DAWN Fridayfax 2000 #31

USA

Prayer saves lives - Washington's crime rate halved

Washington D.C., the capital of the USA, was once known as America's murder capital - in 1993, 454 people were murdered. This seems to be changing: the crime rate has dropped by half in the last six years, according to a report by the prayer movement 'Intercessors for America', which attributes the development to six years of permanent intercession in the USA and around the globe. The frequency of violent crime has dropped by 60%, the number of murders from 454 in 1993 to 232 last year, according to Dan Wedderburn, member of a human rights committee, quoted in the Washington Post last month. Burglary has dropped by 70%, rapes by 40%. As an intercession group prayed that 'deception would be uncovered', the then mayor Marion Barry was arrested in a drug raid.

6,000 pray each week

Over 6,000 people pray each week for current prayer items. They are given pages from the telephone book, so that each person in the city is named in prayer. Some Christian members of Congress also take part in the weekly prayer meetings. A round-the-clock prayer watch for the government and city leaders was started in 1997.
Source: Intercessors for America

Worldwide

811.5 million Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians soon?

In 1900, some 900,000 people were considered members of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. This number grew to 72 million in 1970, which was around 6.4% of all Christians. (These figures are taken from Dr. David Barrett's newest publication, the World Christian Encyclopedia.) In the year 2000, the number has grown to 523.7 million, or 27.7% of all Christians. Barrett estimates that if the growth continues, their number will reach 811.5 million in 2025, at which point they will constitute 32.5% of all Christians. The largest contributions to the figures are from Latin America (141.43 million), Asia (134.9 million) and Africa (126 million). Europe has 37.6 million Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians.
Source: World Christian Encyclopedia, Second Edition, Oxford, 2000

Joshua List

145 newly-reached people groups

In 1995, a group of missiologists constructed a list of 1,739 people groups with a total population of 2.2 billion: the Joshua List. The people groups listed had a minimum of 10,000 members, of which less than 5% were Christians of any sort, and less than 2% evangelical. The list was revised monthly according to reports from all over the globe. Dan Scribner, manager of the 47,000 updates to the list, reports that there are now only 1,594 unreached people groups according to the list's criteria. During the past 5 years, 145 people groups were reached with the gospel.

Church planting teams in 1,055 unreached groups

In view of the remaining 1,594 unreached people groups, plans were made to start a church planting movement in 1,329 of them by the end of the year 2000. That will leave 265 groups, consisting of 45 million people, for which there are no concrete plans. At present, church planting teams are working in 1,055 of the groups. 539 people groups, with a total population of 81 million, remain without a church planting team. There are only 1,117 people groups with less than 100 indigenous Christians.
Source: Dan Scribner, Luis Bush (AD2000)

Worldwide

Conversion growth in the world's largest religious groups

Growth is the sum of biological growth (births minus deaths) and conversion growth. Here are the latest figures:

	Total Growth	Conversion Growth
All Christians	1,45%	0,135%
Evangelical	1,47%	0,423%
Pentecostal/Charismatic	2,33%	0,588%
Muslims	2,15%	0,08%
Hindus	1,84%	-0,087%
Buddhists	1,13%	0,045


Source: Dr. David Barrett/Patrick Johnstone

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