Gospel.com Blog

The World Atlas Mission Project keeps a map of the spread of the Evangelical Christianity throughout the world. They recently did a massive update of their 1996 map. It’s an interesting way to take a look at the world and to see the receptivity of the nations to the good news.

Click on the map for a larger version, or take a look at the gigantic 45MB pdf.

Here’s more from the World Atlas Mission Project blog:

This map illustrates the Global Status of Evangelical Christianity and has been created in order to provide an update to the 1996 Status of Global Evangelization map. This new map provides a global snapshot of the status of evangelical Christianity based upon the latest research from the mission field. Over 100,000 localities are represented. It will be updated periodically, showing the progress of both Bible and Jesus Film translation, and the openness or response to the Gospel message from a variety of mission perspectives.

What does stewardship mean to you? Christians have long considered that part of being God-honoring stewards of our possessions is giving away a portion of those resources—to the poor and needy, to the church, to worthy organizations and ministries. But with the weight of the current economic crisis pressing down on jobs and personal finances, how are Christians to approach the idea of financial stewardship and giving? Are we under a spiritual obligation to give to the church or other causes? How much are we “supposed” to give? Is the whole concept of “tithing” even relevant to the modern church?

A series of articles about stewardship at Discipleship Tools raises these and many more questions—and dashes some of the misconceptions we have about what financial stewardship means. The series begins by asking you to consider what stewardship means to you and goes on to look at what financial stewardship should look like in our everyday lives.

Whether you’ve been faithfully putting money in the offering plate every week for years, or have never really thought about what God would have you do with your money, it’s well worth working through these questions. (And if you’re looking for more reading material on this topic, these essays tie in well with some of the resources about spirituality and money that we linked to late last year.)

Mission Network News reports that Faith Comes By Hearing recently released eight new New Testament audio translations. Faith Comes by Hearing is a global missions organization that offers “the Bible in a format that will connect with the world’s 50% illiterate population.” The organization is partnered with Wycliffe, the American Bible Society and World Vision among others and currently has 400 versions in 336 languages.

Here’s the story from Mission Network News:

The new recordings are in Dan of Cote d’Ivoire; Garhwali, India; Kimochi, Tanzania; Koma, Ghana; Ndau, Mozambique; Quechua, North Bolivia; Mooré, Burkina Faso; and the New American Bible in the United States.

Together, these recorded languages represent more than 222 million people on five continents.

Of these eight language groups represented, FCBH notes that the Koma language is the smallest with only 3,800 people. Experts report that there is absolute illiteracy among this group in Ghana, meaning not one Koma person has the ability to read.

About 70-percent of the world’s population is part of an oral culture and live in poverty. That means access to God’s Word can be out of their reach.

Listen to samples from their audio Bibles using this widget. It’s very cool to hear God’s Word in another language:

Faith Comes By Hearing.com

Many people’s lives have been changed by this challenging sermon from Paris Reidhead called Ten Shekels and a Shirt. He preaches about how easy it is to miss what God wants for our lives by pursuing a religion based on utilitarianism and humanism.

You can listen to it at sermonindex.com.

Here are a few choice passages from the transcript:

And then we come to another well known person, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was a failure from judging all the standards. He never succeeded in organizing a church or denomination. He wasn’t able to build a school. He didn’t succeed in getting a mission board established. He never had a book printed. He never was able to get any of the various criteria or instruments that we find and are so useful, I’m not being sarcastic at all, they are useful. And our Lord preached for three years, healed thousands of people, fed thousands of people, and yet when it was all over there were 120…, 500 to whom he could have revealed Himself after His resurrection. And the day that He was taken, one man said “If all the others forsake you, I’m willing to die for you.” He looked at this one and said “Peter you don’t know your own heart. You’re going to deny me three times before the cock crows this morning.” So all men forsook Him and fled. By every standard of our generation or any generation, our Lord was a single failure.

The question comes then to this, what is the standard of success and by what are we going to judge our lives and our ministry? And the question that you are going to ask yourself, “Is God an end or is He a means?” And you have to decide very early in your Christian life whether you’re viewing God as an end or a means. Our generation is prepared to honor with single honor anyone that’s successful regardless of whether they settled this problem or not. As long as they can get things done or get the job done or well it’s working isn’t it, then our generation is prepared to say well you’ve got to reckon with this.

And probably the most interesting quotation from the sermon:

So it had gotten down to the place where salvation was nothing more than an assent to a scheme or a formula, and the end of this was that salvation was the happiness of man because humanism has penetrated. If you were to analyze fundamentalism in contrast to liberalism of a hundred years ago as it developed, for I am not pinpointing it in time, it would be like this:

The liberal says the end of religion is to make man happy while he’s alive, and the fundamentalist says the end of religion is to make man happy when he dies.

Arab World Ministries has a new website! For over 120 years, AWM has worked to bring the light of the Gospel to Muslims in North Africa, the Middle East, and major cities in Europe and North America. If you don’t know this unique outreach, now’s a good chance to check out their new site and learn about their ministry.

Here are a few noteworthy sections of the new site:

• Ministry opportunities, both long- and short-term, in Jordan, Morocco, London, and other locations around the world. Find out how you can get involved.
• The history of AWM—and how a worldwide ministry began after a heartbreaking encounter in Algeria in 1881.
• AWM Media has been broadcasting Christ-centered television and radio programs to the Arab world for decades. Their new media programs like Maarifa continue this legacy.

Take a few minutes to get to know AWM and the amazing work they’re doing in the Muslim world.

Back in high school I was challenged to spend at least one minute a day in prayer. The idea being that one minute is better than nothing. After doing this for a month or so I found that that minute had expanded to far more than 60 seconds and had become a valuable part of my day. All it took to change my life was trying out a simple challenge.

When’s the last time you challenged yourself spiritually? Nancy Leigh DeMoss explores the connection between loving God’s Word and loving God and how 30 days can change your life. You can listen to the radio broadcast on The Revive Our Hearts page or read the transcript. She offers some compelling evidence to why reading the Bible is important for Christians.

And if you want some help reading through the Bible this year, it’s not too late to take advantage of the Bible Gateway reading plans.

What are Christians to make of the latest round of violence in the Middle East? Since Israel launched its offensive against Gaza, the world is once again watching as the all-too-familiar images of violence flash across TV screens. And the well-worn debates are once again dominating editorial pages and websites: who’s the villain in this situation? To what extent is it even possible to identify “good” and “bad” guys? And most importantly, is there any way to break the cycle of violence for good?

Those are big questions that will no doubt occupy the attention of world leaders and diplomats for many years to come. But for Christians trying to sort out the situation, here are two resources that might be helpful:

• Mart De Haan has posted an interesting essay about Israel, Gaza, and good or bad faith. He wonders what effect this latest conflict has on the faiths of both Christians and Muslims, and he offers some thoughts about “good” and “bad” faith, based on Hebrews 11. It’s a refreshing essay in that it avoids the trap of knee-jerk politics and tries to explore the way that we spiritually process events like this.
• Mission Network News is, as always, on the story. They’ve posted moving stories about the plight of Christians in the Gaza Strip and the effect of the violence on efforts to preach the Gospel message

Keep an eye on both of those sites for more news and reflections as the conflict burns on. And pray—for those affected by the violence, but also for world leaders trying to bring about a just and peaceful resolution to the ongoing cycle of violence in Israel and Palestine.

New Years Eve is the victory lap of the holidays. We expend our energy between Thanksgiving and Christmas and then cap it off with one last party to say good bye (or good riddance) to what just happened and hello to what’s to come.

It’s no wonder so many of us use the New Year as a time to change. We finally have the freedom to glimpse a future with no major holidays for a few months.

This article from Jason Gardner via Cross Rhythms lists the top ten resolutions people make for the new year:

• Get organized
• Help others
• Learn something new
• Get out of debt
• Quit drinking
• Enjoy life more
• Quit smoking
• Tame the bulge
• Fit in fitness
• Spend more time with family and friends

As Jason mentions, “all certainly forgotten by the time February kicks in.” In fact, it’s oftentimes an anomaly to keep a resolution throughout the year.

Personally, I’ve never been one for year-long resolutions, mainly because of how much trouble I have with week-long resolutions. For change to work for me, it needs to come out of a God-placed desire to be a different person. And while there is no extra sprig of spirituality amid the tick of time that takes us from December to January, we’d be remiss not to use any opportunity to reevaluate aspects of our lives, especially the spiritual aspects.

Maybe a positive spiritual change for you this year would be something as simple as committing to reading your Bible for a minute a day, or maybe even reading it for the first time in its entirety. Perhaps it’s going to church every Sunday this year, or getting involved in that ministry you’ve always thought about. Or maybe you want to actually pray this year. Maybe it’s something even more drastic: maybe it’s a complete turn from the path you’re taking.

Whatever it is, even though there’s nothing magic about January 1, it’s a great time to listen to what God might be asking you to consider.