___________________
What is a Church*?
A church is three or more Christian believers meeting together on a regular basis to worship God and is not a cell group of a larger church body.
*only Protestant churches
___________________
How we count Christians?
Of course God is the final judge. For our purposes we count Christians as anyone who is a member of a church. No matter if it is a large city church or a small house church.
___________________
|
Note: You are receiving this email because of your love and interest for the country of Thailand. The purpose of this email is to provide you with information to know how to pray specifically for this nation and to help you make informed ministry plans. We encourage you to share this email with members of your church, your small group, your social media network and among your Christian friends so they too can pray.
Please click here to email us your
prayer requests,comments and updates or if you want to receive the Thai version of this email |
|
Dear Co-laborer in Christ,
The above picture looks like clay that has cracked because it hasn’t received rain and is dried out. This picture is only a small part of a bigger one. Please click on the picture to see the whole view. When you do you will see it is a picture of dry soil but of a different type.
As you can see, it is a map of Thailand showing the shapes of all 7,432 sub-districts in Thailand. Each sub-district has a color. If it is dark red that means there are several churches located in the sub-district. The lighter the color red means there are fewer churches. Sub-districts that have no red color are ones that have no churches.
Please zoom-in on the picture and scroll around so you get a sense of all the areas that do not have the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.
- 75% of all sub-districts in Thailand have no churches.
- 62% of the people in Thailand live in an area where there is no church.
- Out of 64,076,033 Thai citizens over 38 million live in these unreached areas.
- If we consider all the villages in Thailand without a church the number of people who live in an area without a church would exceed 50 million.
The magnitude of the task is overwhelming, but I am thankful we serve a mighty God and with Him all things are possible.
From a human perspective there are four things we can do to reach this nation for Christ.
1. We must work together in unity.
- There are just over 400,000 Protestant church members in Thailand. (0.63% percent of the population) Because there are so few, it is imperative we work together. No one group or person can do it alone. Praise the Lord, Thailand has a National Plan (Vision 2015/2020) to help us work together.
2. Christians from Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Mae Hong Son need to reach out to the rest of the nation.
- Five percent of the nation's population lives in these three provinces but over 50% of the Christians reside here. When the people of the north get a burden and are trained to reach the remaining 74 provinces, significant gains for the Gospel can be made. Thank God this is starting to happen. Thai Christians from the north are moving out. Many more are needed.
3. Church members need to be trained to be disciple-makers.
- 70% of all new believers are led to the Lord by church members. However, only 4% are involved with making disciples. If the number of church members involved with discipleship were to increase to 25%, significant progress for the Gospel will be made.
4. Pray for the nation.
- Without prayer none of this will work. Pray for that God would lead someone to plant a church in areas without churches.
- To find an area without a church click HERE to view the online Christian Presence Map. Ask God to help you choose a district or sub-district to pray for. Click your mouse button within an province so the data for the province is shown in a pop-up window. Click the link at the bottom of the pop-up to see the districts of the province.
Most provinces have districts that are dark brown; these are districts without a church. Pray for this district until the day you see the color of the district change to a lighter brown. This means a church has been planted in that district. Have your church members and your families join you in prayer.
May God richly bless you as you Glorify Him in all that you do.
Dwight Martin
Research Coordinator
Thailand Evangelism & Church Growth Committee
|
|
]
