Monday, March 31, 2008

How much do you know about world missions?

I ran across these facts in a letter from the International Bulletin of Mission Research and through people might be interested in these not so trivial facts.

1. There is a total of 37,000 different church denominations worldwide.
2. Of the 6.6 million people currently living in the world about 31.4 % or 2.2 billion people call themselves "Christian".
3. About 44% of Christians are "white" and 56% are "non-white".
4. There are about 259 million evangelical Christians.
5. Some portion of the Bible has been translated into 2,238 of the worlds languages.
6. There are 4.4 million women in full-time Christian ministry serving around the world.
7. There 443,000 foreign Christian missionaries from 4340 agencies serving around the world.
8. The countries that receive the greatest number of foreign missionaries are: U.S.A. - 35,100, Brazil - 26,400, Russian - 20,100, France - 16,900, Britain - 15,800, D.R Congo - 15,800.
9. There are almost 19,000 Africans serving as foreign missionaries on other continents.

Most people think of the church being centered in Europe and America, but in reality there are more now Christians in Africa, India and Asia than Europe and America. As an example of how Christianity is growing in Africa, I recently received a report from Ghana that more that 1200 people attended the Easter Convention of the Fellowship of Christian Churches of Ghana in Salaga, Ghana, a small town in the north-eastern region of Ghana. It is so remote that many people traveled more than 16 hours to reach the site of the convention. Great things are happening in the church throughout the world.

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