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In Indonesia a powerful earthquake measuring between 6.2 and 7.2 on the Richter scale shook the eastern province of Papua Friday, Feb. 6, killing at least 30 people. This was followed by strong aftershocks on the weekend, inflicting additional damage. In Nabire, the town closest to the epicenter, local roads and buildings were damaged, including a local hospital. Jakarta officials don't expect the death toll to go much higher. Houses in the more remote mountainous region are built mostly from wood, bamboo and thatch, and it was unlikely that victims were trapped under debris. Rescue efforts on the weekend were hampered by both the closure of the airport and damaged runways. Mission Aviation Fellowship's David Wunsch said four of the organization's missionary families escaped safely. The quake caused only minor damage to MAF's facilities at the airport. "We did not have any permanent damage to our buildings, although there were some cracks and so on," he said. "It's basically a cleanup [that is needed]. I don't have any word at this point on how bad the runway may have been affected or if we cannot land or take off. But it's a large airport, and our airplanes are small, so I'm assuming that even if we can use just a portion of the airport, we'll stay operational." Damage reports are still coming in, but Wunsch expects that MAF teams will be involved in relief efforts, especially helping local community churches that lost buildings. (Mission Network News/Associated Press)

* HCJB World Radio is working with local Indonesian partners to establish local Christian radio stations on Roti island and at Kupang in West Timor. Equipment has been sent from the HCJB World Radio Engineering Center in Elkhart, Ind.

NEW MILITANT ISLAMIC GROUP VOWS TO RID INDONESIA OF CHRISTIANITY

The latest analysis report prepared by the Jakarta-based International Crisis Group (ICG) released early this week stated that a radical new Islamic militia has emerged in Indonesia. The newly established group exists in the Central Sulawesi province, and is highly concentrated in the sensitive Poso region where the Action Committee for Crisis Response (KOMPAK) is responsible for a series of attacks against Christians. Members are highly trained in international militant camps in the Philippines and Afghanistan. KOMPAK is involved in the Muslim-Christian conflicts in the Moluccan Islands, aggressively seeking new recruits. They are ideologically prepared to launch large-scale deadly attacks. On Jan. 19 Central Sulawesi police confiscated at least 19 bombs and five handmade guns in three areas in Poso, and joint security personnel from military troops and a police mobile brigade seized at least 27 bombs, 17 live bullets and a handmade machine gun. (Religion Today/Voice of the Martyrs)

COLOMBIAN GUERRILLAS USE FALSE IDEAS TO JUSTIFY ONGOING PERSECUTION

Why do guerrillas with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) continue to actively persecute evangelical believers? Their reasons reveal numerous false ideas, misunderstandings and misconceptions. Armed groups accuse evangelical pastors of living well at the expense of the people, taking up offerings for personal gain, failing to have a vision to improve society, serving as agents of U.S. imperialism, and organizing corrupt political parties. Terrorists charge that the church is just a "business" and say that pastors keep tithes for themselves and hold parties with church offerings. Evangelicals, they maintain, are "government agents who pacify people to make them submissive to the state." (Religion Today/Voice of the Martyrs)

BAPTISTS' OVERSEAS PARTNERSHIPS UNAFFECTED BY STRUCTURAL CHANGES

The proposed withdrawal of the Southern Baptist Convention from the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) is not expected to affect the ministries of Southern Baptist missionaries or the International Mission Board's working partnerships with Baptist unions worldwide, IMB President Jerry Rankin told trustees during a Feb. 3 meeting in Richmond, Va. "A lot of publicity has been generated by the recommendation of a task force that had been meeting for several years that the Southern Baptist Convention withdraw from membership in the BWA," Rankin said. "This recommendation is a matter of organizational affiliation that does not affect the bilateral relationships between the IMB and Baptist conventions and unions that may be members of the BWA or participate in regional fellowships." While the BWA emphasizes "unity in diversity," Southern Baptists say there must be parameters in terms of theology and doctrine in order to have an "authentic basis of fellowship," Rankin said. "Our commonality must be biblically based and represent more than the common identity of the name Baptist," he said. "The BWA has become a forum for those advocating aberrant theological positions, and Southern Baptists have been increasingly concerned about the pattern of disrespect for conservative positions being expressed in BWA commissions and sessions." (Baptist Press)

CORNERSTONE UNIVERSITY TO LAUNCH THEOLOGICAL TRAINING IN CHINA

Believers in China will be getting some much-needed theological education in the months ahead. Cornerstone University's Asia Baptist Theological Seminary has just received approval from the Higher Learning Commission to branch into China. Seminary Dean Bob Rapa says many Chinese church leaders lack formal Bible education. He says the seminary has goals to "shape theology in that part of the world and advance the kingdom by planting church planters as we train these [pastors] to go out into their culture." Trainers will be working with the underground church, so there are risks. "The greatest challenge probably is in knowing how to accomplish the teaching without raising unnecessary problems in terms of the government and their repression of Christianity," Rapa says. A survey team is heading to China next month to determine exactly where the training should be established. (Mission Network News)

CROATIAN SEMINARY SENDS CHURCH PLANTERS TO BALKANS

The Evangelical Theological Seminary (ETS) in Croatia serves as a training base for missionaries and church planters throughout the Balkans. Started in a Zagrev church basement in 1972, the school has more than 800 graduates serving in 50 nations. Now based in Osijek, Croatia, ETS has an enrolment of 100 full-time and 200 part-time students. ETS President Peter Kuzmic said a recent study revealed that there are 36 cities with a population of at least 50,000 in the area without any evangelical witness. "So we began to pray for these cities, and God started calling our students while they were still in preparation to go to those cities," he said. The seminary's primary focus is on the Balkans. ETS helped plant the first gospel-preaching church in Montenegro. In 1986 a graduate planted the first evangelical church in Kosovo, a region that is 82-percent Muslim. The seminary has weathered numerous storms throughout the years. During the 1991-92 civil war in Bosnia and Croatia, Osijek became a war zone. Some students and faculty chose to stay behind and pastor the seminary's on-site church. They risked their lives, offering sanctuary and prayer to fear-stricken inhabitants of the city. More than 160,000 bombs, rockets and grenades fell around them, but none struck the school or church building. (Missions Insider)

* HCJB World Radio worked with Croatia's Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek to install a recording studio in 1999. Weekly radio programs called "Sources of Faith" produced in the studio air on more than 23 secular radio stations across Croatia and two stations in Bosnia.

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