Category: News Briefs

Source: Every Home for Christ, July 5, 2025

About 13 years ago, Mr. C had a quarrel with his brother over land. Mr. C became angry, killed his brother, and served a 12-year jail sentence. He was released just a few months ago.

For 12 years, Mr. C has carried the guilt of his crime and repented, but he didn’t know how to relieve the burden on his heart. Because Mr. C was a devout Hindu, he tried to follow all the rules for atonement of sins according to Hinduism. But he did not find peace of mind.

Last week, Mr. C met one of our volunteers. Mr. C read the gospel literature thoroughly and learned that Jesus died on the cross for his sins. When he understood this truth, he started weeping.

After crying for a long time, he felt at peace in his mind. He realized that only Jesus can free him from this sin. That’s when he gave up everything else in which he had sought peace and accepted the Lord Jesus as his Savior. He regularly attends the local church, reads the Bible, prays, and participates in a Christ Group. He testifies loudly to others that he has been born again through the Lord Jesus.

Read the full story and another about a woman who often dreamed about Jesus before learning that his love is for everyone, not just those from Christian backgrounds.

See an account of a high-caste Hindu won to Christ that also illustrates barriers to the gospel and how they can be overcome (Beyond).

Source: Back to Jerusalem, July 10, 2025

A 16-year-old girl was rescued in India after she was almost murdered as a child sacrifice. Working on a tip, the police raided a local home where they found a man, his wife, the victim, and her mother involved in the child sacrifice ritual.

Yavatmal City Police reportedly uncovered a ritual where a 16-year-old girl was to be burned to uncover hidden treasure. The girl told police that she was to be sacrificed on Guru Purnima, according to local reports (The Times of India).

The man who tried to sacrifice her has been identified as 44-year-old Mahadev Palve. He conducted the human sacrificial ritual with two women who offered their daughters. When the police learned what he had tried to do, he slit his throat in an attempted suicide, but was taken to the hospital and is reportedly in stable condition.

The police recovered money, a live turtle, conch shells, and several other items that were used for the ritual.

Mr. Mahadev Palve will be charged under the Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice Act in India.

Read the full story.

Source: Asia Harvest, July 16, 2025

The 7,000 Paku Karen people are spread over three states in eastern Myanmar, with others living in refugee camps across the border in Thailand. There are at least seven dialect groups among the Paku Karen, each wearing different traditional clothing. Some may qualify as distinct people groups.

Paku Karen women hold a respected place in society, probably because of the influence of missionary Ellen Mason, who, along we her husband Francis, first preached the gospel to them in 1853. They found fertile hearts, and by 1931, more than 80% of Paku Karen people were Christians.

Ask God to send Paku Karen believers out as missionaries to the unreached in Myanmar.

Read more. You might also be interested in the story of Ellen Mason.

Asia Harvest is sharing a series of 230 people group profiles leading up to the publication of the book Operation Myanmar. View all completed profiles.

Have a heart to pray that the emerging church would be mobilized for God’s global purposes? In July, the Global Mission Mobilization Initiative calls us to pray for the church in Lebanon, writing, “Today, Lebanon is home to the largest Christian population in the Middle East, predominantly composed of people from Syria.” See prayer points in seven languages and read, What Is Mobilization Prayer?

Source: Radical, July 15, 2025

Why does Japan reject foreign religions like Christianity? Is Christianity doomed to fail in Japan? In Hard to Reach: Japan, Steven Morales travels across one of the most beautiful—and spiritually complex—nations in the world to uncover why Christianity struggles to take root.

The pieces of this 45-minute documentary were released in 2024 and are still available as a playlist of stand-alone videos, but these week Radical released them as a single video. This may be a good example of how effort and impact are not the same.

Source: Crosswalk, July 3, 2025

More than 700 inmates worshiped God, and more than 400 accepted the call for salvation during an Oklahoma prison outreach. The event aimed to reach every prisoner and was facilitated by just 32 volunteers who served 1,000 hot meals, distributed 700 Bibles, and handed out 1,300 Bible study books.

“I was like, man, I really feel like there’s a harvest of people in the prisons that we could reach with God’s love that [only a few] churches in our city [are] really going after,” [Pastor Paul] Daugherty who leads Victory Christian Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, told CBN News.

See the full story with pictures.

In case you missed it: Finding God on Death Row describes a movement happening in Texas prisons (Movements.net). 

Multiple recent news stories also ask us to pray for believers in China and other places who have been thrown into prison. For example,  read about leaders arrested at a church founded by Hudson Taylor charged with fraud (China Aid, via ASSIST News).

1. Iran: What I Learned Listening to Iranian Movement Leaders
2. Syria: Christians Mourn a Massacre
3. World: How the Deaf Experience War
4. Ukraine: The Unstoppable Gospel in a Time of War
5. India: Faith on Wheels

Read or share the email edition, or just scroll down.

Source: Steve Addison, Movements, June 23, 2025

I spent a week in Istanbul interviewing Iranian disciples who had come out for training. Men and women living under the threat of arrest and imprisonment for their faith in Christ.

The people I spoke to were leaders. Each had 30 to over 100 churches in their streams of multiplication. The churches are made up of 4-5 people.

They represent one network in a movement of God across the Islamic Republic, which is unprecedented in the 1400 years since Islam conquered Persia.

I’ve been listening to the recordings of my interviews with these brave people. Here are some of the recurring themes that provide insight into how God is at work.

1. Disillusioned with Islam
2. Personal crisis
3. Searching for God
4. Signs along the way
5. Someone they love

Invariably, the gospel goes from new disciples to their world of relationships, but carefully. They test and see whether it’s safe. Sometimes parents who are strict Muslims don’t know of their adult children’s new faith. One disciple had not shared with his mother until a health crisis shook the family. She turned and believed, and he baptized her.

This list is not a formula. It’s a recurring pattern of how God is working to bring salvation to the Iranian people, inside the country and around the world.

Read What the Iranians Taught Me. It reports on interviews conducted right before the recent war broke out and unpacks the themes listed above.

See also An Inside Update on the Church in Iran (Radical) and watch Pray for Tehran and Pray for Iran (Prayercast) or read a 2015 book revised and re-released in December 2024, Jesus in Iran (Eugene Bach).

Source: Middle East Concern, June 23, 2025

On Sunday evening, June 22, a suicide bomber struck the church of Mar Elias in Dweila, Damascus, killing many in attendance.

During the holy mass in this Greek Orthodox church, an armed man entered, started shooting, then detonated an explosive device, killing himself and more than 20 Christians. Many others were wounded. The historic church building was severely damaged.

This is the most violent attack on Christians in Syria since the fall of the former regime. March 2025 attacks on [Muslim] Alawite communities in the coastal areas had left Christians fearing they may also be targeted.

Read the full story with prayer points.

Regarding this attack, Back to Jerusalem posted Shocking Video Shows Christians Worshiping Jesus Moments Before They Were Killed By Suicide Bomber. Despite the headline, the brief video does not include any violence, just worship. We encourage you to watch it.

An article from Mission Network News describes a movement of the Holy Spirit among Alawites, creating an urgent mission moment, and Christianity Today has begun a three-part series about the Alawite community, starting with who evangelicals have been building bridges to serve this vulnerable group. The massacre in March killed more than 1,700 Alawite men, women, and children.

A good response to all this? Pray for Syria (Prayercast).

Source: Mission Network News, June 30, 2025

According to the US Council on Foreign Relations, there are 28 active conflicts worldwide today. Each one holds unique dangers for Deaf individuals, from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan.

Even fleeing to safety can be deadly. Rob Myers of DOOR International says, “We know of Deaf people who have been shot on site because the person asking them questions doubted that they were Deaf.”

Deaf people often miss critical wartime information because of language barriers. For example, in Ukraine, “Hearing people in the cities would hear the UN trucks coming and would know that they were carrying food and supplies, and so they would run out and start to grab supplies,” Myers says.

“Deaf people were not aware that the trucks were in town. No one told them. When they finally became aware, they would run out, and the supplies would already be gone.”

Many Deaf also lack information about the spiritual war raging around us because they cannot access the gospel in their heart sign language.

Read the full story and another from DOOR and MNN: Discovering Their Names: Gospel Hope for Deaf Kids.

Source: The Christian Post, June 2, 2025

As war continues to devastate Ukraine, a powerful spiritual revival is unfolding amid the ruins, according to Ukrainian evangelist David Karcha, who told a gathering of European church leaders that the gospel becomes unstoppable in a time of war.

Speaking at the European Congress on Evangelism in Berlin, Germany, on May 29, Karcha described how churches across Ukraine have become beacons of hope, drawing thousands to Christ even as the country endures deep physical and emotional suffering.

In the last three years, Karcha testified that “hundreds of thousands of people have walked through the doors of Ukrainian churches and encountered the love and care of God.”

Read the rest of this encouraging report.

See also Ukraine: Stories Behind the Statistics (Evangelical Focus).