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Today’s News Headlines:

PAKISTANI AUTHORITIES HOLD ISLAMIC LEADER SUSPECTED IN 3 ATTACKS VIETNAMESE OFFICIALS PUSH TO DESTROY CHURCH DESPITE AGREEMENT NEW MISSIONS WEBSITE GIVES INFORMATION ON 11,000 PEOPLE GROUPS TRAINING PASTORS KEY TO REACHING AFRICA FOR CHRIST UCLA TO STUDY COLLEGE STUDENTS’ RELIGIOUS PRACTICES ARCHBISHOP CALLS FOR UNITY AMONG WORLD’S 70 MILLION ANGLICANS

Today’s News Stories:

Pakistani Authorities Hold Islamic Leader Suspected in 3 Attacks Pakistani authorities are holding an Islamic militant leader suspected of masterminding attacks on three Christian facilities last year, wounding 50 persons and leaving a dozen people dead, including two Americans. The attacks targeted Murree Christian School, a Presbyterian hospital and a church. Pakistani authorities picked up Abdul Jabbar during a July 2 raid in a remote village near the city of Sargodha, 120 miles southwest of Islamabad, an intelligence official told the Associated Press. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Jabbar played a key role in organizing the attack on Murree Christian School, 30 miles east of Islamabad, on Aug. 5, 2002. The news comes close to the one-year anniversary of the brutal attack on the school. InterServe’s Joanna Smith says the school and its staff have been relocated to Thailand for security reasons. “They were concerned that there was a pattern of terrorist attacks against Christians and Westerners in the area,” she says. The boarding school provides a Christian education to about 120 students. Jabbar allegedly heads a faction of the outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammed group. (Mission Network News/AP)

VIETNAMESE OFFICIALS PUSH TO DESTROY CHURCH DESPITE AGREEMENT Vietnamese officials continue to call for the destruction of the Thu Thiem Church in Ho Chi Minh City despite an agreement reached July 10 that spared the facility from being torn down. In the agreement, government authorities acknowledged taking too long to consider the church’s application for the new building while church leaders admitted to beginning construction on farmland before receiving a government permit. Pastor Truong Van Nganh also agreed to withdraw the letter of protest he had written. Nganh’s admission to the Religious Department of Ho Chi Minh City appears to have provoked a reaction from city and district civil authorities. At a meeting on Friday, July 25, local officials insisted that Nganh pay the fine for illegally building the church and urged him to tear it down. It is now believed that the agreement was reached only to appease international observers and to deceive Nganh into making his admission so officials could ultimately order the destruction of the church. Meanwhile, church leaders continue to seek concessions and permits that would normally be available only to registered churches in the communist country. (Voice of the Martyrs)

NEW MISSIONS WEBSITE GIVES INFORMATION ON 11,000 PEOPLE GROUPS A new website (peoplegroups.org) gives web surfers the opportunity to search more than 11,000 people groups by name, country, religion, language or status of evangelization. The information provided on each people group includes alternate names, country, primary language, religion and population. Visitors can download a list of all the world’s people groups as well as well as tables and charts on the status of global evangelization. They can also add information about pockets of unreached people groups they have discovered in their own cities. Information for the site is collected through a global network of evangelical missions researchers, then gathered and analyzed by the global research department of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board (IMB). “This site is great because it allows users to help us keep our information fresh,” said IMB researcher Jim Haney. “If you find people groups in your community, let us know.” The site also offers answers to frequently asked questions and explains some of the frequently used missions acronyms that laymen often find confusing. (Baptist Press)

TRAINING PASTORS KEY TO REACHING AFRICA FOR CHRIST Theological education is the key to reaching the African continent with the gospel, says Hanz Finzel of the Conservative Baptist mission agency, CBInternational (CBI). As a result, CBI supports educational ministries such as the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology in Kenya which recently graduated 40 students. Finzel says the curriculum is “practically oriented” with many practical ministry assignments. “As a result, we’re not just filling up their heads, but we’re filling up their hearts.” Supporting this type of national education is essential, Finzel says “I’ve seen a lot of times where people will come here to U.S. to attend our seminaries for training, and oftentimes they won’t go back to the country they came from.” (Mission Network News)

* HCJB World Radio has worked with radio partners to install radio ministries in four cities of Kenya: Nairobi, Athi River, Mombasa and Tinderet. Staff members from the HCJB World Radio Engineering Center in Elkhart, Ind., also recently visited Kisumu to survey the situation for a potential radio partner.

UCLA TO STUDY COLLEGE STUDENTS’ RELIGIOUS PRACTICES Researchers at UCLA will spend $1.9 million to survey the religious habits and attitudes of college students, an area they say has been largely ignored by campus leaders. The school’s Higher Education Research Institute plans to survey 90,000 students on 150 public, private and religious campuses in the fall of 2004. “Higher education today has increasingly neglected students’ ‘inner’ development — the sphere of values and beliefs, emotional maturity, spirituality and self-awareness that are fundamental to their capacity to understand others,” said the institute’s director, Alexander Astin, who will lead the study. Researchers plan to ask how many students are “actively searching and curious about spiritual issues,” how often they attend religious services and which rituals or religious behaviors are most attractive to students. Researchers also want to know what role doubt plays in students’ spiritual journeys, and whether school or peer pressure “get in the way” of spiritual development. “The spiritual growth of students, in the broadest sense, receives virtually no attention in discussions about educational reform,” Astin said. (Religion Today)

ARCHBISHOP CALLS FOR UNITY AMONG WORLD’S 70 MILLION ANGLICANS The archbishop of Canterbury, faced with a deepening split between conservative Third World churches and liberal Western churches in the Anglican Communion, appealed to his archbishops to maintain unity. Archbishop Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the world’s 70 million Anglican Christians, said in a letter sent last Wednesday that Anglican churches “need more than ever to pay attention to one another.” The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion. Williams was responding indirectly to a statement issued in Fairfax, Va., by primates and bishops from the U.S. on the eve of the Episcopalians’ General Convention. The conservatives’ statement promised a “dramatic realignment” of the global church if the Episcopalians allowed an openly gay priest to serve as bishop of New Hampshire, or allow same-sex unions. Third World leaders oppose the Western church’s liberal policies on homosexuality. They cut ties with a Canadian diocese after it allowed the blessing of gay unions, and forced the withdrawal of an openly gay bishop-elect in the Church of England. Williams, who holds a more liberal attitude toward homosexuality but has vowed to uphold church teaching against homosexual acts, told the primates that if they value the Communion, “we are bound by our duties and responsibilities as bishops to care for its survival and coherence.” (Religion Today)

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* * * * * * * * * * * * * James A. Ferrier HCJB World Radio U.S. Ministries Communications Director E-mail: Phone: 1-719-590-9800 Fax: 1-719-590-9801 Web: http://www.hcjb.org http://www.beyondthecall.org * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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