Lausanne World Pulse – World Pulse Archives – World Pulse Archives

Germany’s 24-hour Bible channel
“Bible TV,” Germany’s first such channel, will begin broadcasting this fall with an all-Bible movie format, reports Idea Evangelical News Agency . Scripture readings and films such as the Jesus Film will be shown around the clock. German publisher Norman Rentrop chairs the non-profit organization behind the project, comprised of 15 Protestant and Catholic individuals and Christian ministries. The channel will join 16 other Christian television stations across Europe.

Nigerian Assemblies’ growth

In December, more than 60,000 members of the Nigerian Assemblies of God gathered to celebrate the Decade of Harvest project’s end. During the last 10 years the denomination has not only gained 1.2 million new members, but also ordained 5,026 new pastors and planted 4,044 new churches in Nigeria. The emphasis on reaching previously unreached people groups led to 75 church plants in areas previously untouched by Christianity, says Charles Osueke, Nigeria’s superintendent.

War hampers outreach

Evangelical ministries are struggling to help meet the desperate needs of 16 million people in war-ravaged Congo, but Beth Allen of Food for the Hungry says that the situation is unsafe for its workers, who have been evacuated. The organization is weighing whether to pull out completely.

HCJB Japanese broadcasts move to Internet

HCJB World Radio in Quito, Ecuador, ended 37 years of shortwave broadcasting in Japanese on January 31, although daily programs will still be aired in the language via satellite and on the Internet. HCJB reports that when a Japanese digital radio network learned the shortwave broadcasts would be ending, staffers there asked HCJB for recorded programs to air. The programs air on digital radio channel 301 three times daily.

Mega-sanctuary in Paraguay

Emilio Abreu, pastor of Family Worship Center Assembly of God in Asuncion, Paraguay, reports that his church is planning to build a sanctuary that seats 20,000. It is also planting mission churches, as well as building one in the city of Nemby and another in Asun-cion that will hold 700 and 1,000 people, respectively. With the completion of these two projects, Family Worship Center will have planted 11 churches. A growing home Bible groups network is key to the church’s growth, the pastor says. In recent years, these groups account for the rise in new attendees. Abreu leads a group of 12 men, while his wife leads a group of 12 women. Members of these groups in turn lead other home groups, which sometimes become new congregations. The church also offers special groups for teens, university students and singles.

Georgians love Stalin

Stalin hasn’t fallen out of favor in Gori, Georgia, his hometown, though he fell out of favor in the former Soviet Union when he died in 1953. The town is home to a museum honoring the reviled dictator, who is also remembered with the first toast at celebrations, a big bronze statue, and an avenue with his name. Stalin is said to be responsible for tens of millions of deaths in political purges.

Japanese love gospel music

Even though only one percent of Japanese is Christian, African American gospel music enjoys general popularity among Japan’s people, who are clamoring to join gospel choirs and have the music played at their weddings, Reuters reports.

Promises unkept

The Moscow Times reports that only 14 of Russia’s 89 regional governments follow through on paying benefits it has entitled to its families. Half of Russian families with children live below the country’s subsistence level. A family with three children runs a 75 percent chance of having only a dollar a day for each family member to live on.

Free at last

Freedom House’s annual report on freedom in the world finds that almost 41 percent of the world’s people-2.5 billion-live in “free” countries, and 1.4 billion or almost 24 percent of the world’s people live in “partly free” countries. This is the highest percent in the report’s 20-year history. In nine years, the survey notes, economies of free countries grew 70 percent more than non-free countries. The countries Freedom House notes as greatly improved are Mexico, which moved from partly free to free, Yugoslavia, Peru and parts of Asia. The worst countries are Afghanistan, Burma, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Turkmenistan.

One Iranian pastor’s testimony

Amid tortures, interrogation and solitary confinement for his Christian faith, one night in 1989 Roubik Hoospian’s guard tapped on his jail cell door. The Muslim guard wanted to hear about the pastor’s belief in Christ. Four hours later, the guard accepted Christ, reports the Los Angeles Times. He ministered for seven years in Iran, even though five other pastors were murdered around him, including his brother. In the early 1990s he learned that radical Muslims planned to kill him, so he fled with his family to California, the Times reports, where he preaches in Farsi and Armenian and has a television ministry to the million-strong Iranian and Armenian community. He told the paper that his suffering strengthened his faith. “We keep our faith because we believe that Jesus is our savior,” Hoospian says. “Persecution is normal in the Bible.”

The poor helping the poorer in Brazil

The Rio de Janeiro-based Institute of Religious Studies says in 10 years, volunteer organizations have quadrupled in number. About a quarter of 170 million Brazilians volunteer in some capacity, one of the developing world’s highest rates. But what’s unusual about this trend, the Washington Post reports, is that more than half of the volunteers are poor, earning $230 a month. Writes the Post: “The blossoming of volunteerism in Brazil is evidence of many things: the seemingly intractable nature of Brazil’s social ills, heightened concern over how to solve those problems and growing impatience with government’s ability to address them. It also is evidence of how the power of democracy-only two decades old here-can go beyond clean elections and fair trials to affect a society in ways that are subtler but no less profound.” One volunteer says, “When you’re a volunteer, you forget yourself a little bit.”

Anti-wife-beating bill

Domestic violence is high in Kenya because not only is it regarded as normal for husbands to beat their wives-60 percent of Nairobi wives are beaten- some tribes even regard such beatings as a way for a man to “express love” for his wife. In 1999, about 50 women died at their husbands’ hand. But if a bill aimed at stopping the practice becomes law, wife-beaters could find themselves in jail for a year and fined $1,300, reports the BBC. The bill defines abuse as physical, sexual and mental, and covers harassment and threats. It protects husbands and children and also compensates and protects victims. A provision of the bill criminalizes the forcing of children into early marriage.

Cholera in Southern Africa

Villages without clean water are suffering a cholera outbreak, which has infected more than 16,000 and killed 63. South Africa, Swaziland, Mozam-bique, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe have reported cases of the disease. The water-borne bacterial disease commonly appears as the summer rainy season begins, but this outbreak is more severe than usual. Cholera causes severe diarrhea, which dehydrates its victims.

Kenyan guns and crime

In a bid aimed at lowering poverty and crime, government officials in Kenya are seeking to encourage people to give up their weapons. One politician says every family has a gun-many of them AK-47s and other semiautomatic assault rifles-and that most clans have militias. Following Kenyan independence in the 1960s, animosity between the government and the people is high. Police do little to protect them from crime. Gun amnesties and other government plans to get people to hand over their guns haven’t worked, reports the Christian Science Monitor. “What we are finding is that if a weapon is surrendered voluntarily, that person has already acquired a better one,” the politician says. The latest plan calls for development projects in exchange for arms caches. “We’re saying to them: ‘If you hand in 100 guns, we will build for you a school, or a health clinic, or a borehole [well],” says a development worker. “We’re showing them they don’t need guns, they need development.”

China isn’t Vietnam

A quarter-century after North and South Vietnam reunified, though officially communist, the country is continuing capitalist policies introduced in 1990. In contrast, China launched reforms in 1978, but its history includes the Cultural Revolution, when leaders clung to radical ideology and 20 million Chinese starved or were put to death, notes Asiaweek. While Vietnam is not a free country, children of former South Vietnamese officials “are today thriving in a united Vietnam.” Shops, restaurants and international businesses thrive in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon. Says one Vietnamese tour guide, “We, the sons and daughters of the old South Vietnam, are doing well. If you have the ability, you rise to the sky. If you don’t, you stay like a rock where you are.”

Hindus “washing away sins”

Hindus from around the world converged on Allahabad, India, to “wash away sins” in the frigid Ganges River during the 6-week-long Kumbh Mela festival that drew some 65 million Hindus before it closed in late February. The fest is held every 12 years. Pilgrims hold that bathing where three sacred rivers meet will absolve them of sin and hasten their journeys to Nirvana after death.

Switzerland going to pot

The European country famed for its neutrality, watches and pocket knives is becoming a haven for farming top-grade marijuana. While police have seized crops and its farmers go to jail if the plants are intended for narcotic usage, the country has 300 legal hemp shops, which buy the weed, Time Magazine reports. Annual sales are $550 million. The Swiss government announced in late 2000 its plans to decriminalize marijuana use and possession for individuals, and regulate stores that sell it. That would make Switzerland similar to Holland in its allowing of marijuana, but it would ban sales to minors and foreigners. One public health official predicts that despite the liberal laws on pot use in Switzerland, the government will not legalize it.

France becomeslawsuit-happy

France’s highest appeals court awarded a deaf, brain-damaged, visually impaired 17-year-old damages against health care workers who overlooked his mother’s case of rubella responsible for his handicaps. Knowing her illness would have caused her to abort the pregnancy, Time Magazine reports of the teen’s “wrongful birth” lawsuit. 1999 marked a leveling off of such suits after a 50 percent rise since 1984. One judge notes, “It’s in part a result of the general Americanization of French society, a social and legal change that isn’t over yet.”

European family associations want “child-raising salaries”

Mothers and fathers who give up careers to care for their children should get money from public coffers to do so, family associations said at the European Family Congress in France in November. Idea Evangelical News Agency reports that the chair of one German family association says that parents can’t raise children while pursuing careers outside the home because “family work” demands total effort; those who work and have children are “modern slaves.” A Norwegian politician says that family and marriage are being “devalued” in Europe.

Religious hermits on the rise in the UK

Brits aren’t going to church like they used to, but more of them are choosing lonely lives of spiritual contemplation, reports The Guardian. An Anglican bishop, a spiritual director for contemplatives, says, “People feel they are being called to a greater consecration of their lives to God. Most are living normal lives but, with people living in more loosely structured communities, it is much easier to be solitary.” At the same time, fewer Roman Catholics are opting for such lives. One fellowship of contemplatives reports that its members are Catholic, Quaker, Pentecostal and Anglican.

Sweden’s church-state split

The Church of Sweden has had a “disestablished” status for more than a year. As of January 1, 2000, the Lutheran Church no longer receives $500 million in taxpayer funding, and it is no longer controlled by the government. Sweden’s royal palace has no official religion. Church leaders say that while they had feared the split, it has proven a blessing. One pastor tells the Washington Post, “I think we all see a stronger sense of commitment now. People realize it’s up to them to maintain our churches, not the government.” Fears of an exodus from the church were unjustified, the pastor says. “Just about everybody who was a church member stayed with us.” But in a church that can accommodate 900 in Sweden, which has been called Europe’s most secular country, typically around 30 attend Sunday services. “People don’t go to Mass. They don’t even know how to go. They call me up and say, ‘Do I need to reserve a seat for Sunday morning?'” The formerly mandatory church tax has become optional as a “checkoff” box on tax forms, and each taxpayer can designate a faith- Lutheran or other-to receive funds.

Swedish youth lift up Jesus

In late October, 10,600 young Swedes attended a 27-hour-long marathon of music, dance, preaching and prayer to raise awareness of Christ in Europe’s most secular country. Christians and non-Christians alike attended the event. Magazinet reports that many prayed for their friends and others accepted Christ during evangelistic sermons. Says a Christian leader, “One of the recognisable trends in Sweden is that a growing number of young Christians, on their own or in groups, are starting to plant Christian churches for their generation, using the Internet as a platform for training and exchanging ideas and experiences.” See http://www.rockthe globe.com.

Superstitious Germans

Germans are more believing in lucky symbols. In a 2000 opinion poll by Allensbach Research Institute, 42 percent said they were “sure” that a four-leaf clover would bring luck, reports the Idea Evangelical News Agency. In 1973, only 26 percent held this view. The poll found that superstition is even more widespread in former East Germany and among women.