Chad (MNN) — The African Union has called for civilian and military leaders to share power in the central African country of Chad. President *Idriss Déby was killed in combat in April, and military leaders have run the country ever since.
President Déby had been a strong ally against Islamic terrorism, which runs rampant in northern areas of Chad. Greg Kelley of World Mission says, “As far as the Christian presence in the south, I think these instabilities tend to lead to more chaos. And those with power, which is the largely Muslim majority in the leadership, tend to try and overplay their hand to get more control. So it leads to chaos.”
The advancement of the Gospel
Pray that even as Chad walks through a tumultuous time, the love of Christians will point a different way forward. World Mission primarily serves people in the northern parts of Chad, populated by 99% Muslims.
Kelley says the country has at least 140 unique people groups. “One group we are so excited about is a group called the Ndam. There are only 22,000. But they have their own language. And up until recently, they knew of less than 20 Christians, out of over 22,000 people. And we’ve been doing distributions of solar-powered audio Bible in their native language. And just in the last few months, we’ve seen two new indigenous churches planted.”
The header photo shows the former President of Chad Idriss Deby at a 2004 news conference. (Photo courtesy of Nicoleon, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
