Dispelling the darkness
in regions of the world

See maps with regions:

As missionary Danette Thrush biked to the market, she glanced at the gray sky above her. Dense, morning fog blanketed the town.

“It was so gray and so heavy; I had the overwhelming sensation of being surrounded and pressed back by spiritual darkness,” says Danette, an International Mission Board missionary taking the gospel to the Hakka Chinese in Taiwan. “I had to fight the urge to retreat and go home; I wondered why.”

Then she remembered. Two days earlier, a full moon had shone over the town. “I’d watched countless people set out sacrifices. I’d walked through so much floating ash from burning ‘spirit money’ that I’d actually checked to make sure what landed in my hair wasn’t still on fire.

“God told me, ‘Intercede for these people,’ so I prayed. I prayed God would be patient a little longer, that He would see the emptiness and pain of their hearts and have compassion.”

Every day, all across the globe, IMB missionaries like Danette come face to face with spiritual darkness. As they shine the gospel light, they depend upon your prayers and financial support.

Just how vast is the darkness? “Today, six times more people have never heard of the gospel than were alive when Jesus gave (the Great Commission),” writes Avery Willis, the IMB’s overseas operations chief. Thousands more lack a self-sustaining church movement with the means of evangelizing their own kind.

To get a handle on that task, International Mission Board personnel are divided into 14 regions.

The regions include all peoples and nationals outside the United States and Canada because the board is committed to bringing “all the peoples of the world to saving faith in Jesus Christ.”

Each region is guided by a regional leadership team. These mission leaders are responsible for guiding missionaries in developing, supporting and implementing strategies for initiating and nurturing church-planting movements among all the people groups of their region.

IMB personnel are organized into teams. Each team focuses on a people group or population segment. Their goal is to do whatever it takes to begin and nurture a church-planting movement among the people.

An ethnolinguistic people group is distinguished by its traditions of common descent, history, customs and language. More than 6 billion people inhabit the world, comprising 12,862 ethnolinguistic people groups.

But many of the world’s people are lost—separated from God. Of the global population, nearly 1.7 billion people—2,161 ethnolinguistic people groups—have little or no access to the gospel. Many others also do not know the salvation of Jesus Christ.

But God is using theInternational Mission Board to share the goodnews of Jesus Christ and to begin churchplanting movements among many of these people groups. A church-planting movement is a rapid multiplication of indigenous churches within a people group, city or country.

“A Southern Baptist Convention entity supported by the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering®.”