Ethiopia—nearly twice the size of Texas— is one of the poorest countries in Africa. Half of the population lives below the poverty line (recently increased by The World Bank to $1.25 per day). Nearly two-thirds of its 80 million people are illiterate. Agriculture, primarily coffee, is the mainstay. But the country is besieged by drought and devastated by famine.

Ethiopia is also one of the world’s first Christian nations. The gospel arrived in the 4th century, and Islam followed about 300 years later. Since the time of Muhammad, Christianity and Islam have coexisted.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church was the official state church from 1270 until the 1974 revolution that replaced Emperor Haile Selassie with a Marxist government. From that time, until the regime’s collapse in 1991, Christians were persecuted, and Islamization expanded and became entrenched.

By 1960, there were fewer than 200,000 Protestants in Ethiopia. But the Holy Spirit began mightily “bringing in the sheaves” and, by 2000, there were nearly 12 million!

Today, an estimated 20 percent of the population professes Christ.

But Islam, too, is forcefully advancing, penetrating Christian areas, racking up conversions among the poor with bribes, targeting minority animist and traditional ethnic religions and peppering the landscape with mosques. Thirty years ago, Muslims were rare. Today, about 33 percent of the population—nearly double the number of Christians—practice Islam.

The fields indeed are ripe. As in the first century, however, there are too few workers. The Ethiopian Church is being equipped and mobilized, but it is still scratching the surface. To reach deeper and wider, it needs exponential training, resources and prayer.

THIS IS OUR CHALLENGE.