Lausanne World Pulse – News Briefs
After sixteen years of serving as president of Asian Access, an evangelical mission organization that develops leaders and serves as a catalyst to multiply churches, the Rev. S. Douglas Birdsall, will step down on 30 September 2007 to devote full-time to his position as executive international chair of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism (LCWE). Bruce Johnson, vice president for leadership development, will become interim president. Birdsall will continue as an Asian Access missionary and member of the ministry’s board of directors. “After much thought and prayer, I realized that I could no longer effectively lead both organizations…I also realized that Asian Access is at a point in its growth where it needs the undivided time and passion of a new leader who can take the ministry forward.” Johnson joined Asian Access in 2004 as vice president for leadership development. He currently oversees the design and implementation of the ministry’s pastor training model in twenty targeted countries across Asia (Asian Access)
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AROUND THE WORLD
As part of the Micah Challenge coalition, Christian leaders are calling on Western governments to stick to their promises on tackling global poverty. The call comes in the light of a report by the Africa Progress Panel, which was set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to monitor the promises on poverty made by the G8 nations at Gleneagles in 2005. While the UK is on track to meet its Gleneagles commitments, other countries are lagging behind. Charles Badenoch, chief executive officer of the development charity World Vision, said, “Since Gleneagles, we have allowed so many other priorities to take precedence over our commitment to fund development programmes designed to lift millions out of poverty in Africa. The international community has poured resources toward issues of international security at the expense of the poor. It’s time it made good its promises.” Joel Edwards, co-chair of Micah Challenge International, said, “We urge leaders to stick to their promises. Extreme global poverty can be beaten, if there’s the political will to do so.” (Evangelical Alliance Press)
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GERMANY
The leader of the mainline Protestant Churches in Germany, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, is deeply concerned about increasing threats to the lives of former Muslims who have embraced the Christian faith. There are congregations of former Muslims in Berlin, Huber’s diocese, who live in constant fear of violent attacks, the Bishop said. According to evangelist Ulrich Parzany, approximately five thousand Muslims become Christians in Germany every year. Many of them change their identity because they are afraid of being killed. (ASSIST News Service)
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GABON
Senior government ministers have welcomed a proposal by the Bible Society of Gabon to launch the Good Samaritan program in order to help tackle the country’s escalating HIV/AIDS problem. The Society put forward the proposal last month following a call by Gabon’s vice president, Didjob Divungi Di Ndinge, for NGOs, civic groups and government agencies to “intensify the national response” to the crisis. Recent figures published by Gabon’s Ministry of Public Health and Population indicate that there are eight new cases of HIV infection per day. It is estimated that in the main cities of Libreville and Port Gentil, where two-thirds of the country’s 1.2 million people live, the infection rate is between seven and nine percent. “With the HIV/AIDS infection rate continuing to rise, something needs to be done to help people avoid contracting the virus, and this means encouraging them to change their behaviour,” explains Bible Society general secretary Georges Thierry Mabiala. Gabon will be the fifteenth country in Africa to launch the Good Samaritan program. The other countries already participating are Uganda, Cameroon, Togo, Burundi, Rwanda, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Namibia, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Swaziland, the Sahel Project (Mali, Senegal and Guinea Conakry), Sierra Leone and Tanzania. (United Bible Societies)
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HONG KONG
Hong Kong Christians have launched their first manual to help combat domestic violence and church leaders have urged communities to renew their pastoral theology to support victims of the home scourge. “When the Church places too much emphasis on forgiveness and acceptance, how can it keep a balance in approaching those victims who are facing domestic violence?” the Rev. Bettsy Ng asked at a seminar on “Church Help to Combat Domestic Violence.” (Ecumenical News International)
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HAITI
After a two-year interruption due to widespread violence in the country, the Church of the Nazarene in Haiti resumed and completed eleven district assemblies in April. Final membership totals are not yet complete, but nearly every district showed growth. Two districts showed significant losses due to deaths suffered from flooding over the past two years in Fond Verette on the South East District and in the Gonaives area on the North Central District. Jurisdictional General Superintendent Jerry D. Porter presided over the assemblies. Porter, who had the honor of ordaining thirty-nine individuals, commented, “It was a great privilege to represent the global Church to the nearly 100,000 Haitian Nazarenes as we celebrated the eleven district assemblies. Our Haitian brothers and sisters are passionate about serving the Lord and the Church of the Nazarene as we ‘make Christlike disciples in the nations.’ They have embraced a Centennial Celebration faith projection of reporting 250,000 Nazarenes by 2009.” (Church of the Nazarene Caribbean Region Communications)
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INDIA
More than four thousand protesters took part in a rally in New Delhi, India, recently to demand that the Indian government acts to quell the recent increase in violence against Christians. The rally was called in response to two attacks against Christians which were televized on several news channels. Christian leaders are concerned that copycat attacks could take place in the future unless the government vocalizes opposition to these and other similar attacks, many of which are committed with impunity. The protest was organised by the All India Christian Council (AICC), the All India Catholic Union, Truth-Seekers International, the Christian Lawyers Association and the All India Confederation of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes. Muslim, Buddhists and Hindu representatives, women’s groups and students joined the thousands of Christians from all denominations who took part in the rally. (Christian Solidarity Worldwide)
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INDIA
The National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) has called on the authorities to act immediately to restore the rule of law, following a number of attacks against Christians in recent weeks. The council urged state governments to clamp down on what it said were Hindu fundamentalist groups “responsible for fanning communal hatred and social tension.” The NCCI, which groups twenty-nine Orthodox and Protestant churches, made its call in a statement that followed the beating up of two Christian evangelists in the Kolhapur district of Maharashtra state, in western India. (Ecumenical News International)
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MALAYSIA
A Malaysian woman who converted to Christianity might be jailed for apostasy, or the rejection of her religion, after the Muslim-majority country’s highest court ruled that she does not have a constitutional right to convert from Islam to another religion. Lina Joy has battled for seven years to have her conversion recognized as legal. She finally took her case to a Malaysian Federal Court, which decided in a 2-1 majority decision that she could not remove “Islam” from the religion category of her government identity card despite her conversion to Christianity in 1998. (Ecumenical News International)
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SCOTLAND
A call for Christian mission work to promote “non-aggressive” evangelism and for traditional denominations to find new ways of working with Pentecostal and charismatic movements has been made by the World Council of Churches general secretary, the Rev. Samuel Kobia. “It is of particular urgency that mission be understood and practiced in a way which does not lead to an increase of hatred and violence,” Kobia said, speaking in Edinburgh during a 12-day visit to Britain and Ireland. “That’s one of the reasons we are involved with the Roman Catholic, Evangelical and Pentecostal churches in searching for a code of conduct on conversion.” (Ecumenical News International)
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PAKISTAN
Churches in Pakistan are urging the government to protect a Christian community facing threats from Islamic fundamentalists to either convert to Islam or shut their churches and migrate from their native villages in the North West Frontier Province. “The authorities in Pakistan have responded half-heartedly to the situation, sending only one police officer to protect the community, who is stationed at the door of the church,” the National Council of Churches of Pakistan, a grouping of four Protestant churches, said in a statement. (Ecumenical News International)
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TOGO
The recent staging of the African Football Federation’s Under-17 Africa Cup tournament in Lomé provided an opportunity for the Bible Society of Togo and other Christian organisations to bring God’s Word to many sports fans. Teams and their supporters from South Africa, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, Tunisia and Togo gathered for two weeks in March. Under the banner “With God, we will achieve great things and save souls for his glory,” the Bible Society and their partners organised a busy schedule to ensure that God’s Word was seen and heard. As well as organising prayer sessions, they set up stalls at various sporting venues from which biblical materials and testimonies were distributed. The Bible Society distributed more than five thousand copies of the booklet Plus précieux que l’or (“More Precious than Gold”) in both French and English. It also showed the film Demeurer vainqueurs (“Keep on Winning”), produced by the United Bible Societies’ Area Service Center in Lomé and featuring testimonies from leading African footballers. (United Bible Societies)
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POLAND
Roman Catholic religious orders in Poland have taken to advertising to try and stem a decline in vocations. “The church has been advertising itself for two thousand years,” Dariusz Kowalczyk, the head of the Jesuit order in Poland, was quoted as saying by the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. “Today, the adverts are more sophisticated and this isn’t surprising; there’s the Internet and color printing, and it would be a sin not to use them,” he explained. The newspaper showed a Warsaw church billboard depicting two monks on a country lane above the words “Join us!” Another advertisement, featuring a handsome, unshaven man in a clerical collar, proclaimed “Hard guy? No, a Jesuit.” (Ecumenical News International)
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TURKEY
The killing of three Christians at a religious publishing house in eastern Turkey has triggered strong condemnation by the United States and international church and advocacy groups. Twelve suspects have been linked to the killings of the three men, Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel, both Turkish Christians, and Tilman Ekkehart Geske, a German national, in slayings that have prompted concerns about the safety of the minority Christian community in Turkey. (Ecumenical News International)
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RUSSIA
The Russian Orthodox Church and an émigré church that broke ties in 1927 over a Russian church leader’s declaration of loyalty to the then-Soviet state have officially reunited at a ceremony in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. “Church divisions are being overcome, and the confrontation in society inherited from the times of the revolution is being beaten back,” said Patriarch Alexei II of the Russian Orthodox Church after the signing of an act of canonical union with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, also known as ROCOR. (Ecumenical News International)
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UNITED STATES
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA and the University of Wisconsin (UW) have reached an agreement that settles a lawsuit and fully restores recognition to InterVarsity’s student chapter at the UW-Superior (UW-S). The agreement also removes the threat of derecognition that has been facing InterVarsity chapters at the UW-Madison and other University of Wisconsin campuses. The university notified the UW-S chapter that it was being stripped of official recognition in February 2006. The chapter has been active on the UW-S campus for more than four decades. UW-S officials said that the chapter’s requirement that its leaders affirm InterVarsity’s Basis of Faith violated the university’s non-discrimination policy. InterVarsity maintained that a student religious organization should be able to require reasonable religious standards for its student leaders. (Intervarsity Christian Fellowship/USA)
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UNITED STATES
Churches need to examine their old mission strategies and reshape them for the twentieth century, according to the Rev. Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC. “Addressing this problem is at the heart of strengthening the relationships we have with one another as we engage in mission,” Nyomi told mission groups linked to the Christian Reformed Church in North America, at a meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. The WARC leader said the idea that mission involves missionaries or agencies from North America or Europe working in Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Caribbean is a thing of the past. “When it comes to mission abroad, we have the opportunity now to welcome missionaries from other parts of the world to North America and Europe, just as missionaries from here go to other parts,” said Nyomi. (Ecumenical News International)
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UNITED STATES
Individual congregants of sixty-five Christian denominations that reported financial information for publication gave an average of $713 to their church in calendar year 2005. That figure was reported in the seventy-fifth Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, published in March 2007 by the National Council of Churches USA. The per capita amount represents an increase of just $18.93 per person from the previous year. The Yearbook article notes that the increase (2.7%) does not exceed the official inflation figure. Benevolence giving—financial contributions to church programs such as relief efforts and feeding or housing the homeless—remained flat at fifteen percent. The below-inflation increase in overall giving coupled with a “stagnant posture in benevolence” has the practical consequence of “less support for church-sponsored day care, fewer soup-kitchen meals, less emergency help to persons with medical problems or reduced transportation to the elderly” in local communities. More than $34 billion in total church giving was reported to the Yearbook by the sixty-five denominations. (National Council of Churches)
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UNITED STATES
Results from a LifeWay Research study of teenagers in the United States indicates that many teens are confused about what it takes to get to heaven. More than one thousand teens were surveyed in January and February 2007 by mail questionnaire. Results show that sixty-nine percent of teens believe heaven exists. Also, a majority strongly agree with the traditional Christian belief in Jesus Christ’s death for their sins as the reason they will go to heaven (fifty-three percent). While many teens believe they will go to heaven because of their belief in Jesus Christ, one-quarter trust in their own kindness to others (twenty-seven percent) or their religiosity (twenty-seven percent) as their means to get to heaven. Out of the sixty-nine percent of the teens who strongly or somewhat agree they will go to heaven because Jesus Christ died for their sins, sixty percent also agree that they will go to heaven because they are religious and sixty percent also agree they will go to heaven because they are kind to others. That leaves approximately twenty-eight percent of American teenagers who are trusting only in Jesus Christ as their means to get to heaven. (Baptist Press)
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