Portugal

Population: About 10 millions. 

Religious and political freedoms gained in 1975 have transformed the nation, but high religious affiliation and freedom does not translate into genuine faith.This is reflected in the challenges of materialism, individualism and increasing substance abuse. The religious freedom gained is taken advantage of by Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and New Age philosophies. Pray for the truth about Jesus to be made known by wise Christian leaders of all confessions. 

​Prayerlist:

• Many denominations suffered acrimonious splits, especially some Pentecostal denominations. Pray for unity and united vision. 
• The Portuguese Church has a unique role to play because of the widespread use of the language. Most churches could easily increase involvement in evangelism and in mission. Pray for  for more passion for the lost. Pray that there will be sent out more missionaries! 
• Many more churches are needed. DAWN, together with the EA, targets a goal of 4,000 evangelical churches by 2015. Several groups adopted cell-church models but face the difficulty that, for many Portuguese, a physical structure communicates religious legitimacy. Pray for continued church growth, for affordable and appropriate meeting places and for leaders for these future churches. 
• Pray for more full-time workers with adequate theological depth and spiritual maturity!
• Pray for the seven northern and northeastern provinces, which are strongly traditional Catholic; relatively few evangelical churches exist. Brethren, Baptists, AoG, GEM, TEAM, ECM, Missão Antioquia and several other missions all have church-planting programmes in the area.
• Pray for the four provinces in the south that are poorer and much less religious. Attendance at mass is very low, and evangelical churches are few.
• Pray for the 316 counties, 44 of which still have no evangelical congregation.This is praiseworthy progress from the 69 in 2000 that lacked a church. Pray for further growth. 
• Pray for Madeira Island (270,000), which has fewer than 20 small evangelical churches, and the Azores (250,000), with a further 26, most being Assemblies of God and Baptist. 
• Pray for Ethnic minorities.
• Young people are often spiritually neglected. Drug abuse is a growing problem – over 50% have experimented with drugs. Pray for ministries reaching to these people. Pray also for student work and other forms of outreach. 
• Pray for the different Christian media ministries, production of bibles, tracks, books etc.