Countries Where We
Assist Native Ministries
Overview
Southeast Asia is home to an incredibly diverse population. The island nation of Papua New Guinea alone is home to more than 1,000 people groups who speak more than 800 languages. Christianity has taken root and continues to grow among ethnic minorities who face increasing persecution from oppressive regimes.
Islam is another challenge to native believers in Southeast Asia. Christians in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, face high levels of persecution from radical Muslims, who are pushing Sharia-inspired laws in more communities. Meanwhile, a growing Muslim population on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines continues to breed radicalism and hatred for Christians. In both of these countries, however, Christianity has sustained continued growth.
With the growth of Christianity in Southeast Asia comes an enormous need for trained church leaders. Thousands of rural congregations languish without adequate leadership, falling into unbiblical teaching, moral failure, and syncretism.
In addition to persecution from radical Muslims and hostile governments, native missionaries in Southeast Asia are challenged to minister to unreached people groups in regions of extreme poverty and where there is rampant drug usage. The countries of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand comprise Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle, one of Asia’s two main opium-producing areas. Myanmar is also the world’s largest producer of methamphetamines.
How You Can Make a Difference
Ways To Give
Evangelism & Discipleship
Through the work of one indigenous ministry in Vietnam, more than 3,000 house churches exist in the country’s Central Highlands. A ministry on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines has shared the gospel and planted churches among the island’s 13 Muslim-majority tribes through carefully trained native missionaries. Though ministry inside North Korea is impossible under the present regime, native missionaries established underground churches in six locations in northern China among North Korean women who were trafficked across the border. GIVE NOW to help evangelistic and discipleship ministries like these in Southeast Asia.
Community Engagement
In Indonesia, several Christian Aid Mission-assisted ministries are providing business training to desperately poor pastors and equipping them to start microenterprises to support their families and fledgling churches. GIVE NOW to help community engagement ministries like these in Southeast Asia.
Compassion
In Myanmar, where multitudes fall prey to drug addiction, a ministry is sharing the love of Christ through its two addiction recovery centers where addicts are cared for and discipled in God’s Word. GIVE NOW to help compassion ministries like this one in Southeast Asia.
Exclusive Stories from the Mission Field
Help Plant Fellowships in Laos
Native Christian workers planted 26 churches over a six-month period in two ways: They led people to Christ at seminars that families from different areas attended, with those people going back to their villages to worship in their homes, while other churches began as ministry teams brought the gospel to various districts.
Support Workers Proclaiming Christ in Indonesia
Native Christian workers spent much time in prayer before visiting a Hindu “holy man” with the gospel. When he and his wife put their faith in Christ, they were first kicked out of their home, and then the village and Hindu leaders held a ceremony ritually excluding him from their ancestral temple.
Help Build the Kingdom in the Philippines
A native Christian worker has started a house church among his relatives, and the ministry that supports him is praying other members of the community will soon join. “Their days now are not only spent in farming and hunting, but they have a special day spent only in worshipping the Lord,” the ministry leader said.
Help Bring Word of Salvation in Cambodia
A 38-year-old Buddhist monk had everything he needed in his monastery, where he had lived since his teens, but he longed to be a child of God. He had listened to a native Christian worker’s radio broadcasts for about four months when he heard him quote John 1:12 about becoming children of God through receiving Christ.
Help the Unreached Find God in Laos
A 28-year-old woman wondered if she had offended local spirits or failed to sacrifice enough to them, as neither they nor doctors had healed her of an illness. A native Christian worker visiting her village told her that Christ had the power to heal her, and she invited Him into her life. She obtained relief after workers prayed for her, her health much improved over time and she stopped fearing spirits.
Help Enable Gospel Proclamation in the Philippines
Praise God that outreaches to various tribes are building God’s kingdom as native Christian workers share the gospel in Bible studies, Vacation Bible School and personal conversations. New Christians have shown marked growth in discipleship; one village elder whose son was jailed on murder charges said he would have retaliated had he not become a Christian.