Republic of Zimbabwe – 2
Nov 19th, 2007 by pfadmin
Over the month of November, please dedicate some of your prayer times to focus on this month’s mission emphasis (Zimbabwe). (Information excerpted from Operation World, calendar targets).
Targets for Prayer:
Vision for the 21st Century. The Target 2000 vision was a great boost to the Church, but new initiatives and visions are now needed for the coming decade. Pray that the Lord might reveal His will in this. Missions vision is relatively small, with only about 50 missionaries sent out by 3 million Evangelicals. Pray that the Lord might envision the Church for training, sending and supporting hundreds of workers. Zimbabwean missionaries have had significant impact on Mozambique.
Young people brought up on the idealistic visions of independence have been disillusioned by empty political slogans, the greed of the powerful, and the dearth of jobs. They have become the most receptive section of the population, half of which is under 15 years of age.
The less-evangelized. Zimbabwe has been extensively evangelized, but areas of need remain:
a) The rural areas. In many districts churches are few and full-time workers even fewer. Pray for the calling of pastors and evangelists willing to serve in rural areas. Pray also for evangelistic outreaches and suitable literature distribution specifically to these areas.
b) The burgeoning cities, swollen with hundreds of thousands of rural migrants looking for non-existent jobs. Squatter settlements are multiplying and crime is on the increase. Outreach to the unemployed is a major challenge.
c) Less-reached peoples. There are congregations in every indigenous people, but relatively fewer among the Tonga, Nambya and Dombe of the Hwange-Kariba area in the northwest (where the AoG have made a significant impact with many new churches planted in the 1990s), the Kunda in the northeast, and the Ndau (SIM) in the east. The Kalanga and Ndebele have been exposed to the gospel for 130 years, but have been less responsive than the Shona peoples.
d) Farming areas. Nearly 2 million laborers and their dependants live on 4,200 commercial farms, many owned by whites. Over half these laborers are from Malawi and Mozambique. The CCAP (NGK), Salvation Army, and others maintain an extensive ministry to these communities — especially to the Malawian Chewa-Nyanja speakers — but many farm communities are without an evangelical congregation of believers.
e) Muslims. They are a small minority but wield disproportionate influence on the country through foreign aid ‘with strings’, mosque-building and scholarships in Muslim universities. Little Christian outreach has been made to win them, and churches are ill-equipped to do so.