I am not alone in my desire to see the church return to biblical standards.

Jack Hayford called it a “watershed moment.” The occasion was a meeting of 50 to 60 key charismatic leaders who came together in Orlando in January to discuss tough integrity issues facing the church (see the report on page 20). In an age when it seems nearly anything goes–even in the church–and when confrontations about conduct, doctrine and morality are often greeted with charges of “judgmentalism” or “legalism,” the symposium convened to determine what can be done to set a standard.

Hayford and I both had felt for a while that we had to do something. We saw that too many leaders who are endeavoring to walk in integrity are hurt by extremists–those who, by their erroneous teaching or extravagant lifestyles, create negative stereotypes for all charismatics. So last fall Hayford wrote an article in Ministries Today magazine calling for accountability.

Then we decided to host an invitation-only meeting of ministers who are concerned about the same integrity issues that concern us. The group included charismatic leaders from several major denominations as well as various independent “streams.” Our common denominator was a commitment to God’s Word in the power of the Spirit.

Hayford set the tone for the meeting by declaring that charismatics must shed the image that our convictions regarding basic, Christ-like values are foggy. “By reason of an absence of a collective voice to address this,” he said, “the silence seems to be approval, or, at the very least, an indifference to righteous standards.”

A longer analysis of the meeting by Hayford appears in the March/April issue of Ministries Today, along with a copy of a statement, dubbed the “Orlando Statement,” that was drafted by the group. “I was impressed how quickly common acknowledgment was made that a reasonably practical, solidly biblical statement be set forth,” Hayford wrote in Ministries Today. “All expressed concern that a tidal drift from the stream of the Spirit’s purity and from leadership accountability be stemmed.”

I was encouraged by the strong affirmations made by other leaders. As a Christian journalist for the last 28 years, I have seen ministries rise and fall and some increasingly disturbing trends develop. A decade ago, leaders of a widely known charismatic church were accused by more than two dozen women of gross sexual wrongdoing by the leadership. When we appealed to leaders to investigate the charges, the response was to sweep the issue under the rug. Recent experience has shown that a similar attitude on the part of Roman Catholic leaders created one of the greatest crises that denomination has faced in 50 years.

Unquestionably, there are wonderful things happening. But it seems that not a month goes by that another scandal doesn’t develop. This month Lee Grady reports in his column that in at least one city charismatics are saying churches should condone homosexuality.

The leadership symposium was an encouragement to me that, like the prophet Elijah who believed he was the only one serving God but found out there were 7,000 other prophets that had not bent their knee to Baal, I am not alone in my desire to see the church return to biblical standards of life and ministry.

The symposium and its resulting statement was Step No. 1 in a process that must continue. I hope the statement will be widely accepted, and I’m urging all ministry leaders to affirm it.

Please read it on our Web site, www.ministriestoday.com, and then post your comments. I believe a tidal wave of response will make a statement not only to the church but also to the world. It will show that we are committed to focusing on the church’s greatest calling, emphasized at the symposium by evangelist Reinhard Bonnke: winning souls.

Our hope, as Rod Parsley so aptly expressed it, is that “a paradigm shift can take place in the leadership and the body of Christ at large, where souls, once again, truly become our focus.”

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Stephen Strang, founder of Charisma, hosted the symposium in Orlando in January. Go to www.ministriestoday.com to access the Orlando Statement.

Christian aid ministries working inside the country take precautions against threat of attack
The capture of Saddam Hussein in early December may have been cause for rejoicing for many Iraqis, but the jubilant mood was short-lived for foreign relief workers, including Christians who are helping to rebuild the country.

“Since the capture of Saddam, we have received one report that terrorist activities are being planned for northern Iraq,” said World Relief Disaster Relief Desk Officer Brandon Pustejovsky, who witnessed the celebration in that area on the day of the capture. “I wish the news was better, but I think we are dealing with issues of pride, religion and family, which extend beyond the influence of a mere man.”

Pustejovsky was the only non-Iraqi working for the agency in Iraq until just before Christmas, when he returned to the United States. World Relief’s 11 Iraqi employees are continuing to work under the auspices of Mission East. That group is one of several Christian relief organizations that carried on with their efforts long after hundreds of secular nongovernmental organizations left the country following the August bombing of United Nations offices in Baghdad and attacks on “softer” targets, including aid workers.

Those who remain face daily uncertainty about their safety. “The danger and the problem there is that it’s so unstable,” said Judy Moore, who is based in Albania but serves as World Vision’s interim operations director for Iraq. “One day will be fine, and the next day people will be killed. Every time you go out, you don’t know whether you will be attacked or you will be safe.”

As an added precaution, members of the World Vision team placed the agency’s identifiable vehicles in storage, avoided wearing apparel bearing the World Vision logo and stopped keeping a routine schedule. In addition, the organization has declined requests from network TV news agencies to accompany the staff and cover the work they do.

“It’s tough to turn down, but we always put the safety of our staff first,” said Dean Owen, World Vision’s public relations director.

Like World Vision, other Christian agencies that have chosen to stay try to keep their workers as safe as possible by maintaining a low profile. When Samaritan’s Purse realized in October that it could no longer guarantee the safety of its workers–or successfully continue its operations in Iraq–the organization called a 90-day hiatus and pulled its workers out of the country.

“The mainstream media accused us of offering aid just so we could distribute Bibles and only going over there to help Christians. It was crazy,” said Samaritan’s Purse International Projects Director Ken Isaacs. “No one came to see what we were doing. They compromised us and put us in a high-profile position.”

Still, the work continues. Under the agency’s direction Iraqi Christians feed 1,000 families a month and provide other means of financial and material support. And an existing Baghdad hospital and a partly built clinic completed by Samaritan’s Purse continue to make good use of the 16 tons of medical equipment donated through the organization last year.

Though some churches have been threatened, Isaacs does not believe faith is the primary motive for the persistent danger in the country. “Iraq is a fairly secular Islamic country. If they attack a church it’s because they want a juicier target,” he said. “This is about power and force and evil, and the terror is being exercised to scare the Iraqis. It’s all about chaos and destabilizing everything.”

But neither the United States nor most Christian agencies have given up their efforts to stabilize the country, despite negative reports that reach Americans, Isaacs said. The U.S. government kept the food pipeline flowing, he said, while reports of problems such as power outages were exaggerated and failed to tell the full story.

Electricity was quickly restored after the war, but the sudden availability of consumer goods such as appliances created an overload on the country’s antiquated electrical grid.

“The problems have less to do with the war and more to do with bringing the country up to the 21st century,” he said.

To many Iraqis, whatever chaos exists today is minuscule compared with the overt persecution the people–including Christians–faced under Hussein’s regime. “Before the war, churches in Iraq were persecuted just as Islam was,” World Relief President Clive Calver told Charisma. “Christians were shot, churches and bookstores were bombed, people were thrown in jail. When I went to Iraq immediately after the conflict, church after church asked me to please thank the Americans and their brothers and sisters [in Christ] for giving them their freedom.”

World Relief suffered a personal loss in September when a church leader in Iraq who worked with the agency was killed in a land-mine accident. At least one worker has been shot at, though it’s not clear whether the shooting was random or related to the relief work.

World Vision has not lost any workers in Iraq, but the agency–with 20,000 workers worldwide–loses about one worker per year. “We work in very dangerous places, and Iraq is now near if not at the top of the list,” Owen said. “We are monitoring the situation very carefully and will continue to do so until the situation improves and we don’t have to be so vigilant.”

Security is such a high priority for World Vision that the organization offers an intensive and comprehensive five-day course on security issues for its own staff and for that of other aid agencies, as well as for journalists who work in dangerous areas.

Despite the daily threat of danger, all three agencies say they have seen such an outpouring of love and faith among the Iraqi Christians that they can’t help but believe that God is at work in the country. The Iraqi people remain hopeful, Calver said, that a just government will be established–in spite of lingering concern that fundamentalist Muslims will end up in power.

Said Calver: “This is their message to the [United States]: ‘You won the war, now make sure you win the peace.'”
Marcia Ford

Cerullo asked believers to fast in mid-February.
International evangelist Morris Cerullo hopes to mobilize 1 million Christians in prayer for the United States through his Save America Now campaign, which launched in January. Cerullo said he received a sober prophetic word in June that warned of looming disaster in the nation.

“God was faithfully revealing His prophetic secrets to His servants (Amos 3:7), not to scare–but to prepare–in this case a mighty prayer initiative that would pierce the darkness and push back the forces of the enemy that are set against America–while issuing a 2 Chronicles 7:14 call to national repentance and prayer,” Cerullo wrote on the campaign’s Web site, www.save-america-now.com.

Morris Cerullo Ministries spokesman Greg Mauro said the group has asked 250,000 churches to participate in a week of prayer and fasting Feb. 7-14. The prayer week was to be preceded by a media blitz that would include full-page ads in leading newspapers such as USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The ads are designed to raise awareness about the prayer call and to educate the nation about its Christian roots. Monthly prayer meetings are scheduled to follow the week of prayer, and the campaign culminates with a national TV special at the end of October “to send voters into the polling booths in a spirit of prayer,” Mauro said.

Cerullo’s ministry, which is financing the campaign, said the effort is not a political movement but an attempt to spur people to pray. Cerullo has enlisted the support of more than 80 Christian leaders, including John Bevere, Cindy Jacobs, Bishop Eddie Long, Marilyn Hickey, Eddie and Alice Smith, Rodney Howard-Browne and Bishop George McKinney.

“The USA is facing its greatest moral, spiritual, political and national defense crisis since the birth of the country,” prophetic minister Grant Jeffrey wrote at the Save America Now site. “It is essential that serious Christians commit themselves to prayer and fasting in light of this unprecedented time of both danger and challenge.”

There is no cost to join the campaign, and everyone who participates will receive regular prayer updates and a copy of Cerullo’s book America in Crisis.
Adrienne S. Gaines

It doesn’t claim large conversion numbers, but the ministry believes it has helped change Jewish attitudes about Christ

As Jews for Jesus celebrates 30 years in Messianic ministry, the head of the evangelistic organization is urging Christians to resist efforts aimed at reducing their evangelistic activity among Jews.

In a recent six-page letter to donors, Jews for Jesus President David Brickner challenged several prominent Christian leaders–including the Rev. Billy Graham–to not cave in to Jewish pressure to downplay their evangelism efforts among Jews. He cited a 1973 statement by Graham in which the evangelist said, “In my evangelistic efforts, I have never felt called to single out the Jews as Jews.”

“That comment is still quoted by Jewish community leaders as proof that Graham does not approve of evangelistic ministry directed to the Jews,” Brickner wrote. Graham declined to comment on Brickner’s letter, but the ailing evangelist previously has said: “I preach the gospel to any and all who come to our meetings, whether they be Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Christians or people of no faith.”

Brickner’s letter noted that several ministers–including broadcaster Pat Robertson, pastor Jerry Falwell and American Values President Gary Bauer–support the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an organization that funds several pro-Israel efforts but whose president, Rabbi Yechiel Ecksetin, has long opposed evangelism among Jews.

“If you press [certain evangelicals], they will say, ‘We believe everyone needs Jesus to be saved, but we don’t want to be offending people,'” Brickner told The Washington Times. “Pastors are nervous about taking the heat.”

Jews for Jesus is used to taking heat for urging Jews to embrace Jesus as the Messiah. Last summer a group known as Jews for Judaism shadowed Jews for Jesus missionaries in Toronto to detract from their Behold Your God campaign. The initiative is part of a five-year effort to proclaim the gospel in 66 cities worldwide that have Jewish populations of more than 25,000.

“Their claim that we can become more Jewish by believing in Jesus is like saying you can become more of a vegetarian by eating steak,” a Jews for Judaism ad declares.

Despite such hostility, Brickner insists Jews for Jesus has changed the climate of opinion about Jesus in the Jewish community. In the 1960s rabbis could declare that Jews didn’t believe in Jesus because they’re Jews, Brickner said. Today, he believes a Jew can follow Christ without thinking he’s the only person crazy enough to make that decision.

Rabbi Charles Kluge, president of the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, believes Jews for Jesus’ impact has been positive and negative. Though the group has led many Jews to faith in Jesus, “the Jewish community seems to identify Messianic Judaism as Jews for Jesus,” Kluge said. “Jews for Jesus is not the representative of Messianic Judaism, though it is a part of Messianic Judaism.”

Since 1998 Jews for Jesus has recorded approximately 2,250 salvations a year, the majority Gentiles. Brickner attributes that to their ministry style, which relies heavily on street evangelism.

Looking ahead, leaders say they hope to refine their evangelistic strategy and mend fences with former staffers, some of whom are so bitter they started an ex-Jews for Jesus Web site. Many of their complaints of control and authoritarianism are aimed at retired founder Moishe Rosen. In an open letter released last fall, Rosen wrote: “We had a tough job to do and sometimes I fear that I was too tough on some of the staff. For those mistakes, I truly apologize.”

Though some former employees now reject Jesus as Messiah, a former Rosen associate said most have kept their faith.

The Messianic Jewish movement has grown to include about 500 U.S. congregations. Yet not all Messianic Jews support the confrontational evangelism style Jews for Jesus practices, preferring to use Jewish liturgy and symbolism to draw Jews to Christ. Barry Rubin, who left the group in 1980 and now serves as rabbi of the nation’s oldest Messianic congregation, located in Baltimore, believes the “cutting edge of reaching Jewish people” is the Messianic movement’s softer approach.

Charismatic businessman Joe Bell, who leads a Messianic congregation in Bristol, Tenn., credits Jews for Jesus with leading him to Christ and discipling him. “I think there’s a bashing going on and that Jews for Jesus is being persecuted for righteousness,” Bell said. “The devil hates Jews–especially when they get saved.”
Ken Walker

Started in 1996, New Generation has more than 10,000 participants in schools throughout Norway and Sweden
In an increasingly secular Europe, an energetic band of young Christians is aggressively evangelizing students in Scandinavian schools.

Nordic society has drifted far from its Christian heritage. Fanned aflame in past years by powerful revivals, church attendance today has waned, and many Scandinavians grow to adulthood without ever hearing the gospel.

However, a movement called New Generation is changing that. Young students are viewing their schools as their mission field.

Generally, each principal determines how much evangelistic freedom students are given, though invitations for salvation must be done one-on-one. Students have been able to lead outreach events and hold prayer meetings on their campuses because they already are part of the school milieu.

Eli Skimmeland, 22, a Norwegian, was a New Generation member in her hometown near Bergen. Her membership continues today at her university. “Our youth pastor encouraged us to take responsibility for our school,” she recalled. “We started by openly bringing our Bibles. We also prayed daily before school for classmates, our teachers and our mission.

“God really got our attention when He saved one of our main antagonists among the teachers … one that we had really been praying for. That teacher is now a Christian missionary.”

In Sweden, 16 year-old Sara Victorsson started a New Generation group with three other students shortly after she became a Christian. But within months, she was diagnosed with cancer. She told a New Generation leader: “OK, the Bible says God can heal me. But even if I die, I’ll take as many with me to heaven as possible.”

Her group became one of the most radical in the country, reaching individual students 10 times as often as the national goal of once annually. Through music, drama, one-on-one evangelism and prayer, their group grew from four to 35 within the year. They even saw a satanist in the school get saved.

Students said Sara exhibited great joy throughout her cancer ordeal. Today she is a county coordinator for New Generation–and healed.

One key New Generation distinction is that students are the Holy Spirit-fired “motor.” Adult leaders provide guidance for school leaders, but not control.

New Generation students seek creative ways of evangelizing. Swedish national leader Joakim Lundqvist said that one team raised more than $12,000 in three weeks–enough to purchase Bibles as Christmas gifts for all their schoolmates. A donor matched their hard work and sacrifice, and 6,500 students received a Bible. Not content to just hand out Bibles, the group wrapped each Bible and included a personal greeting.

Lundqvist said these gifts continue to bear fruit as students read God’s Word –many for the first time.

The New Generation concept started at Oslo University in 1996. The organizers quickly realized that the plan was relevant not only on their campus but also throughout Norway. Today more than 7,500 members of New Generation in 200-plus Norwegian schools are actively spreading the gospel.

New Generation kicked off in next-door Sweden in 2001. With encouragement from the Norwegians, the Swedes ran with it. After two years, New Generation Sweden had grown to more than 3,400 members in 230 school groups in nearly every county.

“We have a basic statement of faith, but we do not take a stand on denominational and church-movement distinctives,” Lundqvist said. This interdenominational approach has helped New Generation enjoy widespread acceptance among Scandinavian church organizations.

Seeing this effectiveness, other Europeans want to get onboard. The ministry even spread to Russia after New Generation leaders from Sweden preached at a youth conference in Moscow in 2002. The first New Generation International Conference–scheduled for Sept. 29-Oct. 3 in Gothenburg, Sweden–may fire even global interest. More details can be found on the Sweden New Generation Web site, www.nygeneration.com.

“Our goal in Sweden is to present Jesus to every student, every year,” Lundqvist said. “School is where everyone is; the whole coming society is there. We want to see New Generation in every school.”
David M. Johnson in Uppsala, Sweden

Pastors in Montreal say churches are growing and Italians in the city are embracing Pentecostal teaching

Pentecostal ministers within a small Italian community in Montreal say they are seeing cautious church growth and people set free from lives of crime and demonic oppression.

Though the 300,000-strong Italian population in Montreal has deep roots in Catholicism and religious tradition, pastors say they are slowly seeing walls fall as people embrace faith in Christ.

“God works in mysterious ways,” said David Mortelliti, pastor of 510-member Fabre Street Pentecostal Church in Montreal.

“When someone is willing to go beyond that which is business as usual or tradition, and is willing to look for the truth in the Word of God, that person is close to making a decision for Christ.”

Here, pastors say, each decision for Christ is miraculous. “When you look at it numerically, it does not convey the reality of what’s happening to anyone outside of our context,” said David DiStaulo, pastor of 700-member Emmanuel Pentecostal Christian Church. “It’s like comparing a church in Texas to one conversion in Israel. One baptism there is like baptizing 1,000 in America.”

DiStaulo said Catholicism in the Italian culture is strongly associated with superstition and even witchcraft. He said his church has seen many people set free from demonic oppression, as well as from lives of crime.

“A large percentage of our church is of Sicilian background,” DiStaulo told Charisma. “A lot of these people got saved because a family member–sometimes a parent–killed someone and the resulting consternation drew them to the Lord.”

In the 1920s Italian immigrants began moving from California to Chicago, then on to Hamilton, Ontario, and Toronto, and later to Montreal. DiStaulo said that after a few years of house meetings, the first Italian Pentecostal church–Fabre Street Pentecostal Church–was built in 1926. In 1944, the Italian Pentecostal Church of Canada (IPCC), now a national fellowship of about 20 churches, was formed.

Though few Italians are currently immigrating to Canada, there are about 300,000 in Montreal. Of these, 75,000 do not speak English, and only 2,500 are non-Catholics. “For Italian Catholics, their life revolves around their church. Every one person who is saved faces a high price to be paid,” DiStaulo said, adding that many converts have had their lives threatened.

Though most of the Italian Pentecostal churches in Montreal have bilingual services and ministries, the congregations are becoming increasingly diverse and “less Italian” with each new generation. John DellaForesta, pastor of 200-member Laval Christian Fellowship, said ethnic groups in Montreal hold on to their roots more strongly than ones in the United States. “We don’t want to ignore that reality,” he noted, “but we don’t want to be a predominantly Italian outreach. It’s a tightrope.”

Although Fabre Street also extends its ministry to everyone, Mortelliti noted, “If Italians don’t reach Italians, it will be harder for others to reach them.”

At the Leonardo da Vinci Cultural Centre in the heart of Montreal’s Italian community, the IPCC churches hold joint evangelistic events and hand out gospel tracts. The churches also get together regularly for retreats, rallies, national conventions, pastors meetings, youth activities and special events.

Mortelliti and DellaForesta both say the most effective outreach method is friendship evangelism. “People won’t come to church just because of a bumper sticker,” said Mortelliti, whose church also has radio and TV broadcasts. “We have to allow people to explore our lives and to come up with the hard questions.”

One of the challenges the churches face, DellaForesta said, is the fact that Montreal “is the most evangelically depressed area in North America … but inroads are being made.” One of his church’s long-term goals is to plant other churches. “I believe the Lord would be happier with 10 churches of 200 people than one church of 2,000,” he said.

DellaForesta’s personal dream is to see the area’s churches enjoy “genuine fellowship that goes beyond denominational ties,” he said. “I’d rather have 10 magnets in a bag than 100 marbles. If the bag breaks, the marbles will disperse. But the magnets will stick together.”
Ann-Margret Hovsepian in Montreal, Quebec

Through their Iris Ministries, Rolland and Heidi Baker have planted more than 5,000 churches

After nearly 10 years on the mission field in Mozambique, Americans Rolland and Heidi Baker say they’ve come to know of the love of God more keenly through the suffering orphans they minister to daily.

“The poor, the dying and the orphans we work with show us the face and heart of God every day. It’s a face of incredible love,” Heidi Baker said. “We’re learning to be totally dependent on God, broken and humble.”

Since starting Iris Ministries in 1995, she and her husband, Rolland, say they have seen the lame walk, the blind receive sight, the deaf gain hearing and even the dead raised to life. Explosive church growth of approximately 5,000 churches across Mozambique and into the neighboring nations of Malawi and South Africa, as well as 14 other countries around the globe has accompanied these miraculous signs and wonders.

“There’s such desperation for Jesus in these countries,” Heidi Baker told Charisma. “We go to where there aren’t any other churches, into the darkness.”

Currently the Bakers and their team care for 2,000 orphans living in two children’s centers and in the “foster” homes of pastors and widows. Many of the children lost their parents to AIDS, the killer of an estimated 6,500 Africans a day.

Gitou was an AIDS orphan and a tough street kid when Heidi Baker met him. “He said he was 12, but he looked around 8. His heart was hardened, and he continued telling me off whenever I came near,” she recalled. “But I just kept loving and loving Gitou until his heart melted. Now he preaches out on the street and leads many to the Lord.”

Constancia was a scared little orphan girl of around 5 who was left on the steps of Iris Ministries’ orphanage. “She didn’t speak and couldn’t communicate,” Heidi Baker said. “The Lord just told me to chase her … with His love. I’d chase her and hold her until she fell asleep in my arms.

“The same day Constancia was baptized, she began to speak and even asked to lead the choir. She told us then that she’d been mute since seeing her parents brutally murdered right in front of her.”

Iris Ministries has three Bible schools operating in Mozambique, one in Malawi and another that is set to open soon in South Africa. They train local Christians who feel led to start churches–many of these churches are planted in remote areas of Mozambique where the gospel has never been heard.

The Bakers, who have two children of their own–Elisha, 21, and Crystalyn, 16–hope to see every pastor they train adopt between one and 10 orphans so they can demonstrate the fatherly love of God to the children. “We take such delight in training these pastors, in seeing their hearts set free from their life’s disappointments and seeing them filled to overflowing with God’s love,” Rolland Baker said. “That love can’t help but spill over to the children they adopt.”

The Bakers say the key to all their fruitfulness lies in relinquishing complete control to God. They say it’s a concept the Western church needs to learn in order to sow effective ministry throughout the earth.

Heidi Baker said that while visiting Toronto (Ontario) Airport Christian Fellowship God showed her “the paradigm of His upside-down kingdom. He had me stand upside-down on my head for 45 minutes while someone prophesied God was turning our ministry upside down to reflect His kingdom values.”

The second key to fruitfulness, the couple says, is intimacy with God. “Revival breaks out when people are desperate for God. When they become intimate with Him and lose sight of themselves, then anything can happen,” said Rolland Baker, whose late grandfather H.A. Baker was a missionary to orphaned children in China.

In the Bakers’ book Always Enough (Chosen Books), they recount their adventures leading a ministry that has gained the attention of the president of Mozambique. He has personally met with Heidi Baker three times since 2002. “President Chissano and his government say the Christians are helping to reduce AIDS because a lot of people are getting married and staying faithful once they turn to Christ,” Heidi Baker said.

Missiologist and researcher Justin Long said that the power of the Bakers’ strategy is its potential to multiply the ministry’s impact. “They are battling against injustice, poverty and fatherlessness, taking back ground from spiritual darkness,” Long told Charisma. “They are proclaiming the gospel and being a blessing to the desperate.

“The test will be whether their spiritual children do the same thing. Success could be 2,000 little ‘Iris Ministries,’ each started by an orphan cared for by the Bakers, each in turn raising up a few thousand spiritual children of their own.That would have a profound impact, indeed.”
Josie Newman

Pastor in Pakistan Found Shot to Death

The body of a Christian pastor was found Jan. 5 at the Khanewal Railway Station in Pakistan. An autopsy revealed the Rev. Mukhtar Masih, 50, had been shot in the chest, All Pakistan Minorities Alliance reported. Masih’s son said his father recently had received death threats from local Muslim extremists, some of whom had in the past asked police to ban Masih’s church from using loud speakers. At least 45 people have been killed and more than 90 injured since October 2001, Christian Solidarity International reported.

Christian Families Forced To Leave Laos Village

Two families were recently forced to leave their village in the Attapue Province because they would not renounce their faith in Christ. According to Christian Aid Mission (CAM), six women and their children arrived in the city of Pakse in southern Laos on Jan. 2 after being threatened for many months. “The situation is getting very unstable and dangerous,” two of the women said. Elsewhere, police arrested 11 believers gathered for worship in Kang village, Somsouk village, Donphai village and Sanamsai City. Authorities reportedly are seeking other Christian leaders who are said to be in hiding. Some reportedly have walked more than 60 miles to avoid arrest, CAM reported.

Korean Aid Worker Imprisoned in China

A South Korean Christian humanitarian worker was recently sentenced to a nine-year jail sentence for helping a small group of North Koreans defect to South Korea. The human-rights group Jubilee Campaign reported that the Rev. Choi Bong-il was arrested on April 12, 2002, in Yanji, located in the Jilin Province in China, and charged with organizing illegal border crossings for helping North Korean refugees attempt to defect to South Korea. During a December 2002 trial, a Chinese court did not render a verdict, but authorities continued to detain Bong-il. In mid-December, the court finally found Bong-il guilty. “Please pray that Rev. Choi’s appeal will be timely heard by the court and that … he will be released,” Jubilee Campaign officials said. “Please pray that God continue to give him spiritual and physical strength.”

Across the United States, dynamic outreaches to inmates and ex-offenders are helping reduce recidivism rates
Christian prison ministries across the country are reducing recidivism rates of countless ex-offenders. But more than simply changing statistics, these organizations are credited with transforming lives.

Robert Valdez, 29, spent most of his life selling drugs in the streets of New York. Today, for the first time ever, he earns honest wages working as a land surveyor–thanks to House of Hope of Alachua County, an after-care prison ministry in Gainesville, Fla., that houses converted inmates immediately upon release.

“I would have gone right back to the things I was doing before if it wasn’t for this place,” Valdez said. “The most important thing I have learned is that without my relationship with Jesus, I am lost.”

Since its humble beginnings in 1996, House of Hope has been home to more than 150 men, and the organization has seen dozens of lives drastically changed.

According to a recidivism report released by the Florida Department of Corrections in July 2003, approximately 40.5 percent of male inmates re-offend after three years of release from prison. This is in stark contrast to House of Hope’s recidivism rates–only 17 percent of their total number of graduates have ever re-offended.

Thomas Johnson, executive director of House of Hope, said his program offers the world what it is looking for: an answer. “The world has no answers for the state of self-destruction that it’s in,” Johnson told Charisma. “There’s no answer other than Christ.”

A recent study conducted by Byron R. Johnson, Ph.D., director of The Religion and Civil Society Program at The Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J., found a significant relation between faith-based mentoring and decreased recidivism rates.

The study reports drastically reduced recidivism rates for Texas inmates who completed InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI)–a pre-release, faith-based program that was launched in April 1997 under the recommendation of then-Gov. George W. Bush.

According to the study, IFI program participants were “significantly less likely than the matched groups” to be either re-arrested (17.3 percent vs. 35 percent) or re-incarcerated (8 percent vs. 20.3 percent) in the first two years after release.

“Findings are consistent across a wide range of studies,” Byron Johnson said. “When religious commitment goes up, crime goes down.”

There are four key elements regarding IFI’s success, Johnson added. The program encourages inmates to experience a spiritual transformation, it relies heavily upon volunteers and mentors, it provides support systems for inmates upon release, and it emphasizes education, work, life skills and mentoring built upon a foundation of biblical principles.

IFI is operated by Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM), the largest prison ministry in the United States, through a contract with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The organization was founded by Charles Colson, a former aide to President Nixon who was imprisoned on Watergate-related charges.

According to Mark Earley, president of PFM, relationships are critical to its participants’ success. “We match them with someone early on so that there is a relationship developed before their release,” Earley said. “Our key to success is that we don’t finish involvement when they leave prison. We get them hooked up with a local church, a job, an accountability partner.”

Though recent statistics are promising, it is the lives of IFI’s graduates that reflect the true change, Earley said.

After serving 13 years of a 35-year prison sentence for the murder of his wife, IFI graduate Robert Sutton said he experienced true freedom before ever walking out of a jail cell. “I was taught that even though my body was confined, my mind and spirit could be freed through Jesus Christ,” Sutton said.

Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives said Sutton’s life reflects the effectiveness of faith-based organizations all over America.

“[Robert Sutton] left prison a different man,” Towey said. “When you look at how he has spent his life since being out of prison, it’s astounding to see the contrast from before.”

Today Sutton is on staff at The Greater Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Houston, where he has been a faithful member since his release in 1998.

It is the story of everyone who has had a spiritual conversion, Towey said. “They are desiring to do good, one day at a time. You can see that in Robert Sutton’s face.”
Suzy Richardson

The Back to Jerusalem movement seeks to take the gospel from China to Israel, to the world’s most unreached people
After a combined 40 years in prison for preaching the gospel, three Chinese house church leaders are reviving an 80-year-old vision to take the gospel from China to Jerusalem–a region that comprises 90 percent of the world’s unreached people.

Peter Xu Yongze, Enoch Wang and “Brother Yun,” whose dramatic testimony of torture and imprisonment is recounted in the book The Heavenly Man, are spearheading the effort known as the Back to Jerusalem movement. The campaign seeks to mobilize 100,000 Chinese missionaries who would die to evangelize the estimated 2 billion people in the area known as the 10/40 Window.

The vision was first articulated by China’s Jesus Church in the 1920s, and was implemented in 1949, the same year the Communist Party took over China. Most of those missionaries were imprisoned and died before being freed.

Yongze, Wang and Yun explain their strategy in Back to Jerusalem: Called to Complete the Great Commission, written with Paul Hattaway, who has authored several books about the church in China.

The initial 36 workers were sent out in 2000. Hattaway said that number has climbed to about 1,000 today. “The number of Chinese missionaries is growing every week, and many hundreds more are being trained inside China right now,” he said.

The 10/40 Window, which includes much of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, is home to the three largest spiritual strongholds in the world today–Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism.

“The Chinese missionaries will face opposition in these regions,” said Luis Bush, who heads the World Inquiry, a ministry that assesses missions activity inside the 10/40 Window. “But they believe the persecution they have already endured was like a training ground for this difficult mission that left them equipped to take the gospel through these territories. That is a very deep conviction.”

Patrick Johnstone, editor of Operation World, a prayer compendium on the various nations of the world, said the missionaries could face an excessive amount of persecution “if their zeal is not tempered by wisdom and a deep understanding of the cultures that they seek to reach.”

Hattaway said Chinese missionaries are receiving language, cross-cultural and religious training, and plan to work closely with local believers in each nation they visit. He added that 100,000–a tithe of what house church leaders estimated to be 1 million full-time Christian workers in China–is the minimum number of missionaries organizers plan to send out.

Journalist David Aikman, who has written extensively about China’s Christians, said the Back to Jerusalem movement has gained strength in the last decade. “There is no part of China that I have visited in which house churches are active where ordinary Christians are not aware of the movement and in most cases, eager to support it,” he said.

Bush believes now is a good time to revive this vision, noting that China recently joined the World Trade Organization, which significantly opened communication with the outside world. He also points to the country’s anticipation of the Olympics in Beijing in 2008, which is spurring a more world-friendly attitude.

Johnstone said publishing a book on the Back to Jerusalem movement may be premature, but he noted that the Bible encourages evangelism nonetheless.

“This type of movement will take time and years of language learning, and there will be a steep learning curve with many mistakes,” Johnstone said. “There needs to be an effective network of support and pastoral oversight with adequate accountability, which is not yet there.”

Still, the Chinese house church leaders have pledged to do whatever it takes to fulfill the Back to Jerusalem vision. “The leaders are concentrated on getting the job done in the power of the Lord,” Hattaway said. “The details of how this happens they are leaving up to the Lord.”
Jennifer LeClaire