DAWN Fridayfax 2000 #6

Global

Evangelicals are the world's fastest-growing movement

"4000 years ago, God promised Abraham to bless all peoples through him," write mission strategists Ralph Winter and Bruce Koch in their article 'Finishing the Task'. "Today, this promise is being fulfilled before our very eyes, and with an almost unbelievable speed. Biblical faith is spreading as never before." The magazine 'Missions Frontiers', published by the US Center for World Mission, presented the following new figures, based on their own research and David Barrett and Patrick Johnstone's statistics:

Annual growth
Global population	1.6%
Pentecostal and charismatic churches	7.3%
Evangelical churches	5.6%
Protestant churches	2.9%
Roman Catholic church	1.2% (approx.)
Christianity	2.6%
In comparison: Islam	2.7%

"Evangelical Christianity is growing 3.5 times as fast as the world population," (Pentecostal and Charismatic churches 4.5 times as fast). "That makes Evangelical Christianity, with 645 million members or 11% of the population, the fastest-growing major religious group, and the only movement growing significantly through conversion," says Johnstone.

Unreached peoples: not so unreached!

Of the world's 24,000 people groups, some 10,000, with a total population of around 2.1 billion, are unreached. An 'unreached people group' is a numerically significant population which shares a language, religion, race, locality, trade, class, caste or other identifying element in which there is no indigenous group of Christians which are able to reach the people group with the gospel (the AD2000 and Beyond movement's definition: less than 2% of the group are evangelical, or less than 5% are active Christians). "Of the world's 6 billion inhabitants, around one third are Christians, another third lives in people groups which have been reached with the gospel, and the remaining third lives in unreached groups. That is a great step forward from the situation in1974, when around half of the non-Christians lived in unreached people groups; today, it is only one third. For the first time in history, there are fewer non-Christians in unreached people groups than in evangelised groups," the report continues. Winter and Koch conclude: "We are clearly in the final era of world mission. For the first time in history, we can see that the task of establishing a church-planting movement in the language and social structure of every people group can be completed."
Source: www.missionfrontiers.org,

Global

Half the world population has seen the Jesus film

In 1989, the Jesus Film, based on the gospel of Luke, had been translated into 134 languages, and 30 million of the 330 million who had seen it had decided to follow Jesus. By 1999, the film had been translated into 547 languages, had been seen by 2.9 billion people (almost half of the world population) and 106.5 million people had shown interest in following Jesus, according to a statement made by the Jesus Film movement on 14 January 2000.
Source: www.jesusfilm.org,

Tatarstan

Law or love, which is the greater?

The eternal story of Schamyl, the Chechen prince "During a visit to Perm, a town in the Ural mountains, last summer, we had a couple of hours to spare, and decided to visit the local mosque," reports Swiss evangelist Florian Bärtsch. "The Mullah approached us immediately, and asked us 'Will Jesus come again?' 'Yes', we answered, 'he will return, just as described in the Bible.' He asked another question, and gave his answer: 'What is most important in life? Keeping the law!' 'No,' we replied, 'love is most important.' I then told him the story of Schamyl, a long-dead Chechen prince, which I had heard from Roscher, an economist in the Caucasus area. Prince Schamyl had made a law that anyone who took any of the spoils of their many wars would receive 100 lashes. Then, a theft was discovered - the thief was the Prince's weak old mother! Schamyl then faced the question of whether the law should be fulfilled, and he had to consider it for a number of days before concluding that the law must be fulfilled. He ordered that his mother be bound to a post and whipped. Just before the first lash, he threw himself in front of his mother, ordering the soldier to continue, and to count the lashes exactly. 'He had found the solution: he had saved his mother, but the law had been fulfilled. That is exactly what Jesus did with our guilt on the cross,' we told the astonished Mullah, who had become very quiet while listening to the story. 'Whenever you return, please come to the mosque!' he said as we left."
Source: Florian Bärtsch and Marco Gmür, tel (+41) 33 438 28 28

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