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News Briefs

AROUND THE WORLD

Lowell Nelson Reed was recently named the new international director for Action International Ministries (ACTION), a position he officially takes up 9 March 2007. Reed, currently the associate international director and Southeast Asia regional coordinator for ACTION, will be succeeding current international director and founder of ACTION, Doug Nichols. Reed helped form ACTION Canada in 1980 and served for nine years as director of ACTION Philippines. As part of his new post he plans to assemble an international team of missionary assistants to provide resources, help and facilitation for the expansion of the mission’s ministries. (ACTION)

AROUND THE WORLD

Dr. Jim Montgomery, founder of Dawn Ministries and a missionary for OC International, passed away 29 October 2006 after a prolonged bout with cancer. Montgomery and his wife joined OC in April 1958; they spent four years in Taiwan and thirteen years in the Philippines. He founded Dawn Ministries in 1985, and after retiring in 2005 he started writing The Great Commission Update. (OC International)

AUSTRALIA

Church leaders in Tasmania, Australia, announced that they would run the first statewide “Jesus. All about life” (JAAL) campaign in September/October 2007. JAAL, developed by Bible Society NSW, was held in Adelaide in August 2005 and in Canberra in March/April 2006. JAAL uses primetime television, radio, print and outdoor advertisements over a four-week period to get the good news of the gospel out to the masses. Bible Society director in Tasmania, Alan Harris, has been instrumental in setting up the meetings in Devonport, Launceston and Hobart. “It's wonderful having churches in Tasmania working together,” he said. “I am excited at the response from church leaders and pastors.” (Bible Society NSW)

CHINA

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says he believes that in some regions in China the percentage of the population attending church on Sundays is as large as or even larger than that in most western European countries. "The astonishing and quite unpredictable explosion in Christian numbers in recent years is clearly connected to a widespread sense that the equally extraordinary explosion in the economic life has left many huge questions about personal and social values unanswered," Williams said at the end of his two-week visit to the county. Williams, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, which numbers around seventy million people, said that if China was to develop the kind of civil society that will guarantee both stability and harmony, the Church is a vital partner. (Ecumenical News International)

ECUADOR

Despite that fact that officials of the stadium in Quito scheduled a soccer game for the same night as the 21-23 September 2006 Franklin Graham Festival was to start, more than fourteen thousand people gave their lives to Christ at the crusade. Although the stadium officially seats forty-six thousand people, more than fifty-one thousand people attended the event on the last night. It was the largest evangelistic gathering in the history of Quito. Total attendance of the event was 140,000 people. (Billy Graham Evangelistic Association)

INDIA

Bless Bihar Conference 2006 was held in Siwan 26-29 October 2006. More than four hundred delegates attended. Every day, after the morning worship the participants were separated into three different groups as workers, believers and Sunday school children. Classes for the first two groups were on the theme “Behold, I am coming…”; thirty-seven people committed their lives to the Lord. Sixty-four people were baptized. One person, who was not able to move his hands and legs and not able to speak for more than one year, was healed miraculously. (Emmanuel Christian Fellowship Center and India Mail)

POLAND

The general assembly of the European Evangelical Alliance (EEA) and the European Evangelical Missionary Alliance recently launched the Polish Evangelical Alliance's (PEA) “Year of Evangelical Christians in Poland,” with a firm belief that there is still great hope for Christianity in Europe. ''We all have a sense that our spiritually-dark continent is experiencing more signs of light than many of us had realized,'' said Gordon Showell-Rogers, general secretary of the EEA. ''In our largely secularized continent, I have been encouraged to hear more fresh stories of God at work through one another.'' According to Wladislaw Dwulat, general secretary of PEA, there are about forty thousand evangelicals and 180 evangelical missionaries in a country of more than forty million. (European Evangelical Alliance)

SCOTLAND

The first ordained woman to be named to the top position of the Church of Scotland says she hopes to promote Christian unity during her year in office. "I will definitely be focusing on Christian denominations. That will be the number one priority for me," said the Rev. Sheilagh Kesting after the announcement that she is to serve as moderator of the Church's general assembly from 2007 to 2008. "From a very early age I became aware of the tensions between the churches. That didn't seem to me to be right," Kesting was quoted as saying by The Scotsman newspaper. "Christians should be able to work together and live together." (Ecumenical News International)

THAILAND

A team of fifty volunteers and Asia Challenge Teams workers in northeast Thailand recently traveled to three rural areas unreached with the gospel. Over one thousand people attended three days of makeshift clinics and no one was turned away. Besides seeing a doctor, everyone heard the gospel one-on-one. While the medical team was at work, the rest visited local schools where they were allowed to share their faith, play sports and do crafts with over one thousand students. Each student received a copy of "The Book of Hope" and hundreds made decisions for Christ; 137 others chose to follow the Lord. Plans are already being made to return to these villages and schools. A church is organizing a Christmas program in early December for all three schools and a follow-up program is being developed for new believers. This newly-established team is mostly targeting Isaans, an unreached people group of over twenty-one million. (Operation Mobilisation)

ROMANIA

The Apostolic Church of God in Romania recently celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Pentecostal Theological Institute in Bucharest, the church's primary training school for ministers. The school opened in 1976 when Romania was still under the control of a Communist regime. Founded by Trandifir Sandhru, a prominent pastor and church leader of that era, the seminary has trained hundreds of young ministers, including most of the prominent pastors and denominational officers in the country. (Church of God World Missions)