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Ideas on How to Pray for Unreached Peoples
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The US Center for World Mission’s Global Prayer Digest and the Ethnê Movement are partnering together to provide a year’s worth of daily prayers for the least-reached peoples on every continent from June through May every year. Joshua Project is teaming together with Ethnê to identify the unreached (UPG) and least-reached peoples of the earth within twelve geographical regions – one for each month of the year.
The launch of this unprecedented year-long prayer initiative for one-fourth of the world was June 2006 and each new cycle follows the annual Global Day of Prayer on Pentecost Sunday each year. The GDOP is preceded by 10 days of prayer and fasting and followed by 90 days of local outreach. Similarly, the Ethnê effort is working to see strategic harvest outreaches to the least-reached in each region of the world for the 90 days during and immediately following the month of global prayer. United prayer will open doors and fuel effective outreach efforts throughout the earth.
South America and the COMIBAM missions network of Ibero-America will host Ethnê09, November 11-15, 2009—the next global gathering of UPG-focused individuals, churches, and ministries to celebrate Great Commission progress among the least-reached peoples in the past 30 years, assess current opportunities and resources, and to accelerate movements to Christ among every people group. Workgroups focus on holistic gospel movements, frontier crisis response, harvest-linked prayer strategies, LRP/UPG workers in a changing world, raising-up the next generation of mission leaders, and other topics. Leaders and attendees for these groups come from many nations of the world and represent a truly diverse yet unified spirit of the body of Christ with the goal of peoples joining together to glorify God among all peoples.
The following are some suggestions for getting your church, cell, network or group involved in the world’s largest harvest-prayer effort in history:
- Provide Ethnê HeLPS brochure that gives an overview of the emphasis to each member. [Master brochure is available under Resources section at www.ethne.net or at www.gcni.org/pray40 and permission is given for all these resources to be translated (if needed), to publish and distribute.]
- Use the Video clips, audio clips, bulletin inserts, and prayer bookmarks on a monthly basis for each region’s least-reached peoples which are available to download from these websites, as well as on the Ethnê dvd sets. These are in multiple languages with video subtitles (11-17 languages currently). The videos can be shown in the Sunday morning service at the beginning of each month and bulletin inserts placed for members to take home. Five prayers are given at the conclusion of each video and your congregation can pray along with these. See also www.YouTube.com for the English and Spanish Ethne testimony videos as well.
- Network with your church’s mission outreach and those you know who are working among UPGs throughout the world. Let them know that a major prayer concentration is coming to their part of the world! Get them to spread the word and also make requests for them to send stories
about preparations and results from work that is coordinated with the prayer emphasis to prayer@ethne.net. Pray for those missionaries connected to your church in the month of prayer for their region of the world.
- Hold your own Pray40 event at your church, with your Sunday School class or small group. See www.gcni.org/pray40 for resources, tools, and ideas for this 40-hours of continuous prayer for least-reached people groups around the world. This is ideal for children or youth as a retreat to encourage them to pray for and consider whether God may be calling them to missions involvement.
- Place a high profile announcement or banner on your church’s home page, linking it further to a page just for recruiting involvement for this year’s GDOP and Ethnê’s Year of Prayer. Register your own commitment at www.ethne.net in order to receive notices of new or updated resources.
- Provide links on your web page to the Global Prayer Digest so they can pray each day…or have them sign up for a daily email version at: http://www.global-prayer-digest.org/dailydata/getdaily.asp?which=today.
- Use the PrayerGuard at www.prayerguard.net/ethne to pray 3-minute scriptural prayers for least-reached peoples around the world.
- Visit Joshua Project at www.joshuaproject.net/ethne.php for more detailed profiles, statistics, and searchable information on all the remaining least-reached people groups. In fact, you may download FREE a complete set of prayer cards for every remaining unreached people group at www.joshuaproject.net/prayer-cards.php or you can do a custom query to pull only the segments in which you are interested. Email Dan@joshuaproject.net for details on this.
- Explore Etnopedia at www.etnopedia.org and see the work in process of translating people group profiles into 12 or more languages for the Body of Christ around the world. Help out by recruiting translators to help with the work and spread the word about this wonderful resources to your missionaries overseas. Also, you may be a “promoter” of the prayer intiative in the Spanish language and receive a free mini-poster to hang: http://es.etnopedia.org/wiki/index.php/Etnopedia:Etnia_a_Etnia Other languages coming shortly!
- Send out prominently placed news with your regular church e-mailings, linking them back to your web page for more information. Organize your own supported missionaries by Ethne region and include them in prayer times for the unreached of the region. Encourage them to be especially bold during and just following that month of prayer!
- Make announcements whenever possible.
- PRAY in church services, small groups, families, and individually.
Let Ethne know how you are going to be a part of this emphasis so we can help gain momentum as more and more people realize this is a truly global thing. You can also communicate and ask questions via email at prayer@ethne.net. As the current worldwide stresses and strains of human and natural disasters may remind one of Habakkuk’s complaint in Hab. 1:2-4, might we pray for and reach out to the least-reached and unreached peoples of the world in expectation of the Lord’s answer:
“Look at the nations and watch – and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” –Habbakuk 1:5