A special call to Christians worldwide to set aside 30 days each year to pray for Muslims originated during a meeting of international Christian leaders in the Middle East in 1992. The first “30 Days Muslim Prayer Focus” took place in March 1993. This year, the prayer focus is scheduled from August 22 – September 20 and coincides with Ramadan (a holy month of fasting in Islam). According to Dr. Grant McClung, “This prayer movement is currently coordinated out of France but special curriculum prayer booklets are available from stateside publishers through www.WorldChristian.com and/or www.30daysprayer.com/muslim.” McClung and his wife, Janice, have coordinated a weekly missions intercession prayer group at their local church, Westmore Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee for over twenty uninterrupted years. They lead Missions Resource Group, an international world missions ministry that provides training, consulting, and mentoring to the global Great Commissions community (www.MissionsResourceGroup.org).
“It is especially encouraging to hear the outstanding reports of how God is moving in the Muslim world,” McClung noted, “and also to witness how millions of ‘globalbelievers’ are involved in praying for and reaching out to their Muslim friends and neighbors.” McClung is the author of Globalbeliever.com: Connecting to God’s Work in Your World (Pathway Press 2004) and has a special chapter on Muslim ministry in that missions textbook resource.
McClung was one of the ad hoc organizers of a special denominational consultation on the Muslim world that was convened in the Church of God International Offices (Cleveland, Tennessee) in the early 1990s. His report at that seminar indicated that during the short three year span of 1989 – 1991 (just preceding the gathering) in just the two countries of Bulgaria and Indonesia alone there had been more than 30,000 new believers coming to Christ. “This was only an isolated three-year report from one Pentecostal denomination,” McClung stated, “and in the few years since that time we are now witnessing phenomenal, exponential growth of the church in previously resistant populations and reports of an international turning to God in the Muslim world.”
McClung is an advisor with the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization and a member of the World Missions Commission of the Pentecostal World Fellowship. “Surely, Christians need to be reminded,” he noted, “that our Muslim friends are precious to God and will respond positively to a respectful and loving presentation of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For that reason, let us continue to join millions of Christian believers for concentrated, hopeful prayer.”