Many Mongolians come to Christ at No Longer Music concert

A SERIES of concerts by a controversial "shock and roll" missionary band has led to an amazing increase in the size of Mongolia's tiny Christian church. Some 600 Mongolians made decisions for Christ after performances by the group No Longer Music, whose dramatic evangelistic show features loud rock and bizarre special effects.

The improbable response was far bigger than had been expected in an atheistic country of two million - one of the world's least evangelised - which has around only 100 known Christians.

Band leader and singer David Pierce admitted when he returned last month that he had been unsure how the group would be received when they arrived in the formerly Buddhist Mongolian People's Republic, at the end of a four-week tour in the USSR.

"I wondered whether there was any cultural bridge, really, how appropriate what we were doing would be for them," he said. "They are a fierce people, and don't just open their arms to you because you are from the West, unlike in the Soviet Union."

Yet a total of 623 Mongolians and a further 700 Russians stayed to pray to become Christians after the gospel message at the end of the seven concerts in Ulan Bator, the capital, and Dachran.