Today’s Headlines:

INDIA’S ECONOMIC BOOM PROMPTS MARKETPLACE MISSIONS TRAINING

214 CHRISTIANS JOIN WITH HUNGER STRIKE FOR BELARUS CHURCH

MINISTRY AIDS ORPHANS AND WIDOWS FROM SHINING PATH TERROR

PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS ASKING FOR PRAYERS, CONGRESSIONAL HELP

SURVEY: MARRIAGE RATES REACH LOWEST EVER IN U.S. HOUSEHOLDS

Are you interested in learning more about the people God is using around the world?

Podcast or listen online to HCJB World Radio’s World Radio Programme!

http://www.hcjb.org/worldwide/australia/world_radio_programme.html

Today’s Top Stories:

INDIA’S ECONOMIC BOOM PROMPTS MARKETPLACE MISSIONS TRAINING

As India’s economy takes off and a new middle class develops, Global Advance is hosting conferences intended to ingrain marketplace missions into business people. Global Advance’s Jonathon Shibley says, “This is an opportunity that God is giving them to use their resources, use their knowledge, to be able to reach the people in the marketplace as places like Hyderabad, and Mumbai and Delhi continue to just explode on the economic scene.” The staff works to re-train the national’s thinking so that every transaction is a ministry opportunity. Shibley says during a conference, they work to get businesspeople to own the idea that “their job really is a mission field where they can display God’s glory through their talent, through their work.” In addition, Shibley says, “Through the money that they generate, they can be generous to invest that back into the kingdom.” (Mission Network News)

214 CHRISTIANS ENTER HUNGER STRIKE FOR BELARUS CHURCH

More than 214 Protestant Christians have joined a hunger strike protesting government actions against the New Life Church in Belarus. The 1,000-member strong church in Minsk, Belarus has been denied registration and obstructed at every turn as it has tried to rent a meeting place. The church purchased a property in 2002 but was blocked with conflicting zoning ordinances ending with the city ordering the forced sale of the building. On Friday, October 6, 17 New Life members moved into the building and commenced a hunger strike in protest. Trucks, trailers and a bulldozer menaced the property for some time until dispersing. As word spread, Christians from across Belarus and beyond have risen to show solidarity with New Life church. By Monday, October 9, 500 believers attended a prayer service for the church. Reports from Friday, October 13 indicate 214 New Life members are taking part in the hunger strike. Viktoria Medvedeva, a New Life hunger striker said, “I am ready to starve until the authorities return our church.” As the hunger strike enters its 11th day (17 Oct) the situation grows critical. Amongst the hunger strikers are some senior citizens who have given up both food and water. (World Evangelical Alliance)

MINISTRY AIDS ORPHANS AND WIDOWS FROM SHINING PATH TERROR

Peru’s Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) Maoist guerrilla leader Abimael Guzman received his sentence to life in prison on Friday, October 6, for leading a 12-year rebellion in which about 70,000 people died throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. In the meantime, Latin American Indian Ministries (LAIM), has launched a project to help the widows and orphans of the victims. According to sources in the Christian community in Peru, the savage killings included those of 30,000 Quechua Christians in the Ayachucho area of the Andes including 800 pastors who were murdered. The violence also has left behind more than 5,000 widows and nearly 14,000 orphaned children. Dr. Dale W. Kietzman, president of LAIM, explained that there is now the “possibility of doing something very positive for the widows and orphans among the Quechuas of the highlands of Peru.” LAIM envisions a self-supporting community that will provide training to the orphans created by the guerilla activities. Now mostly ineffective, the Shining Path continues to carry on limited activities funded by the drug trade in southern and south eastern Peru. (Assist News Service)

PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS ASKING FOR PRAYERS, CONGRESSIONAL HELP

Jim Jacobson, president of Christian Freedom International (CFI), says that as tough as it sometimes seems to be a Christian in America, it can be a lot tougher outside the United States. In some parts of the world, he says, being a believer is not only not getting any easier, it is becoming increasingly dangerous. “We’re actually seeing a major increase in the persecution of Christians, especially in Islamic-dominated nations at this time,” Jacobsen notes. “Christians in these nations are seen as surrogates of the West; and so, if these radicals can’t take their hatred out directly at America, then the next best thing is that they’re targeting minority Christians in their country.” The CFI spokesman says these brothers and sisters in Christ are asking for American believers’ prayers and for U.S. Congressional pressure on the governments that condone religious persecution. (Religion Today/Agape Press)

SURVEY: MARRIAGE RATES REACH LOWEST EVER IN U.S. HOUSEHOLDS

A new U.S. Census Bureau report shows that for the first time ever traditional marriage has ceased to be the preferred living arrangement in the United States. Seventy-five years ago, married couples accounted for 84 percent of American households. Now the rate is just under half. Out of roughly 111 million family households, more than 14 million were headed by single women, another five million by single men, and 36.7 million belonged to a category described as “non-family households.” This term applies primarily to homosexual or heterosexual couples cohabiting out of formal wedlock. Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute says it is difficult for the traditional family to emerge unscathed after three-and-a-half decades of divorce rates reaching 50 percent, and five decades of out-of-wedlock births. Besharov predicts the social landscape is moving toward cohabitation and temporary relationships. He also sees a move towards a “much more individualistic society” over time. “[W]hat I see is a situation in which people — especially children — will be much more isolated, because not only will their parents both be working, but they’ll have fewer siblings, fewer cousins, fewer aunts and uncles,” he says. (Agape Press)