{"id":5670,"date":"2026-10-22T07:07:03","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T07:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/stories\/churches-growing-amid-loss-of-missionaries\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T07:07:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T07:07:03","slug":"churches-growing-amid-loss-of-missionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/stories\/churches-growing-amid-loss-of-missionaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Churches Growing Amid Loss of Missionaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Turkish government has deported around 200 missionaries plus their families from the country in recent years, leaving many local churches to survive with limited leadership experience. &ldquo;In the long term, it is going to be good because now we are utilizing many more local people,&rdquo; said a senior Turkish pastor. &ldquo;But in the short term, it has really impacted Turkish churches.&rdquo; He said that Turkish pastors deal with government pressure, persecution from radical groups and burnout. &ldquo;Pray that we can do a better job in training local leaders, that we can reach the needs in Turkiye through them,&rdquo; said the pastor. He added that, despite the challenges, churches in Turkiye are growing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/globalprayerguide\/turkey\/\">Click here<\/a> to find out about Christian persecution in Turkey and learn how to pray.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.icommittopray.com\/request\/3050\/churches-in-turkiye\/\" target=\"_blank\">Post a prayer for churches in Turkiye on iCommitToPray.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Turkish government has deported around 200 missionaries plus their families from the country in recent years, leaving many local churches to survive with limited leadership experience. &#8220;In the long term, it is going to be good because now we are utilizing many more local people,&#8221; said a senior Turkish pastor. &#8220;But in the short term, it has really impacted Turkish churches.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-i-commit-to-pray","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - 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