Facts That Influence Missions
• INDIA:
1. About 150 years ago, a people group in Nagaland, a state in east India, were headhunters. Now more than 95 percent have accepted Christ as their Savior.
2. About 700 million people are 19 years old and under.
• SOUTH AFRICA:
1. Of the 39.5 million people living with AIDS, 5.5 million live in South Africa.
2. 3.1 million women are infected with AIDS.
3. 1.2 million children have been orphaned by AIDS.
4. In 1990 only 0.8 percent of the nation was HIV-positive. Today, that figure is nearly 30 percent
5. 1,000 people die each day of AIDS.
• GUATEMALA:
1. After 36 years of civil war and a neglected educational system, the nation has one of the lowest literacy rates in the Western Hemisphere. In some areas, nearly three out of four adults cannot read or write.
2. Childhood blindness from vitamin A deficiency is a major health concern.
3. More than 90 percent of schools lack textbooks and basic library books.
4. Fewer than 5 percent of children have used a computer.
5. Most schoolchildren graduate without the skills needed to get even midlevel jobs, resulting in a life of poverty and discrimination.
• FRANCE:
1. Less than two-thirds of 1 percent of the people are evangelical believers, and evangelical churches are considered cults.
2. Less than 1 percent of the 12 million people living in Paris claim to be evangelical Christians.
• MONGOLIA:
1. About 1 percent of the population are Christians.
• PAKISTAN:
1. Nearly 90 percent of drug users are suffering from hepatitis; 21 percent have tuberculosis, and 37 percent are HIV-positive.
• MADAGASCAR:
1. The cost of electricity has increased by 200 percent in the past four years. Gasoline is more than $4 a gallon.
• SPAIN:
1. In 2006 the nation reported the fastest growth of immigrants in Western Europe.
2. Of the nation’s 8,022 towns and cities, only 572 have an evangelical witness.
• In a village on the border of two Central Eurasian nations, 70 percent of the women are in prison for selling and/or using drugs. Heroin is easier and cheaper to access than alcohol.
• 26 percent of the world’s population has never heard the gospel.
• About 28 percent of the Uzbekistan population lives in poverty.
• More than 80 percent of the world’s supply of cocaine is grown, processed, or transported through the nation of Colombia.
• SOUTHEAST ASIA:
1. More than 15 million children work as bonded child laborers, and nearly 500,000 children are forced into prostitution.
2. More than 41 percent of the world’s 6,697 least-reached people groups can be found here.
3. More than 18 million children are homeless and live on the streets.
4. Nearly 2 million children never live to see their first birthday.
5. More than 500,000 children are forced into prostitution.
6. More than 100 million children between ages 6 and 14 are outside the school system and are highly likely to be child laborers.
• LAOS:
1. Is the third least-developed country in the world.
2. Has 138 ethnolinguistic groups, 129 of which haven’t been reached with the gospel.
3. Is about the size of Utah but is 90 percent mountainous.
4. Is listed ninth in persecuting Christians.
5. Has 6.2 million people, but only 1,158 attend 21 AG churches.
• PHILIPPINES:
1. The average Filipino speaks at least three languages – the local tribal language, a regional trade language and English.
2. More than 80 percent of the population is Catholic. Many practice folk Catholicism, a mixture of Catholic and animistic beliefs.
3. Nearly 5,000 homeless children roam the streets of Davao City in southeastern Mindanao Province.
4. About 6,000 children and 10,000 adults live in the mausoleums of a cemetery in north Manila. A few people even operate small shops there, and drugs are rampant.
• Most experts suggest that about 200 million Christians are suffering persecution for their faith. Another 200 million to 400 million face discrimination in some form simply for being a Christian.
• The Indonesian government recently declared that churches with fewer than 90 adult attendees must be closed.
• Less than 1 percent of the Bangladesh population professes Christianity.
• Every day at least 327 people die from AIDS in the Latin America/Caribbean region.
• More than 11 million people in the five drought-stricken countries are on the edge of starvation in East Africa.
• About 40 percent of people in South Africa, between 12 and 36 years of age, are HIV-positive.
• Because of a 15-year emphasis on abstinence and faithfulness, the rate of HIV infection among the population of Uganda has decreased from 15 percent to 5 percent.
• Only about 2 percent of church members in the northern part of Germany attend services regularly.
• More than half the world’s 6.7 billion people live in poverty. Nearly 1 billion live on less than $1 per day.
• AFRICA:
1. More than 80 percent of Zimbabwe’s population is unemployed.
2. Africa has the world’s highest mortality rate with 118 out of 1,000 children dying before their first birthday.
3. Two African children die every minute from malaria.
4. More than 40 percent of Swaziland’s population is unemployed, and 69 percent lives below the poverty level.
5. Malaria remains the number one killer of children on the continent, claiming at least 1 million under the age of 5 every year.
6. More than 44 percent of the continent’s 900 million inhabitants are under age 15.
7. Unemployment in Zimbabwe is now more than 70 percent, and the annual inflation rate has climbed to nearly 800 percent. With food, fuel and power shortages, people are struggling to survive.
8. The U.N. Children’s Fund warns that by 2010, nearly 20 million children in sub-Saharan Africa will have lost at least one parent to AIDS, bringing the total number of orphans in the region to 42 million.
9. The average life expectancy of a male in Swaziland is 32 years.
10. To accommodate the ever-increasing inflation rate, one Zimbabwe businessman told missionary Dean Galyen that he raises prices on items in his store by 11 percent every day.
11. Less than 5 percent of the people in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have running water in their homes and only about 10 percent have electricity.
12. There is about one Christian pastor for every 2 million people in northern Africa.
13. In the sub-Saharan area, 42 million school-age children do not attend school.
14. Primary school enrollment and literacy rates in the continent are among the lowest in the world.
15. About 33 percent of Senegal’s children begin school, but only 14 percent of junior high-age children attend.
16. Malnutrition causes stunted growth in 22 percent of Africa’s children under age 5.
• EUROPE:
1. Less than 10 percent of Western Europe’s population attends church.
2. Ireland has the smallest percentage of evangelicals in Europe.
3. About 10 percent of Scotland’s population attends church. Born again believers comprise an even smaller percentage.
4. In the past several years, the Pentecostal fellowship in Poland has grown to 193 established churches and 70 new church plants. About 80 percent of new congregations do not have a pastor.
• GERMANY:
1. About 77 percent of East Germans and 22 percent of West Germans say there is no God.
2. Only 52 percent of Germans believe religious organizations are a positive force in the world.
3. Only 43 percent of Germans acknowledge that religion helps to determine what is right or wrong.
4. In 2006 more than 10,000 babies were aborted in Berlin.
• RUSSIA: Researchers report...
1. 40 percent of Russian males are alcoholics. The average age they begin drinking is between 12 and 13.
2. 7 percent of the population (10 million people) are drug addicts.
3. Two out of three marriages end in divorce.
4. Two abortions take place for every live birth.
5. HIV-AIDS infections are rising faster than in any other developed nation.
6. HIV-AIDS infections are rising faster than in any other developed nation.
7. Moscow has replaced Tokyo, Japan, as the world’s most expensive city in which to live.
8. Seven percent of the nation’s 143.5 million people are addicted to drugs.
9. Spans 11 time zones.
10. In the European section of the country, 42 cities with a population exceeding 100,000 have no Pentecostal witness. Some of these have no evangelical church.
11. More than 21,000 cities in Siberia are currently without a gospel witness.
• The ARABIC LANGUAGE is:
1. One of the world’s top 10 languages.
2. Spoken by some 280 million people.
3. The official language of 22 countries.
4. The language that links Muslims worldwide — a group composing 20 percent of the world’s population.
5. One of six official languages of the United Nations as well as many other international organizations.
6. One of the languages heard on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:11).
• BURUNDI: The average annual per capita income is $112.
• GHANA: The average annual per capita income is $600.
• EURASIA: Regional Director Jerry Parsley says that 2,654 unreached people groups in the region have never said “no” to an altar call because they have never heard the gospel.
• HAITI:
1. Political unrest and corruption have made the country the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.
2. Nearly 85 percent of the population is unemployed, and 1 out of 5 children do not live past 5 years of age.
• BANGLADESH: Only 8 percent of the population had access to a television in 1995. Now 65 percent of people 15 and older watch television at least once a week, and 41 percent have a television in their home.
• NORTHERN ASIA:
1. The population is more than four times that of the United States.
2. 132 million citizens use the Internet, second only to the number of U.S. users.
• The prevalence of tuberculosis throughout the world has declined by 20 percent in the past 15 years. But the number of new cases in Africa has quadrupled during the same time period.
• Nearly 3,000 baby girls die daily from female infanticide in southeast Asia.
• About 25,000 brides are burned annually as victims of dowry deaths in southeast Asia.
• Some 1,200 people die every day from the lingering effects of war in Africa.
• Twenty percent of African children die before reaching 5 years of age.
• Dutch sociologist Nan Kirk de Graaf, who studies faith and belief, reports that 21st century Europe has “one of the least religious populations in the world.”
• About 15,000 homeless and unsupervised children live in abandoned buildings, on the streets and in underground city utility tunnels of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
• More than 75 percent of Moroccan Arabic speakers are functionally illiterate, meaning they cannot even write their own name.
• The International Federation of Red Cross reports that an estimated 300 million to 500 million cases of malaria each year cause 1.5 million to 2.7 million deaths. More than 90 percent of the deaths are children under age 5 living in Africa.
• Violent crime is increasing in Guatemala. This small country of 12 million, on average, has 15 murders occur daily. A recent news article stated that more than 3,000 women were murdered last year – mostly by gangs.
• As many as 2 million Vietnamese live in the nation of Cambodia. Most cannot read or write Khmer, Cambodia’s primary language.
• These 10 cities have the highest cost of living in the world, according to a survey conducted by the London-based Economist Intelligence:
1. Oslo, Norway
2. Tokyo, Japan
3. Reykjavik, Iceland
4. Osaka Kobe, Japan
5. Paris, France
6. Copenhagen, Denmark
7. London, United Kingdom
8. Zurich, Switzerland
9. Geneva, Switzerland
10. Helsinki, Finland
• The ambition of many fathers in much of Africa is for their family to eat one meal each day. As soon as a meal is finished, the quest begins to provide something for the next day.
• About 20 percent of children in Africa die before reaching 5 years of age.
• Nearly 3,000 people die from AIDS each week in Zimbabwe, Africa; 25 percent of the population is HIV-positive.
• Less than 1 percent of Thailand’s population is Christian.
• North Korea has 70 bronze statues (including one valued at $800 million), 40,000 plaster figures, 250 monuments, 350 memorial halls and 3,500 towers of eternal life — all honoring former leader Kim II Sung.
• Nearly 34,000 Japanese businessmen commit suicide each year because of business losses. Until recently, these self-sufficient, self-reliant and indifferent men were the hardest segment of society to reach with the gospel. Now after 14 years of recession and the loss of jobs, retirement benefits and lifetime employment, many are listening to the message of Christ and the hope He brings.
• The average life expectancy for a Russian woman is 72 years, but life expectancy for Russian men has dropped to 58 years.
• The crowded conditions of Bangladesh can be compared to half the entire U.S. population living in the state of Iowa.
• Less than 3 percent of Europe’s population claims to be born-again believers.
• About 80,000 abortions take place each year in Spain.
• Teen Challenge of Serbia has a list of more than 100 drug addicts waiting to enter the program.
• Most Peruvian pastors do not have a study Bible, commentaries or a Bible dictionary to help them prepare messages and Bible studies.
• Jamaica has the third-highest murder rate in the world — one murder every six minutes.
• Nearly 75 percent of the population in the central jungle area of Ucayali, Peru, is unemployed.
• In Russia, an opinion poll of 1,600 people living in 46 regions reports that 58 percent say they believe in God. However, 88 percent don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead.
• An article in a leading U.S. newspaper states that alcohol plays a role in nearly a third of Russian deaths. Alcohol poisoning kills an estimated 40,000 Russians each year.
• Every major religion except Islam is declining in Western Europe, according to the Center for the Study on Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. The drop is most evident in France, Sweden and the Netherlands, where church attendance is less than 10 percent in some areas. —From “Religion Takes a Back Seat in Western Europe” by Noelle Knox, USA Today.
• Arabic is the official language of more than 1 billion people in 22 countries and one of the world’s top 10 languages.
• Mexico City has about 4,000 barrios. Only 1,000 of them have an evangelical church.
• More than half of Ukraine’s Pentecostal pastors have had no formal pastoral training.
• Tibetan Buddhists carry a prayer wheel because they are physically unable to pray as often as they are required.
• Nearly 38 percent of the Cambodian population is 14 years old or under, and the nation’s median age is 19.
• The United Nations labels a nation in crisis when HIV infections reach 1 percent. Nearly 7 percent of Jamaica’s population is HIV-positive.
• It costs approximately $140 to fill a tank with gas in Rwanda.
• A Swaziland newspaper reports that a 15-year-old today has only a 20 percent chance of reaching the age of 30.
• More than 1 million children of all ages live on the streets of Russia and never attend school.
Statistics Concerning Children in Africa
• 19,000 children die daily from easily curable diseases.
• Approximately 17 percent of Africa’s labor force is children.
• Nearly 25 percent of Africa’s children between the ages of 10 and 14 are involved in labor.
• About 80 percent of the world’s children under the age of 15 who are living with HIV are from Africa.
• More than half of the continent’s estimated 15 million refugees and internally displaced people are children. Only about 30 percent of them receive any type of education in refugee camps.
reprinted by www.ag.org