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Sumon Gomes, a college student in Dhaka, Bangladesh, assembled nearly 5000 Mennonite Central Committee school kits last November and December. He used the money he made to help pay his tuition. Each year, as many as 90,000 MCC school kits are assembled and shipped from North America to students around the world. However, getting the kits across borders can be difficult and expensive. There are sometimes high tariffs, and buying the materials and assembling the kits in country helps the local economy. MCC staff in the Congo assemble and distribute some 500 kits every year. MCC also pays the equivalent of a trimester’s school fees, about $16 per child. In Bangladesh, MCC staff buy school supplies – notebooks, pencils, erasers, rulers – from local shops. The average cost of one complete kit is $3.20. Promision Sangma, a security guard at the MCC office, assembled 1469 school kits in 2001, earning enough money to install a tube well for drinking water at his home village in northern Bangladesh. Most MCC school kits are assembled in North America by volunteers. Currently, MCC needs at least 46,000 school kits for shipments in 2002 to Bosnia, Haiti, Liberia, Nicaragua, North Korea, Serbia, Sierra Leone and Ukraine. – Mennonite Central Committee
Christian speaker Tony Campolo says the current US war on terrorism could set missions back 1000 years. Speaking to a Baptist men’s conference in Charlotte, N.C., Campolo reminded his listeners that Jesus told Christians to be peacemakers: “I’m not sure we want to hear of a Jesus who says ‘Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.’” Campolo compared the current military response to trying to get rid of malaria by killing mosquitoes when what is needed is to drain the swamp (of poverty and injustice) which breeds mosquitoes. He said, “If we’re going to win that Muslim world to Christ, we cannot make stupid statements about their religion and we cannot, in fact, engage in a holy war against them.” – Evangelical Press News Service
Reginald W. Bibby’s new book, Restless Gods: The Renaissance of Religion in Canada (Stoddard Publishing, 2002), reveals that overall church attendance in mainline Protestant churches in Canada is holding steady after three decades of steady decline. Bibby, a sociologist at the University of Lethbridge, found that 23% of mainline Protestant teens now attend worship services, up from 17% in 1984. The results were significantly different in Quebec, where weekly church attendance among Roman Catholics has dropped from 26% in 1990 to 14% today, and only 7% of teens attend religious services. – Evangelical Press News Service
It is estimated that Mennonite Church USA will need 100 new pastors each year for the next 10 years to replace retiring pastors; 33% of the denomination’s pastors are over age 55. Today there are only about half as many seminary students as there were at the peak in 1983, and there are five pastoral openings for every candidate. – Mennonite Church USA
The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Roman Catholic order of priests who take a vow of poverty, is filing for bankruptcy protection in order to save the $6.9 million in assets, including two apartment complexes, that it has designated for the care of its elderly members. Oblates donate all their salaries and pensions to the Order on the promise that they will be taken care of until their death. The Order is faced with 2500 legal claims of abuse from former students at residential schools it ran for the federal government. No Oblates have been found guilty of any criminal acts stemming from claims of physical or sexual abuse. The Order has proposed that it would contribute $200,000 to a “healing fund” and continue its work among aboriginal people in return for being allowed to keep its assets for its retired members. – Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, National Post, The Globe and Mail, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Researcher George Barna’s new book The State of the Church: 2002 shows that 80% of American adults donated money to one or more non-profit organizations in 2001, compared to 84% in 1999, 87% in 1998 and 78% in 2000. The average amount of giving in 2001 was $1097, up 19% from 2000 and 5% from 1999. Baby Busters (aged 18–35) were the least generous, with 75% donating money and only half giving anything to churches; their median donation to all organizations was less than $800, and their mean donation to churches was less than $600. In contrast, 83% of Baby Boomers were donors, two-thirds gave to churches; their mean giving to all organizations was $1200, and to churches $746. The most generous groups were the two older generations (now 56 and older), with 9 out of 10 being donors, and 7 out of 10 giving to churches. Their mean giving to all organizations was $1537, and to churches $1176. All amounts are in US funds. – Evangelical Press News Service
Chinese pastor Li Dexian was arrested April 11 while he was leading worship services in the village of Hua Du. Members of China’s Public Security Bureau interrupted the group and arrested Li, his wife and four other Christians. While the others were released after several hours of interrogation, Li remains in custody. The Voice of the Martyrs is monitoring the situation. Li has been arrested numerous times in the past for leading “illegal” church gatherings. – Evangelical Press News Service
New evidence shows that Johann Sebastian Bach was a man of faith. Thomas R. Rossin, director of the professional chamber choir and orchestra Exultate, studied Bach’s Bible for his doctoral dissertation. Bach owned a three-volume set of the Calov Bible, a commentary Bible written by the 17th-century Lutheran theologian Abraham Calov. Rossin catalogued all of the notes Bach had scribbled in the margins of the Bible and translated them from the original German. Of the over 400 markings found in the Bible, only 3% have to do with music. The rest reveal Bach’s personality, feelings, thoughts and beliefs, Rossin says. Bach’s Bible was found in a Michigan farmhouse in 1934 and was later donated to Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Mo. Traditional scholarship had held that Bach wrote church music only because he was paid to do so. – Evangelical Press News Service
The childhood death rate in the developing world dropped 14% in the past decade, reports World Relief. Pneumonia, diarrheal disease and measles are the biggest killers of children under age 5 in the developing world. – Evangelical Press News Service
Lucy Lu, a landed immigrant from China who was given sanctuary at Calvary Bible Church in Kingston, Ont., stepped out of the church on March 19 for the first time since November 2000. Lu was granted a three-year reprieve from a deportation order that would have sent her back to China, where she could face execution if she is retried and found guilty for the murder of her husband. Lu was paroled after serving 19 months in a Kingston prison for manslaughter; her husband was found bludgeoned to death outside their Toronto apartment in 1985. Lu became a Christian in 1990 while in prison. Hoping to begin a new life in Kingston, she found work at a local shoe store and remarried, but then received orders from Canadian immigration officials that she had to return to China immediately. Her adopted congregation granted her sanctuary and began an appeal process. Lu, who at the time of her sentencing struggled with English and the Canadian legal system, now says that she didn’t kill her husband but felt a plea bargain was her only option. – Christianweek
The Bible League distributed over 1.3 million Bibles and Scripture portions in Russia in 2001. Also distributed were its “Choose Life” Bible study program materials that were translated in the languages of minority ethnic groups in Siberia: Tuvin, Khaka, Evenk, Tatar and Buryat. – Evangelical Press News Service
The National Clergy Survey conducted by Duke University Divinity School found that six in ten clergy in the US reported that they have “never doubted” their call to the ministry; seven in ten reported that they have never considered leaving pastoral ministry; and over 70% said they think the difficulty of reaching people with the gospel is one of the primary problems for pastors. The survey included nearly 900 respondents from over 80 faith groups. – Evangelical Press News Service
Christian and Muslim factions on Indonesia’s Molucca Islands signed a peace agreement Feb. 12. Since 1999, Muslims and Christians in the Molucca Islands, also known as the Spice Islands, have been sporadically fighting each other, destroying villages, churches and mosques. An estimated 10,000 people have been killed, and as many as 300,000 have been forced to leave their homes. Both Christian and Muslim groups agreed to end the conflict, but observers say they do not know if the peace will last. Representatives from the radical Muslim faction Laskar Jihad, which came to the Moluccas from other parts of Indonesia and has led several attacks against Christian villages since its invasion of the islands in 2000, did not attend the peace negotiations. – Evangelical Press New Service
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Last modified June 14, 2002.
© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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