Recent figures give good news about church-planting teams sent to the world's neediest peoples - but also show there's still far to go.

WEC International's God-given task is simple to state, if hard to complete:

'make sure that every people on earth
embraces the good news of Jesus'.

In 2002, a global meeting of WEC leaders set faith goals for 2010:

• To have 150 'viable' church planting teams in place among unreached peoples.
  'Viable' means five or more members so that right from the beginning, the team is modelling how Christian fellowship works, with each person bringing distinctive gifts.
  
  
• To have 'prayer mobilisers' for each of the 88 unreached people groups amongst whom WEC is working.
  'Prayer mobilisers' have a passion to recruit intercessors and pass on prayer information about a people.

Measured in February 2005, WEC had 90 church planting teams scattered around the world, but only 39 of them were 'viable' according to the definition.

By June 2007 this had grown to 125 teams overall, and the number of 'viable' teams had almost doubled to 76.

Now the latest figures, released to a meeting of WEC leaders in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in May  2008 counted 188 church planting teams, of which 85 were viable, and 65 prayer mobilizers.

Want to join a team?

Ways to get praying