August update and a few other nuggets

I always love hearing our president, Steve Douglass' updates of what God's doing around the world.  He's sort of 'in the loop' in ways that most of us aren't because of the other ministry leaders he gets to interact with on a regular basis.  Its just so encouraging and such good perspective to hear of the Lord's immense workings.  You can hear his whole talk with video from our staff conference, but I'll just share a few stories that struck me.

• from Southeast Asia: a group of students were challenged to form 'missional teams' to reach more campuses.  Christine, from the Philippines, started a team.  They trusted God and visited seven campuses near their own to start Cru movements.  Soon the 7 campuses became 40.  Just a few years later, there were new ministries on over 100 campuses. These movements are all student-led and are now sending to surrounding countries where over 500 students have launched 200 movements. 
• from Ethiopia: the country is less than 1% Christian.  The in-country ministry hoped to hold a training conference for students.  They bathed the event in prayer and 2600 students were sent to the conference. During their time, two of the students were arrested for sharing their faith in the streets. While in prison, they took the opportunity to follow the apostle Paul's example and shared the gospel with over 1100 inmates, seeing dozens place their faith in Christ. They were eventually released by the government to stop the spread of the gospel in the prison.
• from Bolivia: An idea called 'dinners for friends' was developed to share with top leaders in Santa Cruz. Since the strategy's inception, over 5,000 of these meetings have been held and 100s of leaders in Bolivia have come to know Christ.
• finally, an update from the world over: Six years ago, a group of ministry leaders were evaluating the task of completing the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20). As they researched people groups and shared resources from their respective ministries, they found that there were 639 unengaged people groups (meaning absolutely no awareness of Christ or Christian presence).  In the past six years, as these organizations have worked together, 4000 missionaries have been sent to minister to these groups and 80% of them have now been 'engaged' with the message of Christ.  What a great work God is doing!

As I mentioned above, to hear all of the updates, you can check out Dr. Douglass' talk on Significance.  I know I missed a few details as I could hardly write fast enough to get everything down!  May you be encouraged by the work of our Sovereign God in the world!