What Does That Mean? | The Field is The World

Annual response as seen through the lens of the hardest to reach

The original vision for Global Media Outreach was to give everyone on earth multiple opportunities to trust Jesus. Our aim has been to attract them with the hope of the gospel, confront them with the truth of the gospel, and get them connected with a trained volunteer Online Missionary. In our founder’s words, we “meet them at their point of need” and build a relationship based on trust in which they can ask any question. We ask them questions, too: designed to surface anything keeping them from wholeheartedly trusting and serving Christ.

We find that the name of our “The Field is the World” letter continues to hold true: the world responds to the gospel like the field in Jesus’ parable in Matthew 13. Only one of the four soils in the parable becomes fruitful. One other soil may represent a person who has come to genuine, saving faith, but has been “choked out” by the cares of the world so as to fail to produce fruit. Likewise, we find that up to 23% of our Contacts reply back to their Online Missionaries who follow the principles laid out in our Discipleship Training course.

The numbers are in for our 20th year of ministry, and there are many ways to slice them. One tool I use to evaluate our outreach is Open Doors’ World Watch List: we’re one of the safest and most effective ways to reach out to the 50 places in the world where Christians face the most persecution. On the most recent version of this list are: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Colombia, Comoros, Cuba, Democratic Republic Of The Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Libya, Maldives, Mali, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam, and Yemen. In 2024, these places gave us 32,727,687 gospel visits, 10,980,352 indicated decisions and 937,999 New Contacts!

World Watch List rank	Country	Gospel Visits	Indicated Decisions	Contacts	New Disciples
1	North Korea	14	3	10	0
2	Somalia	95,103	39,715	2,263	30
3	Yemen	910,532	389,220	20,600	6
4	Libyan Arab Jamahiriya	341,051	127,444	2,979	2
5	Sudan	239,555	96,430	5,115	1
6	Eritrea	107	23	34	0
7	Nigeria	3,465,102	1,573,651	126,068	1,108
8	Pakistan	3,730,779	710,260	259,244	175
9	Iran	93,340	25,807	1,766	0
10	Afghanistan	146,109	48,276	59,471	13
11	India	4,272,398	2,475,159	151,507	468
12	Saudi Arabia	10,719	4,327	218	1
13	Myanmar	15,777	15,003	221	3
14	Mali	39,321	10,399	336	0
15	China	15,566	11,418	261	2
16	Maldives	48,136	1,150	15	1
17	Iraq	950,608	445,477	8,664	1
18	Syrian Arab Republic	585,685	222,364	8,070	3
19	Algeria	2,505,758	928,664	27,707	4
20	Burkina Faso	72,420	13,687	1,267	3
21	Morocco	675,947	162,014	8,466	26
22	Lao Peoples Democratic Republic	11,507	30,231	80	0
23	Mauritius	165,150	9,546	340	3
24	Bangladesh	691,251	400,090	4,217	5
25	Uzbekistan	50,610	21,170	431	0
26	Cuba	909,384	168,903	13,818	41
27	Central African Republic	38,426	5,497	986	2
28	Niger	67,855	17,639	631	3
29	Turkmenistan	4,331	546	3	0
30	Nicaragua	243,598	92,402	2,432	108
31	Mexico	774,706	129,269	7,524	5
32	Oman	46,291	1,910	63	1
33	Ethiopia	1,134,990	286,944	63,418	527
34	Tunisia	314,214	90,879	1,014	3
35	Democratic Republic Of The Congo	1,206,881	178,792	22,520	48
36	Bhutan	5,324	3,589	155	1
37	Mozambique	1,239,610	169,874	29,415	184
38	Kazakhstan	64,500	29,387	316	3
39	Tajikistan	18,405	9,354	142	0
40	Egypt	4,038,164	1,233,026	47,149	6
41	Qatar	28,484	862	105	0
42	Comoros	23,522	3,620	181	0
43	Cameroon	475,835	60,121	7,946	41
44	Viet Nam	9,108	19,434	50	0
45	Turkey	540,501	223,877	13,644	1
46	Colombia	1,952,865	389,862	33,313	37
47	Kyrgyzstan	84,513	23,268	667	0
48	Brunei Darussalam	99,390	456	18	3
49	Chad	136,499	35,574	2,250	5
50	Jordan	137,746	43,739	889	1
		32,727,687	10,980,352	937,999	2,875

It's astounding to see that our Online Missionaries marked 175 Disciples from Pakistan: 30 even from Somalia. “Ejaz” from Pakistan asked, “Is the Jesus God?” “Obax” from Somalia asked, “How do I improve my love in the Lord?”

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s holiday celebration! Luke and Lillian visited us here in Memphis for the first time, and Emily and Matthew also drove up from Jackson, MS. Matthew’s parents from Australia flew here for vacation (“holiday”) and spent several days in Memphis with us before continuing on (with Emily and Matthew joining them) to sites in Alabama, South and North Carolina and Washington, D.C. before parting ways so Ken and Hayley could continue to the U.K. and Italy.