Lausanne World Pulse – News Briefs
Although translation work among Wycliffe Bible Translators has been progressing faster than ever (more than 2,200 languages have at least some of the Bible in their language), at least three thousand languages still need the good news translated into their heart language. And many are in difficult-to-reach areas or where there is warfare and civil unrest. At the current rate it would take until the year 2150 for translation work to be started in each language that needs it. For this reason, Wycliffe formed Vision 2025, a plan that calls for the start of Bible translation projects for every language community that needs one by the year 2025. Working hand to hand with SIL International, the project requires partnership with national churches, seminaries and Bible schools, mission agencies and other Bible agencies. While the translation needs span the globe, eighty percent of the remaining Bible translation needs are focused on three areas of the world: Central Africa with eight hundred languages; the region from northern India to southern China which includes another eight hundred languages; and the band of islands in Asia from Sumatra to Papua New Guinea with one thousand languages. (Global Prayer Digest)
Read Article >>
AROUND THE WORLD
Individuals on Christian college campuses, local church college ministries, mobilization ministries and others passionate about getting this generation on fire for Jesus Christ will be taking part in the 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting from 22 January to 12 February 2007. Sponsored by the Student Volunteer Mission Movement 2 (SVM2), the event calls Christians around the world to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit among the emerging generation. A daily prayer guide is available at www.svm2.net. (SVM2)
Read Article >>
AROUND THE WORLD
Members of thirty-two minority language groups worldwide received God’s word in their own heart languages for the first time in 2006 thanks to a long-standing partnership between Bible League and Wycliffe Bible Translators. “Some of those we are reaching have been exposed to the gospel via a language they did not understand,” said the Rev. Chester Schemper, Bible League’s director of minority languages. “But many testify that it was after God spoke to them in their own language that they finally understood the message of salvation and really came to know Christ as their Savior and Lord.” The minority scriptures published in 2006 by Bible League were translated by Wycliffe Bible Translators, and used in countries with active Bible League ministry. Bible League provides scriptures and Bible studies to local churches in more than fifty-five countries. (Bible League)
Read Article >>
CHECHEN REPUBLIC
After standing in ruins for more than a decade, the only Russian Orthodox church in Chechnya’s capital has been restored. The consecration of the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Grozny was led by Bishop Feofan of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz, who presides over a region settled by Christians and Muslims, but which today is filled with tragedy. Particularly horrific was the school hostage-taking in Beslan, Northern Ossetia, near Vladikavkaz, in September 2004. (Ecumenical News International)
Read Article >>
AUSTRALIA
The newly published Business Bible was launched by Bible Society NSW 12 December 2006 in Sydney. The Business Bible is a new edition of the Good News New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs, with personal testimonies from leading Christian business people in the opening pages. According to Daniel Willis, CEO of the Bible Society NSW, “Just to stay on top of such critical issues as human resource management, personal and company tax and industrial law is a big task. The Bible is a source of real guidance on how we should live—even in the corporate jungle—and that is why we have released this new edition of the New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs.” (ASSIST News)
Read Article >>
CYPRUS
Arab Vision is drawing up plans to produce Iraqi television programs by early 2007. These programs will be made by Iraqi Christians themselves in their own Iraqi Arabic dialect. They will focus on sharing the gospel of peace with their nation, as well as encouraging their own Christian community to cope with the extreme pressures and dangers it is facing on a daily basis. (Arab Vision)
Read Article >>
BELGIUM
European church leaders meeting in Brussels have called for a dialogue with other religions about the future of Europe, while underlining the need for the process of European integration to be based on shared values and a common vision. “As people from different cultures and traditions in Europe come closer together, we want to highlight the importance of intercultural and inter-religious dialogue,” the Christian leaders said in a statement, following a two-day meeting in the Belgian capital. (Ecumenical News International)
Read Article >>
JAPAN
Theologians from Korea and Japan, Korea’s colonizer in the first half of the twentieth century, have begun a dialogue in search of “an Asian theology that can act to reconcile, and that goes beyond nationalism in both countries.” The two-day Korea-Japan Theology Forum 2006 was held in Kyoto. It was hosted by the Japan Society of Christian Studies. Organizers said the meeting was unprecedented and that it was the most significant communication between theologians from the two countries in recent years. (Ecumenical News International)
Read Article >>
CHINA
A research team was formed by Shaanxi provincial China Christian Council/Three Self Patriotic Movement to carry out an investigation on the situation of grassroots level churches. In August 2006, the research team, made up of three vice presidents of the provincial “two committees,” visited churches in six counties and a district within the city of Yan’an. The main objective of the visits was to meet church members and clergy so as to assist them in internal and external matters of church management, such as setting up church ministries, resisting heretical doctrines, preparing documents for the registration of the church and establishing relations with the local religious authorities. (Amity News Service)
Read Article >>
INDIA
The number of missionaries in India has increased over sixty-seven percent in the last five years, said the country’s Minister of State for Planning, M. V. Rajasekharan. At the same time the Minister said that according to the World Bank’s World Development Indicators 2006, the population living on less than $1USD per day had declined to 34.7 percent in 1999-2000. This is compared with forty-seven percent in 1994. (Voice of Asia magazine)
Read Article >>
CÔTE D’IVOIRE
On 1 January 2007, the United Bible Societies began the next stage of an ambitious project designed to bring God’s word into the homes and workplaces of many residents of Côte d’Ivoire who have little knowledge of the Bible. On this date, three radio stations were to begin broadcasting La Bible sur les ondes (“The Bible on the airwaves”), a series of programmes that will take listeners through the whole Bible in a year. There is considerable potential for the 15-minute programmes, which consist of Bible texts recorded by Hosanna and comments on the texts, to have a broad impact, believes Dr. Lynell Zogbo, the UBS translation consultant who is overseeing the writing of the scripts by an interconfessional team. “We have not avoided addressing issues such as leadership, family values and morality,” she explains. “We are trying to address West African issues, not just Ivorian issues.” (United Bible Societies)
Read Article >>
INDIA
More than two years after a tsunami devastated communities around the Indian Ocean, the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) continues to help build hundreds of houses for tsunami survivors in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. In India’s Tamil Nadu state, MCC helped build 450 houses in order to relocate the coastal village of Idinthakarai, which was declared uninhabitable after it was damaged by the tsunami. This was the largest of MCC’s post-tsunami construction projects that have been completed to date. Several more large construction projects were recently completed or are underway—including an additional 287 houses in India, 181 in Sri Lanka and more than three hundred in Indonesia. (Mennonite Central Committee)
Read Article >>
INDIA
Christian groups in India are mourning the killing of a prominent Christian worker who had converted from Islam and who was shot dead at a bus stop in front of his home in the state Kashmir. The Global Council of Indian Christians has demanded that the federal police fully investigate the killing of Bashir Tantray, the slain man, who worked in his spare time for the church group. People close to him said he was gunned down by motor-cycle borne Islamic militants. (Ecumenical News International)
Read Article >>
IRAN
For the first time, 24-hour Persian Christian radio is available anywhere in the world. The new Persian-language website Radio Mojdeh (Mojdeh means “good news” in Persian) and a 24-hour Internet radio service have recently been launched. The website, www.radiomojdeh.com, includes Christian music and teaching for both Muslim and Christian believers, the entire Persian Bible online, testimonies, Bible exposition and intensive discipleship training. This technology is vital because the number of Internet users in Iran jumped by ninety percent in the past year alone. Seven million of the sixty-five million people in Iran currently use the Internet. This number is expected to jump to twenty million next year.
Read Article >>
IRAQ
Kurdish Surani-speakers in northern Iraq are to receive scripture calendars in their own language for the first time, thanks to an initiative by the Bible Society in Lebanon. The Society has published twenty-thousand scripture calendars in the language for the Kurdish Church and people living in northern Iraq. “We were excited to know that the Kurdish Church is now growing strong and steadfast in its faith,” said Mike Bassous, the Bible Society’s general secretary. “So we decided to provide them with this scripture portion that will accompany them throughout 2007.” The Society has been publishing scripture calendars since 1980, distributing hundreds of thousands every year throughout the Middle East, using various scripture texts in Arabic, English, Armenian—and now, for the first time, in the Kurdish dialect of Surani. Altogether the Society has published 170,000 2007 calendars for distribution in several countries in the Middle East. The largest quantity among these comprises those destined for Iraq. Some sources estimate the number of Surani-speakers in Iraq at around three million. “The scripture calendar has been the trademark of our Bible mission in Iraq for years,” said Nabil Omeish, the Society’s program coordinator for Iraq. “It provides Iraqi Christians with hope and encouragement to continue living in this troubled country, and it provides the Church with an opportunity to distribute portions of God’s word outside their walls, to non-Christians.” The distribution of the calendars was expected to be completed in mid-January 2006. (United Bible Societies)
Read Article >>
MALI
After more than fifteen years of work by many translators and collaborators, missionaries in Mali announced that the New Testament is now available in the Maasina Fulfulde language. This will make the gospel story accessible for the first time to more than one million Fulfulde Malians who have never seen the Bible written in their mother tongue. Fulfulde is spoken in some form in seventeen African countries. Numerous dialects, however, make exact communication in Fulfulde difficult from country to country. Some experts estimate that at least seven different Bible translations would be needed to make it comprehensible to all Fulfulde speakers. The edition introduced in November 2006 is based on the dialect spoken by the Fulbe people in Mali. (Christian Reformed World Missions)
Read Article >>
LEBANON
After years of satellite and shortwave broadcasting into the North Africa/Middle East Region, HCJB World Radio recently had the opportunity to show God’s love through its healthcare ministry, responding to the aftermath of the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. An HCJB World Radio medical team of six women found serious medical and spiritual needs in Lebanon when there for two weeks to help alleviate the widespread suffering. In the short medical response trip, the team saw approximately five hundred people. HCJB World Radio responded to the need of a partner organization on the ground that asked for non-North America, female doctors. One of the Ecuadorian physicians said, “We believe this trip planted a seed to bring people hope. There was a language barrier, but through our behavior, our care, our medical attention, the people saw us and the hope we brought.” Another doctor added, “With each person we gave medical attention, we prayed for them. Nobody rejected that. They accepted us. They were very open with us, to the point where some of them said to us, ‘thank you for bringing the light’ in their own language.” (HCJB World Radio)
Read Article >>
UNITED STATES
The Disaster Response Office of Habitat for Humanity International recently rolled out its newest program, the Disaster Corps. The program seeks to provide increased support for disaster affected Habitat affiliates by engaging baby boomer generation volunteers with professional and skilled backgrounds. “We’re trying to engage volunteers to help…in more internal roles—helping to build a strong volunteer/donor database, meeting administrative needs, participating in project management, financial management and strategic planning,” said Jennifer O’Donnell, Habitat’s Disaster Response external relations specialist. At the end of the two-week program graduates, called Disaster Corps Legacy Leaders, are placed with a US Gulf Coast Habitat affiliate for two to four weeks, assisting with local short and long-term needs. (Habitat World)
Read Article >>
NETHERLANDS
Russia’s Orthodox Church has bought a Roman Catholic church and monastery in the Netherlands and plans to turn them into the largest Orthodox complex outside Russia. “Many churches have had to close here, especially in suburban areas, and all kinds of things are happening to them,” explained Pieter Kohnen, spokesperson for the Dutch Catholic Bishops’ Conference. (Ecumenical News International)
Read Article >>
NIGERIA
The much publicized, long-awaited Jesus 50 Million People March took place 26 December 2006 in all thirty-six states of Nigeria and 774 local government areas spread across the country. Over forty thousand Christians converged at designated zones all over the country for the march. This comprised Christians from all church denominations and associations. Many of the participants wore t-shirts and fez caps which bore the inscription “JESUS.” The country is also preparing for the United Jesus Rally (UJER) which will take place on Easter Monday. (ASSIST News)
Read Article >>
ROMANIA
An increasing number of European churches are beginning to understand the role of Christian media in reaching the unchurched in Romania and Europe. To provide adequate training in the use of Christian television, Alfa Omega TV reports that in conjunction with World Vision Romania, it has launched a short-term intensive media training program. According to Alfa Omega, the training is for two days a month and provides basic information about the technical aspects of filming, editing, news, feature reports and interviews. The first course brought a group of young people from five cities not only interested in using media tools in local churches, but also excited about getting involved in broadcast production on Romanian TV channels. The aim of the course is help prepare a strong group of Christians who can effectively use the media to spread the gospel in Romania and beyond. (ASSIST News)
Read Article >>
SWEDEN
The Lutheran Church of Sweden, the national church and the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden, the country’s second largest denomination, have celebrated the signing of an ecumenical agreement at a service in Uppsala Cathedral. In terms of their agreement “the two churches recognise each other as apostolic churches, participating in the Church of Christ…holding the same confession of the apostolic faith” and “the same understanding of the sacraments,” the Church of Sweden said in a statement. (Ecumenical News International)
Read Article >>
UNITED KINGDOM
Delegates at the Global Connections’ conference in December in Swanwick, Derbyshire, UK heard how mission is central to God’s very nature. Conference speaker Clive Calver said that our Lord is a sending God—the Father sent the Son, the Son sent the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit sends the Church. Martin Lee, executive director of Global Connections said, “It was great to rediscover the missional heart of God and that mission cannot be on the edges of church life, but is actually in the very nature of God and so should be at the core of who we are.” The conference was attended by 170 delegates, including church leaders, Bible college principals and leaders from organisations including Tearfund, Interserve and FEBA. (Global Connections)
Read Article >>