“Every hour, 3,000 people decide to follow Christ,” says Detlef Bl ¶cher, director of the German Mission Society. “This is a record in all of church history.” The number of evangelical Christians in Africa, Asia and Latin America has multiplied 1,000-fold in the last 40 years “as the fruit of 200 years of Western mission.” Today Christianity is spreading even in areas long considered closed to the gospel such as Northern Africa, Central Asia, Mongolia and India. European nations such as Romania and the Ukraine are also open for missionary activity, as are the Turkish minority in Bulgaria and the Sinti in Spain. In Austria the number of evangelical churches has tripled in the past 20 years. (Friday Fax)