Malaria in Africa

From The End of Poverty [yes, I'm trying to get back to posting more notes from the book]:

Malaria
- claims 3M lives a year - 90% of whom live in Africa
- Four types of human malaria
- Malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum is by far the most lethal variant and is responsible for the vast proportion of malaria cases in Africa.
- central ecological point - the warmer the temperature, the faster the life-cycle change for the parasite to go from the stomach back to the saliva of the mosquito - to be put into the next person
- Some types of mosquitoes prefer to bite people whereas others feed off cattle. Transmitting malaria requires two consecutive human bites: the first for the mosquito to ingest the parasite and the second for the mosquito to infect another person, roughly two weeks later. Africa has a predominating mosquito type which prefers human biting nearly 100 percent of the time.
- Africa is really unlucky when it comes to malaria: high temperatures, plenty of breeding sites and mosquitoes that prefer humans to cattle. Africa's crisis is unique, with only a few other scattered parts of Asia sharing the same high ecological burden.

If you are like me, you had no idea that Africa was such a unique, isolated, perfect storm for malaria.

[Related posts from the book: Chapter 1, 2, and 3.]

State of the Gospel Talk

Jason Mandryk from Operation World [yup, that book] and his talk about the State of the Gospel at YLG2006.

[Related - the post about the ppt from the talk that you can download.]

[These stats won't be new to long time readers...]
- about 27% of the the world is still unreached
- we are sending about 2.5% of our current foreign missionaries to the unreached - 1/40
- some areas of the unreached world have less than 3 missionaries per 1 M people
A lot of people out there need a better world.

via Dennis

The Case for Teaching the Bible - Time Magazine

In a 1992 survey of English teachers to determine the top-10 required "book-length works "in high school English classes, plays by Shakespeare occupied three spots and the Bible none. And yet, let’s compare the two: Beauty of language: Shakespeare, by a nose. Depth of subject matter: toss-up. Breadth of subject matter: the Bible. Numbers published, translated etc: Bible. Number of people martyred for: Bible. Number of wars attributed to: Bible. Solace and hope provided to billions: you guessed it. And Shakespeare would almost surely have agreed. According to one estimate, he alludes to Scripture some 1,300 times. As for the rest of literature, when your seventh-grader reads The Old Man and the Sea, a teacher could tick off the references to Christ's Passion–the bleeding of the old man's palms, his stumbles while carrying his mast over his shoulder, his hat cutting his head–but wouldn't the thrill of recognition have been more satisfying on their/own?

The full article here. Via Marko.

Francis Chan - Thinking of Them

Watch the video for why Francis Chan and Cornerstone Church Simi Valley California decided to build an outdoor amphitheater instead of a new building. via Ben Arment. [One of the messages I watched by Francis had him throwing dollar bills at the congregation to illustrate how affluent they were. Ouch.]

Answering a call

It was a stirring in the blood at the sound of rain. It was a sickening of the heart at the sight of misery. It was a clamoring of ghosts. It was a name which, when I wrote it out in a dream, I knew was a name worth dying for even if I was not brave enough to do the dying myself and could not even name the name for sure. Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you a high and driving peace. I will condemn you to death.

Buechner via Seth

I Don't Pray Like This

The great preacher D. L. Moody is said to have carried a list of the names of 100 non-Christians for whom he prayed all his life. Over the years, his prayers for many of these people were answered and, whenever one of them became a Christian, Moody would cross their name off the list. It is a tribute to the power of perseverance in prayer that, by the time of his death, no fewer than 96 of those 100 people on Moody's list had become followers of Jesus. What's more, the remaining 4 gave their lives to Jesus at Moody's funeral.

- Pete Greig, God on Mute

Summer Team Info Sheets

Our summer team info sheets are up. I think finally most of our details are solid enough to publish. But you long time readers know how that goes...

:: incoming 10th grade - Baltimore with Chain Reaction [Jeremy helps run this party.]

:: incoming 11th grade - NYC with Urban Impact

:: incoming 12th grade - Liverpool, England with YWAM Marine Reach

We are still working on middle school... I'm very excited about all of these teams. They embody our principles of long term partnership, progression and GCC family connections.

PS - I used Google docs for all info sheets and it seems to be working out well.

Off-Road Disciplines by Earl Creps

I got a copy of Off-Road Disciplines by Dr. Earl Creps in return for a review, so here it goes. Overall, it was a pretty good book. I especially liked the subtitle, "Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders." Two other things struck me. Dr. Creeps writes to leaders and potential leaders keeping the context of mission at the forefront. He knows that leaders must be catalysts for the future, not leading to keep the status quo. The other thing that struck me was that these 'disciplines' are indeed off-road. They are not the staples of traditional disciplines, such as prayer, Bible study, etc. Even though they don't follow the standard model of habits, these off-road disciplines require concentration, intention and modeling. And they are habits that are worthy of developing.

Here are some of my scattered notes:

Intro:
This book argues that missional leadership derives not from methods or strategies but from the work of the Holy Spirit to rearrange one's interior life.

...the off-road disciplines serve the function of making space in our lives so that Jesus assumes the central position within us and the Spirit conforms us to the mission.

Chapter 1 - Death - The Discipline of Personal Transformation
How can I be changed so that others will find me worth following in mission.
The way to develop a missional ministry, then, is to be transformed into a missional person, "so that everyone may see your progress." In the end, my best practice must be me.
concept of culture of origin - COO

Chapter 2 - Truth - The Discipline of Sacred Realism
Sacred realism fearlessly embraces the truth about the Church, and about our lives, because of confidence in a God bigger than those facts.
Post-Christianity is waiting for missionaries who practice sacred realism: the discipline of holding the truth in one hand and faith in the other.

Chapter 3 - Perspective - The Discipline of POV
Christian mission tends to prefer a blueprint point of view that insists on replicating designs developed in a relative vacuum, or cloning methods used somewhere else.
A reverse engineering POV applied to Christian mission starts with the off-road discipline of interpreting culture and arriving at a strategy for mission at its deliverable.

Chapter 7 - Assessment - The Discipline of Missional Efficiency
[From a sample scorecard]
7. If we worked for a mission agency, would we still have jobs?
9. What would we say to a poor person who asked us what we have done to help the marginalized since our last meeting?
10. Who is growing spiritually among us, and how do we know this?

Chapter 9 - Reflection - The Discipline of Discernment
Processing the event - The purpose of the exercise is to create white space in which God has a chance to speak to us about our best efforts - whether they succeeded or failed.

Chapter 10 - Opportunity - The Discipline of Making Room
Students of the Church estimate that approximately 250 plans to evangelize the world were proposed by 1900, with another 1,150 or so added during the twentieth century, many of them coalescing around the end of the last millennium, with none of them succeeding.
Like catalyzes love, and love grows the capacity for mission in every form.

Chapter 11 - Sacrifice - The Discipline of Surrendering Preferences
But every missional leader experiences shock, the only question being which kind.

Good read, definitely recommended.

Week 2 at Corp1.3

Posting about your job on your blog is a terrible idea, unless its your job to write about your job on your blog about your job. But I can tell you that I'm having an absolute great time at the new job. It's just about everything I was hoping for.

It's a really great technical environment. I'm learning a lot about some very cool technology and getting some great experience in that regard - a nice change of pace away from the role of management and back into being an engineer. Every person that I have met so far has been extremely friendly, kind and helpful - and I don't think that is just because I'm new. I think these people act like this all the time - and not just because someone is telling them how to act. Finally, there is huge element of dignity - the work matters and is important, but staff is not simply a means to an end. And it seems like there are always free meals or snacks.

I realize I'm only in my second week there and that, like life, it is probably not going to be so great all the time. But so far, I'm having a lot of fun and really enjoying my new job. And work is one way we create - like in the image of the Creator.

PS - Related to job and work, go listen to the message by Nancy Ortberg [husband of John, who has written a few books] entitled, "Jesus and Your Job." It's got some great concepts such as "watching breathtaking leadership" and "the nobility of service." [via DJ]

Mission Team Applications

I like to read through mission team applications - it's okay, I know it might not rank high on most people's list of hobbies. I read through one tonight that was intriguing. Let me give you the breakdown:
- 5 total pages
- 2 pages of Involvement Policy
- 1 page of Trip Covenant
- 1 page of Liability Waiver [notarized please]
- 1 page of Medical Consent

One point about this app - it states that an interview is part of the process. But.. you might be wondering, like I am, where is the part about where the applicant gets to talk about themselves? Stuff like how God is leading me lately, what my personality is like, my motivation for trying to join a team, what my dreams are about this opportunity...

We use our application to find out a lot of information about potential team members. We want to know about you - to know what you value, what gets you excited, what you think you are great at, and what you might need a bit of help with. How you envision being an integral part of securing humanity's future. But absolutely for sure, I hope that our potential team members use the application to find out a lot about us too. Because we are surely dreaming about you, excited about you being involved, and know that the experience will stretch you, grow you, and get you more excited about God's plan for the world. We aren't really just dreaming about policy, consent and waivers.

Hungary Team Leaders

From the left: ErinOB, moi, D, LB, GM and inserted with some mad Photoshopping skills, EGrab.

Some short introductions to tell you the caliber of these peeps:
ErinOB - over four years of staff experience with Young Life and serving now as GCC's senior high youth administrator. Knows how to organize a movement and get students to a direction.
D - will keep me in line along with experience with children's ministry and intuitive, one-to-one interaction. Connectedness, Belief and Responsibility strengths which will mean specific insight into serving the CA staff to depths others may not have insight into.
LB - third summer of SPACE leadership on a third continent. Third summer of seeing first hand what families are going through in the field and being able to bless them in those ends.
GM - second summer of SPACE leadership. Off the scale Realtor and special attachment to high school students. His somewhat ADD tendencies will be a major asset to speaking life into some third culture students. [I'm being serious here.]
EGrab - second summer of SPACE leadership. Been immersed in children's ministry as long as he has been alive.

My personal challenge may in fact be to get out of the way. It's going to be a lot of fun to lead with these folks.

Grace Community Church, Fulton, MD sermon rss feed

Our church, Grace Community Church, in Fulton, MD, now has an rss feed for the messages. This page has the actual link. I think Pastor Mark is one of the best communicators around these days. Give it a listen.

Saturday Potpourri

[Sorry for the light posting. Adjusting to Job1.3 has been going well, but taking a lot more energy than expected. Normal posting to resume soon.]

On this St. Patrick's Day, some posts about passion, innovation and risk. Because St. Patrick certainly embodied passion [for the Irish], innovation and hmm just a tad of risk... [The real story of St. Patrick]


::: "Managers obsessed with logic and left-brained thinking are dismissive of feelings—they say that emotions don't belong in the workplace. They do not believe engagement has anything to do with organizational performance or that people can be passionate about their work. Managers need to understand that emotional intelligence and right-brain thinking are critical skills to become successful leaders in the new global economy." more about engagement from LeadershipNow


::: "In 1998, Barry Stiefel took off from work on Friday at 5pm and was back at his desk a little more than a week later on Monday at 8am, having visited every US state in the interim" link via Kottke


::: Explorer Bill Stone: "The traditional approach to space exploration has been to carry all the fuel you need, and to carry everybody back in case of emergency. But to prime the pump that will take us beyond, boldness is required: the first expeditionary team must travel to the Moon without the fuel to come back, and produce it there. It can be done in 7 years, and I intend to lead that expedition. There was a time when people did bold things to open new frontiers. We have collectively forgotten that. Now we are at a time when boldness is required again." via the TEDBlog. See also, a Wired article from 2004 on Bill Stone.

Teams and More Teams

The past few weeks have been pretty busy with getting our teams up. Our initial plans are done and we are almost done with the recruiting-leader-stage. Recruiting is maybe not the right word. Begging perhaps?

No just kidding. I'm very happy with each one of these leader teams. They are all pretty much people I have a lot of respect for. But the two big tests - would I greet them if I saw them in a shopping center, and would I trust them with my children? And every leader passes those tests.

Hopefully the final details for the majority of teams line up later this week and then we publish info sheets for students this coming weekend. That would be grand. This year is a combination of experiences we have done before and new stuff, just like seemingly every year. I like it, I think it's going to be a great summer.

When the info sheets are done, I will set up some links to them from one of the sidebars, in case any of you are interested. I also decided to use GoogleDocs for those info sheets, it's quite handy.

PS - Job1.3 is going great. Along with the job transition, I'm trying to figure out the best balance for my extracurricular online time.

Job 1.3

First day at Job 1.3. Very fun. It was landing in a new culture and I was asking all day, "What do they value without saying so outloud?"

Team Leader App - My Answers

Some people have been asking what are the right answers to some of the questions on the team leader app for this year. Here are my answers. Of course, they aren't right either...

:: Describe all cross cultural ministry experience you have had. How did these experiences change you?
Summer 1992 – 6 weeks of student missions around the east coast including inner city summer camp, VBS in the coal mine community in KY, beach outreach
Summer 1993 – 4 weeks in the DR working with an orphanage
Summer 1995 – 2 weeks in the UK - vacation
Spring 2003 – Perspectives class
Summer 2004 – 1 week in NYC working with immigrant populations
Summer 2005 – 10 days in Brasil working with GCC family McMs
Summer 2006 – 10 days in Cameroon working with GCC family Nens

All of these experiences have continued to solidify my convictions about the following:
The need for two-way partnerships in the context of short term missions that capitalize on local and indigenous leadership and ownership on the host side and a utilization of talents and strengths on the visiting side; the need to catalyze and mobilize students to reach the nations; and how important culture and context are to living a life that others want to emulate.

:: You are leading a group of 12 passengers on a 3 day trek in a remote area. One of the group falls and breaks their leg and needs to be evacuated. The rest of the group needs to continue or they will miss their connecting train and flights home. Your mobile phone is not working so you can't call for assistance. What would you do and how do you meet all the group's needs?
[question via Intrepid Travel]
The two smartest guys rig up a stretcher from whatever they can find in the woods – branches, leaves, vines, etc. The two biggest guys carry the wounded as far as they can. We go together as a group as far as we can and do the best we can. If we miss the connection, so be it. I implore to be as engaging as I can in light of plan B – who knows what else we might experience that we would have otherwise missed.

:: Predict 500 years from this summer – what will be the impact of your leadership?
We will have catalyzed a team of leaders to do change their day to day thinking to be based around culture and worldview. We will have launched a group of students to seriously pursue cross cultural contexts for life. My children will have impacted some other kids and gained life long friends that will rally around Jesus and His mission for humanity.

:: Describe the riskiest - but not necessarily successful - endeavor you have ever attempted.
Either:
1 - Taking a team of students to Cameroon in the summer of 2006. Risky because of the travel, locale, intimidation effect. It ended up being not too risky at all.
2 – Flying across the country in 2005 to work on a community outreach project with a youth pastor who I had never met face to face.

:: From any experience working with groups (eg. as part of your employment, school settings or student ministry), tell us about the role you played in the group, and how you dealt with any conflict.
I like to think that people are capable of resolving conflict when they need to. Most of the time, I will let it go until it reaches a boiling point at which point, it needs to be addressed because it hasn't worked itself out. I also believe that conflict always needs to be moderated within the context of two points of view - one person is never all the blame.

:: Describe a time when you birthed something (i.e. a club, a business, a team, etc). Experiences from childhood count.
[question via the International Mentoring Network]
I helped birth SPACE – the service/missions component of a student ministry.

Saturday Potpourri

::: "If you're an artist, as opposed to a careerist, and your movie is more important to you than a career in this town, they can never beat you." - Quentin Tarantino on making movies via Kottke


::: SHIFT conference video clip - Donald Miller on Story
[Related - my SHIFT notes and reflections]


::: "Think about what you just said. You give gifts to Alzheimer patients and missionaries!" - more from Blue Passport


::: "We have a chance here to prove that a country that almost slaughtered itself out of existence (while none of us, most of all me, did anything to help) can practice reconciliation, reorganize itself, focus on tomorrow and provide comprehensive healthcare to its citizens." - Bill Clinton at TED 2007 via TED Blog [TED - The Technology, Entertainment, Design conference]

Job #2 Ends

"Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the mood in which it has been made has passed." - Cavett Robert

For some odd reason, I had this quote on an index card at my desk to literally my whole time of being employed here at Corp1.2. If you know who wrote it, let me know.

I turn in my computer and badge this morning and thus ends a chapter. Wow.

I also gave my aerial map of the Arctic Circle to my friend and coworker, Axr. I know it will serve to give him some good perspective.

Well, time to get ready and finish it.

My Farewell Lunch

from yesterday

The next two days might be a tad weird...

What I've Done

Well, it's back to work for me for my last three days in Cubicle Nation. Here is a little bit about my little career break:

::: Movies
- The Illusionist
- Amazing Grace
- Music and Lyrics [D and I went to a 1.15 show on a Tuesday - what a life]

::: Reading
- started The Alchemist
unfortunately, not much more reading than that

::: Cooking [yes believe it or not and yes, Rachael Ray is my friend]
Chicken Parm Pizza [easy and turned out really good]
Cognac-Sauced Pepper Steaks [the steaks I bought were too thick and D had to bring the sauce to a higher boil - really tasty, but make sure the steaks are thin]
Paprika Smoked Onion Rings [what a mess after this one - not bad either but a lot of work and cleanup]

::: Misc
- bought $150 of hard drives
- reinstalled WinXP on an older desktop
- wired a Yamaha subwoofer to a new receiver and listened to some good old school music
- rebleached my basement floor [leftover from our sewage issue a little while ago]
- had lunch with Em at school
- went away with D
- talked to people on a ship in Europe via Skype
- Blogged about Willow Creek student ministries conference

Tuesday Potpourri

::: How The World Really Shapes Up via Waxy.org


::: Interesting story about Polycarp the Bishop of Smyrna


::: When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back, saying, "You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages." To that, Calvert replied, "We died before we came here." via Nomad4God


::: Live beyond the limits of the imaginary lid
via Jonny Baker

Country Quiz

Name as many as you can in 10 minutes.
I got 80 after my 4th try...
[Warning - huge timewaster - you mean I only have one more day to do this?] via Kottke

Humana 2.0 - thought #1

"We are so fragmented we can't even make friends." - Erwin McManus from Humana 2.0

[Preface - I know some readers of this blog have a very different view of the world, especially when it comes to religion and spirituality. So this post may be a bit - hmm how shall I put it - dorky. Even so, thanks for reading this processing in my head.]

One of the themes from Humana 2.0 was getting away from evangelicism, out of the Christian enclave, outside the bubble - and into the real world and engaging humanity. One of the sessions on "Idols and Avatars", the idea that an avatar is divine embodiment and that we are all meant to embody the light within us to the world - not just to those in the Church already. In that respect, I consider myself lucky - I don't spend all of time around people that believe the same things as I do and I have a job that gets me out with people from all kinds of different backgrounds, cultures and contexts.

I am as busy as everyone else with a job and a family. I also have a hobby that requires a certain amount of people development - empowering, leading, planning, etc, which is a good thing - allowing me to invest in other people's lives - it really is a super opportunity. Your life - and mine - are meant to be invested.

But...
There is no progress in my life regarding being a friend to someone that doesn't believe the same things that I do. For instance, I can't remember the last time I:
- had a meal with
- saw a movie with
- had coffee with
someone that is outside of my sphere of influence related to SPACE. The point I got from Humana 2.0 is that it is really important to make room for people. Making room means maybe not doing all the church stuff all the time. Maybe deciding intentionally to give up the church activity sometimes in order to make room for someone that isn't connected to Church at all. And this idea is not something I've been very good at in a long time.

One other related thought here. In light of my recent career move, I'm going to be losing touch with and gaining some new coworkers. I'm sure both of these will provide some interesting opportunities.

Ok, one more related thought. Cubicle nation has also reinforced the idea that community is formed out of mission. My work environment used to be a lot of fun mostly because the people that I worked with were bound with a common sense of mission. We worked together to achieve a common goal that was larger than any of us individually. We were a team that had a sense of community, that were responsible for one another, that had a sense of belonging and camaraderie. This sense of mission has left us for many reasons [too much to go into here] - but the byproduct is a group of people that work together, but are not bound together at all. Community is not formed randomly - deep friendships are forged out of a common mission and dedication to something much bigger than ourselves.

Here are three quick things that will help me at least be aware of being a good friend. Maybe they will help you too.
::: BLESS
::: Remembering birthdays
::: 10:02am

Photo: The UrbanPoets via Ted Law's Flickr

[Related - my conference notes.]

Shift Conference Reflections

Some very quick reflections from the Shift Conference:

::: Much of what Darren said in Session 1 was not new to me. Even so, I'm glad he said it to an audience of youth workers. Most everything about the talk was representative of what missionaries know about culture and what youth workers know but don't realize. For instance:
- "User created content" - think indigenous.
- "Tour guide" - think contextualization.
I don't mean this to be negative at all - his session was good and he is a top-notch communicator. The content just wasn't new to me, which is certainly not a barometer of a good session or not.

::: Having Jeremy encourage Willow by having a worship band with diversity of musical style was good. Maybe it's just me, but is Willow really that white and suburban?

::: Three big things stood out to me and these made the conference a good investment of time:
1 - The concept of cultural freeze [from session 1]
2 - That we have to engage students in a much bigger story [from session 2]
3 - Conferences like this should be about paradigm shifting, not necessarily about implementation - because context and culture are significant. I think that definitely happened in session 2 [Donald Miller] and session 5 [Jeremy Del Rio].

Thanks again to Willow Creek for inviting me to be a part of the virtual side of the gathering.

[Related: notes from Session 1 and 2 and Session 5]

Only 2148?

[Click for full size]

My Summer 2007 Team

Here are one of the overall directions we are moving towards for this summer. I am leading a team to Hungary and Austria this summer. Not to brag or anything, but I think this is one of the most innovative mission experiences around.

GCC supports a family that are ministering in Italy. Their mission organization does an annual staff conference where all of their staff come to a central location for some relaxation off the field, some investment and some downtime. This summer, my team is going to travel to this conference - happening in Hungary - to assist with all the activities centered around the missionary kids. There is also a possibility that some of our team will split off and assist with the activities for the high school missionary kids, which will be located in Vienna. The distance between Sopron, Hungary [where the staff conference is] and Vienna is only about an hour by car.

I say this is innovative because:
- A local *student* mission team connecting with some missionaries of a world wide missions organization.
- Our students are going to get to impact some families that are out in the field. I suspect some families are going to be fine and some other families are really going to need this break. For them, our students could fill a vital role of encouragement, blessing, a break from their kids, and speaking into their lives. Not only that, but having our students be able to spend time with missionary families is going to be so valuable.
- This missions organization is very cool. Tell you more about them later.
- It's part of our strategy to be connected to our extended body all around the world.
- This is an invite only team. Students that are invited to this trip have significant missions experience, have heavily invested in SPACE and are serious about considering a lifetime in cross cultural ministry.

With regard to another aspect of the trip, D and I have decided to move in the direction of all of us going as a family. Yup, call us either deluded, crazy, all of the above. We think that this is going to be a great experience for our kids and this specific trip is a great environment for our kids to actually assist and play a vital role in the team. Of course, we both know it's not going to be easy. Heck, we have a hard enough time getting them ready to go to the beach, much less Europe. But we believe that the difficult investment now is going to be worth it - the trajectory of their lives will see this summer as a major boundary event.

Leader invitations are en route as are the first round of student invites. Like all of the past teams, this team is slated to be a great one as well. Traveling across the world to hold up some people that are fighting to rescue humanity. I guess we shouldn't expect this to be super easy.

D and I are off for a night - computer free. As always, CourtK, her black belt and our watch dogs are home. Have a great weekend!

Shift Session 5

Highlights:

- The Scriptures begin in a garden but end in a city - melding of different cultures - a flavor of what Heaven is going to be like - knitting people together because God has deposited a little bit of Himself in everyone.
- We've bought the cultural lie that young people are the future. David as a 13 year old was not the future. Mary was not the future as a virgin teenager. Esther was not the future winning a beauty pageant to save her people from genocide.
- When we were choosing birthing options, the Central Park petting zoo was not one of our options.
- Jesus ministry lasted for 3 years - hey middle school pastors, you have them for 3 years.
- Justice is about righting wrongs. You give your life to right the wrongs.

Full notes here. Good job Jeremy!
[Session 1 and 2 notes]

Thursday Potpourri

[Not blogging the Shift conference today but will be back blogging it tomorrow.]


::: From an interview with John Eldredge at Infuze Mag:

In John 10, Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice. They follow me." That's the whole deal right there. But I recognize that we weren't taught this. The Christianity in the West, for all kinds of reasons, has just become an exchange of information.

::: Two great reads on Europe

- At a growth of only 300,000 people per year, Northern Europe will likely increase from ninety-four million in AD 2000 to only 101 million in 2025. It is heavily urbanized and over eighty-three percent of the population lives in cities. Over 180 cities have a population of one million or more. Northern Europe has the third highest concentration of elderly in the world: twenty percent of the people are 65 or older.
- Western Europe is responsible for over half of Europe’s GNP, and sixteen percent of the global economy. It is not surprising that both France and Germany have been attracting tens of thousands of migrant workers.
- 234 least reached people groups still remain in Western Europe.

- An Overview of Western Europe
- Least Reached in Europe both via Lausanne World Pulse


::: Cafe 1040 - training for college students to work in the 10/40 window - also via Lausanne World Pulse