In This Issue: 1,000 New Indonesian Churches, “Burn a Quran” Controversy, and More
- INDONESIA: Radio Stations Birthing Churches
- USA: Florida Church Urged to Cancel “Burn a Quran” Day
- GUINEA: Was It Really a Chimp?
- CAMBODIA: “God, You Were Supposed to Kill Him!”
Missions Catalyst is a free, weekly electronic digest of mission news and resources designed to inspire and equip Christians worldwide for global ministry. Use it to fuel your prayers, find tips and opportunities, and stay in touch with how God is building his kingdom all over the world. Please forward it freely!
World News Briefs, edited by Pat Noble, are published twice a month.
INDONESIA: Radio Stations Birthing Churches
Source: Missions Network News, July 29, 2010
Ministry is thriving in Indonesia; lives, communities, and hearts are being transformed. To communicate the exciting transformation taking place, HCJB Global just created a video.
HCJB Global president Wayne Pederson said, “The video is designed to really tell the story of what God is doing through some of our local partners in Indonesia. In this case, our partner in Indonesia is a church-planting organization. We work with them to plant radio stations, and out of those radio stations come churches.”
Since 2003, HCJB Global has partnered with Disciple Makers, and the response to their ministry has been astounding: “The amazing part [is that] this is the largest Muslim country in the world. And yet, we’ve been able to work with this partner to plant over 40 radio stations,” Pederson said.
An estimated 3 to 5 people come to Christ daily as a result of listening to each station. From these 40 stations, 1,176 churches have been planted across Indonesia.
>> Full story. [Note: This video is not on the web, though the MNN article includes a link.]
>> Editor’s note: It seems like there are conflicting opinions about what is happening in Indonesia. It’s a big, diverse country so these reports should not surprise us. Here are two examples: Support for Sharia Law Is in the Minority – and Declining (Jakarta Post) and Indonesian Church Attacks on the Rise (UCA News).
USA: Florida Church Urged to Cancel “Burn a Quran” Day
Source: The Christian Post, July 30, 2010
The nation’s largest evangelical body is urging the Florida church behind “International Burn a Quran Day” to cancel its plans.
Plans to burn Islam’s holy book on the ninth anniversary of Sept. 11 shows “disrespect” for Muslims and would only “exacerbate tensions” in Christian-Muslim relations worldwide, stated the National Association of Evangelicals on Thursday.
“It sounds like the proposed Quran burning is rooted in revenge,” said NAE President Leith Anderson, in a statement. “Yet the Bible says that Christians should ‘make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else’ (I Thessalonians 5:15).”
Dove World Outreach Center, a non-denominational church in Gainesville, Fla., recently announced it will host a Quran burning event on its church property in observance of the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to warn Americans about the dangers of Islam.
In an interview with The Christian Post this week, Senior Pastor Dr. Terry Jones explained, “We only did it because we felt there needed to be an outcry against Islam, because Islam is presenting itself as a religion of peace.”
>> Full story.
>> Also read Christians Commanded to Love Their Muslim Neighbors, Panelists Insist (Associated Baptist Press).
>> Editor’s note: If you agree that we need more “grace and truth” in the Muslim-Christian dialogue, and I hope you do, then check out the Grace and Truth Project.
GUINEA: Was It Really a Chimp?
Source: New Tribes Mission, July 26, 2010
“A chimpanzee ran off with Suuti’s son, Sana,” yelled Fadau.
Missionary Hans Jensen jumped on his motorcycle and gave
chase. He soon found that some young men working in a peanut field outside a Nalu village in Guinea had run after the chimp and rescued the 6-year-old boy. Sana was left with a chimp bite on his cheek, and Hans rushed him to the hospital for treatment.
“News of the chimp attack spread quickly,” Hans wrote. “Initially opinion on the issue seemed divided, with some people believing the chimp was a real animal behaving badly. The majority, however, were certain that it was a sorcerer in the guise of a chimpanzee.
“Sana’s uncle went to a distant village to ask the medicine people there the meaning of the attack. They assured him that indeed it was the work of a sorcerer, one of the little boy’s aunts. These medicine people also told him that the sorcerer wasn’t really after Sana but rather his older brother Seku. On hearing this, Seku’s father, Suuti, immediately sent the boy off to Conakry.”
Though the “chimp incident” occurred several weeks ago the people are still fearful and trying to ward off the danger from the sorcerer who masquerades as a chimp.
>> Full story.
CAMBODIA: “God, You Were Supposed to Kill Him!”
Source: International Mission Board, July 29, 2010
Silas (name changed) was 8 years old in 1975 when communist leader Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge overturned the government of Cambodia. He was separated from his family and sent to a re-education camp where the Khmer Rouge trained him as a child soldier.
When the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia in 1979, Silas was reunited with his mother, brother, and sister, but not his father. Silas believes the Khmer Rouge executed him in 1976 in one of the infamous Killing Fields.
Years ago in a refugee camp in Thailand he became a Christian. He also learned the identity of the man who turned his father over to the Khmer Rouge.
“He was my father’s best friend,” Silas said. “(As boys) my brother and I decided when we found that man we were going to kill him.”
After college, seminary, and the decision to return to Cambodia as a Christian worker, Silas learned from his mother that the man he once wanted to kill also had become a follower of Christ.
“I said, ‘God, you were supposed to kill him,'” Silas laughed. “Still, I knew that God had spared his life so he could become a child of God.” Silas urges his fellow Cambodians to let go of the past and learn to forgive.
>> Full story.
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I get news once a fortnight from u. They are v. nice.
If u send it every week, I would love it better.
God bless your ministry.
Hab. 2: 14 is the God given vision to me.
Dear Dan,
Thank you for your compliment. Yes, we do send Missions Catalyst every week. You can subscribe to receive every issue by clicking the link on our home page in the right column.
God bless you, too.
I get the Catalyst regularly and was rather fascinated by this Burn a Koran day.
My input is against such a plan. One reason for it? Many Muslims in the USA are just like many Christians in the USA; they don’t even know what their “book” says! Also, just like there are different interpretations of the Bible concept of the “Great Tribulation,” even so there are many interpretations of the Koran concept of “jihad.” My wife works for a company where there are Muslims, one of her former bosses is Muslim, and his take on “jihad” or holy war is that it is a personal struggle against sin, not violence against non-Muslims. We would do MUCH better as the Body of Christ befriending and learning to understand Muslims, 98% who say they do not have ONE Christian friend.