West Africa (MNN) — Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have eyes on an alliance. These three countries also have something else in common; a concerning lack of Gospel presence.
Why? Greg Kelley of Unknown Nations believes that “The biggest issue of the lack of Gospel presence in these three countries is just the lack of priority. It’s way easier for the Church to resource things in [other parts of the world] where you don’t have to deal with the adversity and challenges of radical Islam.”
Extremist persecution makes faith hard. The risk of losing one’s life makes faith hard. The threat of physical violence makes faith hard. “And I think because of that, we just haven’t taken on these difficult fields,” Kelley says. “We continue perpetually to go for the low-hanging fruit, the places of paths of least resistance.”
And yet the apostles of the Bible had a different mentality. They took Jesus’s message where it was not, even when it meant risking their physical safety. They went because the people in those places needed the Gospel as much as anyone else.
Kelley says there are 45 countries in the world where less than 5% of the population is Christian. “It’’s not difficult to find that information. We know where the places are at. So we have to ask ourselves; what are the barriers creating the situation?”
One such barrier is literacy. Most people in these countries are oral learners, so they need solar-powered audio Bibles to learn Scripture. Unknown Nations has those Bibles, translated into the local languages of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso – but they need to be able to distribute them.
Once those Bibles are in place, discipleships can blossom. House churches and small groups emerge and thrive, leaders step up, and God makes His presence known even in the darkest corners of the world.
So pray. “Pray that the Lord of the harvest [would] send forth laborers,” Kelley says. “We need to equip ourselves with knowledge[…] so as we’re praying with knowledge to the Lord of the harvest, we’re naming those people groups that Jesus died for.”
Follow the work of Unknown Nations here.
Header photo courtesy of Unsplash
