Today’s Headlines:

600 NATIONAL CHURCH PLANTERS ATTEND CONGRESS IN MEXICO CITY

BIBLE SOCIETY NOTES INCREASING DEMAND FOR SCRIPTURES IN CHINA, INDIA

CHAPLAIN OUSTS 6 EVANGELICAL GROUPS FROM GEORGETOWN CAMPUS

100 KIEV SCHOOLS TO BEGIN TEACHING CHRISTIAN ETHICS TO 1ST-GRADERS

Today’s Top Stories:

600 NATIONAL CHURCH PLANTERS ATTEND CONGRESS IN MEXICO CITY

About 600 Mexican church planters recently gathered in Mexico City, Mexico, for a congress to discuss what God has done through their ministries. The gathering included leaders trained through the ministry’s church-planting program in the last 11 years and included representatives from 40 indigenous people groups. Since 1995 these Christians have planted more than 3,000 churches across Mexico. The workshop sessions were intended to both celebrate successes and inform and encourage the church leaders to continue evangelizing, discipling and planting churches in communities nationwide. “As the leaders left the congress they were so full of excitement,” said Bible League National Director Arturo Robles. “Seeing that was a real encouragement to me. We expect to see hundreds of new churches planted in the next year as a result of God working through this event.” (Bible League)

BIBLE SOCIETY NOTES INCREASING DEMAND FOR SCRIPTURES IN CHINA, INDIA

The German Bible Society in Stuttgart, Germany, has published a report noting the rising demand for Bibles in China and India, the world’s two most populous countries. The official Bible printing house in China has turned out more than 46 million copies of the Bible and New Testament since 1987. However, official figures from China indicate distributions reaching 2.5 million copies per year, not including Bibles smuggled into China. A newer and bigger printing press is being installed in Nanjing to boost Bible annual production to 10 million. China, a country with 1.3 billion inhabitants, is home to an estimated 80 million Christians. Three-quarters of these worship in unregistered church communities. Out of India’s 1.1 billion people, only 2.4 percent are Christians. Large numbers of believers are indigenous Adivasi people and Dalits (untouchables) who are often too poor to afford a Bible or even a gospel tract. The Indian Bible Society is striving to provide more audio Bibles for these Christians. (Assist News Service)

CHAPLAIN OUSTS 6 EVANGELICAL GROUPS FROM GEORGETOWN CAMPUS

The Protestant chaplain at Georgetown University wrote a letter to six evangelical groups, including InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, stating they may no longer be involved with Georgetown students in any way, effective immediately. Christianity Today reported that the letter begins, “Blessings and may God’s peace be upon you!” before Chaplain Constance Wheeler explains that “It’s God’s will” the ministries no longer operate on campus. The letter also instructs the ministries to modify all websites to reflect the terminated relationship. Spokesman Erik Smulson said the ouster was a “desire in the Protestant chaplaincy to build the ministry from within Georgetown and its Protestant student leaders rather than rely on outside groups or fellowships.” Yet the same spokesman was more direct with The Washington Post saying the chaplaincy “wants more control over its on-campus ministries.” (Christianity Today)

100 KIEV SCHOOLS TO BEGIN TEACHING CHRISTIAN ETHICS TO 1ST-GRADERS

Officials in Kiev, Ukraine, announced plans for some public schools in the Ukrainian capital city to begin teaching Christian ethics in an experimental program aimed at reinforcing the country’s 1,000-year Christian heritage. The class for 6-year-olds, titled “Christian Ethics in Ukrainian Culture: The Path of Good,” will begin in 100 of Kiev’s 527 schools with an initial audience of 6,000 students. “The goal is to foster moral behavior, spiritual values and a love for the homeland,” said Father Bohdan Ogulchansky, an Orthodox priest and author of the textbook. Kiev’s minority Jewish community has voiced concern about the classes even though parents can opt to pull their children out of the class. Next year city officials hope to expand the program to include all 21,000 first-graders in the capital. Kiev Deputy Mayor Vitaliy Zhuravsky, who once gave every Ukrainian lawmaker a Bible, is one of the project’s proponents. “There is a path of good and a path of evil, and wherever God acts, the devil also appears,” he said. “Whoever opposes introducing Christian ethics — for me, that’s devilry.” (WorldWide Religious News)

* HCJB World Radio worked with local churches to establish Radio Emmanuel, a 500-watt FM station, in Kiev in June. Two additional outlets in Kiev and one in Dneperpetrovsk are also affiliated with New Life Radio, a Russian satellite radio network operated by Christian Radio for Russia with HCJB World Radio as the principal partner. In addition, weekly Ukrainian programs air to the country via shortwave.

Pakistani Christian Maria Samar John tricked her ex-husband during a telephone call to meet her in a Lahore park last week where police arrested him for abducting their two young children. Her former husband, Abdul Ghaffar, kidnapped his then 5-year-old son, Joshua, and 3-year-old daughter, Miriam, during a supervised visit within the Lahore Family Court building on Sept. 13, 2004, because he didn’t want the children to grow up as Christians. John had previously obtained a divorce from Ghaffar after she was kidnapped and forced to marry the Muslim who then beat her for not saying Muslim prayers. Police in Lahore continue to search for the two children who one source places with their paternal grandfather in another city. “So hopefully we will be recovering the children [soon],” the source said. Wassim Muntizar, John’s legal assistant, added that “she’s still scared until she gets the children back. It’s only been two years, but it’s like 200 years for Maria and us.” (Compass Direct)