New Survey Helps Identify Global Evangelism Obstacles, Opportunities
by Allie Martin
June 21, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A global research project conducted by a California-based aviation ministry is providing reconnaissance for other Christian organizations and mission agencies worldwide in an effort to provide information that will help them shape their evangelism and mission strategies.Six years ago, Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) announced "Operation ACCESS!, an effort to identify and survey areas of the world where transportation, communications, and technology barriers complicate or prevent the spread of the gospel. This landmark study surveyed 364 isolated areas or sectors in 64 countries, focusing on pockets of people that have been long forgotten or who were previously unreachable.
The survey results will now be made available to evangelical ministries in an effort to overcome obstacles to reaching various people groups with the gospel as well as barriers to getting sustained resources needed for community development, healthcare, and education services. Operation ACCESS! surveyors made assessments as to the extent or degree of any ministry going on in an area and the nature and significance of any barriers to ministry and also advised how those barriers might be overcome.
Ghislaine Benney, director of the MAF study, says the project provides some key statistics on the various factors analyzed in the areas the survey covered. "We have digital maps on those locations," she says, as well as "an overview on every sector that we surveyed."
Operation ACCESS! has yielded information that will help MAF determine its future direction for the next 15 to 20 years, Benney asserts. Still, she acknowledges, the six-year project did face some challenges.
"We're finding that 66 percent of all the sectors we surveyed had little or no ministry in place, and 89 percent of the sectors we surveyed have significant communication barriers," the project leader notes. And in 56 percent of those sectors, she adds, those communications barriers are "almost insurmountable -- very difficult to communicate or to sustain anything in place."
Operation ACCESS! research -- found on the web at OperationAccessMAF.org -- is being made available to denominations, ministries, churches, and humanitarian agencies around the world. After being briefed on the study, many leaders have hailed it as groundbreaking data that will affect the focus of their ministry for years to come.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
