Syria
Syria is one of the oldest inhabited lands on earth — Damascus may be the world's oldest continuously occupied city, and the region has been home to civilization for at least 10,000 years. It was here, in Antioch on the Orontes, that followers of Jesus were first called Christians, and it was on the road to Damascus that the apostle Paul was stopped in his tracks by the risen Lord. The land passed through Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Arab rule before becoming a center of the early Islamic Caliphate. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus — built on the site of a Byzantine church, which itself stood on an earlier temple — is one of the oldest and most significant mosques in the world. After centuries of Ottoman rule, Syria became a French mandate after World War I, then an independent republic in 1946. In 2011, protests against Bashar al-Assad's government became a catastrophic civil war that killed over 600,000 people, displaced more than half the country's population, and shattered cities. In late 2024, the Assad regime fell. The ancient Christian communities of Syria — some of the oldest churches in the world — have been decimated by decades of war and emigration.
25,620,000
People live in Syria today in a nation struggling to emerge from one of the most devastating conflicts of the 21st century — a land where the gospel first took root, where Paul was transformed, where ancient churches still echo with Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Syria's Christian population has shrunk dramatically through war and emigration. The majority Muslim population — Sunni, Alawi, Druze — carries generations of trauma, loss, and religious identity shaped by sectarian conflict. In the chaos of reconstruction and political uncertainty, there is also unprecedented openness: Syrians who have lost everything are asking deep questions about God, meaning, and hope. This ancient land, which gave the world some of its earliest missionaries, may be ripe for a new movement.
Prayer points
The Road to Damascus
On the road to Damascus, a man who was destroying the church was stopped by the risen Christ — blinded, broken, and remade. That same road runs through Syria today. Pray for the Syrian people, Muslim and secular alike, to encounter the Jesus of the Damascus road — sudden, undeniable, life-altering. Pray for the ancient Syrian church, reduced and scattered by war, to be renewed in faith and witness. Ask God to bring laborers to a land that was once the heartland of world Christianity, and to raise up a new generation of Syrian disciples who carry the gospel to the nations as Paul once did. "Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." (Acts 9:5)
A Nation Shattered, A Harvest Scattered
Over six million Syrians are refugees — in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Germany, Sweden, the United States, and dozens of other countries. Millions more are internally displaced. Entire cities — Homs, Aleppo, Raqqa — were reduced to rubble. Pray for Syrian refugees worldwide, many of whom are encountering the gospel for the first time in their host countries. Ask God for bold witness from believers who live near Syrian diaspora communities, and for the seeds planted in refugee communities to take root and bear fruit that returns to Syria. Pray for the rebuilding of Syria — not only physically but spiritually — for a generation who has known only war to discover the Prince of Peace. "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." (Psalm 147:3)
In the Night, A Light
The God of the Damascus road is not done with Syria. Across the Muslim world — and increasingly among displaced Syrians in refugee camps and resettlement cities — there are growing testimonies of Jesus appearing in vivid dreams and visions: the figure in white, the voice that calls by name, the peace that makes no earthly sense. In Idlib and Aleppo and the camps of Jordan and Turkey, God can speak in the night. Pray for Syrians who have lost everything to encounter the One who lost everything for them — in dreams, through unexpected friendships, through Scripture encountered in the dark. Ask God to pour out His Spirit in the ruins. "In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision: 'Ananias!' 'Yes, Lord,' he answered." (Acts 9:10)