Lausanne World Pulse – News Briefs
Early in the new millennium Angola was officially named by the Global IDP Project the worst place in the world for children to grow up. During a quarter century of war millions of people were forced to flee and hundreds of thousands were killed. In the past three years, however, following a peace treaty between government and rebel forces, several million people have returned home, including 900,000 people in 2004 alone. (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)
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COLOMBIA
There are currently between two million and 3.4 million displaced people in Colombia. Many live in sub-par shantytowns on the outskirts of the country’s major cities. As a result of decades of civil conflict, Columbia is facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere. (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)
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ECUADOR
The Rt. Rev. Wilfrido Ramos-Orench will begin 1 June as provisional bishop of the Diocese of Central Ecuador, one of two Episcopal dioceses in Ecuador. The Diocese of Central Ecuador has twenty-nine missions, fourteen presbyters and two deacons. The administrative office is in Quito, Ecuador. Ramos-Orench, 65, is a native of Puerto Rico. (Episcopal News Service)
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INDIA
The government in Rajasthan, India, recently became the sixth state in India to enact an anti-conversion law. The Rajasthan Dharma Swatantraya (Freedom of Religion) Act outlaws any attempt to convert a person from one religion to another “by use of force or allurement or by fraudulent means.” The punishments are a prison term of not less than two years or a fine of up to fifty thousand rupees. In other states with anti-conversion legislation, Christians have been the targets of widespread attacks from Hindu extremists. (Christian Solidarity Worldwide)
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PANAMA
Through providing food, clothing, school supplies, teaching materials and generators, Convoy of Hope (COH) helps enable more than three thousand Ngobe Bugle Indians to attend an annual conference in western Panama. The conference provides teaching for pastors, laypersons, youth and children. COH provided thirty-five thousand pounds of rice, beans, corn, pasta and dried fruit to both feed attendees during the conference and to send home with them. (Convoy of Hope)
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RWANDA
The Book of Hope has joined with Hillsong Church of Australia and many international Christian ministries for HOPE RWANDA: 100 Days of Hope. From 7 April through 15 July, they will provide the Book of Hope to every student and teacher in Rwanda, as well as eighty-nine thousand prison inmates. Hope Fest concerts, medial ministries and compassionate ministries will include messages presenting Christ to everyone across the entire nation. (Book of Hope)
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RUSSIA
Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) has been working in Russia since the early 1990s. Due to inaccessible cities and villages across eleven time zones expansion has been difficult, despite the need. However, MAF is now expanding into Siberia. MAF’s Dave Bochman says, “Every time we’ve looked and every place we’ve looked it just seemed that God wasn’t opening the door, but then this past year God raised up a national pilot with a burden for missionary aviation. And the area that the Lord has placed on all of our hearts is Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia.” Bochman says the new program is completely Russian. (Mission Network News)
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SIERRA LEONE
Wesleyan Church National Superintendent J.Y. Konteh reported news of a revival breaking out in the Kavala District where The Wesleyan Church has been partnering with the Great Commission Movement and the JESUS Film Project. Thousands are turning to Christ and many new churches have been started. This partnership is handing over several new church plants to The Wesleyan Church of Sierra Leone. (Wesleyan Information Network)
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UNITED KINGDOM
A national survey in the UK shows that Christians are the happiest people in the nation. The survey was carried out by CommunicateResearch and was sponsored by the Evangelical Alliance and Premier Christian Radio. Findings show that seventy-five percent of churchgoers said they were happy, compared to fifty-four percent of non-churchgoers. When a parallel study was done with evangelical Christians, the happiness percentage rose to eighty percent. (Evangelical Alliance Press Office)
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UNITED KINGDOM
A poll commissioned by the Evangelical Alliance and Premier Christian Radio found that seventy percent people in the UK believe Christian principles are still valid in today’s society, even though half of those who answered in the affirmative professed no faith. Seventy-four percent said children should be brought up with Christian values and seventy-one percent agreed that Christianity should continue to be taught in Britain’s schools. Two thousand people took part in the poll. (Evangelical Alliance Press Office)
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UNITED KINGDOM
On 28 March 2006, a Thanksgiving service took place in Westminster Abbey to mark the 150th anniversary of The Mission to Seafarers. The Mission to Seafarers (formerly The Missions to Seamen) is a missionary society of the Anglican Church which cares for the welfare of all seafarers regardless of their nationality or faith. The United Kingdom became the first place to begin the work of the society which then dispersed to ports around the world where the main aim was to take care of the spiritual welfare of the seafarers. (Anglican Communion News Service)
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UNITED STATES
Twelve Christian leaders from the Middle East recently shared with nearly sixty Western Christian leaders on the state of the Church in the Arab World. The event was held 20-22 April at the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois, USA, and drew leaders from Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq. The event, called Sounds of Hope, gave the Middle Eastern leaders a platform where they could share with North American leaders the circumstances of the fifteen million Christians in the Arab World. (Sounds of Hope)
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UNITED STATES
The third annual Spring Conference for African-American Journalists of Faith was held 21-23 April 2006 at Morehead College in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The keynote speaker was John W. Fountain, professor of journalism at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). The conference exists to bring together students and professional journalists of faith from across the nation. Participants were encouraged to integrate their Christian faith with their journalism practice. (World Journalism Institute)
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UNITED STATES
Pentecostal and so-called non-mainline Protestant churches show continuing growth in the United States, while mainstream churches continue to lose membership, according to the latest annual figures on US church membership. The largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, showed a decline in membership, while the Roman Catholic Church, the largest single church body, showed a slight increase. The US National Council of Churches recently released the figures in the 2006 Yearbook of American and Canadian churches. (Ecumenical News International)
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UNITED STATES
Royal Rangers International (RRI) held an historic conference in Florida, USA in February. In Spanish, the conference was called Seminario de Actualizacion Latinoamericano (SAL, which means salt). The purpose was to introduce new evangelistic program resources to the national Royal Rangers leaders in the Spanish-speaking world. Royal Rangers is one of the world’s largest and foremost Christian adventure-based mentoring programs. More than one hundred leaders from Spain, Italy, Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean attended. Reciting the first part of the Royal Rangers pledge, “With God’s help I will do my best to serve God,” the national leaders committed themselves “to an unprecedented effort of Ranger-evangelism.” As a group they set a goal to grow the ministry in Latin America and the Caribbean from forty-five thousand people to over 250,000 people within the next ten years. (Assemblies of God News and Information)
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