Southeast Asia

Overview

Southeast Asia is home to an incredibly diverse population. The island nation of Papua New Guinea alone is home to more than 1,000 people groups who speak more than 800 languages. Christianity has taken root and continues to grow among ethnic minorities who face increasing persecution from oppressive regimes.

Islam is another challenge to native believers in Southeast Asia. Christians in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, face high levels of persecution from radical Muslims, who are pushing Sharia-inspired laws in more communities. Meanwhile, a growing Muslim population on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines continues to breed radicalism and hatred for Christians. In both of these countries, however, Christianity has sustained continued growth.

With the growth of Christianity in Southeast Asia comes an enormous need for trained church leaders. Thousands of rural congregations languish without adequate leadership, falling into unbiblical teaching, moral failure, and syncretism.

In addition to persecution from radical Muslims and hostile governments, native missionaries in Southeast Asia are challenged to minister to unreached people groups in regions of extreme poverty and where there is rampant drug usage. The countries of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand comprise Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle, one of Asia’s two main opium-producing areas. Myanmar is also the world’s largest producer of methamphetamines.

How You Can Make a Difference

Christians are not welcomed into towns and villages dominated by false religions unless they can offer a product or service helpful to the community. Your support for Southeast Asian missionaries enables them to start small businesses as a means to enter communities, build relationships, and be self-supporting. Ministries in Southeast Asia also request assistance for Bibles and training materials in local languages for the many ethnic minority groups that are responding to the gospel message.

Ways To Give

Southeast Asian man sits on tile floor with legs crossed and hands together while others sit in a circle with him

Evangelism & Discipleship

Through the work of one indigenous ministry in Vietnam, more than 3,000 house churches exist in the country’s Central Highlands. A ministry on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines has shared the gospel and planted churches among the island’s 13 Muslim-majority tribes through carefully trained native missionaries. Though ministry inside North Korea is impossible under the present regime, native missionaries established underground churches in six locations in northern China among North Korean women who were trafficked across the border. GIVE NOW to help evangelistic and discipleship ministries like these in Southeast Asia.

Indonesian man smiling while sitting on his motorcycle with his chainsaw on the back

Community Engagement

In Indonesia, several Christian Aid Mission-assisted ministries are providing business training to desperately poor pastors and equipping them to start microenterprises to support their families and fledgling churches. GIVE NOW to help community engagement ministries like these in Southeast Asia.

Men and women from Myanmar line up to register for a free healthcare clinic

Compassion

In Myanmar, where multitudes fall prey to drug addiction, a ministry is sharing the love of Christ through its two addiction recovery centers where addicts are cared for and discipled in God’s Word. GIVE NOW to help compassion ministries like this one in Southeast Asia.

Exclusive Stories from the Mission Field

Philippines

Help Victims of Natural Disasters in the Philippines

Super typhoon Goring hammered the islands with gale-force winds, torrential rains and flashfloods in August, damaging some homes and destroying others. Crops were submerged and businesses wiped out. As families were evacuated to government relocation centers, native workers provided aid that helped restore homes and lives.

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Indonesia

Share the Gospel with Unreached People in Indonesia

A team of evangelists met a 56-year-old man at a park and engaged him in conversation, and at one point he said it was the first time he had heard that sin is forgiven through Jesus. After he said he believed their message, they led him in prayer to confess his sin and accept Christ as Lord and Savior.

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Myanmar

Help Workers Pioneer the Gospel in Burma

A new mission field has opened up for native Christian workers in a town of staunch Buddhists. A contact there recently invited workers to share the gospel, and they found local people were receptive. Seven people put their faith in Christ for forgiveness of sins and eternal life and were baptized the next day.

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Laos

Rescue People from Darkness in Laos

A worker recently led four people to Christ after they listened to a digital audio recording of the ministry leader’s gospel presentation. A worker in another area also gave villagers audio players so they could listen to the recorded messages. “After that, he led them to Jesus,” the leader said. “Now they have been facing serious persecution, and he is taking care of them.”

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Flooding caused by a cyclone in Southeast Asia
Prayerline

Help Supply Compassionate Aid in Southeast Asia

Native Christian workers providing aid to cyclone victims found people afflicted by malaria, dengue and other diseases. Many people lost the roofs of their homes, some lost the bamboo they sold to make a living, and some lost their paddy fields to flooding.

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A Filipino Christian missionary in a loaded truck with his family ready to travel
Philippines

Help Open Doors for the Gospel in the Philippines

A native ministry’s church has begun a new outreach that involves the ministry leader joining police and government officials in meetings to teach from God’s Word. This opens the door to sharing the gospel, and another government department has also asked the leader to teach the Word of God to members and beneficiaries of state service in three communities.

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