RELIEF TEAMS RUSH AID TO INDIA AS MONSOON FLOODING CONTINUES

POLICE BREAK UP BAPTIST CHURCH SERVICE IN TURKMENISTAN

BELARUSIAN CHURCHES ENCOUNTER MORE REGISTRATION PROBLEMS

BRAVE CHRISTIANS PAVE WAY FOR EVANGELISM IN CHECHNYA

VIEWERS OF CHRISTIAN ARABIC TV NETWORK FORM CHURCH IN SWEDEN

Today’s Top Stories:

RELIEF TEAMS RUSH AID TO INDIA AS MONSOON FLOODING CONTINUES

Gospel for Asia (GFA) and Believers Church leaders are calling for intense prayer as relief teams reach out to minister to tens of thousands of families affected by India’s heaviest rains in 100 years. After being bombarded with 26 inches of rain in one day last week, Mumbai (Bombay) and other parts of western India suffered flooding that has killed at least 1,500 people. And the forecast is calling for more rain. GFA President K.P. Yohannan called the floods a “huge tragedy of unbelievable magnitude. More than 283,000 homes have been destroyed, and 16,000 villages have been hit. These are people who live in shacks with dirt floors, and everything they owned was swept away.” While the government estimates that 5.5 million people have been affected, that number could be double, Yohannan said. GFA’s Compassion Services teams — including more than 100 pastors, staff and students — have been joined by dozens of Believers Church members in providing food and other relief services in the face of continuing heavy rains. (Religion Today/Gospel for Asia)

POLICE BREAK UP BAPTIST CHURCH SERVICE IN TURKMENISTAN

About 10 plainclothes police officers broke up the Sunday-morning worship service of the local registered Baptist Church in Mary, a town in eastern Turkmenistan, on July 31. Protestant sources who asked not to be named said one of the intruders identified himself as Eziz Agaev from the local police department that deals with terrorism and organized crime. “The service was broken up, then they started filming everyone present and the building with a video-camera,” said one of the church members. “Then they asked everyone to take all their books with them and follow them on foot to the police department.” Police then started individually interrogating all those who had been present in the service, including children, in separate rooms. “The questions were the same . . . about place of birth, place of work, residence, religious affiliation, how you ended up here [at church], why you come here, why you don’t speak Turkmen, who pays you, how much they pay. .. . .” Church members were freed at about 1 p.m., nearly three hours after the service had been broken up. “They demanded that each one promise not to come to services in future,” the Protestants reported. “They wanted to invite the teachers of the children present with their parents, but because teachers are now off on holiday they were not able to summon them to the police.” (Forum 18 News Service)

BELARUSIAN CHURCHES ENCOUNTER MORE REGISTRATION PROBLEMS

Religious communities in Belarus continue to face “many difficulties” as a result of the country’s religious law which came into effect in 2002. Recently Pastor Leonid Voronenko of New Generation Church in Baranovichi intended to convert a warehouse into a church, but local authorities have refused to allow the original purpose of the building to be changed or even give the church full rights to the land beneath the building. In another case, New Life Church in the capital city of Minsk was informed on Friday, July 15, that the city’s executive committee would review the issue of terminating the church’s right to the plot of land beneath the cowshed that it uses for services. Officials insist that the building may only be used for its designated purpose and have imposed heavy fines for violations. On June 7 local authorities in Ivatsevichi (Brest region) refused to give the local Baptist Union congregation permission to build a new prayer house on the site of their old one because it’s in a residential area. Pastor Ernst Sabilo of the independent Belarusian Evangelical church was unable to re-register at his Minsk apartment and was given two months to find a suitable legal address. (Forum 18 News Service)

BRAVE CHRISTIANS PAVE WAY FOR EVANGELISM IN CHECHNYA

A Russian soldier was killed and two wounded when Special Forces were ambushed by Chechen rebels in the mountains last week. Despite such dangers, Christians are in the republic in southern Russia to hold Christian summer camps. Sergey Rakhuba of Russian Ministries calls this an answer to prayer. “(For) the first time since the war started in Chechnya in 1992 there was a Christian camp held right in its capital, Grozny. And a Russian Ministries team traveled there from Vladikavkaz to spend a week with children from Muslim families.” Many of these children have never known peace, Rakhuba added. “We came to build a bridge of peace. We want to help them and tell them about Jesus. . . . For the first time they hear about hope in Jesus. And we know that the seed that will be planted by our team there into their hearts will grow.” (Mission Network News)

VIEWERS OF CHRISTIAN ARABIC TV NETWORK FORM CHURCH IN SWEDEN

Recently 10 people of Arabic descent in a small city in Sweden came to know Christ through broadcasts from the SAT-7 Arabic satellite network. When the new believers could not find an Arabic-language church in their city, they decided to start a church on their own. Centers affiliated with SAT-7 in Europe often help viewers find and integrate into local Arabic churches, but this time no church was available. (Mission Network News)

CORRECTION: The July 26 update incorrectly stated that NTV-Plus is Russia’s first religious television channel. While this is the first TV channel dedicated to disseminating ideals of the Russian Orthodox Church, religious television programming has been present since the breakup of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Evangelical ministries in St. Petersburg, Russia, have been broadcasting for more than three years while other Christian broadcasters deliver television programming via satellite to homes across Russia and the C.I.S.