Those Who Haven't Heard

Mongolian Students share the Gospel with their Campuses
by Tom Lin

Mongolia is an enormous but remote nation in East-central Asia, and its people are the stewards of a storied past. Yet daily life on a university campus looks familiar to any student around the world who wishes to share the good news of Jesus in a university setting. Tom and Nancy Lin are serving in Mongolia with IFES Link. The following is assembled from recent letters from them.

EVANGELISM takes on a whole new sense of urgency in a country in which less than one percent of the population is Christian. Most of the over 100,000 Mongolian university students have never heard about Jesus. Indeed, most have never heard of the Bible. But one group of Mongolian Christian students wishes to bring the good news to their friends, invite them into community, and help them become committed followers of Jesus. After all, if all the world’s students should have the opportunity for deciding whether to follow Jesus, but opportunities for hearing the gospel are limited, urgency is the flavor of evangelism.

The Fellowship of Christian Students (FCS) is active in three chapters across the sprawling capitol city of Ulaanbaatar. In order to focus on this core mission, the students are committing to various outreach programs and “street” evangelism during the first month of the new semester. Evangelism training will also be a major part of the teaching.

The FCS group in southeast Ulaanbaatar recently hosted a “Friendship Café”, transforming an office into a café, where tables were set for students to play games and enjoy coffee and conversation. Then the students offered a special gospel presentation through drama, a student testimony, and an introduction to FCS to the guests. Three students made decisions to receive Christ and 30 of them signed up to learn more about Jesus!

At the next day’s follow-up event, over 20 of those students came and enjoyed fellowship with FCS members. Finally, those students will be invited to see Passion of the Christ at the student center. Please pray that these students would be successfully integrated into the FCS ministry.

The other two Ulaanbaatar groups are sharing the gospel on the streets, near their target schools. They have been inviting hundreds of students to “Open Large Group,” a special worship service which will include the gospel message and introduce FCS. Mongolian students love to sing, so singing praise songs together also seems to be effective in sharing the gospel. Please pray for these outreaches and the ongoing work in Ulaanbaatar.

Related Stories and Sites

Fellowship of Christian Students Mongolia

International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES)

InterVarsity Link