Missed part one? Read it here.
In 2024, a SIM UK businessman moved to a country in South East Asia to live out his faith in the workplace and be a witness through his daily life. “It’s not an easy place to serve and local believers are very much at risk,” he admits, “but saying I worked in a software company opened doors and built trust, enabling my wife and I to make wonderful friends among my colleagues and we had the privilege of introducing many people to the God of creation of whom they’d never heard.
Before he left to start a new missional business and help put down deeper roots for SIM in the region, one of his colleagues was baptised: “There’s nothing more exciting than seeing God at work in least-reached nations here and beyond!” he adds.
In a Middle Eastern country, where mission workers are few, one SIM UK worker is making a gentle but profound impact. Through daily interactions and the patient, loving care of children with special needs, barriers are being broken down, lives are quietly transformed and people are becoming more open to learning about Jesus.
And in a large city in North Africa – a region where choosing Christ can bring rejection and persecution – God’s created a unique gospel opportunity among more than 20,000 French-speaking African college students studying on scholarships.
Although many are Christians, few are equipped to share the gospel with their friends across linguistic, cultural, and religious divides, so SIM workers are discipling these young believers so they can share Christ effectively with their friends and become cross-cultural witnesses themselves.
From remote villages to bustling cities, our workers are called to plant the seeds of the gospel wherever they go, despite the risk of persecution, legal restrictions, geographic isolation, and spiritual opposition.
However, the idea of “least-reached communities” is no longer limited to distant places on the other side of the world; they’re also our neighbours.
Nearly 12 million people living in the UK were born overseas, and many have never met a Christian. Based on the 2021 census, some studies suggest that by 2050, people from ethnic minority backgrounds could make up one-third of the UK population.
This growing diversity presents churches with unprecedented opportunities to welcome, befriend, and share the hope of Jesus with people from every corner of the globe. That’s why we launched our Engage programme in 2017, placing cross-cultural gospel workers from overseas into UK receiving churches. Their role is to help churches build relationships across cultural, religious, and ethnic boundaries within their communities.
They are workers like Ram, who left his ministry in South Asia, to serve with Engage in Greater Manchester, where he pastors a new church plant and teaches English, supports the homeless, and shares the gospel with people he meets out on the streets. “It’s humbling to be used by God in a hard place with lots of opposition and rejection,” he shares, “but we praise God that people are responding!”