Thailand as of January 2010
Population
63,038,401
63,038,401
Christians
339,048
Churches
4,186
Percent Christian
0.54%
Percentage of districts (amphurs) with no churches
23%
Percentage of sub-districts (tumbons) with no churches
78%
Percentage of sub-districts with no Christians
47%
Percentage of population who have little or no opportunity to hear the gospel because there are no Christians near them
35%
Number of people who have little or no opportunity to hear the gospel
21,814,049
via Dwight Martin
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Someone challenged me for an explanation of of these stats, so here is what I told him:
There are 3 divisions on government in Thailand. From largest to smallest they are:
1. Provinces – kinda like states, but more the size of counties since all of Thailand is a little smaller than TX.
2. Amphoe – Districts (similar to counties) – 878 of those
3. then Tambon – Like a township – As of the 2009 there are 7255 tambon – about 8-10 per District
4. Villages – Tambon are further subdivided into 69,307 villages, about 10 per tambon
you can find that out on wikipedia
I don’t doubt the stats because, first of all, the country, according to Operation World is only 0.48% Evangelicals. Not even 1%.
And they are not evenly dispersed around the country obviously, certain villages and cities are far more Christian than others while many have had no christian witness at all.
Then, many christians are in the main cities, especially in chaing mai and chaing rai, since that is where the most concentration of missions work seems to be focused. Other missionaries work just among burmese and lao refugee camps – which are very localized, obviously.
So, there are certain pockets of christianity around the country, but most of Thailand is unreached.
With a population of 65 million, divided evenly, each of the 7255 sub-districts (or townships) would have a population of about 9000.
So, 1 person in 9000 would have to be christian to have a representative in each sub-district. (that would be 100% of townships have a Christian)
1 in 18,000 would be a christian for 50% of townships.
But, according to stats, there is approx. 1 Christian for every 312,000 people in Thailand.
So, the claim of 47% of townships with no Christian sounds very plausible.