Two resources are now available to help us gain a big perspective on the current state of the world’s people. Gordon Conwell’s Center for the Study of Global Christianity has released its Status of Global Christianity 2022, which shows that the growth of the world’s Christian population continues to fall behind the overall population growth (but only by one-hundredth of a percentage point). But more importantly, the report shows that the vast majority of non-Christians (81.7% of them or 4.4 billion souls) – do not know any Christians! This is why the Mobile Ministry Forum exists – these people may have no other means to learn about Jesus or His people except through the screens and speakers of their mobile phones.
DataReportal has also released its annual authoritative Digital Global Overview Report, and there is a lot to chew on in its 300 slides! Did you know that the number of social media users in the world grew by nearly half a billion in 2021 (from 4.2 billion to 4.62 billion)? Take a look through the slide deck for information about the world population (slides 13-18), global/regional/country-level Internet use (slides 19-85), social media use (slides 86-214), and mobile phone use (slides 215-236).
In February, DataReportal will likely release reports for individual countries, so keep an eye out for that here.
Our prayer is that you will take what you learn here and turn it into fuel for prayer and action among the people for whom God has called you to be salt and light.