Lausanne World Pulse – World Pulse Archives – World Pulse Archives

Arops rebuild
A tidal wave wiped out half of Papua New Guinea’s Arop people. Among those who died in the wave was a translator working on the Arop New Testament. Today, three years after the disaster, survivors are living in villages they rebuilt away from the sea and work has resumed on the New Testament, reports Wycliffe’s Insider. The SIL team is expanding its ministry from one language group in the Sandaun province to several of the nearby languages as well. “This is one of the positive outcomes that God has brought about after the tidal wave,” Insider reports.

The Bible League’s new ministries
The Bible League (TBL) is launching Project Philip, a Bible study program, in Ecuador and Haiti to provide Scripture and introduce Bible study courses. A TBL press release says that those who finish a six-week study course will earn a New Testament, and those who continue their studies will earn a whole Bible. TBL plans to plant churches in Ecuador. It is also expanding its work into Haiti, where even pastors often don’t have Bibles, and aims to develop and provide material in Creole.

Latin America: ‘Abandoned harvest’
Latin America Mission President David Befus describes the state of evangelism below the Rio Grande as an “abandoned harvest,” Religion Today reports. “Even while the growth and enthusiasm of the Latin American church is cause for optimism, the number of unreached people is actually growing,” he tells Religion Today. “If the vacuum is not filled, Latin America could well be described as an abandoned harvest if Christians fail to grasp the opportunities that God is now giving to his church.”

Urdu literacy primer printed
Literacy and Evangelism International (LEI) has finished work on a reading primer in Pakistan’s Urdu language, reports LEI’s newsletter. The textbook teaches reading while conveying biblical truths, including God’s plan for salvation, spiritual growth and becoming church members.

Child-to-child evangelism
The 12-member Just for Kids drama troupe of the Bible Society in Lebanon has completed a tour of three Iraqi cities, making Christ known to some 4,000 of Iraqi children in 14 performances. The United Bible Societies’ World Report says that the troupe has toured schools and churches in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan over the past year. A society staffer said that the group gave away Scriptures supplied by Trans World Radio to children and some adults in Baghdad.

Jumping into a Sa translation
Vanuatu’s remote Sa-speaking village of Wanurr is the birthplace of bungee-jumping. Wanurr has been Christian for more than a century, and while villagers sing hymns and pray in Sa, they have no Bible in their own language. Wanurr’s Christians have begun translating the Bible into the local Sa language, the United Bible Societies (UBS) report. Although there are no UBS funds available for the project, the work is going on with help from the Bible Society of Australia’s director of translation, John Harris.

Crackdown in China
Beijing’s State Foreign Experts Bureau, an umbrella organization that loosely oversees foreign educational programs, has told administrators that the inter-Mennonite program China Educational Exchange (CEE) can no longer officially send English teachers to China. The bureau gave no specific reasons for this action, reports the Mennonite Brethren Mission and Service International.

IVORY COAST: The Africa Christian Television (ACT) studio was dedicated in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in March, with a vision to produce programs for French-speaking Africa. Before the studio, ACT already was producing more than 20 programs broadcast by around 11 national television stations. Among ACT’s sponsors are the Association of Evangelicals in Africa, reports Africa Ministry Resources’ publication, The Church Leader in Africa.

GHANA: About two-thirds of Ghanaians call themselves Christian, but only 40 percent have any link with a church. Only 12 percent attend church regularly, reports Wycliffe’s Insider. The top-priority translation project in Ghana is the Ahanta New Testament, facilitating Scripture use and developing a literacy program. So far, Matthew and Mark are complete and are being checked. Luke and the epistles of John are in draft. Three trial reading primers have been developed and approved; 40 copies of each are being tested in literacy classes in two towns. The Ahanta team expects to finish its work in 2006.

KENYA: Kenyan Tharaka speakers now have a New Testament. It was dedicated August 26 reports The Church Leader in Africa.

CHAD:The African nation Chad is home to almost 7 million people and 181 people groups, reports TEAM. Chad is home to more totally unreached groups than any other African nation. TEAM is launching an initiative within a region of Chad where Christians were persecuted in the 1970s and where there is no outreach to its Muslims, who account for 99 percent of the region’s 200,000 people.

ZIMBABWE:Zimbabwean church leaders gathered September 4-7 for a final Target 2000 to celebrate the planting of 10,000 new churches since 1992, reports The Church Leader in Africa. In nine years, the number of churches in Zimbabwe has doubled. Delegates embraced a new strategy, Target 2010, to tackle the challenges of penetrating the remaining least-evangelized communities, equipping leaders for healthy church growth and mobilizing Zimbabwe’s church for global mission.

Another state brings on sharia
The introduction of Islamic law, or sharia, in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state had led to Muslim-Christian clashes in which at least 10 people were killed in Gwantu. Irinnews.org reports that police and troop reinforcements have been sent in to stem the violence. In February 2000, more than 2,000 people died in clashes after Kaduna announced plans to introduce sharia. To defuse tension, then, leaders opted on a compromise whereby predominantly Muslim communities in the state would apply sharia, while mainly Christian communities would apply canon or customary law. In the past two years a dozen states in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north have adopted Islamic law, sparking religious clashes in a number of northern towns, and reprisals in the mainly Christian south.

Children’s plight grave
Between 40,000 and 60,000 children are born HIV-positive in Zimbabwe every year, reports the Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN).

September 11’s toll on missions
Fallout from the terrorist attacks in the United States has included the pullout of non-US Christian workers from around the world from Afghanistan and nearby countries. ALC news agency reports that the Brazilian Baptist World Mission Board, or JMM for its Portuguese initials, has pulled its people from Afghanistan, as has Operation Mobilization. JMM is considering whether to pull out of the Middle East altogether. History professor Sidney Ferreira Leite of Sao Paulo’s Cásper Líbero College believes that religion will be a key component of 21st century conflicts.

Key to Mormon expansion: Missions
In 2000, more than 58,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) were missionaries in the US and overseas. It’s one of the world’s fastest-growing faiths, especially in the past decade, Newsday reports. The LDS church claims more than 10 million adherents. One Mormon missionary who served in Seoul, South Korea, in the mid 1990s tells Newsday, “You never know the seeds you plant. That’s the reward of a missionary. I think I made four conversions in two years; the best conversion to happen was mine.”

Of Jedis, heathens and atheists
British fans of Star Wars movies may declare Jedi Knight as their faith. Jedis have been recognized officially on the list of religions to be registered at the United Kingdom’s national statistics office for this year’s census. There’s no word on how serious the Jedis are. The movement began with an e-mail chain letter urging the movies’ fans to register their faith as Jedi. The Daily Telegraph reports that Jedi is named on the list of religions after Catholic, druid and Hare Krishna but before heathen and atheist.

A poem as lovely as a baobab
Many in Tanzania believe that the massive baobab tree on Kenyatta Drive in the capital, Dar es Salaam, has special powers and harbors spirits, reports the Washington Post. People take off their shoes and kneel before it as witch doctors perform rituals, such as smashing a coconut to release problems to the wind. People nail scraps of paper with written wishes to the tree; wishes can also be jotted on coconuts and rotten eggs. Unmarried women beseech the tree for a husband. Government leaders visit during elections to seek favor. One witch doctor who works at the Kenyatta Drive baobab tells the Post, “I am a Christian. My family is Christian. But this comes from the tribe. The spirits forced me to do this business. They made me sick. I was too thin. After working this job, I got fat.”

Inquiring minds want to know?
The vice president of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth says that since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, people in Brazil are asking about Islam. Two Brazilian Muslim leaders have received an average of three requests daily to speak about Islam in schools and universities and on television reports ALC news service. Before September 11, the pair got two such requests each week. A worker at a center for the spread of Islam in Latin America said that the volume of requests for theological books about Islam has tripled.

UK closing successful Christian prison units
The United Kingdom’s Prison Service is shutting Kainos, a pioneering prisoner ministry, at four British jails, reports The Guardian. The chief prison inspector said that prisoners were often released without skills to function in society and without prospect of going straight. Kainos, a rehabilitation program based on Christian principles, pays the costs of running the program, which the paper says is credited with reducing recidivism from Britain’s national average of 60 percent to around 20 percent. But in a letter to governors, Ken Sutton, the director of resettlement at the Prison Service, said: “It would not be appropriate to provide public money at either local or central level, to support this or other religiously based intervention.” Of particular concern to the prison management board was complaints from Muslim groups about the special position given to Christian denominations, especially the Church of England. Says the Commission on British Muslims and Islamaphobia, “Muslim prisoners are not receiving equal access to pastoral care compared to prisoners from Christian backgrounds.”

Muslims may outnumber Anglicans by 2013
If current trends hold with church-going on the decline and the number of mosques on the rise, Great Britain will be home to more Muslims than members of the Church of England, the Church in Wales and the Scottish Episcopal Church. The News Telegraph says that the projections by the statistics organization Christian Research may fuel recent debate begun when a Catholic leader said Christianity was close to being “vanquished” in Britain.

Law may hinder Indian ministry
Cutting off terrorist funds could threaten the flow of foreign money to Christian groups and non-government organizations (NGOs) in India, Ecumenical News International reports. “But Christian bodies fear that more restrictive legislation could lead to a clampdown on foreign donations to legitimate Christian and other organizations unpopular with the government,” it reports.

December 21, 2001