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Today’s Headlines:

SUSPICIOUS FIRE DESTROYS SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH IN RUSSIA PERSECUTION OF VIETNAM’S TRIBAL CHRISTIANS CONTINUES SURVEY SHOWS ABSENCE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN TURKMENISTAN NIGERIAN MINISTRY OFFERS ALTERNATIVE TO DUMPING UNWANTED BABIES 3D ANIMATED FILM ON CHRIST TO SPREAD GOSPEL IN RESTRICTED COUNTRIES SOUTHERN BAPTISTS MAY FACE FINANCIAL CRISIS IF GIVING KEEPS DROPPING

Today’s News Stories:

SUSPICIOUS FIRE DESTROYS SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH IN RUSSIA Arsonists are suspected of burning down a Seventh-day Adventist Church in the northwestern Russian city of Novgorod Saturday, Sept. 25. The fire also destroyed books, records and archives while water damage rendered the building unusable. The congregation of 98 worshipers is seeking an alternate location. Pastor Stanislav Bazilo said church members arrived on the scene at 5 a.m. to find the building in ruins. Earlier, a guard at a neighboring construction site noticed smoke coming from the building and called fire brigades. “The police discovered that the locks on all the doors were broken,” Bazilo said. “They even found the crowbar with which the locks were broken.” No motive for the suspected arson has been given, and police are investigating. Bazilo has asked city authorities for help in seeking a new worship location. (Adventist News Network)

PERSECUTION OF VIETNAM’S TRIBAL CHRISTIANS CONTINUES Soldiers recently confiscated Bibles, raped, arrested and used electric-shock torture on Vietnamese Christians. In August, 100 soldiers forced their way into H’Duen Buondap’s house in the village of Buon Yang Reh in Daklak province, confiscating Bibles and hymn books, reported the Montagnard Foundation. The group’s leader also reportedly raped Buondap. In another incident on Aug. 21, a group of soldiers and police officers beat Y-Pho Eban and his family with rifles and used stun guns against them because they suspected him of feeding refugees who were hiding in the village of Buon Cuoi. Last month a joint patrol of Vietnamese and Cambodian police also arrested and beat four Cambodian Montagnards who were trying to provide food to a group of 50 Montagnards who had fled Vietnam. The Montagnards were fined and their supplies and money confiscated. Montagnard, a Vietnamese word meaning “mountain people,” includes several Christian tribes living in Vietnam’s central highlands. (Religion Today/Charisma News Service)

SURVEY SHOWS ABSENCE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN TURKMENISTAN A religious freedom survey of the Central Asian country of Turkmenistan shows a “complete lack of freedom” to practice any faith except for Sunni Islam and Russian Orthodox Christianity in a limited number of registered places of worship. All other communities — Baptist, Pentecostal, Adventist, Lutheran and other Protestants, as well as other forms of Islam, Armenian Apostolic, Jewish, Baha’i, Jehovah’s Witness and Hare Krishna — are de facto banned and their activity punishable under the administrative or criminal law. Religious meetings have been broken up with a spate of raids on Protestants and Hare Krishnas since May. Believers have been threatened, detained, beaten, fined and sacked from their jobs while homes used for worship and religious literature have been confiscated. Turkmenistan’s secret police oversee all activities of religious groups and social organizations in the country. (Forum 18 News Service)

* HCJB World Radio works in partnership with Back to the Bible to air Christian Turkmen programs. Twice-weekly broadcasts began airing from an undisclosed site outside of Turkmenistan in 2001 and moved to daily programming earlier this year.

NIGERIAN MINISTRY OFFERS ALTERNATIVE TO DUMPING UNWANTED BABIES While some Nigerians are throwing away unwanted babies, at least one Christian ministry is making strides to change this cruel practice. An article in The Kano Sun told of newborns being dumped daily in poor parts of the city. In some instances rats came and gnawed on parts of the babies while they were still alive. To counter the problem, neighbors and police have been urged to watch for women entering the streets in the early morning hours. So far the efforts of government leaders, civic officials and law enforcement officers have failed to halt the baby-dumping practice and did not offer any positive solutions to the problem. A Nigerian Christian ministry wants to set up a home to reclaim the unwanted babies while educating and counseling the distraught mothers. “Only the gospel can break the chains of Satan in these wicked and inhuman acts,” said the mission leader.

The ministry sponsored a “Health and Healing” seminar in July that attracted more than 2,500 people. Clergymen and Christian medical professionals gave lectures on how to avoid HIV/AIDS, chronic diarrhea, malaria, typhoid and polio while giving guidelines for simple hygiene and safe pregnancies. “The ministers concentrated on salvation, which is the No. 1 healing that everyone needs,” the leader said. At the end of the conference more than 300 ministers spent the evening praying individually with those who requested prayer. At least 200 young women received counseling on the dangers of teenage pregnancy and early marriage; more than 150 women got professional counsel on female health problems; and 300 persons put their faith in Christ. (Missions Insider)

* HCJB World Radio, together with partners In Touch Ministries, SIM and the Evangelical Church of West Africa, began airing weekly half-hour programs in the Igbo language in 2000. The programs air via shortwave to Nigeria’s 15 million Igbo speakers.

3D ANIMATED FILM ON CHRIST TO SPREAD GOSPEL IN RESTRICTED COUNTRIES A new 3D animated film on the life of Christ is close to being completed, says Book of Hope International spokesman Rob Hoskins. The $4-million “God Man” project could be the key to reaching young people in restricted countries such as China. “Although we are only able to get a small number of printed Books of Hope into the country of China, we’ll be able to show the ‘God Man’ on compact video disc to millions of school-aged children in China,” Hoskins says “This will show the story of Jesus in the latest and most relevant way possible.” An additional $800,000 is needed to complete the film by year’s end. “If we don’t hit this deadline, it’ll make it very difficult for us to get this on any type network television at Easter time for the U.S. And then of course, to roll it out in the other languages will be another budget factor for next year as we release it around the world,” Hoskins says. (Mission Network News)

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS MAY FACE FINANCIAL CRISIS IF GIVING KEEPS DROPPING The nation’s largest Protestant denomination could face a crisis within a few years unless churchgoers start giving more money to the denomination. A report conducted by the funding study committee of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) shows that giving by church members decreased steadily from 1968 to 1998 as a percentage of their earnings, dropping to 2.03 percent, the Associated Press reported. The Christian research group, Empty Tomb Inc., indicated that the percentage of donations forwarded from churches to the SBC’s Cooperative Program (funding missions, seminaries and state Baptist convention ministries) dropped to 7.4 percent of church income last year, down from 10.5 percent in the 1980s. The lack of Cooperative Program funds already has forced postponement of 100 missionary deployments and resulted in job cuts at mission boards along with tuition increases at the six Southern Baptist seminaries, the report said. The denomination’s executive committee adopted the document last week. “It is the opinion of the committee none of the entities are in a financial crisis at present,” the report said. “However, all of them are experiencing trends in their fiscal health that could degenerate into a crisis in very few years.” In addition to the sluggish economy, the report blamed lower Cooperative Program giving on increased local church expenditures and greater emphasis on local missions; the belief that SBC ministries have enough money; and con cerns that Cooperative Program funds aren’t spent efficiently and effectively. Another theory is that “political infighting has led to decreased satisfaction with the denomination.” The SBC has 42,000 churches and 16.2 million members. (Charisma News Service)

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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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