March
- 05
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BELGIUMCOUNTRY :BELGIUM
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| Population | 9,980,000 |
| Peoples | Indigenous 88%.
Flemish 54.7%. Language related to Dutch; mainly in north and west. Walloon 32.3%. French-speaking; mainly in south and east. German 0.65%. In districts adjoining Germany. Jews 0.32%. Mainly in Antwerp. Foreign 12%. European Community Citizens 6%. Italian 280,000; French 110,000; Portuguese 80,000; Spanish 70,000; Dutch 70,000. Other 6%. Arabic-speaking (mainly North African) 150,000; Turkish 60,000; Kurdish 22,000; Chinese 14,000; Zairois 10,000; Albanians 3,000. |
| Literacy | 98%. Official languages: Flemish, French and German. All indigenous languages 4. Languages with Scriptures 3Bi. |
| Cities | Capital: Brussels 1,100,000 -- HQ for the European Community and NATO. Urbanization 96.5%. |
| Economy | Highly industrialized and wealthy, but economy faltering due to weak governments and world recession. Income/person $14,880 (71% of USA). |
| Politics | Constitutional monarchy since 1830. Political stability imperilled by disagreements between the Walloons and Flemings since the mid-1960's with fragmentation of most political parties along linguistic and regional lines. |
| Religion | Non-religious/other 7.2%. Muslim 3.1%. Mainly North African, Turks and Yugoslavs. Jews 0.32%. Half the pre-war number. Largely Orthodox. Buddhist 0.10%. Christian 89.3%. Attendance 11%. Growth 0.1%. Protestant 0.8%. Growth 0.5%. Roman Catholic 87.3%. Growth 0.1%. Other Catholic 0.04%. Growth -1.1%. Orthodox 0.5%. Growth -0.3%. Marginal 0.7%. Growth 2.7%. |
| 1. For 400 years spiritual darkness has gripped this land. The Spanish Inquisition destroyed the 600 churches that embraced Reformed teachings in the 16th Century. Pray that the light of the gospel may penetrate that darkness once more. | |
| 2. The great majority of the population is culturally Catholic rather than Christian. Catholic attendance and adherence to the teachings of the church are stronger among the Flemish than the more lax Walloons. Yet the Church faces four major crises -- declining attendances, waning influence, theological seminaries without students and the invasion of New Age thinking. The charismatic movement has had little lasting impact. | |
| 3. The small Protestant witness has hardly grown in 20 years; the growth of the Evangelicals and the evangelical wing of the theologically liberal United Protestant Church has offset the liberal decline. Growth has been most marked through the witness of the BEM/OM teams, Baptists, Pentecostals in the French-speaking areas and, in the Antwerp area, of the Brethren. | |
| 4. Goals for the year 2000. a) There is a growing trans-denominational vision to present the gospel to every Belgian in this decade. Pray for a closer fellowship and unity among believers so that this goal may be achieved. b) BEM plans to plant 47 new churches in the '90s. c) Cosmopolitan Brussels has nearly 30% foreign residents. It is the HQ of the European Community and NATO. During 1991 many churches cooperated to reach the 400,000 homes in the city. Pray for lasting fruit in the many new churches planted |
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| 5. Freedom for evangelism has never been greater, but all outreach is an uphill battle to obtain a hearing. Pray for OM Love Europe summer teams in their literature and door-to-door ministry and year teams in evangelism and church planting. Evangelism Explosion is a church-based method of evangelism that is attracting interest in a number of churches. | |
| 6. Bible training. There are four evangelical training schools: the Evangelical Theological Seminary (Heverlee -- Dutch and English), Belgian Bible Institute (Heverlee -- Dutch) Institut Biblique Belge (Ottignies -- French) and the Brussels Bible Seminary (French and Dutch). Pray for these institutions, the staff and students. | |
| 7. The missionary force has steadily increased, the largest being BEM with 125 workers. Other missions of note include AoG (123), OM (61), GEM (50), YWAM (26), SBC (18), Evangelical Free Church Missions (18), and GMU (17). BEM aims to recruit 300 new workers in the 1990s. Stress points for missionaries are the hardness of the field, the high cost of living, and the increasing difficulty of obtaining missionary visas for non-EC residents. | |
| 8. A wide range of Christian literature is being produced by groups such as SU, Biblical Literature Fellowship (BLF) with 12 workers, OM and AoG. BLF has a large printing plant and has published over 500 titles. There are 21 Christian bookstores in Brussels and Wallonia; nationally BEM runs seven bookstores and BLF a further five. Pray for the effective use and fruitfulness of these endeavours. | |
| 9. Neglected areas of Belgium: a) Of the 2,500 administrative districts in Belgium, 2,200 have no evangelical congregations. b) There are 140 towns of over 6,000 people without an evangelical congregation. c) In Flanders (5 million people) there are only 2,000 known evangelical families. d) Antwerp (660,000) has but 22 small Protestant churches. e) Luxemburg province (250,000) has nine groups, each with about 30 believers. |
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| 10. Unreached peoples in Belgium: a) North Africans have grown rapidly through legal and illegal migration, the majority settling in the poorer areas of Brussels. They are almost entirely Muslim and present a unique and urgent challenge for prayer and evangelism. Three GMU couples work among these people. "Good News by Telephone" in a number of languages has proved a fruitful method of witness; pray for this and the prospective ministry of "Radio Good News". There is now one congregation of Arab believers in the city. b) Turks and Kurds have proved hard to reach with the gospel. There is now a small Turkish fellowship of seven believers, but the great majority have never heard the good news. c) Orthodox Jews have no long-term ministry specifically directed to meet their need. d) The large international body of diplomats and EC bureaucrats are overpaid and underevangelized. They present a unique challenge for evangelism, but little has been done to reach them. e) The German-speaking cantons on the German border have been long neglected by evangelicals. Only recently has a beginning been made by German missionaries to plant churches in the area. f) The student population of 176,000 in 17 universities and colleges is a major challenge. IFES has a ministry in the five Flemish universities (ESG) and in French universities (GBU), but the total membership in each of the two branches is 50. Pray for the evangelistic ministry of OM in cooperation with these groups and in a teaching ministry in the IFES groups; there is one staff couple. |
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