The Numbers Shock Me

Back in the early 90's, I discovered the World Prayer Map published annually by Every Home for Christ (Get free maps at www.ehc.org). Since then I've tried to keep a current copy nearby to use as a prayer guide and resource. It is a neat tool that shows each country's population, the name of its leader, and the percentage of Christians in that country. It also serves as a prayer guide by assigning specific countries to pray for each day of the month and giving you specific things to pray for in that country. I highly recommend it.

I've been crunching some numbers lately and some of the results that I'm getting haunt me. For example, out of 227 countries in the world, 152 have a Christian population of 10% or less. 116 of those have a Christian population of less than 5%. (EHC gathers these statistics from Operation World - an organization that has been tracking and studying world evangelism for decades.)

What countries have the most Christians? The top 5 are:

1. Uganda 46%
2. Kenya 36%
3. Central African Republic 35%
4. USA 33%
5. Swaziland 29%

(Note: This list includes only countries with populations of 1 million or more. Some small islands in the South Pacific have a high number of Christians such as the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu.)

If you were to look at the listing of every country on the planet, you would be shocked at the number of countries with virtually no or very little Christian influence. Here are some examples:

Spain 0.4%
Greece 0.4%
Germany 2.9%
France 0.8%
United Kingdom 8.5%
Russia 0.7%
Iran and Afghanistan 0.0%
Vietnam 1.4%
Indonesia 4%
China 6%
Japan 0.4%
Costa Rica 12%
Colombia 4.7%

So it bothers me when we, the Church in America, spend so much time and money on ourselves and very little on world evangelism. We are oblivious to the fact that most of the world has NO KNOWLEDGE of Jesus Christ. We are like the band members on the Titanic. We continue to play our songs while the world around us is dying.

Jesus gave us a Great Commission to "go into all the world," yet very few believers take it seriously. We must be obedient to this calling. I fear that the Church in America, ONE-THIRD of the American population, is failing at this - miserably.

More later. Gotta go for now.