Queen in Ukraine

Recently (10-10-10), on the 101 Network on DirecTV, I watched a replay of a concert given by the rock group, Queen, in Kharkov, Ukraine which took place on 13 September 2008.  It was an outside concert and that was a good thing because 300,000 people showed up.  300,000!  That's 21% of the city's population of 1,461,300.

When I told a Chinese woman about the Gospel, she almost immediately lit up and said, "We did not have this in China."  She had found a treasure.  Now, she and her daughter regularly attend church and she smiles all the time.   And her parents, new converts because of her, took the faith back to China with them.

When I thought of her and the people in Ukraine, I thought of the hundreds of thousands, including many Christians, who were persecuted and killed in their countries' pasts in an attempt to create socialist atheist worker's paradises.  The Christian faith survived in Ukraine (where regular church attendance stands at 10%) and in China (regular church attendance at 9%).

At 10%, of the 300,000 at the concert in Kharkov, those who attend church would number 30,000.  Of the 1,461,300 people in Kharkov, 10% means that only 146,130 go to church with regularity.

Before we in America pat ourselves on the back, our percentage of regular church attendance is only 44%.  That means that 56 Americans out of every 100 do not attach any importance to church attendance.  Compare that with Nigeria at 89%.

Go to the link below to see a listing of the rates for 53 countries.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/rel_chu_att-religion-church-attendance