Project Goal: 2,000 Mobile Schools
Content: Bible stories/dramas, pastor training, basic health
Population: 1,321,851,888
Literacy Rate: 90.9%
Project Summary: While East Asia has made tremendous progress in literacy in the last 30 years, the number of illiterates and semi-literates is still significant. Hundreds of millions in East Asia still learn orally. T4 Global has planned several projects among different house church movements to test the effectiveness of the mobile schools in this context. The rapid rate of growth in rural house churches has made it difficult to provide adequate pastor training and basic believer discipleship training. Given the widespread poverty and poor health conditions found in the communities where the house churches exist, holistic training is also needed to bring individual and community transformation.
Country Background
Asia is the world’s most populous continent, with East Asia’s continuous culture stretching back nearly 4,000 years. East Asia now has the world’s fastest-growing economy and is undergoing what has been described as a second industrial revolution. Since initiating reforms and open policy, the region has achieved tremendous success. Growth of about 9.7% per annum since the late 1970s has helped to lift several hundred million people out of absolute poverty.
Unfortunately as average incomes increase in East Asia, the gap between the richest and poorest segments of the population is growing, especially in rural areas. The World Bank estimated that 16.6% of rural populations live on less than a dollar a day. 46.7% live on less than 2 dollars a day. Poverty is concentrated more in rural districts where the percentage of abject poverty has actually increased from 27% to 31% in recent years.
The massive house church movement has primarily been a rural movement. While recently the church has expanded significantly in urban areas, the vast majority of Christians in East Asia live in rural areas.