80% of the world’s evangelical Christians live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Over the last 50 years, God’s church has grown exponentially in these areas.

These regions have tremendous mission sending potential to help bring the gospel to unreached peoples, but they currently send only 20% of the world’s cross-cultural missionaries!

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Total Number of Evangelicals

Cultural Bridges to UPGs

Regional Access to UPGs

Religious Freedom

Prosperity

Current Sending Abroad

Mobilization Potential

Custom Mobilization Potential

Number of Evangelicals

Cultural Bridges

Strategic Access

Religious Freedoms

Current Sending

This infographic provides a visual score for seven data points ranked on a 0 to 100 scale. Faded icons show scores for other countries on the mobilization index. See below for actual scores and country-specific insights.

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DISTANT AND FOREIGN MISSION FIELD

THE WORLD IS THE MISSION FIELD

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Students are the most recruitable, trainable, and sendable people on the planet. Equip them to live out and lead Evangelism, Disciple-making, and Missions mobilization among their peers.

Transform your ministry into a movement of Christ.

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Bring a sense of conviction and passion to your students

Modeling Jesus in evangelism, disciple-making, and mission mobilization will help your students thrive in faith for a lifetime and ignite their campus for Jesus Christ. The Fuel and the Flame is one of the top discipleship tools used by college ministries worldwide.

Core Tools

All the tools you need for a full year of effective student ministry

Download and print simple one-to-one discipleship tools or browse our templates for staff planning and development.

Get The Basics Series, 12 simple discipleship lessons to review the foundations and establish new believers and disciples.&nbsp;

Steve Shadrach, author of The Fuel and the Flame, has curated and simplified these bible focused one-to-one tools which have been used by student ministries for 40+ years.

Learn from the best practitioners in student ministry leadership from across the world

Join the conversation on the Campus Ministry Today podcast, as our Via Students team interview and dialogue with seasoned ministry leaders. You'll gain the perspective and insights to help shape your ministry into a movement for Christ.

Level up your ministry by raising up next generational leaders

We've packaged together a virtual discipleship training program you can use for free! We created it for 1,000+ students during COVID, but ministries are now using this as a versatile program in summer or during the school year. Build your group, set your schedule, listen to powerful leaders including David Platt and Robby Gallaty, and and prepare your students to be a laborer on campus.

Student Ministry Tools

College: A four-year (or more!) window of time where a student can become and accomplish all that God has for them. This book will help you do just that as you discover a vision for your life, the kind of personal and spiritual foundation you need to build, and practical ways to share your faith, disciple others, and impact the world for Jesus Christ. The challenge? If you will fully submit yourself to the Lord to be the fuel, God will ignite your life and spread the flame of the gospel across your campus and world. So beware, what you hold in your hands may forever change you. You in?
Our goal in this book is to focus on a few of the simple commands and modeling Jesus provided us. We hope that God uses the basics of evangelism, disciple-making, and mission mobilization shared in this book to transform your everyday life and change your heart to be more like His own.
So, if you want to walk with God more closely, have a vision for your life and ministry, develop a practical plan for you to lead others to Christ and make disciples, and to impact the world for the glory of God&hellip; you&rsquo;ve come to the right place! Read this on your own. Or take a small group through it. Encourage your whole college ministry to use it as their semester training tool or summer project book.

Are you looking for extra resources, as mentioned in The Fuel and The Flame? <a href="/students/fuel-and-flame-resources" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Click Here</a>.

Ignite Your Campus for Jesus Christ

The Fuel and the Flame

The Fuel and the Flame

Explore is a seven-lesson study for small groups or individuals covering the basics of God's word, world, and work, helping students (or anyone!) gain a heart for the nations.
<ul>
<li>GOD'S WORD: Journey from Genesis to Revelation seeing the recurring theme of God desiring worship from ALL people and mobilizing His people to be ambassadors for His name.&nbsp;</li>
<li>GOD'S WORLD: Lesson 2 provides a quick overview of the major (THUMB) religious blocks, defines unreached people groups, and highlights the task remaining in helping all people have access to the Gospel.</li>
<li>GOD'S WORK: Discover opportunities in global missions no matter your location or vocation through these 5 World Christian habits: Praying, Sending, Welcoming, Going, and Mobilizing.</li>
</ul>

Discover God's Word, God's World, and God's Work

Explore the World Christian Lifestyle

Explore the World Christian Lifestyle

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<div class="et_pb_text_inner">
Welcoming the Nations Among Us&nbsp;is a 6-lesson study inviting believers to explore welcoming others for God&rsquo;s glory. Welcoming is more than being friendly. It is the lifestyle of a person prioritizing God&rsquo;s mission to &ldquo;make disciples of all&nbsp;nations.&rdquo; A welcomer gets involved with those around them from different cultures, developing genuine cross-cultural friendships, selflessly serving, and always being&nbsp;ready to share Jesus with others. Our Father has always been a welcomer and has a role for each of us to play in joining Him.&nbsp;Welcoming&nbsp;participants will explore:
<ul>
<li>The realities of migrants and near neighbors around them&nbsp;</li>
<li>Their own obstacles to reaching out cross-culturally</li>
<li>Practical steps they can take to start welcoming</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>

Engage With Your Cross-Cultural Neighbors for the Sake of the Gospel

Welcoming the Nations Among Us

Welcoming the Nations Among Us

As a ministry worker, raising support can be a daunting task. It doesn't have to be intimidating though. It isn't about money or asking people to give. It is about looking to God to provide for you. He has given you a vision for ministry, and now you get to invite others into that vision. Your job is to pray and work hard to discover those whom the Lord has already prepared to invest in you and your ministry. God has done His work. Now it's time for you to do yours.
A case in point: Nehemiah was very nervous about meeting with the wealthiest, most powerful man on the planet. He was asking King Artaxerxes to fund his Jerusalem restoration project. But when it came time to make his appeal, this lowly cupbearer first looked up to the Person who really provides resources. At the moment of truth, Nehemiah lifted his heart and made The God Ask. In Nehemiah 2:4 he describes the exchange: "Then the king said to me, 'What would you request?' So I prayed to the God of heaven."
Instead of going into appointments fearing what your fellow man will say, you can have confidence that God is superintending the whole process. This book will help you embrace the fact that this is not a Man Ask. No. It is a God Ask!

This book provides a fresh, biblical approach to personal support raising that will help you embrace appointments with confidence!

The God Ask

The God Ask

Students Home

The word curious comes from the Latin root word cura, which means &ldquo;to care.&rdquo; The invitation to be curious about people is fundamentally an invitation to care about them. When you care about someone, you want to know their story. You become invested in the things that matter to them. Jesus&rsquo; posture of curiosity, his eager desire to see what God was doing in someone&rsquo;s life, was rooted in love for them. He was curious because he cared. Likewise, our curious exploration for people of peace should always be fueled by love.
Being curious is a hard thing to schedule into your week or to write into your ministry plan. It&rsquo;s got to be an all-the-time posture for how you relate to the people around you. Here are a few tips for embracing a posture of curiosity as you explore for a spark of the movement of God in people&rsquo;s lives.
Be curious about people&rsquo;s stories. This is basic, but it&rsquo;s a solid foundation for good evangelism and leadership development, and it&rsquo;s a strong place to start finding people of peace! Be curious to learn what&rsquo;s going on in people&rsquo;s lives. A little prophetic insight into people&rsquo;s past, like Jesus had with the woman at the well, can be helpful, but often this kind of insight is released by asking good questions and paying attention to what we see and hear. If there&rsquo;s a community where God has called you to be on mission (a neighborhood, a dorm, your workplace, a bar, etc.), get to know people in that place.&nbsp;
Ask about their families. Ask about where they grew up. Ask what they love about their community and what they wish was different; find out where they see beauty and brokenness. Find out about their spiritual background. Have they had spiritual experiences that impacted their lives? Have they ever tried prayer? Have they had painful experiences with church or Christian communities?
When we&rsquo;re genuinely curious, it&rsquo;s natural to learn about someone&rsquo;s family, about their hopes, dreams, and disappointments. It becomes natural to find out about their spiritual background and to be honest and vulnerable about our own spiritual journeys. It&rsquo;s possible to be more utilitarian in our search, looking for people of peace solely as a strategic step for ministry. But if that&rsquo;s our primary focus, then we&rsquo;re building on a foundation of using people, and that will never bear the kind of fruit that love can.
When a person shares something about their story, especially their spiritual journey, that&rsquo;s an opportunity to ask more questions and learn more about them. Listen to their words and stories with curious attention and at the same time listen and watch for what the Holy Spirit is saying or revealing.
Be curious about networks. One key trait of people of peace is that they unlock relational networks. In his historical account of the early church, the biographer Luke was meticulous in his attention to relational networks, usually using the Greek word oikos, which means &ldquo;house&rdquo; or &ldquo;household&rdquo; but often carries a broader meaning of an extended relational network. A household of people in the first century did not refer to a mother, father, and 2.4 children. Several generations lived in one household, often with servants and extended family members living together.
Over a dozen times Luke mentions people&rsquo;s oikos, referring not to their physical home but to their network of relationships. When Cornelius was baptized, his whole oikos was baptized as well, and Luke spells out in Acts 10:24 that that included relatives and close friends. The same was true for Lydia (Acts 16:15), Crispus (Acts 18:8), Stephanas (1 Corinthians 1:16), and the Philippian jailer (Acts 16:32‑34). You can quickly see the power of networks. In the book of Acts we see that the church didn&rsquo;t grow by the addition of individuals, it multiplied through entire communities bound together by social networks!
One tool that can help you recognize and explore networks in your context is called network mapping. It&rsquo;s extremely simple, but network mapping has been a game-changer for each of us. Here are a few simple steps to create a network map for you or those you&rsquo;re working with: 1. Draw a small circle on a piece of paper and put your name in the middle.
2. From there, draw lines to other circles representing the different places where you spend time and have relationships. At this point, your name may be surrounded by circles like your neighborhood, your kids&rsquo; school, your workplace, your favorite boba shop, your yoga class, a board game caf&eacute;, and so on.
3. Each of those circles represents a network of relationships, so your next step is to write the names of people you know in each of those places, and connect them with lines coming out of each circle.&nbsp;
As you look at your network map, what do you notice about the people you&rsquo;re connected to? Are you connected to mostly other Christians? Mostly non-Christians? Are there any people of peace on your network map? Your network map isn&rsquo;t just a list of names. Each line represents a relationship between you and another person. How strong are those lines? Are there people you have a close, committed relationship with? Are there lines that are merely acquaintances? You probably have both and that&rsquo;s okay. Your job as a missionary is to grow and strengthen your network. That means adding more names as you get to know more people in the places where you do life and strengthening the relationships you have by getting to know people better.
Paying attention to your networks as a community is a helpful embodiment of 1 Corinthians 12, that we&rsquo;re one body with many parts. Different ones of us will connect with different people and communities. None of us can reach everybody, but all of us can reach somebody. And that&rsquo;s the beauty of community, that in the diversity of our personalities and gifts and networks, we can do more together than any of us can do on our own.
_____________________________________________________________________________&nbsp;
Adapted from Reviving Mission by Linson Daniel, Jon Hietbrink, and Eric Rafferty. &copy;2025 Linson Daniel, Jon Hietbrink, and Eric Rafferty. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. <a href="https://www.ivpress.com">www.ivpress.com</a>. &nbsp;

Via Students

Curious Evangelism

The Lord has let me start ministries in 5 countries: the USA (California and Florida), Canada, Germany (2 cities), Spain, and now the Netherlands. I didn&rsquo;t plan on moving around that much. I&rsquo;ve also enjoyed coaching our team as they launch or grow from small ministries in other cities.&nbsp;
Don&rsquo;t get me wrong: I think there&rsquo;s a huge benefit in sticking around over time and seeing a legacy ministry grow and expand in one place over decades. However, I guess the Lord wired me so I would get bored after a few years (just being frank!). And I love cranking up new ministries!&nbsp;
But even if you don&rsquo;t move, we leaders all experience this reality: university student culture changes. Plus, there&rsquo;s an annual flow of freshmen arriving and seniors graduating. So we&rsquo;re constantly re-evaluating and sometimes re-launching our campus ministries.
In part, it&rsquo;s a huge mystery to me, how the Lord graciously brings around the &ldquo;right&rdquo; students&ndash;the low-hanging fruit&ndash;or how God guides me in a wise, timely choice. Sometimes it seems random. But the strategy is also woven around launching. Here are 10 tips and components that I&rsquo;ve repeated:

You will be asked! Have a one-page description to share with believers or pastors.

You can make up a name for the group quickly. If needed, tweak it later. About 2 years into my first city in Germany, we had no name. I wanted it to be organic and fit the culture and language. However, students had started calling it, &ldquo;Martha&rsquo;s group&rdquo; or the &ldquo;Monday group.&rdquo; It was time to nail down our name: Connexxion (fun story: we found the name during a snowstorm!). What logo to choose? Any logo. What&rsquo;s the best survey to use in this culture or city? Just copy someone&rsquo;s&mdash;and then get out there!

Look for the &ldquo;blessings.&rdquo;&nbsp;

There will be many setbacks and struggles. You&rsquo;re on the front lines. Keep a journal of God&rsquo;s faithfulness even in small things.

You&rsquo;ll need these to not go crazy, thinking you&rsquo;re spinning your wheels. And you&rsquo;ll need them so you can rejoice and look for trends! Ministry progress can seem fuzzy. Accurate statistics and doing reflection each month helps me &ldquo;pat myself on the back&rdquo; (in prayer!) when I get discouraged. When I feel like I&rsquo;ve been lazy or slow, our monthly report usually helps me realize: &ldquo;Oh wait, that&rsquo;s why you&rsquo;re so tired!&rdquo;

This is not the time to carry out a PhD-style research project. One couple I knew spent months just prayer-walking. YES&ndash; pray, research, explore while meeting students. As soon as you see an open door, start something! Ask tons of questions. Make mistakes while you try out stuff. If you&rsquo;re too slow, you lose steam. Also, you miss the freshness of &ldquo;Hey, I&rsquo;m new. Can you tell me about your city?&rdquo; You also can&rsquo;t start too soon to launch a small group or discovery group using the Bible.&nbsp;

Find out what other long-term Christian ministries are doing. In moving to the Netherlands, I talked with a student from Navigators and with the director of Campus Crusade, Maarten, on the phone. I ordered Dutch tracts from them. Then I took the train to Rotterdam to learn how they did campus surveys and attended retreats from both ministries. Students informed me about everything from which location to hold our small groups to what types of fun events would work and what topics are attractive for a Bible study. I&rsquo;m concerned when I see leaders make up brand new discipleship materials when they&rsquo;re in the launch phase. Avoid time at your desk!

Use the training phases of model, assist, watch, and leave (M-A-W-L). Get new friends from church or students involved at every stage. Teach them and do it together. Use various reproducible and transferable concepts, illustrations, and materials. Copy and paste! Have an exit plan to work yourself out of a job from the get-go.

Keep sending out texts and email prayer updates. It will encourage you, too, when they respond and rejoice in your little victories.

Don&rsquo;t hide in your flat or in a city caf&eacute;. May I add? Where you live can be very strategic. I say, Look for an apartment near where students live, study, or play. Or near good transportation nodes. In my capital city of Amsterdam, students live all over. But my apartment is central and near some big metro stations.

Last but not least&ndash; don&rsquo;t get stuck at IKEA

First, plant your field, then build your house. Don&rsquo;t spend too long setting up your &ldquo;nest.&rdquo; Yes, open the boxes and hang pictures, but do that as you go. Proverbs 24:27 says, &ldquo;Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.&rdquo;

In my present season of ministry, I find myself once again in a re-start phase (sigh!). I&rsquo;ve relished these verses: &ldquo;It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from&nbsp;saving by many or by few.&rdquo; And his armor-bearer said to him, &ldquo;Do all that is in your heart. Do as you wish.&rdquo; (1 Samuel 14:6-7). The Lord has had me pray and believe him for just four key students, two young men and two young ladies who will be &ldquo;leaders who are learners.&rdquo; We believe in multiplication. Using the tips above has set up our group for growth!

Random Meets Strategy: 10 Take-Aways From Launching (and Re-Launching) Campus Ministries in 5 Countries

This is such a powerful statement! It&rsquo;s so simple but packed with so much insight! It reminds us that our job is not just gathering students to hear us preach, but sending students out. Instead of packing out the room, how can we saturate the harvest field with workers? Isn&rsquo;t that what Jesus said to pray for in Luke 10:2? &ldquo;Ask the Lord of the harvest for workers because the harvest field is plentiful but the workers are few.&rdquo;
Jesus didn&rsquo;t ask us to beg God for sitters and listeners but for goers and workers! How many college ministries make it their goal to gather Christians? If they can just gather enough Christians and provide a safe place for them to hang out until they pass through the dark ages of college then they&rsquo;ve done their job. Oh friends, may it not be! May we become so captured by God&rsquo;s vision to see our campus saturated with the gospel that we begin to see the harvest field in need of workers instead of being content over a full worship service.
What is your mindset? Our mindset is revealed in at least three areas:

Your vision and values determine a lot about your ministry. They speak to your mindset. Do you have a vision that involves workers in the harvest field, or only the people you can gather?&nbsp;
One ministry had the vision statement: &ldquo;Everyone on our campus will be within arms reach of the gospel!&rdquo; Another ministry developed a vision that &ldquo;every student on our campus will have the opportunity to hear the gospel from a friend before they graduate.&rdquo; &nbsp;Both of these are field mindset visions. They demand an equipping and sending out of students, not solely the gathering and maintaining of students.
I&rsquo;m not sure about your campus, but if every single ministry on my campus hit maximum capacity at their worship service we&rsquo;d still only reach 15% of our campus. That leaves 85% of our campus lost with no connection to God and his people. We could fill the room and still lose the campus!&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s not just about gathering students; it's about our vision of where ministry happens that exposes our mindset. Do you feel like you have to be present for ministry to happen? Does your ministry happen in a centralized place or an organic network throughout your campus? Harvest workers tend to be more effective in the actual field harvesting than in the program you have going on in your building.&nbsp;
How are your vision and values enabling (or an obstacle to) students to spill out into the harvest field?

The way we staff reflects our mindset. We either staff for the room or staff for the field. When we staff for the room we limit our staff to a ratio of however many participants we have. When we staff for the field we look at how many people it will take to get the job done.&nbsp;
Can you imagine if we staffed our mission agencies like we staff our churches? Can you imagine someone standing up and saying, &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s not send any more missionaries to Saudi Arabia, because they only have 50 believers there. They don&rsquo;t need anymore, it would be a waste of resources.&rdquo; No way! The fact that there are only a few believers and a vast untapped harvest field drives our passion for people to go.&nbsp;
Why are we so quick to staff our foreign missionaries to reach the harvest field, but limit our college missionaries to staff for only the number of people they can gather in a room?&nbsp; Didn&rsquo;t the Lord call us to pray for workers in the harvest field, not guarders of the storehouses?
Some of us will never reach our campus because we only have staff to take care of the students we can gather. One of the most powerful questions I was ever asked was, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s it going to take staffing-wise in order for you to reach your campus?&rdquo; It shifted my paradigm. All of a sudden I was striving to staff a missionary team to reach thousands of students instead of a staff for the number of students I could gather at my events.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Do you find yourself making staffing decisions based solely on the students who come to your ministry? What would your staff need to look like in order for you to reach your campus with the gospel&mdash;in order to fill the field?

How you view other ministries on your campus reveals your mindset. Are other ministries on your campus gospel partners or competition? When we view other ministries as competition, then it reveals we are looking to fill the room&mdash;our room&mdash;not the harvest field. When other ministries are partners, then any growth they experience is a shared win for the kingdom.
Several years ago, our ministry lost about 150 students when another ministry launched on our campus. I was freaking out! I was like a duck all fall semester: calm and cool on the surface, but frantically paddling for my life underneath! I had always said I was for his kingdom to be made known on my campus, but as it turns out I was actually only okay with God bringing his kingdom to my campus if it meant that he used my kingdom to do it! It revealed my &ldquo;fill the room&rdquo; mindset.&nbsp;
How you relate to other gospel groups on your campus is one of the best litmus tests to expose your true mindset. If you are struggling with the success of other ministries, then you may be more concerned with building your kingdom than THE kingdom. It peels back the layers of facade in our soul and reveals our small-mindedness. What is your view of the other ministries on your campus? Partners in the field or competition to your room?
I have a quote over my desk that reads, &ldquo;You have one chance to reach this generation. Don&rsquo;t be lame.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s a constant reminder to me that it&rsquo;s more about my sending capacity, not my seating capacity. It&rsquo;s more about who I&rsquo;m preparing and sending to the fields, not who I&rsquo;m gathering in the room. Friends, could we rise up and see the gospel march across our campuses and see workers harvesting in the field? Or will we be content to confuse attendance to our events and worship services with discipleship and obedience to Jesus? It starts with us as the leaders and pacesetters in our ministry. It starts with our mindset.
Will we fill the field or be content with just filling the room?

Steve

Dr. Rice Broocks