Desiring God Blog : Posts on International Outreach

One way the gospel is spreading across borders this day and age is through the work of ministries like TWR (Trans World Radio). As their full name implies, TWR focuses on using radio waves (and other media) to overcome the ignorance of the knowledge of God around the world.

Here's a short description from their website of the kind of work they do:

Together with international partners, local churches and other ministries, TWR provides relevant programming, discipleship resources and dedicated workers to spread hope to individuals and communities around the globe. Whether using high-powered radio to reach people in the Middle East and Latin America, streaming content to Internet users in Asia and Europe or visiting face-to-face with listeners in Africa, TWR leaves a lasting spiritual footprint.

Desiring God has had the privilege of partnering with Malek, a wor…

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In the past year, much of the Arabic-speaking world has found itself embroiled in fierce and often hostile conflict. Called by many the “Arab Spring," a series of uprisings have sparked in countries across North Africa and the Middle East, due largely to the problems of poverty combined with rising prices, lack of job opportunities for young workers, and growing anger at personal enrichment among the politically elite.

The result is that there are huge dangers for this part of the world — and huge opportunities. The greatest of these opportunities is an incredible opening for the gospel of Jesus Christ to spread.

80,000 Visits the Past 12 Months

The Internet is one of the most effective means God has given us for publishing the good news. It is able to penetrate even the most difficult countries.

For example, during the past 12 months, the Desiring God websi…

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Patti Richter writes:

Operation World (2010) reports that the church in Nepal flourishes as a "remarkable indigenous movement" within a strongly Hindu culture. From the first Christian church formed in 1952, Nepal's believers grew to 200,000 by 1990, during times of persecution, and to some 850,000 Christ-followers by last year. Thus: "Leadership training is possibly the most urgent need in the Church."

"Nepal has 10,000 churches, but most of them have no resources," says Alan Ginn, Project Director for East Asia with Leadership Resources International (LRI).

LRI workers encourage church leaders by using a "TNT" strategy — training national trainers. They mentor and teach a group who will then train a "second generation." This model of multiplication is inspired by 2 Timothy 2:2, "The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrus…

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We're praising God today for the translation of John Piper's book Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ into Persian (aka Farsi) and the permission we've received recently to post it online as a free download.

Download ديدن و چشيدن عيسى مسيح (PDF). You can also purchase hard copies in our online store.

Persian is the official language of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. But significant Persian-speaking populations can be found in many other countries worldwide, including the US, at an estimated total of 80-100 million people.

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ was written to unpack the Bible's teaching on who Jesus was as a person and teacher and Son of God, in the hope that people from every language will come to see him more clearly and savor him supremely.

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Recent posts from International Outreach —

• The Situation of Most Shepherds Around the World
• A …

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The Gospel Coalition recently posted an article by Pietro Ciaverella on the great need for theological training in Italy. This topic really hits at the core of why Desiring God is working to resource church leaders around the world. He writes,

Pause for a moment and think of your pastor in New York, London, or Sydney. What if he wasn’t trained, didn’t have a salary, and was only able to dedicate his free time to the ministry of your church? How would that affect the quality of his ministry and his effectiveness in teaching you and your family the whole counsel of God? Welcome to most conservative, evangelical local churches in Italy. Italy has many godly nationals standing in pulpits proclaiming the riches of Christ. Yet very few of them are either trained or remunerated and, more often than not, they are bi-vocational.

This scenario is typical in much of the w…

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Matthias Lohmann, a German pastor and friend of Desiring God, shares about a new evangelical network in Germany and their conference next month in Hamburg:

Over the last two years, some like-minded pastors and theologians have come together to discuss possibilities for advancing a biblical understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ among German-speaking countries. One result of this has been the development of the networkEvangelium 21 (in English, “Gospel 21”). Evangelium 21 helps to foster growth in understanding, proclaiming, and living the gospel in the 21st century through hosting conferences (especially for Christians in leadership), providing resources, and facilitating further networking.

The first Evangelium 21 conference will be held August 18-20, 2011 in Hamburg, Germany with the theme “The Centrality of the Gospel in the Church.” Matt Schmucker of 9Mar…

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Since 2008, Joy to the World Ministries (JTW) has been organizing the Chosen Generation Missions Conference in Malawi, Africa. This conference has the primary goal of awakening a passion for global missions among African Christians, especially the young people.

On behalf of JTW, we would like to invite the global church to pray with us for the fourth Chosen Generation Missions Conference, which will be held from July 6-10, 2011. (Read the invitation [PDF].)

The theme of this year’s conference is “Thy Will Be Done,” taken from the third petition in the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:10. They will be exploring God’s will as revealed to us and fulfilled for us in the Lord Jesus Christ, as well as how this should guide our zeal for the global purposes of God. The goal of this conference is that God be glorified among all the nations, from the rising of the sun even to its…

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Nearly 14 months ago we launched our Chinese language website, kemushen.org. At the time, however, we offered no explanation (either in Chinese or English) of the new logo, as important and meaning-filled as it is. Therefore, as we have elsewhere unpacked the meaning of our English logo, here is some explanation of our Chinese one.

In its written form, Chinese is a character-based language, with a meaning being conveyed not primarily by how each character is spoken, but by how it is written. Each character in Chinese is made up of multiple components (a radical and numerous strokes) and conveys one or more meaning.

For Desiring God, we chose the characters 渴慕神.  The official Romanization of the characters is ke mu shen (pronounced kuh moo shun).  渴慕 (Kemu) means "hunger" or "strong desire." And 神 means "God." So the phrase 渴慕神 conveys a desire or extreme long…

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“50 miles from Chernobyl”—that’s the location of our friends at In Lumine Media who are producing some really great resources for the Russian-speaking world (free downloads below). Recently we posted an article about how Desiring God connected with this ministry back in 2006 and why we continue to be excited about the work they're doing.

Jake Knotts, In Lumine’s founder, describes their mission:

Our goal is to create and distribute resources in the Russian and Ukrainian languages that are gospel-based and Christ-centered to provide an alternative to the moralistic and prosperity-driven books. . . . We want to see people know Jesus more, love him more and live for his glory, and we want to see books in people’s hands that are accessible, affordable and helpful.

In Lumine has also made many of their Russian titles available in digital format, which you can do…

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Statistics about religion in the Czech Republic, especially in the last 20 years, are startling:

According to the 2001 census, 59% of the country is agnostic, atheist or irreligious . . . . From 1991 to 2001, the number of people identifying with no religion increased by 19.1%, or two million people, representing the largest group increase. Adherence to Christianity decreased by over one million persons.

These numbers are why Wikipedia can summarily state, "The Czech Republic has one of the least religious populations on Earth."

That's not the only news, though. Operation World reports that among Czechs, "New expressions of Christianity are springing up and connecting with the younger generation. Dynamic church planting, paired with creative ministry (teaching English, business-as-mission), sees fruit."

What's going on here? Tim Keller is probably right when…

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