Building Movements in Northeast Africa
Southeast Asia comprises eleven unique countries: Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Although Southeast Asians are known for being fun-loving, gentle, hospitable, and friendly, yet this region is also home to five of the top 50 countries where it is most difficult to follow Jesus. By the grace of God, CCF Beyond is privileged to take part in planting multiplying churches in three of these five countries—Myanmar, Vietnam and Indonesia. These are not easy soils to plant in. Christian adherents are heavily persecuted (mocked, threatened, jailed, beaten and even killed) due to religious nationalism, and religious persecution, and political oppression.
The region is home to 674,179,000 people. Of this total, 334,125,000 (or 49.6%) people in 686 people groups are still unreached, having little access to Christ. CCF Beyond has been involved in Vietnam since 2013, Cambodia since 2017, Myanmar since 2018, and Indonesia since 2019 assisting local partners through our church planting movement strategy called Multiplying Churches and Communities (MC2). Through this partnership these countries have seen 1,200 house churches and small groups planted (pre-COVID). Today, amidst the COVID pandemic, the movement is currently being challenged by the heavy lockdowns and political climate where local governments blame Christians for spreading the virus through their physical church meetings, thus forcing them to discontinue assembling as a church.
While some churches in the region struggle to physically meet and multiply, CCF Beyond has seen some of these churches adapt to the COVID situation. Such is the case in Indonesia, where leaders continue to train church planters online which has resulted in 56 new house churches and small groups (3 generations deep) with 250 new converts in a span of 1.5 years in Q1 of 2021. These encouraging numbers have led us to pursue opportunities to partner with other international Christian groups in different countries that do digital evangelism. Just this August, we have started experimenting with our Digital Church Planting initiative with the goal of winning people online and discipling them in digital house churches using the same principles of church planting movements (MC2).
We pray that you will partner with us in prayer as we continue to assist struggling churches in meeting physically during this COVID situation and also pray for us as we also target new people groups online and disciple them in digital churches to adjust to the new normal. May we see hundreds of thousands of digital churches worshipping Jesus and multiplying in the next few years!