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AROUND THE WORLD

The International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP) will be held 12 November 2006. Some countries will pray one Sunday earlier or one Sunday later but 12 November is the most common day for IDOP in the world, says Johan Candelin, IDOP global coordinator. IDOP has become the biggest one-day prayer event in the world and this year it is estimated that Christians in more than 130 nations will pray not only for the persecuted Church, but with the persecuted Church. (International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church)

AROUND THE WORLD

Global Mapping International (GMI) has released The Peoples of the Buddhist World CD-ROM, a prayer guide for the peoples of the Buddhist world. It was designed for Christians, educators, churches and missionaries concerned with better understanding and praying for the world’s 700 million Buddhist adherents. The CD-ROM contains over five hundred pages, 238 people group profiles, hundreds of color photographs, dozens of maps, twelve articles and indexes and cross-references. It can be purchased for $24.95USD and is available at www.gmi.org/buddhist. (Global Mapping International)

AROUND THE WORLD

The number of persecuted Christians is on the rise worldwide, according to Professor Thomas Schirrmacher, director of the Religious Liberty Commission of the German Evangelical Alliance. Three in four cases of severe persecution are targeted at Christians and at least fifty-five thousand Christians are killed each year for religious reasons, he said in a lecture at a gathering of the Protestant Association of the Christian Democratic Union in Dresden. (Idea)

AROUND THE WORLD

The global website for the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP, www.idop.org) will open 12 October 2006, one month before the IDOP Day 12 November. Some countries will pray one Sunday earlier or one Sunday later but 12 November is the most common day for IDOP in the world, says Johan Candelin, global coordinator for the IDOP. IDOP has become the biggest one-day prayer event in the world and this year it is estimated that Christians in more than 130 nations will pray both with and for the persecuted Church. (International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church)

AFRICA

Christians in Africa need to develop their own theology instead of copying Western theology, which is influenced by rationalism, said Joe Kapolyo, a theologian from Zambia, to participants at the annual meeting of the German Association of Evangelical Missions (AEM) in Rehe, Germany. Kapolyo believes that African theology must include issues such as poverty, tribalism, corruption, sexuality and spiritism. (Idea)

AROUND THE WORLD

“The future of the Church could be under threat unless biblical illiteracy among young people is not urgently addressed,” a group of Christian evangelical agencies have warned. Although young people may have well-rehearsed arguments outlining Christian responses to social and ethical issues, far fewer appear to have a solid understanding of who Jesus was and why he died, the issue of sin or why the Bible should be trusted. To address this issue, the Evangelical Alliance has launched essential, a project designed to engage young people with biblical truth. Youth leaders have recognised that although plenty of material exists about sex, drugs and other lifestyle issues, there is a paucity of resources addressing basic Christian theology. At its centre the essential project uses a website to recommend good quality resources (including downloadable samples) and provides response (along with discussion questions) to many of the questions young people frequently ask. The website address is www.essential-truth.org. (Evangelical Alliance)

AUSTRALIA

Three indigenous Bible translation projects, started through the support of Bible Society in Australia (BSiA), are continuing through private donations and individual church support. The projects are in Nyoongar, southwest Western Australia; Dhurga at Mogo near Bateman's Bay NSW and in Yumplatok (Torres Strait Creole). With support from BSiA and Bible Society NSW, the Nyoongar project (WA) completed a first draft translation of Luke's Gospel two years ago. The Nyoongar people were the original inhabitants of the southwest of Western Australia. Translation in the Dhurga project continues enthusiastically at the Boomerang Centre at Mogo, the Anglican Aboriginal outreach centre. The third project is the work being done in the Yumplatok language, also known as Torres Strait Creole. (Bible Society, New South Wales)

CANADA

Statistics from the 2001 Canadian census indicate that the growth of religions such as Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism in that country are far surpassing both Protestant Christianity and Roman Catholicism and that Canada is indeed a great mission field. Between 1991 and 2001 Islam has increased 128.9 percent; Hinduism has increased 89.3 percent and Sikhism has increased 88.8 percent. Protestantism has only grown 8.2 percent and Roman Catholicism 4.8 percent. Judaism comes in last at only a 3.7 percent growth. (Association of Baptist for World Evangelism)

FRANCE

A report presented to French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy has sparked controversy by proposing to amend the country's strict laws separating church and state by allowing local authorities to finance the construction of new places of worship. The proposal drawn up by a committee under Paris law professor Jean-Pierre Machelon is seen by its supporters as responding to the lack of places of worship in France for Muslims and evangelical Protestants, two religious traditions almost totally absent from the country when the separation of church and state was approved in 1905. (Ecumenical News International)

CZECH REPUBLIC

Representatives of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the World Evangelical Alliance met in dialogue 8-11 August 2006 on the campus of the International Baptist Theological Seminary, located in Prague, Czech Republic. Although informal contacts had occurred during the past fifty years, this was the first official meeting of the two groups. The purposes of the dialogue were to gain a clearer understanding of the theological positions of each body, to clarify matters of misunderstanding, to discuss areas of agreement and disagreement on a biblical basis and to explore possible areas of cooperation. (World Evangelical Alliance Theological Commission)

HUNGARY

Over 5,300 Hungarians from fifteen countries attended the third Hungarian Baptist World Assembly in Debrecen 4-6 August 2006. Over eight hundred non-Baptist guests attended the meeting as well. Speakers for the event included Kalman Meszaros, president of the Baptist Union of Hungary, David Coffey, president of the Baptist World Alliance and Helari Puu, president of the European Baptist Federation. Leaders from other denominations were also present. (Baptist World Alliance)

MEXICO

Nearly six hundred Bible League-trained Mexican church planters recently gathered in Mexico City for a congress to discuss what God has done through their ministries. The congress brought together church planters who have been trained over the past eleven years. It built on the initiatives of the first congress held in 2004 and included representatives from forty indigenous people groups. Since 1995 these workers have planted more than three thousand churches throughout Mexico. (Bible League)

JAPAN

According to one of Asia’s leading exponents of liturgical music, despite their long-standing preference for Western melodies and words, Asian Christians need to learn to use traditional cultural elements to enrich their hymns. "The great majority of Asian Christians have internalized Western hymns so much that it is difficult for them to develop their own traditional hymns," says I-to Loh, general editor of "Sound the Bamboo," an Asian hymnal used by the Christian Conference of Asia. "However, the situation has been changing during the last two or three decades." (Ecumenical News International)

PAKISTAN

A bishop in Pakistan has renounced his nationality in protest against discrimination and hatred he says is suffered by the minuscule Christian minority in the world's second largest Muslim nation. "In Pakistan, Christians, including me, are facing extreme hate, discrimination and detestation by Muslims. We are unwanted people in Pakistan," Bishop Timotheus Nasir, who heads the United Presbyterian Church of Pakistan, wrote in a letter to President Pervez Musharraf. (Ecumenical News International)

NIGERIA

President Olusegun Obasanjo has urged Nigerians to turn to God if the country is to overcome intractable problems that have bedevilled Africa's most populous nation for nearly forty-six years. "We have come out of the dark past and as we continue to work together and plan together, our dear country, in God's name, we will continue to make progress," Obasanjo said in a nationwide broadcast. "We are a strong, God-fearing, proud and productive people; we must continue to make progress." (Ecumenical News International)

RUSSIA

In order to confront the growing HIV/AIDS crisis in Russia, Christian organizations Tearfund (UK) and Russian Ministries (US) will hold the "HIV & AIDS Forum of Good Practice and Networking" 15-17 November 2006 at the Moscow Christian Center in Moscow, Russia. This is the first Christian gathering of its kind in Russia, and is attracting participants from the former Soviet Union, Western Europe and the United States. The goal of the three-day forum is to gather key Christian, social and governmental organizations which are responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the former Soviet Union, and to explore ways these groups might share resources and experiences and develop effective strategies of care, prevention and policy change. The forum is also designed to motivate the national Church to develop an HIV/AIDS ministry that focuses on prevention and care of people affected by HIV/AIDS. (Assist News)

SRI LANKA

The first women priests in Sri Lanka's Anglican Church say their ordination is a dream come true. "I have no words to describe my joy," the Rev. Chandrika Mayurawathie, one of the first three women ordained in September into the Church of Ceylon, told Ecumenical News International. "I have waited and prayed for this ordination for years," said Mayurawathie, who completed a bachelor's degree in theology in 1996 and was speaking from Colombo. (Ecumenical News International)

UNITED STATES

The World Missions Atlas Project and its partners, in cooperation with the greater missions community, have released the new "Global Status of Evangelical Christianity" wall map. The map illustrates the status of evangelical Christianity and church planting based upon the Church Planting Progress Indicators (CPPI) database maintained by the Global Research Department of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Included on the map are three inset maps displaying the global status of Bible translation, global status of JESUS film translation and global response to the film JESUS. Over 100,000 cities, towns and villages are thematically color-coded to depict both their relative size and their evangelical status based upon the primary language and people group living in each location. (World Missions Atlas Project)

UNITED STATES

In a historic moment for the Wesleyan North American General Conference, Distrito Hispano Suroeste de La Iglesia Wesleyana (Southwest Hispanic District of The Wesleyan Church) was formally launched as the denomination's thirty-fourth district organization. It is also the first Spanish-language Wesleyan district in the United States and Canada. Distrito Hispano Suroeste includes thirty-five congregations located in California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, with a total average attendance of 3,381 persons in Sunday morning worship services and 2,522 covenant members. (Wesleyan Information Network)

UNITED STATES

Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), a faith-based, non-profit ministry that serves missions around the world with aviation, communications and technology, recently dedicated its new training and mobilization headquarters in Nampa, Idaho, USA. The MAF previous headquarters was in Redlands, California. Founded in 1945, MAF stations nearly two hundred missionary families in the remotest regions of twenty-three countries on five continents. MAF pilots fly approximately forty thousand flights per year, transporting missionaries, medical personnel, medicines and relief supplies, as well as conducting thousands of emergency medical evacuations. (Mission Aviation Fellowship)

UNITED STATES

The July 2006 merger of Advancing Churches in Missions Commitment (ACMC) and Caleb Project has resulted in Initiative360—Take it Global, a new organization which seeks to further the kingdom of Jesus Christ by serving the missions interests of believers and the churches, agencies and institutions of which they are a part in world outreach. The new organization will help believers and their churches explore, discover and activate their roles in God's mission, whether in local neighborhoods or around the world. Regarding the new name, Chief Executive Office Dr. Gregory Fritz says, "I have always been encouraged and blessed by those who take initiative with the faith that God gives them. God himself is the divine initiator, the one who created the world and all mankind, redeems us from our sinful existence and sends us out with his salvation message to the peoples who have yet to receive the gospel." (Initiative360)