July 01, 2003 by Lee Purgason

These excerpts from World Inquiry reports give a taste of the refreshing flow of God’s Spirit in new plans and initiatives.

Vision 2010: UP Transformation Movement is the God-given strat­egy to reach India’s Uttar Pradesh state: with multiplying, reproduc­ing, disciple-making house churches through a consortium of organiza­tions and networks committed to the Great Commission.

U.P. is India’s largest state with 174 million people (including Ut­tranchal). If U.P. was a separate country it would be the fifth largest nation in the world.  The center of political control of India, it is also a state of utter poverty, violence, cor­ruption and religious fundamental­ism with the most powerful spiritual strongholds in India.  In the year 2001, during the Hindu Kumbh Mela festival, 70 million people from all over the world came to the city of Allahabad to have a dip in River Ganges with the hope that their sins would be washed away.

A massive prayer initiative was launched by several organizations with approximately 500,000 around the world mobilized to pray. Many did prayer walking on site. About seven hundred people from nearly 30 organizations distributed nearly 20 million pieces of literature in six languages.

Third Way Chinese Christian Revival Fellowship

After the Cultural Revolution closed the doors of all churches including TSPM they were opened in 1978. At that time an estimated seventy percent of the Protestant stream of the church in China was TSPM churches while thirty percent were house churches.

In 1994 (about fifteen years later) the percentage had almost inverted. Now forty percent are TSPM and fifty-five percent house churches, but a new stream has emerged, five percent, called the New Model Move­ment. Many ministers left the TSPM for the house churches at this time.

In 2002 (eight years later) TSPM was only thirty percent, house churches sixty percent but the new model movement ten percent.

An Emerging Stream in the Persian World The small group of underground believers is increasingly bold in sharing their faith, despite extreme risk. Gospel radio is still broadcast into Iran. Recently, Iranians in the United States have launched satellite television stations in Persian that are accessible inside Iran. Increasingly, Iranians living outside Iran are coming to faith. Persian language churches exist in most major cities of the world, and Iranian leadership training schools exist in both England and Germany. These Iranian believers have increasingly begun to look back at Iran with their gospel efforts. And some of the new believers inside Iran are even beginning to consider reach­ing out to the rural areas and nomadic tribes, where there is virtually no access to the gospel, and where people are still living as they did a thousand years ago.

A Church Renewal Movement in the Turkic World

...we formed the “Vision Silk Road Center” to reach the Turkic people groups along the “Old Silk Road” including Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turk­menistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Xinjiang Uygur Province of China. We have a clear goal: to plant 1,000 churches along the “Old Silk Road” by 2010.

We are sure that we are prepar­ing the way “Back to Jerusalem” together with Chi­nese brothers and sisters paving the road along the Silk Road among the Muslim Turkic and Arab peoples.

Dalit-Bahujan Movement

This movement towards the Gospel has social, spiritual and community dimensions. These oppressed com­munities are looking for major refor­mation spiritually and socially. The Christian commitment to the Dalits is to help build a caste free society— and more so, a caste free Church.

There is a sovereign move of God as He has used the persecution of Christians to bond the Christian community and the Dalit-Bahujan people in a new way. The direct interaction and bonding is leading to major social and leadership and com­munity networks across the nation. There is a spirit of repentance and contrition among Christians for their own mistreatment of Dalits within the Church.

Mission Movement in Mongolian Churches

Mongolians are nomadic-minded people.... They are adaptive to any climate, lifestyle, culture or situation. By nature, they can cope with a hard life and tough conditions.

Mongolian Christians believe that they are obligated to take the Gospel to the nations their forefathers once ruled harshly. This time, instead of conquering the world with the sword, Mongolian churches pray and cry for sending missionaries to those nations.

Primary Health Care and Evangelism (W. Africa)

Health care began almost two thou­sand years ago one Saturday evening in Capernaum in Galilee.  Jesus mod­eled the full range of primary health care—bringing hope, purpose, and joy to life, teaching healthy relationships with God and oth­ers, and healing sick persons. His Good News embraced all aspects of life - physical, emotional, social, and spiritual - as he brought new life and eternal life to all who trusted in him.

Jesus modeled an integrated approach to evangelism, caring for physical, emotional, social, and spiri­tual needs as he encountered them.

The Bible is the foundation for an understanding of health and the health sciences.

Obedience to God’s laws as revealed in the Bible or as discovered by scientific investigation favors health and a healthy lifestyle.

For more complete information on these and other World Inquiry reports, see www.missionfrontiers.org