Dear Pastors,
Have you found it interesting how the disgusting revelations emanating from the Mark Foley case have often appeared alongside the story of the gunman killing those little girls in an Amish schoolhouse in PA? While the first story has sparked debate and consternation concerning how widely and deeply blame can be assigned, the events in Pennsylvania have piqued the curiosity of the media, who wonder how the Amish community can forgive a person who has done them so great harm. I have really been touched by the reasoning given by one Amish spokesperson who gave witness to the community’s faith in Christ and His command to forgive. “It is not complicated,” the spokesperson said, “for Jesus told us to forgive just as he has forgiven us.” I confess I often cringe with embarrassment or disappointment at what is said by Christians who are given the opportunity to speak on national television, but not so with the recent interviews with the Amish. Foley instant messaging young men; Amish people forgiving a killer. Two situations worlds apart; a man and a people building their lives on totally different ethics. The results are shocking. I hope many have noticed the contrast.  - Dave 

INDONESIA: CHRISTIAN DRAGGED FROM BUS AND STABBED
Religious tension continues to escalate on the island of Sulawesi where armed Muslim militants blockaded a road and stopped a bus on Oct 1st. They forced five passengers from the bus and stabbed an unidentified Christian man. Police arrived before there were any further injuries. The victim was admitted to a hospital with serious injuries to his back. The same day a mob also burned a partially constructed church building on the island. It is believed these attacks may be attempts by militant Muslim factions to further stir up religious tension between the Muslim and Christian communities. Pray the Holy Spirit will strengthen Indonesian Christians to be loving witnesses as they walk humbly with their God. (Source: VOM)

EGYPT: CHRISTIAN GIRL ESCAPES KIDNAPPERS
An Egyptian Christian teenager escaped her Muslim kidnappers last week hours after they had drugged her on a public bus. They threatened to rape her and convert her to Islam if her family did not leave their Nile Delta city of El-Mahala el-Kobra. Laurence Wagih Emil, 15, escaped the ground-floor room where she was being held while her captors were away breaking their Ramadan fast. Her father had received several threatening text messages from his daughter’s mobile phone, including “Take the rest of your daughters and leave the city, or you will lose them one by one,” and “The girl is not accepting easily, but she will embrace Islam for sure.”

Reports of kidnappings and the forced conversion of Christian girls are common among Egypt’s Coptic community. 12 Christian girls under the age of 21 have disappeared in 2006. The list includes 17-year-old Dina Amin, who disappeared from her family’s home in El-Mahala el-Kobra on the same day as Laurence Emil. Coptic Christians make up at least 10 percent of the Egyptian population. While it is illegal for Egypt’s Muslims to convert to Christianity, “kidnap conversions” to Islam have long been the subject of debate in the country. (Source: Compass Direct)

AZERBAIJAN: OFFICIALS DEPRIVE BABY OF CHRISTIAN NAME
Born on June 18 to a Christian family in northern Azerbaijan, little Ilya Eyvazov still has no official name. Local authorities in the town of Aliabad at first refused to issue a birth certificate when the baby’s father, Novruz Eyvazov, tried to register his son’s birth on June 21. “Impossible,” city administration officials told Novruz Eyvazov when they saw his son’s name was the Russian form of Elijah.

“They said it was because it was a Christian name,” said the Baptist church member. The father of five told Compass that he was not surprised by the difficulties because he had faced the same problem with his last two children. “God knows what he wants and we trust him for everything.”

Novruz Eyvazov said he returned to the city administration offices on a weekly basis for the next month, but he succeeded only in eventually securing a birth certificate that left his son’s name blank. Without a birth certificate it is impossible for an Azeri to receive medical care, go to school or travel abroad. It is not yet clear what practical problems Ilya Eyvazov will face if his official I.D. carries no name. In Azerbaijan, where 96 percent of the population is Muslim, Christianity is perceived by many as a foreign religion, and conversion out of Islam is often viewed as betrayal of the nation. (Source: Compass Direct)

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PUT THE WORLD IN PERSPECTIVE WITH GOOGLE EARTH
Have you tried Google Earth yet? "The idea is simple. It's a globe that sits inside your PC. You point and zoom to anyplace on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view."

"You can zoom from space to street level instantly and then pan or jump from place to place, city to city, even country to country."

"This is a 3D model of the real world, based on real satellite images." (blurbs from the Google Earth site) 

How might you use Google Earth as a missions resource? How about showing your Sunday school class what the neighborhoods look like in Bamako, Mali? Or giving your congregation a sense of the terrain in Uganda? Or what it's like to island hop in Japan or Indonesia? What about using the program to take your children's Sunday school or VBS on a "virtual globe trotting trip" to each of the places your missionaries serve? Or inviting visiting missionaries to give your missions committee a tour of where they live and work using the program?

These are just a few ideas. Take a few minutes to check out the program, and we're sure you'll think of many more applications for missions education. You can download the program for free at http://earth.google.com/.

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Direct Hit: Aiming Real Leaders at the Mission Field by Paul D. Borden
Abingdon Press 2006  (Reviewed by David Korb)

I always take a minute to read the “endorsements” listed in the first few pages of a new book. I was quite surprised, then, that although the first few pages of this book contain blurbs of praise from people I highly respect and whose wisdom I value, I had a totally different response to this book than did the endorsers. I feel like this book is more about “selling widgets” than leading a congregation into a Spirit-directed, Christ-centered missional passion.

Borden asserts in Chapter 1 that “the primary skill required for strong leadership in the church is the ability to use words. …Outstanding leaders understand that they have signed up for a 24/7 task. Every spoken word, every phone call, every e-mail, every verbal interaction (formal or informal) with people in the congregation reflects an overall communication strategy for change. If we lead change only through formal presentations or meetings, then we have unclear thinking about the nature of the task. Every venue, every day—no matter how seemingly insignificant—ought to be a specific tactic in our overall communication strategy. …The skill is not found only in the words. The quality is found in the intonation, the body language, the eye contact, and more, when helping people see we are excited about a new vision.”

Borden feels that the key to a healthy church is strong pastoral leadership, and the most important skill for pastoral leaders to possess and hone is their ability to communicate. In this book, he outlines how a pastor might become this tremendous communicator in order to lead his congregation through a process of change. Borden ends the first chapter with this charge: “God calls you to lead change not only with individuals but also with groups of people, called congregations. …Therefore, communicate well to lead well.” The author’s emphasis on tactics and strategies to be employed by one leader over a group of people with an implied commitment to heavy top-down leadership left me feeling unsettled. Leaders certainly need to have vision, but Borden’s “nuts and bolts” approach to casting that vision before a congregation feels too mechanistic.

Beyond Duty: A Passion for Christ, a Heart for Mission by Tim Dearborn
InterVarsity Press 1998  (Reviewed by David Korb)

Beyond Duty provides a needed counterbalance to the book reviewed above. Dearborn writes, “God’s church falters from exhaustion because Christians erroneously think that God has given them a mission to perform in the world. The Father, the God of mission, has given his church to the world. It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of the church who has a mission in the world.” He continues, “The church does not exist for mission. It exists for the Lord Jesus Christ. To set mission before the church as its essential reason for existence is to risk focusing its devotion on an idol. In our age of human-centered pragmatism, where our focus is easily fixed on the fruitfulness of our own labor and where our worth is measured by our successes and failures, we dare not make something we do the justification of our existence.” Dearborn reminds the reader that the call of mission is commitment not to a task but to a person, Jesus Christ.

I highly recommend this book. It offers a refreshing reminder of the clear call of Scripture to have an effect upon society not because of the tasks we perform but due to the love of Christ emanating from our lives.

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