Africa. You know – the place where corrupt, crumbling governments abuse their citizens, where tribal groups attack each other, where everybody dies of AIDS.
Those, at least, are the grim images that spring to many minds from the minimal news coverage – most of it negative – Americans get about Africa from major media. The temptation is strong – even for the missions-minded – to “write off” places and people that seem beyond hope. But Jesus never succumbed to such an impulse. If He had, where would we be?
International missionaries and African believers are asking Great Commission Christians around the world to pray for Africa.
Why pray for Africa?
Because the church is mushrooming in Africa, averaging 6 million new believers each year. “The expansion of Christianity in 20th-century Africa has been called the fourth great age of Christian expansion. Nearly 20 percent of Africa’s 800 million people claimed Christ as Lord by the end of the century, and more than 100 million were evangelical believers. But hundreds of millions more wait to hear the gospel.
Because nearly 2,000 distinct languages are spoken by more than 3,000 ethnolinguistic people in Africa – the world’s greatest remaining challenge for Bible translation.
Because Islam claims 300 million African adherents, permeates North Africa, dominates a number of sub-Saharan nations and sends missionaries throughout the continent.
Because Africa is suffering. Of the world’s 40 poorest nations in the mid-1990s, more than 30 were in Africa. Disasters, turmoil and lack of economic development continue to subject millions to hunger or starvation. Malaria kills more than 1 million Africans every year, and the AIDS pandemic ravages whole nations.
(BP)
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