Today’s Headlines:

CHRISTIAN GROUPS IN JEOPARDY AS CHECHEN REBELS STRIKE RUSSIA AGAIN

VENEZUELA’S VICE PRESIDENT DEFENDS EXPULSION OF MISSIONARIES

‘STRATEGY-COORDINATOR’ CHURCHES FOCUS ON SPECIFIC PEOPLE GROUPS

FOUNDATION RAISES FUNDS TO PLANT 1,000 CHURCHES IN ETHIOPIA

PLANS UNDER WAY TO DEVELOP CHRISTIAN THEME PARK IN ISRAEL

Today’s Top Stories:

CHRISTIAN GROUPS IN JEOPARDY AS CHECHEN REBELS STRIKE RUSSIA AGAIN

Scores of Chechen rebels hit the city of Nalchik, Russia, on Thursday, Oct. 13, striking police and government buildings in Russia’s Caucasus region. The city is just 60 miles southeast of Beslan, site of the deadly terrorist attack on a school by Chechen rebels more than a year ago.

Sergey Rakhuba of Russian Ministries, which operates an outreach center near Nalchik, says the violence forced the organization’s children’s ministry director, Marina Kudasheva, and her family to flee their home before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a citywide lockdown. “We were planning to have a training seminar for all children ministry workers in the entire region in the next two weeks,” Rakhuba said. “Now we have to reconsider that because of the situation and have to change locations for that seminar.”

Despite the violence, Russian Ministries is reaching the next generation of Christian leaders. “We want people to continue praying for Russian Ministries,” Rakhuba said. “Pray from wisdom for all those Christian leaders that are in the area there to bring comfort to those who are suffering, to those who lost loved ones.”

The Associated Press reported that militants took hostages, turning a provincial capital into a war zone. Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the offensive in Nalchik, a city of 235,000 in the mostly Muslim republic of Kabardino-Balkariya.

Deputy Interior Minister Andrei Novikov said late Thursday that 61 militants were killed, some from Kabardino-Balkariya and some from other republics in the Caucasus. Russian and regional officials said 12 civilians and 12 police officers were killed. Russian news agencies, citing figures from Russia’s Center for Catastrophic Medicine, reported that 13 people were killed and 116 others were hospitalized, but it was unclear whether those figures referred only to civilians.

Estimates of the number of militants involved ranged from 60 to 300, and the Interfax news agency quoted an aide to the president of Kabardino-Balkariya as saying late Thursday that 17 had been detained.

Sources: Mission Network News, Assist News Service, Associated Press

* HCJB World Radio reaches across Russia with a variety of radio ministries. The mission began sending gospel broadcasts across the country via shortwave in 1941, first from Quito, Ecuador, and in recent years from the U.K. In the early 1990s the ministry began “planting” local radio ministries in Russia and now works with partners nationwide. In 2000 HCJB World Radio helped launch New Life Radio, the first Christian Russian satellite radio network. More than 63 downlinks have been placed in more than 42 cities (including Nalchik) across Russia and neighboring countries.

VENEZUELA’S VICE PRESIDENT DEFENDS EXPULSION OF MISSIONARIES

Venezuelan vice president Jos © Vicente Rangel on Thursday defended a decision to expel New Tribes Mission (NTM) from the country, saying members of the group had links to the CIA — a charge the organization strongly denied. Rangel spoke a day after President Hugo Ch ¡vez announced he was ordering the group to leave, citing U.S. “imperialist infiltration.”

“We have intelligence reports that some of them are CIA,” Rangel said. “The president’s decision was based on reports that their actions create situations that compromise the country’s sovereignty.”

Nita Zelenak, a spokeswoman at NTM’s headquarters in Sanford, Fla., denied any CIA links and said the group knows nothing about “strategic information” that Ch ¡vez accused it of gathering. “I really didn’t have any idea what he might be talking about,” she said. “When you consider the people that we’re with, there really isn’t any sense of strategic information they would have.”

NTM has some 160 staff members in Venezuela, including about 30 Venezuelans. Zelenak said the organization didn’t plan to remove its missionaries immediately and would try to convince Ch ¡vez to reconsider.

On Friday the U.S. rejected charges that NTM were working as spies and urged authorities to start talks with the missionaries. “I can categorically deny that,” U.S. Ambassador to Caracas William Brownfield told reporters when asked about the spy charges. “I still hope we can have direct talks between the mission and the government to resolve their differences.”

Ch ¡vez’s announcement came just days after U.S. preacher Pat Robertson attacked the left-wing Venezuelan leader for the second time this year, accusing him of funding Osama Bin Laden and seeking atomic material from Iran.

Sources: Associated Press, Reuters

‘STRATEGY-COORDINATOR’ CHURCHES FOCUS ON SPECIFIC PEOPLE GROUPS

First Baptist Woodway in Waco, Texas, typifies a new phenomenon in international missions — the “strategy-coordinator” church. “It’s a church that is owning the task of taking the gospel to an unengaged people group,” explains Ken Winter of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board’s church services team. “It is making a commitment that says, ‘We, under God’s leadership, are going to do whatever it takes to see this people group coming to Christ, being discipled and planting churches that will lead to other churches being planted.'” Winter says about 40 Southern Baptist churches are committed to reaching specific people groups and cities around the world that aren’t being touched by any missionary or evangelical group. Strategy-coordinator churches vary in size and type, ranging from large congregations with multiple mission commitments to smaller bodies focused on a single task. Strategy-coordinator churches take primary responsibility for reaching a specific population or location — strategizing, guiding the work and mobilizing others to get involved. Leaders from 23 such churches met earlier this year with IMB strategists to trade ideas and sharpen ministry models. (Religion Today/Baptist Press)

FOUNDATION RAISES FUNDS TO PLANT 1,000 CHURCHES IN ETHIOPIA

Dr. Charles Blair and the Blair Foundation in Denver, Colo., announced Wednesday, Aug. 31, the successful completion of a two-year project to secure sponsors to fund the planting of 1,000 evangelical churches in Ethiopia’s previously under-reached Benishangul-Gumuz region near the border with Sudan. The “Ethiopian Call” project officially launched in September 2003 in response to a plea from the region’s Christian president, Yaregal Aysheshim. At the time there were just seven churches in the region. The $1.85 million pledged by sponsors will provide a year’s salary, study Bibles and four training sessions for native Ethiopian missionaries as well as Bibles for new converts, a church benevolence fund, and materials to help construct a church building. Land for construction is granted by Aysheshim as soon as a village congregation reaches 25 adult members. The goal is for each Ethiopian missionary to plant churches in at least two neighboring villages in the next two years. About 1 million people live in 3,000 villages in the region. (Religion Today/Religion News Service)

* Staff members at HCJB World Radio-Australia’s studios record Oromo language programs that air to 28 million speakers in Ethiopia and Kenya via FEBA Radio’s shortwave facilities.

PLANS UNDER WAY TO DEVELOP CHRISTIAN THEME PARK IN ISRAEL

Plans are under way to develop an evangelical Christian center in the area along the northeastern edge of Israel’s Lake Kinneret in Israel, reported the For Zion’s Sake ministry website. As part of the project, Israel will initially lease 125 acres in the area between Capernaum, Tabgha and the Mount of Beatitudes. Plans are to build a center that will provide believers with a sense that “Jesus lived here.” Tourism Minister Abraham Hirchson said in a website report that most tourism to Israel is by Christians. “Evangelicals will invest $50 million to $70 million in the project, and that they will design the area with Israeli consent.” he said. “I hope that in November we’ll be able to sign the first agreement.” Hirchson estimates that the new center will draw up to 1.5 million additional tourists a year. The northeastern area of Lake Kinneret was chosen for the project because most chapters of the New Testament refer to Jesus’ activity there. (Assist News Service)