It’s helpful to keep in mind a picture of the world we live in today. Thankfully, two resources have just dropped that help us do just that. Gordon Conwell’s Center for the Study of Global Christianity has released its Status of Global Christianity 2021, which shows that the growth of the world’s Christian population has, once more, fallen behind the overall population growth (but only by one one-hundredth of a percentage point). But more importantly, the report shows that the vast majority of non-Christians – 81.8% of them (4.36 billion souls) – do not personally know any Christians! This is why the Mobile Ministry Forum exists – these people may have no other means to be introduced to Jesus and His people except the screen and speaker of their mobile phones.
DataReportal has JUST released its annual authoritative Digital Global Overview Report, and there is a lot to chew on in its 299 slides! Did you know that the number of social media users in the world grew by nearly half a billion in 2020 (from just over 3.7 billion to 4.2 billion)? Take a look through the slide deck for information about the world population (slides 12-21), global/regional/country-level Internet use (slides 22-77), social media use (slides 78-185), and mobile phone use (slides 186-222).
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 for the people God wants you to be salt and light among!