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Source: Harvest, July 11, 2023
On July 8-9, Harvest Christian Fellowship facilitated more than 4,500 baptisms at Pirate’s Cove in Newport Beach. The same body of water was used for baptisms during the Jesus Movement in the 1960s and 70s.
People gathered from across the country with lines wrapped around the seawall in what Harvest is calling the largest baptism in American history.
“On the day of Pentecost, after Peter preached, we read in the Bible that 3,000 people were baptized,” said Pastor Greg Laurie. “At Pirate’s Cove, we are looking at a baptism of biblical proportions.”
Laurie and his wife Cathe were baptized at Pirate’s Cove nearly 50 years ago. The cove was also used as a filming location for the Jesus Revolution movie.
According to Laurie, the movie demonstrated “the power of baptism and more significantly, what salvation looks like visually. By watching someone get baptized the way it was done in the film it really conveyed what conversion can look like. It really resonated with a lot of people.”
The baptism follows the Southern California Harvest Crusade where 230,000 people packed out the Honda Center in Anaheim [or] watched online, and 7,000 made proclamations of faith in a two-day worship experience.
“There is no question that pretty much everyone at this baptism saw the Jesus Revolution film,” said Laurie, “So many said they were so inspired by it they wanted to be baptized at Pirate’s Cove.”
See the full press release with pictures. It mentions that Jesus Revolution will be available for streaming on Netflix at the end of the month; you can already stream it through some other services.
Source: Wycliffe Bible Translators, July 7, 2023
“I have to do this,” Bishop Leidimo Edoni said.
He was referring to sailing in a small, marginally seaworthy boat through choppy, pirate-occupied waters in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. The trip would take five hours, and danger lurked everywhere.
So why was the bishop making such an arduous trip to begin with? The answer was simple: God moved Bishop Edoni of the United Church in Papua New Guinea to see transformation happen among all communities in Milne Bay. Bishop Edoni sought a partnership with another bishop at the opposite end of the island. Unity meant that two of the most prominent church groups in the province, representing thousands of people, would be brought together—all in the name of Bible translation.
The shared desire for and commitment to translation was a promise of eubone, which means “unity” in the Dobu language. Together, these two bishops promised to lead the work of bringing the Bible to their people.
Read the full story and also read God Is on the Move: Encountering Jesus Through His Word with reports from Fiji, Azerbaijan, and the Philippines.
See also these two interesting articles: Researchers Use AI to Help Translate Bible Into Very Rare Languages (Christian Today) and AI Begins Symbiotic Relationship With Bible Translation (Mission Network News).
Source: Mission Network News, July 10, 2023
It’s been two months since the Meitei people began a campaign attacking tribal Christians and burning their homes and churches. Now, makeshift bunkers and fortifications crisscross Manipur as each side defends its territory.
Within the first month, more than 35,000 people fleeing Manipur were displaced in IDP camps. Now, the number has nearly doubled to 60,000 people.
Regan Miller with Mission India says, “Schools in the area have been trying to reopen to establish some normalcy again. Yet, teachers and students are really just not showing up because they’re afraid of everything that’s going on in their safety. So they’re still far from normalcy and it’s crazy to think that’s still going on when it’s been two months since the violence started.”
Mission India’s partners on the ground say they are encouraged by the faithful example of persecuted Christians in Manipur.
“They sent us this video of Christians that were just lining the street in Manipur praying for their state and praying over the violence that’s taking place.”
Read the full story. You can send an encouraging prayer for Manipur now (Mission India).
See also a well-written and thought-provoking article about living out and sharing the gospel in conflict zones illustrated with stories from eastern Congo (Lausanne Global Analysis).
Source: Beyond, June 30, 2023
[A church in East Asia] had come to a startling revelation: the more the church grew numerically, the fewer disciples they made. Their focus on excellent preaching had failed to produce any real lifestyle changes in their church members. Additionally, they found that as the church grew, they had fewer new believers attending. Their desire to grow numerically actually made them less effective as a church.
In a bold move, the church leaders decided to structure the church to once again meet in small groups. They trained leaders in the Discovery Bible Study group process and ensured all their members attended a small group.
Shortly after they made this decision, government officials demanded they shut down their large Sunday meeting place. If this decision had come a few months earlier, it could have been disastrous, but these leaders saw God’s hand in the timing of these events. They decided that it was confirmation of God’s will and leading. They would not seek another place for their large meeting. Instead, they would continue meeting as house churches and use the new Discovery Bible Study process.
To explore the link between hospitality and discipleship, see Why Smaller Churches Must Be Better at Hospitality Than Larger Churches (The Christian Post).
Source: Pioneers-USA and Commnet, July 11, 2023
A village pastor asked a Pioneers member to come with him to pray for Bee, who was very sick. She was also having brutal and disturbing nightmares. Turns out she and her husband had made a deal with a witch doctor 30 years before. That seemed to be behind what she was suffering now.
Several more brothers and sisters from the village church came to visit Bee. One was a new believer, Jeab. She didn’t know very much of the Bible and her faith still had a lot of Buddhist thinking. But she prayed to Jesus with boldness. Lek, Bee’s niece, was a young teenage girl. She came and played Christian songs from YouTube on her phone. Then there was Deng, a Buddhist woman who just watched things unfold around her.
“All of this challenged my theology,” said the Pioneers worker. “I thought we just needed to pray. I thought those prayers should come from mature Christians. And, at the same time, I was becoming aware of my own sin.”
Bee’s life wasn’t the only one that would be changed in the next few days.
