Lausanne World Pulse – News Briefs
The youth outreach of Open Doors International is gearing up for a SHOCKWAVE—a global 72-hour prayer event for youth that will take place 3-5 March, both online and at prayer meetings throughout the world. The fifth annual SHOCKWAVE kicks off in New Zealand and works its way across the time zones, literally covering the entire world. Last year, thousands of young people from nineteen nations were involved. The goal is to raise awareness about the suffering of brothers and sisters in Christ. For details, go to: www.odshockwave.org (Mission Network News)
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AROUND THE WORLD
Compassion International has become one of more than 260 Christian organizations around the world that have partnered in the Micah Challenge to combat child poverty globally. The Micah Challenge is a global Christian campaign that encourages Christians to engage with the poor and influence world leaders to meet the United Nations millennium development goals by 2015. Compassion International, a long-term Christian child development ministry, is committed to seeing children get out of poverty. “There are thousands of verses where God is communicating about the issue of poverty and wealth,” said David Dahlin of Compassion. “It’s the second most common theme in the Bible.” (Mission Network News)
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CAMEROON
“A day hasn’t passed without people coming to see it and comment on it,” said Dorothee Daneidjo, as she displays her dress with verses of the Bible printed on the material. “Sometimes people on the street ask me to stop because they want to read a little more and we start talking about Christian matters,” said the 22-year-old Cameroon student. “I wear the dress to witness to what I believe in. I find it gives me plenty of opportunities to speak to people about the faith I have in Christ and that they too can have,” added Dorothee. (Bible Society of New Zealand)
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CANADA
After serving for the past eight years in South Africa, Jonathan Wilson will be serving as executive director for World Team Canada. Born in the United Kingdom, Wilson was a missionary kid for seventeen years in Papua, Indonesia. In South Africa, Wilson served as Pan African training director and helped establish and coordinate the Marriage Alliance of South Africa, a seventy-denomination initiative to protect marriage in the South African judiciary and legislature. Wilson will assume his role as executive director April 2006. (World Team)
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INDIA
A record-breaking graduating class of over ten thousand students—most of them Dalits—recently produced the world’s largest seminary graduation ever. The historic graduation of Dalit outcastes in India was sponsored by Hopegivers International. Although Dalits make up nearly twenty-five percent of the population in India, they are still considered “untouchable,” often having to deal with oppression and exploitation by members of other social castes. However, according to Hopegivers president Dr. Samuel Thomas, “Today, the tide is turning. Millions of Dalits are finding hope and freedom through the Hopegivers message, and all of India is reaping the benefits of the release of their potential.” Upon graduation, students received a bicycle and a one-way train ticket to their first assignment to share the gospel. (Hopegivers International)
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MALAWI
Nazarene Youth International (NYI) Africa is receiving recognition beyond church walls for its work in AIDS prevention. At a recent youth convention in Lilongwe, Malawi, minister of youth, sport and culture Jafali Mussa applauded NYI for the “great work” being done by NYI in HIV and AIDS information dissemination. According to NYI spokesman Edward Mikwamba, Mussa also thanked NYI for assisting less-privileged people through mission teams in hospitals and communities. (Nazarene Communications Network)
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MEXICO
As missionaries and nationals work on Bible translation across the globe, Wycliffe Associates serves to support that translation work. Wycliffe’s Norm Every says he works to maximize translation efforts in the Americas by sending short-term teams to help with construction and administrative tasks. “My function is to get volunteers connected with opportunities to support Bible translation, and we have several things going on in Mexico right now in conjunction with translation projects.” Volunteers can help speed the gospel going forward, says Every, as they get involved in support of Bible translation. “By us doing the construction, it saves a tremendous amount of resources for the SIL branch that is involved in the translation work itself.” (Mission Network News)
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MIDDLE EAST
A boom in Christian websites is occurring in the Middle East. According to the Strategic Resource Group (SRG), these websites are receiving nearly nine million hits per month and more than two thousand Arabic Bibles are downloaded from the Internet each month. One Christian organization that hosts chat rooms for Arabic-speaking visitors estimates that more than forty-two thousand people visit these Christian sites every day. More than half of the population in the Middle East is 25-years-old or under and most have easy access to computers either in their homes or in public venues such as Internet cafes and schools. (Assist News Service)
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PHILIPPINES
World Vision’s Australia office is mustering an emergency response to help the victims of the Philippines landslide. Officials fear that continuous rain in the province could slow down rescue efforts. While some survivors have been pulled from a school buried in the disaster, World Vision’s team says those left behind desperately need help with basic survival needs. Please pray for their staff as they act as the hands and feet of Christ in this situation. (Mission Network News)
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PHILIPPINES
The Metro Manila Franklin Graham Festival, held 2-5 February drew massive crowds to Rizal Park, totaling at least 317,600, including 125,000 on the final night alone. Throughout the event, 33,844 people responded to the invitation to put their faith in Jesus Christ. Saturday morning, 82,500 kids packed the grassy expanse, breaking the record for the largest children’s event ever held in the venue. Crowds at the festival heard Graham’s nightly messages in English and Tagalog, the two languages used interchangeably in the Philippines. Before the festival began, Graham addressed the President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and hundreds of other government officials and city leaders at the National Leadership Breakfast. (Metro Manila Festival)
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SWITZERLAND
The leaders of two worldwide church groupings have proposed the creation of a new global body called the World Reformed Communion to unite the more than eighty million Protestants in their two organizations. “We … believe that this new, united, Reformed body will be a blessing to the broader ecumenical movement and to the reconciliation of the world,” said the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), and the Rev. Douwe Visser, president of the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC), in a joint statement. (Ecumenical News International)
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TURKEY
SAT-7 is partnering with TURK-7, a new media outreach to the Turkish people, to create indigenous television programs that will both grow the believer in the Christian faith and lead non-believers to Christ. According to one Turkish pastor, “Turkey is a big country and the number of Christians is still small. Television is a very effective method for communicating across the entire nation. The most exciting thing is that TURK-7 is helping Turks to proclaim Christian truths to their own people, in their own language.” The TURK-7 staff is producing their own programs. (Mission Network News)
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UNITED STATES
Registration is now open for Urbana 06, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s twenty-first student missions convention to be held 27-31 December 2006, in the Edward Jones Dome at the America’s Center in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Jim Tebbe, InterVarsity’s vice president for missions and the director of Urbana, says he believes Urbana 06, in its new location, will generate a new level of interest and excitement about missions and God’s global plan. InterVarsity anticipates Urbana 06 will draw between twenty-five and thirty thousand attendees. Urbana 06 will address current realities in global missions including “Mission Through the Lens of AIDS” and “Slum Communities in the Developing World.” (Intervarsity Christian Fellowship)
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UNITED STATES
An estimated 100,000 Pentecostal and charismatic Christians are expected to come together in Los Angeles, California, 25-29 April to commemorate the centennial of the Azusa Street revival, an event that marked the emergence of the modern Holy Spirit movement. The five-day event will feature ministry tracks, cultural worship experiences, parachurch ministry conferences and an international teaching convention. There are six hundred million Pentecostal and charismatic believers around the world. The Assemblies of God, with fifty-three million adherents worldwide, is the largest single group. (Azusa Street Revival)
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UNITED STATES
Ken Olson recently made a major contribution to what is an obscure, but necessary science if the gospel is going to go into all the world. Olson contributed a new symbol to the International Phonetic Alphabet—the first new contribution in twelve years. Linguists have agreed on the special alphabet when doing transcriptions of different languages. Ultimately the work leads to helping missionaries with translations. Olson proposed the symbol for what is known as the labiodental flap. “The sound is produced by drawing the lower lip back into the mouth—well behind the upper teeth—and then bringing it forward rapidly, striking the upper teeth briefly in passing,” according to SIL International, the organization for which Olson is the associate international linguistics coordinator. The symbol looks like the combination of a “v” and an “r” and technically is known as “a right hook ‘v.'” Prior to its inclusion, linguists used ad hoc letter combinations such as “vw,” Olson says. (Covenant News)
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ZAMBIA
Zambia’s major denominations melded during January’s global week of prayer for Christian unity. And while the churches are expected to play a pivotal role in national elections scheduled to take place by the end of 2006, civil society groups pressing for change wonder if that cohesion can carry over into the political sphere. Leaders of the three largest church groupings in the southern African nation released a joint statement urging church cohesion and the unity of communities. “Being mindful of what we hold in common allows us to face more effectively things which still divide us,” they said. (Ecumenical News International)
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ZIMBABWE
International Bible Society (IBS) released its Shona Bible translation on 27 January in Harare City, Zimbabwe, Africa. This translation makes the Word of God accessible in contemporary language to ten million people in Zimbabwe who speak the Shona language. More than three thousand church and government leaders welcomed the translation of God’s word at the dedication ceremony. IBS president Peter Bradley presented the Bible to Her Excellency, vice president of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Arnai Joyce Mujuru. Leaders from Christian denominations and churches, the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Council of Churches and the Christian business community also attended the ceremony. The Shona language is the dominant language in Zimbabwe and is composed of the Karanga, Korekore, Manyika, Ndau and Zezuru dialects. Most Zimbabweans prefer the Shona language, even though English is the official language of the country. (International Bible Society)
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