An Atlanta-area “café” is serving up missionaries to take the gospel into the least evangelized parts of the world.
Launched in 2000, Café 1040 trains college-age youth to spread the gospel in the 10/40 Window, an area spanning from West Africa to East Asia. “Almost all of the peoples who do not have access to the gospel … live within the 10/40 Window,” says founder Chuck Phillips, who helped organize the Passion youth events before founding the ministry.
Café participants spend three months in Africa or Southeast Asia, studying the culture, religion, language and history of the nation they seek to serve. “What we’re trying to do is get them focused on doing missions work among unreached people groups because the Great Commission will not be completed until someone from every tribe, tongue, nation … [has] heard,” Phillips says.
Since 2004, 112 students have completed the program, with 78 percent planning to become missionaries. Erin Gray, a recent University of Georgia graduate, says the training was life-changing. “It really teaches you … everything that you can do in that culture so you’re really getting a grasp of how to acquire a language, how to be a part of that society and be a Christian in that society,” she says.
Phillips believes a great student movement is rising that could complete the Great Commission. “But only if this movement sends its followers to the unreached peoples of the world,” he says.
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