Beyond the Crisis: Mission Amid Persecution 🌍
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”
- Matthew 28:18-20
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new for you
A missions trip planning checklist
From Storyline Missions:
If you’re leading a team, a good mission trip planning checklist saves you from the two things that hurt trips most: paperwork that shows up late and a team that meets for the first time at the airport. The first is a logistics problem. The second is a preparation problem, and it’s the one most checklists skip.
This checklist covers both. It walks through how to plan a mission trip from about a year out to a few weeks after you come home, with the practical items (partners, passports, budgets, forms) and the team items (Scripture, prayer, training, roles) side by side. Print it, share it with your co-leaders, and adjust the dates to your trip.
Missionary profile – Peter Vumisa
Can any missionary go anywhere and succeed without knowledge of the culture? I and my wife, Christine, went as missionaries to a community that practiced polygamy. One of the most significant aims was to prove that I wasn’t there for a second wife, which was testimony enough. I went with one focus: to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
However, this experience might have been different if I had been a single person serving the Lord in such a community. If a single, unmarried missionary is sent into a society with such cultural practices, he might face many challenges. Sometimes the missionary may not survive!
This is why it’s paramount to understand the mission field in order to prepare new missionaries and ensure their longevity once in the field. That has been the focus of my ministry
Missionary profile – SW
I was 13 years old when I accompanied my pastor and the church elders to visit a missionary in the mission field. I witnessed a hunger for the Lord unlike anything I had seen before; their need for God was raw and pure; I hadn’t seen that in my backyard. As we prayed for people and talked to them about Jesus, my call to be a missionary became crystal clear. I’m now a missionary in a Muslim community.
I was brought up by my grandmother after my Mom died in 2000. She took me to school and to the church where I met Jesus. I had such a deep desire to be a pastor, that my answer to, “what do you want to be when you grow up?’ was always, “a pastor!”
After my secondary education, I studied guidance and counseling. Later, I enrolled in a course in animal health. I felt God wanted me to reach out to a pastoralist people group,
From GMNI - Thriving in the Midst of Persecution: The Church in Nigeria
The Nigerian Church continues to face sustained attacks from extremist Islamists in certain regions of the country.
In the Middle Belt and the far North of the country, Christians have been killed and continue to experience structural and systemic forms of persecution. Though attacks on Christians are mostly in the North and the Middle-Belt, the attack on St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Owo, in Ondo State in 20223 indicates that Christians in other parts of the nation are not entirely free from such targeted attacks. The freedom enjoyed by Christians in the Southern part of Nigeria sometimes makes the plight of those who face persecution in the far North and Middle often to be overlooked.
This paradoxical reality of prosperity of the Nigerian Church in the South and the persecution faced by Christians in other parts creates a contradictory reality. Yet this paradox reflects the lived reality of the Nigerian Church. So, we have a situation in which we have a
The 4 "m's" of missions stewardship
From Catalyst Services: Leading a church in missions is like caring for a garden. If gardeners focus all their energy on simply watering their plants, or they neglect watering while constantly pouring on fertilizer, their crops will produce little or nothing at all. But if they balance nourishment and care, their garden thrives for the benefit of many.
Missionary profile – Rev (Dr.) Ishaku and Martha Amah-Kabong
As missionaries in Mali, my son gave a Gospel tract to a Muslim man; he refused to take it. My son wept bitterly because of this rejection. This presented an opportune time to teach him how to effectively reach out and react to negative feedback in the mission field.
My wife, Martha, and I serve as missionaries with SIM West Africa Mission Office (WAMO) in Nigeria. Previously, we served with EMS of ECWA as pioneer missionaries to Mali. We’re now mobilizing missionaries for SIM West Africa, and Martha is also a prayer coordinator for WAMO.
As a young man, I was scared into salvation when I watched the film show “The Burning Hell”. When I saw how long the villain was in hellfire, I didn’t want to end up like him.
From Open Doors - 2026 most persecuted christians
The World Watch List is Open Doors' annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution. Explore each country profile and download the data and stories for in-depth information about following Jesus in the most dangerous places. You'll learn more about Christian persecution and discover how to stand with your brothers and sisters in prayer and action.
More than 388m Christians suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.
In Open Doors' World Watch List top 50 alone, 315m+ Christians face very high or extreme persecution. Explore the country profiles to find information, stories and prayers for each of the countries, along with ways that you can stand with your persecuted church family in prayer and action.
Missionary Profile - Amos and Janet Epau
The Ik people were abandoned many years ago in terms of education, health care and outreach. In 2022, I signed up for only one year to serve in their community, but when I got there, I saw so many needs that broke my heart into pieces.
I knew that I had to sacrifice to serve the Ik, and became involved at the school in ministry to the children. I also encouraged the children to attend school regularly. We started Bible study groups and discipleship classes. I became so bonded with the community that when I took two months away, the ministries began to collapse and children stopped attending class. People were searching for me, until I returned.
Until this time, I am deeply involved in serving the Ik and even though the ministry is so challenging, I keep on trusting God because he is my everything. I have such a passion for the Ik people, and what motivates my heart is listening to the call of God and what his word speaks into my life.
I recently married, and we have agreed in our
A liturgy to pray for the unreached
From East West ministries, connect with God and pray for the unreached in a new way with three guided prayers. Visit them to download the following liturgy (in full), and you will receive two lock screen downloads to use on your phone.
The world is shrouded in darkness—
a darkness so deep
that many do not see it.
The darkness is hidden,
residing deep within the hearts of those with no hope—
yet they do not know they are without hope.
They have not heard,
they have not tasted nor seen
the abounding love of the Lord.
Missionary profile – Noblesse Ruhumuriza Nkunzi
I am a missionary in South Sudan reaching the people group called Laarim or Boya people living in the Boya Hills of South Sudan.
I was born into a Christian family, the youngest of eight siblings. My dad was a pastor, but he died before I came to know the Lord. We’re Rwandwan but relocated to DRC.
I was confident I would have a good grade on my High School Leaving Examination in the Congo (DRC). But during the exams, I could tell I wasn’t doing well. I was going to flop spectacularly. I started praying, but there was something amiss – I was bringing my request to the King of the kingdom of light while I still belonged to the realm of darkness. I knew I needed to choose which King I wanted to serve. I decided to surrender my life to Christ at that evening time.
Missionary Profile - Yinkamala
I am *Yinkamala (not her real name), a missionary with Calvary Ministries (CAPRO), a missions agency out of Nigeria. I worked extensively among unreached people groups in Nigeria, and through my ongoing commitment to do God’s will, he called me to serve on a Muslim-dominated island off the coast of Africa. The call became especially compelling to me after I realised that the people there are like fallow ground, with their hearts hardened against the gospel.
I arrived not knowing how God would use me, and was divinely led to volunteer at a government hospital as a nurse/midwife. This area has a high rate of maternal and child mortality, and I have been further led to start early pregnancy health education through community health education.
From Clarity to the Nations - The Sending Force Is Already Next Door
If you want to understand the future of missions in Africa, start with 2 numbers. The first number is 5,413. That is Joshua Project’s estimate of the cross-cultural workers needed to reach every frontier people group on the continent. The second number is 123 million. That is the estimate of evangelical believers already living in just four countries: Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and Ghana.
Set those side by side, and it comes to roughly one worker for every 23,000 African evangelicals. The African church does not lack people. It lacks awareness, mobilization, and equipping at scale. That is a solvable problem, and the timeline is years, not generations.
Our team just ran a fresh analysis of Africa’s Frontier People Groups on late-July 2026 Joshua Project data. Frontier peoples are the hardest edge of the unreached: 0.1% or fewer Christian adherents and no known movement to Jesus.
It forms one contiguous belt. The frontier runs