MONSOON IN INDIA DESTROYS 12 CHURCHES, DAMAGES BIBLE COLLEGE

TURKMENISTAN POLICE BEAT BAPTIST WITH BIBLE, THREATEN TO HANG HER

ONCE-TORTURED PASTOR BECOMES ADVOCATE FOR PERSECUTED CHRISTIAN

UNITED METHODIST CHURCH MEMBERSHIP IN U.S. CONTINUES TO DECLINE

PREACHERS INCREASINGLY PLAGIARIZE SERMON MATERIAL FOUND ON WEB

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MONSOON IN INDIA DESTROYS 12 CHURCHES, DAMAGES BIBLE COLLEGE

Torrential rains and flooding that have brought Bombay, India, to a standstill have swept away 12 churches affiliated with Gospel for Asia (GFA)

and swamped the ministry’s local Bible college with more than 4 feet of water, ministry officials have confirmed. “Fortunately, none of our workers or students have been hurt,” said a GFA spokesperson. A record 26 inches of rain on Tuesday, July 26, resulted in the death of more than 500 people in Bombay and elsewhere in the state of Maharashtra. Half of the fatalities occurred in Bombay where transport is still disrupted and trading on financial markets suspended. Thousands remain stranded amid fears the number of dead could rise. Particularly hard hit were the city’s slums where 5 million of the Bombay’s 16 million people live. “We have a dozen churches in the slums, and it looks like all of them were completely washed away,” said GFA President Dr. K.P. Yohannan. “Lots of the believers are in terrible suffering.” At the GFA Bible college, study materials were damaged even though they were moved to the upper floors as rain leaked into the old building. Classes were suspended for two days because of the deluge. By Thursday morning school leaders reported that the rains had stopped and the water level was dropping. Pastors and the school’s staff and students are planning to help with relief efforts as soon as the flooding subsides. (Assist News Service)

* Radio programs in nine languages (English, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Nepali, Malayalam, Chattisgarhi, Hmar and Meeitei) are produced at HCJB World Radio’s studio in New Delhi. These are aired from the “Voice of the Great Southland,” the shortwave station operated by HCJB World Radio-Australia.

TURKMENISTAN POLICE BEAT BAPTIST WITH BIBLE, THREATEN TO HANG HER

Police raided a private home in Turkmenabad in the Central Asian country of Turkmenistan where Baptists gather regularly for Bible study and prayer and beat the host, Asiya Zasedatelevaya, with her own Bible and threatened to hang her. Three men burst into her apartment at 9 p.m. Tuesday, July 19 — two of them in civilian clothes accompanied by the local police captain in uniform. “Without identifying themselves or showing authorization for a search, they pushed me away from the door and began a search,” she said. They confiscated her religious literature as well as a Russian dictionary without giving any reason. “Then they started to interrogate me,” said Zasedatelevaya. When she refused to reveal where she had obtained her Christian books, one of the plainclothes men struck her on the head with her Bible while the second punched her in the face. “The local policeman threatened to hang me,” she added. “During all this my 4-year-old child was present in the apartment.” Zasedatelevaya was then taken to the police station where officials questioned her about neighbors’ complaints that she had hosted meetings in her apartment lasting two to three hours. Zasedatelevaya admitted that she regularly hosts weekly meetings of between 10 and 15 local Baptists “to study the Word of God.” She has appealed to authorities to return the confiscated literature and stop harassing her for holding worship services. (Forum 18 News Service)

* HCJB World Radio works in partnership with Back to the Bible to air Christian programs in the Turkmen language. Broadcasts began in 2001 and have been aired daily since 2003.

ONCE-TORTURED PASTOR BECOMES ADVOCATE FOR PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS

A Filipino pastor and evangelist who was tortured and scheduled for public hanging in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Christmas Day, 1992, now leads an organization that supports persecuted Christians worldwide. Wally Magdangal had just two days left to live when he was spared execution because of the intervention of international human rights groups, the U.S. Congress and the White House. The Saudi Arabian muttawa (Islamic religious police) accused him of blasphemy. It was a trumped-up charge based on his agreement with a Christian magazine article that predicted the ultimate fall of Islam, he said. He said he was actually imprisoned because he had led an underground church in Riyadh for 10 years. It had become one of the largest churches in Saudi Arabia with between 300 and 700 people attending each service. Magdangal was imprisoned and tortured for months. His wife, Mathilda, was able to circulate her husband’s story to international media outlets. Instead of being executed, he was expelled and returned to the Philippines. Magdangal and his family moved to the U.S. in 1993 where he operates Christians in Crisis. He visits heads of state to tell them about the persecution and torture of Christians and other groups in Saudi Arabia. (Religion Today/Charisma News Service)

UNITED METHODIST CHURCH MEMBERSHIP IN U.S. CONTINUES TO DECLINE

The United Methodist Church, the second-largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., reports a net loss of 71,000 members in 2004, bringing the total to less than 8.2 million. That followed a decline of 69,000 in 2003. The United Methodists have suffered annual declines for decades. The latest report shows some membership growth in the South with the largest drops mostly in the Midwest and Northeast. (Agape Press/AP)

PREACHERS INCREASINGLY PLAGIARZE SERMON MATERIAL FOUND ON WEB

Brian Larsen of PreachingToday.com says the Internet is turning some preachers into thieves. He is calling attention to the phenomenon of sermon plagiarism, a trend he says is on the rise among preachers. Larsen believes this kind of intellectual property theft creates some heavy ethical problems. “People assume when they hear someone preach that the general outline is their own and the specific words are their own,” he says. But when the words and presentation structure are taken from someone else without crediting the source, he contends preachers are being dishonest with their listeners. He adds that preachers who use material generated by others are representing themselves as having gifts, abilities and insights they do not actually have. Larsen says the same rules against plagiarism should apply to preachers just as they do to others in society. (Religion Today/Agape Press)