MENA (MNN) — Hundreds of believers from every ministry sphere are teaming up to achieve one goal: reaching millions in the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan with the Good News of Christ. In the coming days, MNN will speak with Gospel project leaders to learn which unreached people groups they’re focused on and why.
The end goal is seeing biblically-healthy churches form and multiply among 90 unreached people groups of the Greater Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan.
“There are multiple organizations that try to reach people groups, and with some measure of success, but rarely do you bring all the ministry sectors together in one effort,” says David Pope, President of POPE Initiatives.
Specific efforts include “Bible translation, which typically exists in a silo; orality, prayer mobilization, any kind of media approach; along with the things we call the core missiological tasks: proclaiming the Gospel, making disciples, and developing leaders,” Pope says.
How to reach a region for Christ
Traditionally viewed as an Islamic stronghold, the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan are home to approximately 395 unreached people groups. While definitions vary, WorldAtlas.com identifies 19 countries as being part of the MENA region: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. POPE Initiatives and its partners expanded their regional focus to include Pakistan because it contains a large number of unreached people groups.
(Photo courtesy of Prayercast)
In unreached communities, most people have never heard of Jesus and have no access to the Gospel. There are no, or very few, indigenous missionaries because less than two-percent of an unreached people group knows Christ – that’s what keeps them “unreached.”
Thankfully, it’s all about to change. “We have a great opportunity to see the Gospel spread and churches multiply where they aren’t, at least not yet, in that part of the world,” Pope explains.
“If we can foster biblically healthy churches and multiply them in this region, it’ll impact the entire Muslim world.”
Instead of working in “silos”, hundreds of ministry workers are combining their skills and resources in one collaborative effort. This task is monumental, to say the least, and there’s a critical place for you in the story.
“I think everybody’s heard the three ‘pray, give, and go’ [responses] but, for us, prayer mobilization and intercession is not an afterthought. It’s actually the groundwork before we go in,” Pope says.
Find your place in the story
Join MNN and our sister ministry, Prayercast, in surrounding this initiative in prayer. Use this video to start.
(Stock photo obtained via Pixabay)
“We’re working with Prayercast to produce prayer awareness videos for every people group in this initiative, so we’re generating prayer on a grand scale globally,” Pope says. “We’re also engaging large-scale prayer networks around the world to [translate] these prayer tools into major languages like Portuguese, Mandarin, and Korean.”
If God’s blessed you with resources and you’d like to support this effort financially, contact POPE Initiatives here. “The beauty of this is you’re not really investing in a project… or a ministry partner, you’re investing in a process,” Pope says.
Sign up for daily emails here to learn which unreached people groups are next on the list.
Header image courtesy of Prayercast.
