2 amis; moins de 35 équipiers (un jeu de nombres)

{En. = 2 friends; less than 35 staff team workers (a numbers game)}

Come and play a numbers game with me!
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Today I shall endeavour briefly [hah!] to introduce you to 2 of my friends, Isabelle V. and Yuya S.

Isabelle is a French staff worker with Groupes Bibliques Universitaires (GBU) in France.
Yuya is a Japanese staff worker with Kirisutosha Gakusei Kai (KGK) in Japan.

GBU and KGK, for those who don't know, are the IFES national student groups for the 2 countries noted above; the closest equivalent to each - where I live - is the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical students, or AFES.

Isabelle lives in France.
She is one of between 30 and 35 GBU staff workers in her country.
That means no more than 35 French-speaking Christian staff workers nationwide
- for a population of 65 million.
In effect, for France's 65m people
there are up to 35 national staff able to be engaged in GBU student work.
(And some of those staff workers, to my knowledge, are not even funded to serve the GBU full-time.)

Yuya lives in Japan.
He is one of about 35 KGK staff workers across the country.
So, 35 Japanese-speaking Christian staff workers nationwide
- for a population of 126 million.
That means, for Japan's 126m people
there are (just as in France) only 35 national staff able to be engaged in KGK student work.

Does that sound like it's spreading the student work out a bit thin?
I think so.

When I look at Australia, when I narrow it right down to Sydney (where I went to university), I think it seems a bit unfair, actually...

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Before continuing this post I paused to compile a quick list of all the people I could think of who are currently AFES staff workers in the Sydney metro area, including those from EU (Sydney Uni.), CBS and FOCUS (UNSW), ECU (Cumberland campus at Lidcombe) and CU and FOCUS at Macquarie. I recalled and wrote down 15 current staff workers just in the first fifteen minutes. One CBS worker - whom I consulted the same day I was drafting this - reckoned there were at least 9 others on his staff team at UNSW alone; add those 9 CBS workers in, and it totals 24. Moreover, those 24 Australian-based staff workers are NOT the only 24 in Sydney, nowhere near it! If you joined in and helped me, we'd come up with a list of over 35 student workers quite easily, just for Sydney alone, and we'd still be counting...

The point of what I am saying is this:
Right now in the city of Sydney alone there are well over 35 AFES staff workers.

35(plus!) staff for Sydney's population of less than 5 million.

In effect, that means more than 35 staff just for ONE. Single. Australian. CITY.
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We are a gospel-rich city, and country, generally. Even if we had only those 35 AFES staff workers for our whole population of 24 million Australians, we'd still be far better resourced than GBU France or KGK Japan. After all, we have only half of France's 65-million population and only one-fifth of Japan's 126-million.

And yet I hope it's clear here that there are more AFES workers based in Sydney alone than the total 35 national French or Japanese staff currently serving with GBU in France or KGK in Japan.

I wish you could feel the disparity I've tried to highlight above.
Isabelle in France and Yuya in Japan each represent a situation so very poorly resourced when I compare it with the AFES movement in Australia.

To me it's unjust, that in just one Aussie city (pop. 5m.) we have so many AFES workers serving campus Christian groups full-time
- whilst overseas in France (pop. 65m.) and in Japan (pop. 126m.),
GBU and KGK respectively have no more than 35 staff workers - apiece! - currently serving in their national teams.

These are situations that break my heart.
And they need our prayers
- that the Lord of the harvest send out workers into His harvest field, outside of Australia.
And maybe, they also need some of us to rethink.


Where might the Lord of the harvest use us, if we are willing & able to leave here, and go to the lands God will show us..?

If, at this time, God has disabled us from going ourselves,
how can we be sharing what we have with our French, Japanese and other international gospel partners to see God's salvation reach to the ends of the earth?

L/T.
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