Source: Mission Network News, March 9, 2016<\/p>\n
Officially, the government [of Laos] permits the practice of four religions, including Christianity. In reality, churches are watched carefully by the government. Patrick Klein with Vision Beyond Borders<\/a> explains, \u201cIn Laos, kind of like in China, they have the government-run church, and then they also have the underground church movement.\u201d<\/p>\n Because the underground church is growing quickly, Klein observes, \u201cIt seems like there\u2019s a jealousy in the government church. They want to control the growth, control the people that supposedly come to Christ. They really want to make them puppets of the government.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSome villages they go into, they go in to evangelize, and the government church is already discouraging people from even listening to the evangelist. They want to control the growth of the church in Laos, and it\u2019s really disheartening because it is coming from other \u2018family\u2019 members.\u201d<\/p>\n Klein is asking us to join together and pray for unity in the body of Christ in Laos. \u201cPeople can be praying for us that we can continue to get Scriptures in and keep helping the Church, but also that the underground church will really mature\u2014become stronger and stronger so that they will not abandon their faith.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00bb Read full story<\/a>. See also God\u2019s Master Plan: A Bible Smuggling Testimony<\/a> (Vision Beyond Borders), and watch the Prayercast Video for Laos<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Mission Network News, March 9, 2016 Officially, the government [of Laos] permits the practice of four religions, including Christianity. In reality, churches are watched carefully by the government. Patrick Klein with Vision Beyond Borders explains, \u201cIn Laos, kind of like in China, they have the government-run church, and then they also have the underground … Continue reading LAOS: A Church Divided Against Itself<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6276,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6275\/revisions\/6276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}