-prayer-guide-2019.
• Download, print and display the poster on bulletin boards at work and in churches: https://www.30daysprayer.com/resources/downloads/.
• Feel free to use their images and text to promote “30 Days” in your communication channels: https://www.30daysprayer.com/resources/downloads/.
• Let your Facebook friends know.
• Organize a meeting a couple weeks before Ramadan starts to talk about it.

Furthermore, Love Muslims is launching! Chris Ruge is ecstatic to share that Prayercast is launching Love Muslims – the most comprehensive and compelling Muslim-focused prayer resource the world has ever seen!

Over 130 new 4-5 minute videos will lead the Body of Christ in focused, strategic, passionate prayer for the Muslim world. Each video is led by a former Muslim who now follows Jesus!

“We’re rallying the Church around the world to join us in prayer each day during Ramadan, and we’ll be releasing a brand new video each day. Would you prayerfully consider SHARING this and INVITING your network to join in prayer through Ramadan.”

 Specifically, would you do the following?

• INVITE your mailing list, networks, and partners to join in prayer - including all the MENA prayer groups!
• SHARE about the movement through your social media and other communication channels.
• SIGN UP yourself and pray with us!

We want to make this as easy for you as possible. We have a series of media tools to make sharing Love Muslims easy and clear for both you and your community. Click to see a special preview of one of the videos: https://vimeo.com/291193744/3f1af42f77  Our heart cry is to gather as many people to pray with Love Muslims as we can leading up to Ramadan. Would you help spread the word? Forward this to everyone you know who should be joining in prayer. Share about the movement on social media using #LoveMuslims and directing your friends and followers to www.LoveMuslims.org

Whichever tools you use, join the millions of Christians around the world, and churches and ministries from many denominationsbeginning May 2019, including from May 6 to June 4, 2019 during the season of Ramadan, to understand and to persistently pray for our unreached neighbors and nations.

Liz Adleta

Global Prayer Strategist serving
Fellowship of Prayer Strategists, the Ethne Movement, & the 24:14 Coalition

The 24:14 Community is challenging our prayer partners to join in 21 days of prayer and fasting as God leads for the acceleration of movement engagement in every unreached people and place by 2025. Click on the link below for a two-page reusable 21-day prayer guide to focus your prayers and provide specific prayer points for Church Planting Movements. 

Pray

• Pray for the upcoming Ibero-America regional meeting, that out of it a regional team will be formed that spearheads movement engagement of all remaining unreached peoples and places in the region.
• Pray for movement leaders globally to share movement data with 24:14 so that we have a complete picture of the remaining gaps to share.
• Pray for volunteer translators for every major language to translate the 24:14 website, vision book, and other materials
• Pray for every country of the world to be covered by Geographic Stewardship Team members who ensure movement engagement

More: https://inheritthenations.net/2414-coalition-prayer-involvement/21-days-of-prayer/

All mighty spiritual revivals have had their roots in prayer. Years ago a missionary revivalist reported that in England he talked to a lady about the revival in China. She gave him certain dates when God specially pressed her to pray. He was startled to find that they were the very dates when God was doing his mightiest work in Manchuria and China. The day will come when the history of revival will be unveiled and show that it was brought about mainly by God's saints hidden away with Him in prayer. There will be an international prayer day for the unreached peoples of the world on 20 May. Will you pray? To find out more, go to

Indigenous people are being reached in northern Ghana. The Komba people have demonstrated an exceptional openness to the gospel; many villages have openly invited Christian missionaries into their communities. Seventeen 17 national and international ministries are partnering to see Christianity reach this generation of unreached people. With a focus on local leadership training and evangelism, they are seeing a movement to Christ begin: 368 Komba leaders have been trained in disciple-making and church-planting, resulting in 63+ new churches. Missionaries are working side-by-side with local leaders, equipping them to do what God has called them to do. However, nominalism and self-absorption are rampant in this area, and 18 other people groups have not yet even heard of Jesus, while Muslims are launching an aggressive outreach, making significant inroads. There is a spiritual divide.

The Finishing the Task initiative is helping to coordinate the final push to share Christ’s Good News with the last unreached peoples. Would you please consider adopting one of these people groups and beginning to pray for them until they are reached? It will make a huge difference because Jesus told us to “pray the Lord of the harvest that He would send forth laborers” into the harvest.

Please find attached the current focus list of the unengaged, unreached people groups being promoted by the FTT network on the attached website with other helpful information. If you have any questions please contact:

Lara Heneveld
Project Manager
Data and Research Team Lead | Networks and Partnerships

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.finishingthetask.com

Joshua Project at joshuaproject.net also has much helpful information about adopting an unreached group and offers a good number of prayer profiles for this purpose.

‘Our International Board meeting will take place from 27 to 30 April, in the Middle East. Our board members and the directors of our national offices in the UK, Holland, Germany, Australia, and the USA will meet. Please pray for wisdom, discernment and unity in all the decisions they have to make, and for a strengthening of the vision to gain access to many unreached people groups in the countries we work. From 30 April to 6 May, all our team members will meet for our annual conference. Please pray for safe travel, and that everybody will be strengthened and encouraged and equipped afresh for our work and ministry. This is a very important time for our teams, and God always ministers to us as individuals and as an organisation. Pray also for all those who will come to speak and minister to our team members.’

Here is the latest version of the chart focusing prayer for laborers on the areas with the most unreached people groups and least help from workers. It looks much better than it actually is, because 90% of mission workers do not go out to work among unreached groups, but help Christians in those areas (regardless of whether we are talking about Africa, Europe or Asia).

Many church mission committees unwittingly compound this problem by insisting that their workers only work where they can partner with local churches overseas!! This practice consistently leaves the least engaged without help. I hope that the problem of laborers can be highlighted at the Herrnhut meeting.

Rebecca Lewis

Frontiers

Let’s pray the Lord of the Harvest to multiply and send forth adequate workers into this massive harvest in Asia so that movements of disciples who can share the Gospel within their own people groups will arise. May His salvation touch every people group on earth within the coming decade as we adopt these unreached peoples in prayer. The completion of the unfinished task of bearing witness to all the peoples of the earth is a key precursor to the return of Jesus Christ. For more good information about how to pray for unreached peoples and adopt them for the mission of your church or prayer group, please check out this website: https://joshuaproject.net 

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.

The Afghan government does not recognise any of its citizens as Christians, nor is anyone permitted to convert to Christianity. However, there are no laws forbidding proselytism, although the practice is contrary to Muslim beliefs. There is only one legally recognised church - the Catholic chapel at the Italian Embassy - but it is not open to local nationals. There are also Christian religious facilities at foreign military bases, such as an Eastern Orthodox church at the Romanian base in Kandahar. Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam, such as Bibles, are prohibited. Muslims who change their faith to Christianity are subject to societal and official pressure, which may lead to death. However, many sources claim there is a secret underground church of Afghans. The US state department estimates that the size of this group is between 500 and 8,000 individuals. The complete Bible is available online in Dari, and the New Testament is available in Pashto.