Zprávy HCJB 24.5.2009 - 30.5.2009

	Reformované sbory plánují spojené oslavy 500. výročí narození Jana Kalvína
	V souvislosti s 500. výročím narození reformátora 16. století Jana Kalvína se mezi představiteli dvou největších světových uskupení reformovaných sborů plánují společné rozhovory. Výkonné výbory Světového sdružení reformovaných církví (WARC) a Reformované ekumenické rady (REC) se sejdou v Ženevě ve Švýcarsku, kde Kalvín začal protestantskou reformaci. Tam rovněž vyzval k viditelnému sjednocení mezi reformátory. „Dnešní směřování k jednotě má být poctou Kalvínovi jeho novodobými dědici,“ řekl prezident REC Peter Borgdorff ve svém prohlášení. Někteří spekulují, že reformátory ke sjednocování nutí ekonomické důvody, ale výkonná tajemnice WARC pro styk s veřejností Kristine Greenaway to vyvrací. „Spojení není důsledkem ekonomických tlaků,“ napsala v mailu pro The Christian Post. „Po pravdě řečeno, obě tyto skupiny opravdu mají finanční problémy, spojování je však působeno touhou po jednotě pro větší svědectví ve světě a snahou zvrátit tendenci reformovaných ke drobení se… Důvodem ke spojování je sjednocení všech reformovaných k důraznějšímu svědectví. Zdroj: Christian Post
	Pálení Biblí americkou armádou v Afghánistánu vyvolalo pobouření
	Prezident americké skupiny zaměřené na pomoc křesťanům pronásledovaným pro víru vyjádřil rozhořčení nad tím, že příslušníci americké armády spálili Bible zabavené v Afghánistánu. „Srdcem každého křesťana otřese zpráva, že se někde pálí Bible,“ řekl prezident Open Doors USA Carl Moeller v rozhovoru pro Mission Network News. Bible vytištěné ve dvou nejběžnějších afghánských jazycích byly spáleny z obavy, aby nebyly použity k obracení Afghánců, potvrdil mluvčí Ministerstva obrany USA ve svém prohlášení, které zveřejnila CNN. Nevyžádané Bible poslané americkou církví byly zabaveny před rokem na základně Bagram v Afghánistánu, protože americké vojenské předpisy zakazují vojákům „všech vyznání“ obracet na víru během pobytu v Afghánistánu, řekl podplukovník Mark Wright. Členové nepatrné místní křesťanské komunity mohou být pro svou víru usmrceni – potvrzuje řada pozorovatelů zabývajících se lidskými právy. Zdroj: Open Doors USA, Mission Network News, BosNewsLife, CNN *HCJB Global Voice přináši rozhlasem slova naděje a povzbuzení lidem po celém Afghánistánu. Spolu s partnery se podílí na vysílání na AM ve čtyřech jazycích používanách v zemi: turkmenštině, Darí, jihouzbečtině a severouzbečtině.
	Všechny zprávy v angličtině
	MISSION ORGANIZATIONS RUSH AID TO CYCLONE VICTIMS IN BANGLADESH, INDIA Sources: Christian Newswire, Baptist World Alliance Mission organizations are sending aid to southern Bangladesh and eastern India after Cyclone Aila devastated the region on Monday, May 25, killing more than 200 and driving a million others from their homes. The West Bengal headquarters of Gospel for Asia (GFA) in India has become a makeshift shelter for victims whose possessions and dreams were washed away by the storm. “The love of the Lord and His compassion has seized our hearts to do something for our dear people who have been affected by this dreadful cyclone,” wrote a GFA-supported missionary pastor. “We have already sent some money to our district leader to buy essential commodities for the believers.” Baptist World Aid, the relief and development arm of the Baptist World Alliance, has sent grants totaling $12,000 for cyclone emergency relief to the affected area. Leor Sarkar, general secretary of the Bangladesh Baptist Fellowship, said the greatest need is for drinking water and dry food. “All the water wells are under water or are mixed with saline water, and there is no source of sweet water as the salt water covered the whole area,” he explained. “We’re now distributing drinking water and food to save their lives.” A number of survivors are living on boats. The cyclone hit just as the area’s rice paddies were ready for harvest. The salt water brought ashore by the cyclone destroyed crops and leveled houses. The death toll continues to climb. Some of the new deaths are not from the storm itself, but are related to its aftermath. Landslides in Darjeeling, for example, killed 24 people. REFORMED BODIES PLANNING MERGER, CELEBRATION OF JOHN CALVIN’S 500TH ANNIVERSARY Source: Christian Post Coinciding with the 500th anniversary of 16th-century reformer John Calvin, merger talks are scheduled between leaders of the world’s two largest reformed church bodies. The executive committees of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC) will convene in Geneva, Switzerland, where Calvin had promoted the Protestant Reformation. There, he had also urged visible unity among the reformers. “This move toward unity is a fitting tribute to Calvin by his modern-day heirs,” said REC President Peter Borgdorff in a statement. While some speculate the merger was prompted by financial challenges, Kristine Greenaway, executive secretary of communications for WARC, rejected such claims. “The merger was not prompted by financial struggles,” she said in an e-mail to The Christian Post. “While both organizations indeed face financial challenges, the merger was occasioned by the desire to re spond to the call to be one for greater stronger witness in the world and to reverse the tendency for the Reformed to yield to divisions. . . . The reasons for merging are to unite the Reformed churches and strengthen their common witness.” WORLD REFUGEE SUNDAY TO RAISE GLOBAL AWARENESS OF DISPLACED PERSONS Source: Assist News Service World Refugee Sunday will be celebrated on June 21, encouraging churches to focus on refugees and refugee-related issues. “In our ongoing concern for the poor and the marginalized, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is pleased to be a part of promoting World Refugee Sunday in an attempt to mobilize the global church to pray for the more than 40 million refugees and internally displaced peoples,” said WEA’s international director, Geoff Tunnicliffe. “As Jesus calls his followers to be concerned for all of ‘the least of these,’ WEA calls the worldwide evangelical community to participate in this event and pray for families who because of war, violence or disaster are forced from their homes and communities.” The event is organized by the Refugee Highway Partnership in cooperation with WEA. FAITH COMES BY HEARING LAUNCHES AUDIO BIBLE AMBASSADOR CAMPAIGN Source: Christian Newswire Faith Comes by Hearing, a major audio Bible ministry, has launched an audio Bible distribution program called Audio Bible Ambassador. “Becoming an Audio Bible Ambassador is simple,” said Troy Carl, the agency’s national director. “You start by downloading an audio Bible for yourself. Then sign up online and choose languages to sponsor. When others go online and search for their free audio Bible in one of your sponsored languages, your computer talks to their computer and sends over the Audio Scriptures.” Audio Bible ambassadors then visit a secure interactive webpage that displays a world map showing all those that they’ve shared the Word of God with. “Through this outreach you can make a difference for Christ and reach people while at work, surfing the web or even while you’re sleeping,” Carl said. Faith Comes by Hearing, an Albuquerque, N.M.-based nonprofit ministry, developed this program to equip Ch ristians for online Bible ministry opportunities. ‘SURPLUS’ OF BIBLES, CHRISTIAN LITERATURE IN U.S. HELPS FILL WORLDWIDE NEEDS Source: Mission Network News The average number of Bibles per Christian in the U.S. is two. There is also an abundance of other biblical literature in the U.S. Christian Resources International (CRI) has discovered a way to use “America’s surplus” of Bibles in other countries. “We take Christian books, new and used, and we send them overseas to people who just can’t get them,” said CRI’s Connie McCallum. CRI gets about 400 requests per month from people around the world requesting Bibles and other Christian books. Because most of the requests are from countries where English is the second language, these people can use books from the U.S. In this way, says McCallum, “America’s surplus can fill their needs.” The agency sends books to other countries such as the Philippines, Kenya, India and Nigeria. “One of the great things about CRI,” McCallum said, “is that you can actually be a missionary from home. Whethe r it’s giving a Bible, a dollar or $500, you can sit in your living room and actually get a book into the hands of a missionary.” * HCJB Global Voice, together with SIM and the Evangelical Church of West Africa, airs weekly half-hour programs on a local FM station in Nigeria in the Igbo language. HCJB Global Voice has also helped with a partner station in Umuahia. STUDY: U.S. RESIDENTS ‘AMAZINGLY RELIGIOUS,’ BUT YOUTH BECOMING MORE SECULAR Source: Religion News People of faith are better citizens and better neighbors and the U.S. is “amazingly” religious compared to other countries, says Harvard University professor Robert Putnam. This is tempered by the fact, however, that young Americans are “vastly more secular” than their older counterparts. A celebrated political scientist, Putnam has long been concerned with declining participation in American civic life, as described in his best-selling book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. When Elks clubs and parent-teacher associations lose members, the ties that bind civil society unravel, Putnam argues. But religious people may be God’s gift to civic engagement, Putnam and University of Notre Dame scholar David Campbell argue in their book, American Grace: How Religion Is Reshaping our Civic and Political Lives, which will release next year. The scholars say their studies found that religious people are three to four times more likely to be involved in their community. They are more apt than nonreligious people to work on community projects, belong to voluntary associations, attend public meetings, vote in local elections, attend protest demonstrations and political rallies and donate time and money to causes, including secular ones. REVIVAL LEADERS OF ‘PENSACOLA OUTPOURING’ PLAN GATHERED ON WEEKEND Sources: charismamag.com, Ministry Today Nearly a decade after the five-year-long revival in Pensacola, Fla., leaders of what became known as the “Pensacola Outpouring” and alumni of the Brownsville Revival School of Ministry gathered last weekend. “Today in the Christian world there’s just so many people who are hungry for God’s presence,” said John Kilpatrick, former pastor of Brownville Assembly of God. “You can run dry real quick in ministry if you don’t replenish. I think that’s probably what everyone is coming together to experience again.” This conference was the first time all the revival leaders and faculty members from the school met in one location since the Pensacola Outpouring ended. Many graduates have become missionaries and pastors around the globe. VISIT FINDS ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN MYANMAR Sources: Christian Solidarity Worldwide, BosNewsLife A visit to Southeast Asia provided Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) with fresh evidence of human rights violations in Myanmar (Burma).Traveling with the Free Burma Rangers, CSW representatives visited the Kachin ethnic group and made a separate visit to Chin refugees in Malaysia. Team members heard firsthand reports of rape, religious discrimination and land confiscation in Kachin state and met a Chin pastor, now in Malaysia, who had been forced by Myanmar’s military regime to deliver a speech at a public rally denouncing human rights campaigners and claiming to enjoy “complete religious freedom.” The team also met representatives of the Kachin Independence Organization the day after the regime had ordered the group to surrender its arms and soldiers to control of the Burmese army. “The Kachin people have a ceasefire with the regime, but the peace dividend is severely limited,” said Benedict Rogers, CSW’s East Asia t eam leader. “An end to widespread killing and mass displacement is welcome, but it comes at the cost of a climate of intense restriction, discrimination and crimes committed with impunity by military personnel.” Chin refugees also to face “constant religious and ethnic discrimination and severe abuse” while the international community looks on. U.S. MILITARY BURNING OF BIBLES IN AFGHANISTAN SPARKS OUTRAGE Sources: Open Doors USA, Mission Network News, BosNewsLife, CNN The president of a U.S.-based group helping Christians persecuted for their faith has expressed outrage that U.S. military personnel have burned confiscated Bibles in Afghanistan. “It really should shake the core of every Christian to realize that Bibles are being burned,” said Open Doors USA President Carl Moeller of in an interview with Mission Network News. The Bibles, printed in the two most common Afghan languages, were burned amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, CNN quoted a Defense Department spokesman as saying. The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the U.S. were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of “any religion” from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said. Members of the tiny Christian minority in Afghanistan can face death because of their faith, several rights investigators have confirmed. * HCJB Global Voice is bringing words of hope and encouragement to people across Afghanistan via radio. Together with partners, Christian broadcasts go out via AM in four languages spoken in the country: Turkmen, Dari, Southern Uzbek and Northern Uzbek. CHRISTIANS SKEPTICAL ABOUT TWO-STATE SOLUTION FOR ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT Sources: Mission Network News, Crosswalk.com, OneNewsNow During Pope Benedict XVI’s recent visit to the Middle East, he declared his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However the Middle East director of E3 Partners, Tom Doyle, said that the “abysmal failure” of the Gaza Strip has already shown that if a Palestinian state falls into the wrong hands, everyone will suffer. Christians in the Hamas-controlled region of Gaza tread carefully and quietly, sometimes respected and sometimes targeted by hard-line Muslim neighbors. “The pope says the answer to the Middle East problem is giving the Palestinians the West Bank,” said Doyle. “I would say the problems are . . . much deeper, and the Gaza failure has proven that this theory is probably not going to work. Israelis need security from terrorism, and so do Palestinians, especially the Christians. People on both sides of the fence, Christians and Muslims, are frightened because they don’t kno w what this second state’s going to bring about.” Life is already difficult in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, especially for Christians. Talk of a Palestinian state has led to a “rise of boldness among Islamic terrorists,” Doyle said. © Copyright 2009 - HCJB Global - Colorado Springs, CO USA

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