Why Italy?

The need for missions in Italy:

Today Italy, roughly the same size as New Zealand, has almost 60 million inhabitants. In terms if spirituality, traditionally "To be Italian is to be Catholic" but many don't want anything to do with spiritual things.

In 1984, the president of Italy declared that Catholicism would no longer be the "state religion" and that all faiths would share equal rights and privileges. This formal political declaration opened many doors for different religions. Protestants no longer endure persecution, however Jehovah's Witnesses are the second largest religious group after the Catholic church, and Islam is the fastest growing religion. From Mormonism to Zen Buddhism, Italians are open to all forms of religion. Even television broadcasts programs dedicated to fortune telling and card reading.

It would be fair to say that the Evangelical/ Pentecostal Churches have struggled in this environment and are generally failry weak (although there are some healthy exceptions.)

Religion:
Operation World 2001)
Catholic 77.4%
Non-Religious 20.0%
Islam 2.4%
Protestant 0.6%

While there seems to be an openness to other religious faiths, evangelicals make up less than 1% of the population. Of the more than 35,000 cities, towns, and villages, less than 1,500 have an evangelical church.

To better understand how many of these communities have no gospel witness, imagine you wanted to visit each one for just one day and then travel to another town to visit the following day and you did this every day of the year until you had visited each one. It would take you 92 years before you visited each city or town without a gospel witness for just one day.

There is only one trained pastor for every 350,000 people. Many Pastors are untrained and there is not really anything in the way of a viable Bible College.

I also believe that the nation of Italy is critical for world missions. It is the place where the world's Christianities meet, it is the crossroads for northern Africa, the Middle East, east Europe,and west Europe.

Every week hundreds of refugees from Africa flood into Italy. Despite this being a problem for the country, it is an opportunity to reach peolpe groups that otherwise would not recieve the gospel.