Time to play the Dwight K. Schrute fact game:
Fact: 37.2 million Muslims live in Europe
Fact: 1.5 million Muslims live in Britain, of which 48% live in London
Fact: 40% of all Mosques in Britain are located in London (approx. 1,200)
Fact: Muslims in the U.K. are reproducing at a rate of 4.6%, which is the highest in the U.K. and more than twice the national Anglo-Saxon birthrate of 1.8%
Fact: Over 300 languages are spoken in the 33 boroughs of London
Fact: Every people group from the 10/40 window is represented in London
London has truly been an eye-opening experience for me. For the first 5 months of this trip we pretty much stuck to the third world. Sure, some areas were beautiful and extravagant, but they always sat directly adjacent to poverty. That word, poverty, is the key here. What is it about poverty that makes a sad, desperate, hopeless human being more willing to listen about Jesus? Is it because they don’t have a single earthy possession which they deem equal in value to the message that you’re presenting them? Or is it just more appealing to hear about eternal life in heaven when you live in a lean-to?
People are people, and the rich London businessman who drives home at night in his Aston Martin is just as depressed and without hope as the single mother of 3 who lives on the streets of Cambodia. So don’t let the killer exchange rate from Dollars to British Pounds fool you; this is a country in dire need of the gospel!
On seemingly every corner there is a Mosque or a halal meat market. Muslims from all over the world congregate in London because of the freedoms they are given, and yet they are prisoners of what they’ve been taught. As for the rest of the London population, they simply don’t care about God or religion.
First world or third, they’re all mission fields…
