Missionary News

Here is an interesting bit of news buzzing around the House of Prayer right now. YWAM and other major missionary ministries have been working hard to calculate the status of the global missions movement over the last several years. A few years ago YWAM announced that we with the help of modern technology and a recent thrust in the missions movement, we would not only see every people group reached in our lifetime, but we would see it happen within the next decade. This does not mean that every people group will be saved or that they will all be evangelized completely, but every people group will have been accessed by the gospel at least in an introductory way within the next decade.

So very soon, we are going to see the end of the term "unreached people" into the term "least-reached people." Not only that, but there will also need to be the re-evangelization of several groups, namely Europe and America, and the final death grip against Christian missions will come down to the Middle East. It is very amazing to think that we will soon be able to reach every people on the earth, and now we need missionaries to go and effectively spread the gospel through those people groups to evangelize and save as many as we can!

That is why IHOPU is launching a program called the A.C.T.S. School (Antioch Center for Training and Sending). In the Bible, the church at Antioch was the birthplace of the missions movement to the Gentiles and was Paul's sending place. IHOPU is taking graduates and establishing teams that will go into the remaining hostile nations and plant churches and save the lost.

Most interesting of all is the promise of the House of Prayer at the end of the age. There are several chapters of scripture and even more passages dedicated to the importance of the worship movement of Jesus at the end of the age. Therefore, IHOPU is sending musicians to fuel a global worship movement around the world to "sing back the King!" As the end of the age draws nearer, and Biblically as the missions movement comes to a close, the Bible shows us a massive global worship and prayer movement established in the nations that immediately precedes the return of Jesus.

Therefore, YWAM and many other missions organizations are also planning on establishing houses of prayer in the people groups the are reaching to fulfill this portion of Scripture, and they are in great need of IHOPU graduates who are rooted in prayer and worship to lead the charge and help establish these houses of prayer and worship. We're talking about tens of thousands of houses of prayer, I think the number was 50,000 just in Africa alone. Of course all of these vary greatly in size, but size is not what counts, it is about the existence of worship across the earth.

So the global missions movement and the prayer and worship movement are converging like never before in history (save for maybe the first century church). Right now the missions movement is in a large thrust (which is actually mentioned in scripture as a sign of the times) and as we shift from "unreached" to "least-reached" people groups, and as the Bible translators nearly finish the job of translating the Bible into every major language, the movement is shifting into a global worship movement to establish houses of prayer all over the earth.

We are living in an extremely exciting time, perhaps the most exciting time in history (certainly). It is very compelling to consider the days that we live in and the task at hand, and our small yet powerful part we play in the big story of Jesus' return.