Palestinian Authority police associated with the Fatah party in Gaza, Israel, seized the six-story Gaza Baptist Church on Friday, Feb. 2, to use as a watch point against Hamas militants. Pastor Hanna Massad said police officers demanded the building key from the lone guard who did not have one. He then informed church leaders who refused to give the key to the police. The police then broke into the building, taking positions on the sixth floor. Because of the battles raging on Gaza’s streets, Massad has been unable to leave his house to check on the church. The reconstructed building was dedicated last November. The building houses the church’s sanctuary, Gaza’s only Christian library, a guest hostel and a mammogram clinic. A fresh ceasefire was declared the evening of Sunday, Feb. 4, but there was no indication it would be any more successful than the nine previous truce attempts occurring in the last five days. Sunday services at the church were canceled because of the instability. “It’s a very dangerous situation. It’s in God’s hands,” Massad said. (Assist News Service)

COLLEGIATE PRO-LIFE ORGANIZATION ADDS WALK ACROSS CANADA

The national collegiate pro-life organization Crossroads, known for annual pro-life walks across the U.S. every summer since 1995, is planning to include a walk across Canada in 2007. The walk, coinciding with the American walks, would be made up of volunteer students from colleges and universities across Canada. Crossroads President Jim Nolan said, “It’s beginning to look as though this will be the year a Canadian walk will be possible, provided that we have a sufficient number of Canadian volunteers.” Since 1995 Crossroads walkers have spoken to more than 2 million Americans at churches alone, and countless millions through local and national media and speaking engagements while walking a combined 10,000 miles through 35 states and thousands of towns and cities. Crossroads sponsors three simultaneous pro-life walks across America each summer, beginning in Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego, and concluding together in Washington, D.C. The group also sponsors “spring break walks” up the Florida coast, and conducted a walk across Europe to World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, in 2005. The proposed Canadian route would begin in British Columbia and end in Quebec, approximately 3,200 miles. (Christian Newswire)

UZBEK PASTOR ARRESTED FOR ‘INCITEMENT TO HATRED’

Underscoring international concerns about minority religious freedom in Uzbekistan, Pentecostal Pastor Dmitry Shestakov, 37, remained imprisoned more than two weeks after he was captured. On Sunday, Jan. 21, secret police arrested Shestakov at his Full Gospel Church in Adijan on charges of “incitement to hatred on national, racial or religious grounds.” The pastor, along with his wife and three daughters, had been forced into hiding last June after a prosecutor accused him of “treason.” They fled after Shestakov was ordered to provide a list of all his church members, which he refused to do. “It was clear that the National State Security were going to find something to charge me with and remove me from my position as a Christian pastor,” Shestakov said in an interview. Prosecutors are refusing to release him, claiming he is a member of a “banned religious organization,” despite the fact that the Full Gospel Church has written a declaration that he is one of the denomination’s officially accredited pastors and is part of a registered congregation. (BosNewsLife)

* HCJB Global Voice airs 2.5 hours of Uzbek programs per week from an AM station outside the country. More than 15 million people speak this language.

5,000 CHRISTIANS MARCH IN PROTEST OF ROMANIAN RELIGIOUS LAW

More than 5,000 Christians from churches and religious associations held a “March of Protest” on the streets of the Romanian city of Timisoara on Sunday, Jan. 21, to protest the country’s new religious law. In speeches made during the march and an official petition submitted to the Romanian government, the marchers pointed out the new law breaks the country’s constitutional requirement for separation of church and state. The new law will discriminate against minority religious by separating citizens into three categories: predominant denomination, registered denomination or unregistered denomination. “Through this law it will open wide the door for the control of the state over the spiritual life in Romania,” said Paul Negrut, president of the Baptist Union of Romania, during an interview with Alfa Omega TV. Ben-Oni Ardelean, another pastor participating in the march, compared the new law to “formulations similar to those for which, during the rule of communism, our forerunners were sent to prisons and murdered for their beliefs.” (Evangelical News/Assist News Service)

* HCJB Global Voice broadcasts the gospel locally in eight Romanian cities via partner ministry Radio Voice of the Gospel. The network is a cooperative effort with the Evangelical Alliance of Romania and the Romanian Missionary Society.

NEW TESTAMENTS WITH GREETING CARD COVERS BOOST EVANGELISM

A new line of Scriptures designed as a tool for outreach wraps a contemporary “God’s Word” translation of the New Testament with a cover styled after a greeting card. The new line of Bibles offered by Green Key Books and called “SentameNTs” are designed to take awkwardness out of personal evangelism and enable people to pass on a Bible to someone without appearing judgmental. With simple and striking cover imagery such a clock face with the words, “It’s About Time,” printed on it, or a cup of coffee coupled with the text, “Fresh Start,” the Bibles have received a lot of positive feedback from stores that tested the products. There are nine different designs available, and Green Key plans to introduce three new designs each season. Signage provided with floor displays of the product proclaim, “What you want to tell them on the outside . . . what you want to give them on the inside.” (Christian Retailing)

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