Syria (MNN) — The UN’s top envoy says conditions in Syria cannot be ignored, with more than 16 million people in need and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Suspects linked to deadly sectarian violence that uprooted over 180,000 people made their first court appearance earlier this week. Clashes in March between government forces and supporters of the ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad led to more than 1,400 deaths.

A gathering of the people and residents of Daraa city in Al-Karama and Al-Hurriya Square after the fall of Bashar Al-Assad (Photo, caption courtesy of Mahmoud Sulaiman via Unsplash)

On December 8, 2024, Syrian opposition forces captured Damascus and forced Assad’s exit, ending over five decades of Assad-family rule and bringing the government’s collapse.

Meanwhile, “the Church in Syria is dying,” a Catholic bishop warns, with Christians leaving the country in search of better living conditions.

“What they’ve had to deal with is extreme,” Mike* with Global Catalytic Ministries says.

“The stat is half a million Christians have been martyred [in] recent years. [Then there was] the brutality earlier in this year of executions of Christians and ISIS-ish people coming in and taking over after Assad flees.”

According to Catholic estimates, around 2.1 million Christians lived in Syria in 2011. That number dropped to 540,000 last year. While the above-ground Church is shrinking, “Muslim-background believers are growing,” Mike says.

“The Spirit of God is moving; He is speaking to people powerfully.”

Pray for doors to stay open as GCM begins new work in Syria. Learn more about GCM’s approach here.

“We recently infiltrated Damascus and we had our first baptism there, in a town [where] all the Christians were martyred, as far as we know,” Mike says. “We [had our] first baptism of a Druze woman, which is extremely hard to do.”

Child holding a Syrian flag. (Photo courtesy of Ahmed akacha/Pexels)

Along with introducing Syrians to the God who died for them, “We also want to help train and coach believers on how to engage ISIS in a way that you’re not exposing your faith,” Mike says.

“There’s a way to operate and make disciples [while mitigating] risk. We are not an extraction ministry; we don’t want to extract you out of it.”

Pray for resources to support Global Catalytic Ministries as it helps underground Christians throughout the Middle East. “He’s asked us to go to every nation, tribe, and tongue, so that’s what we’ll do,” Mike says.

“We’re in over 70 percent of the Middle East. There’s an opportunity and an openness for the movement to start breaking out in Gaza, so it’s a very strategic point in the narrative of the world, but Syria is also very strategic as well.”

 

*Name withheld for security purposes.

 

Header image is a representative stock photo depicting children in Idlib, Syria. Photo courtesy of Ahmed Akacha/Pexels.