In This Issue: The Caucasus, Yemen, China, and Beyond
- RUSSIA – Open Doors for the Gospel in the Caucasus
- YEMEN – Militants Kill Christian Aid Workers
- CHINA – Reaching the Musical People
- VIETNAM – Police Attack House Church, Jail Leaders
- INDIA – Gospel Spreads among Mumbai’s Muslims
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.
RUSSIA – Open Doors for the Gospel in the Caucasus
Source: ASSIST News Service, June 23, 2009
Russian Ministries‘ Sergey Rakhuba has just returned from Vladikavkaz in the Northern Caucasus. During his time in this volatile area, Rakhuba said it was great to realize that “a group of highly dedicated Christian leaders have committed their lives and resources to expanding God’s kingdom throughout this turbulent area.
“These next-generation leaders bring hope to needy orphans and abandoned children, thousands of war refugees in South Ossetia, and to the young generation who attend schools and universities and are open to learn about biblical values,” he said.
“Our ministry center in Vladikavkaz is an outpost for Christian ministry today, reaching out to Ingushetia, Chechnya, South Ossetia, and other areas with the gospel of Christ.
“Throughout the year, students from Vladikavkaz have been involved in humanitarian projects in Ingushetia [as] part of the students’ practical ministry training. As a result of these humanitarian aid projects, small-group Bible studies are being organized in homes in Ingushetia. These small groups will eventually form the basis of church plants in this Muslim-dominated region.”
>> Full story with picture and prayer points.
YEMEN – Militants Kill Christian Aid Workers
Source: Worthy News, June 25, 2009
Christian aid workers are believed to have been kidnapped and killed in Yemen by suspected Islamic militants because they were involved in evangelism among Muslims and had been warned to end their mission work, Worthy News learned June 25.
The bodies of German nurses in training, Rita Stumpp, 26, and Anita Gruenwald, 24, and a 33-year-old South Korean woman, Eom Young-sun, were found by child shepherds four days after they were abducted (June 12) with six other foreigners in the country’s troubled Noshour Valley region.
Yemen’s Information Ministry said it was hopeful that the other Christian hostages, including a British engineer, a German married couple, and their three young children, were still alive.
>> Full story with picture.
See also two additional stories from Yemen: Media Absent from Yemen’s Forgotten War (an article by Yemeni journalist Maysaa Shuja al-Deen) and New Discipleship Program Praised in Yemen.
Thanks to Joel News for alerting us to this latter story, writing: “In 2004 Feba (FEBC’s sister organization) began broadcasting in a Yemeni dialect, which received amazing response. Yemenis couldn’t believe that their fellow countrymen were talking about Christ in their local dialect… the number of Christians in Yemen is growing.”
CHINA – Reaching the Musical People
Source: Mission Network News, June 24, 2009
What would it look like to base your day around song? Seventeen million people in southern China do that every day.
“They’ll gather in the parks and one group will sing a line or two over to another group. The other group will think about it and then sing another line back to the first group. They make decisions through song. They get married through song. Music is very important to their society, so we call them the Musical People,” said Brent Preston, senior director of East Asia and Asia for The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM).
TEAM is building relationships among these people while they work among them every day. With the local university, they are trying to archive the music of the people in order to help the government.
Preston said, “Inevitably, the people will ask about what makes them different. It’s amazing how often the topic of spiritual things comes up. People are very interested in how our families are unified, why we have such good relationships with our wives.
“They say, ‘What is it that makes you tick? Why are you so happy? How come your family is so joyful?’ Questions like that which lead right into talking about the reason for that, which is Jesus Christ.”
>> Full story.
VIETNAM – Police Attack House Church, Jail Leaders
Source: Compass Direct, June 18, 2009
Police invaded the Sunday service of the Agape Baptist congregation in Vietnam’s Hung Yen Province on June 7 and beat worshipers, including women, and arrested a pastor and an elder.
Christian sources said police put the two church leaders into separate cells and that each man was beaten by a gang of five policemen in a way that did not leave marks: hard blows to the stomach.
Police tried to force [Pastor Tuan] to sign a document saying he had resisted their investigation, though he had yet to be questioned, and said that he was under administrative arrest. Christian sources said he was also ordered to sign a document accepting the seizure of his Bible.
In separate letters to supporting friends abroad, the leaders of the Agape Baptist House Church group, with 34 congregations throughout Vietnam, say that according to their long experience, “persecution is often a sign that the Lord is at work.”
They add that they are not discouraged and see a growing maturity among Christians who suffer and overcome such gratuitous abuse. But they also say they feel much pain in seeing their Christian family disrespected, mistreated, and abused.
>> Full story.
INDIA – Gospel Spreads among Mumbai’s Muslims
Source: International Mission Board, June 11, 2009
Wynn and his wife, Rose,* tried for years to mobilize Mumbai churches to reach out to the lost of the vast city. They met with little success. Some congregations were in survival mode; others had their own strongly held ideas about evangelism.
Through an extended, trial-and-error search, Wynn became a teacher and mentor to two Muslim men pursuing truth: Farooq and Rasheed.* Farooq is well-educated and affluent; Rasheed comes from a lower-class village background. They offer access to different parts of Mumbai’s multifaceted Islamic community.
“I’ve taught them the same principles, but they’ve done their own thing with them,” Wynn explains. “I just keep giving them the Word of God and let them do what God tells them to do.”
God is telling them to teach truth to other Muslim seekers. Farooq started with 10 friends, including a professor, a lawyer, a store owner, and several Islamic scholars. Individual contacts develop into seeker groups, some of which become full-fledged jama’ats – indigenous groups of Muslim-background followers of Jesus Christ.
Now the movement is spreading beyond Mumbai, as its leaders take the initiative to combine truth-teaching with relief ministry to struggling Muslims in other parts of India.
“They’re sharing Jesus,” Wynn says. “It’s their thing.”
*Names changed
>> Full story.
See also Mumbai: Seeking Truth in the City of Gold, and Worldview: Mumbai Is the Urban Future. In addition, the IMB recently published a multimedia feature that might interest you, Iran: Behind the Headlines.
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