DAWN Fridayfax 1995 #20

News from California (USA), Germany, Colombia, Korea

Adopt-A-Cop

Christian churches in San Jose, California, have initiated a programme in which each church spiritually adopts one or two policemen. The idea is to support them spiritually and emotionally in their dangerous work, particularly through regular prayer. The local police chief not only supports the idea; he has written a working paper for the churches. Each church should now pray daily for the adopted policemen, contact them by letter or phone each week, and invite them to the church each year to pray for them personally. The programme was the result of a suggestion made by the president of the Christian Police Association and the police chaplain.

Source: Harvest Evangelism, San Jose, Tel 001-408-927-9052

New church in East Germany: up to 400 visitors

Gerd Kriedemann, pastor of the Lichtenstein Christian Centre, was trained as a bricklayer. In March 1988, before Germany was reunited, he and 7 other adults and 9 children founded a new church. Between 1990 and 1994, the protestant free-church met in a school dining-room, and soon had to divide into morning and evening services because of the number who attended. He told us of the incredible way in which they found new premises: they prayed that God would point it out; in a pastors prayer meeting, another pastor suddenly said that God had shown him premises in a factory building, which had something to do with a particular property management company. What the pastor did not know: Kriedemann and his co-pastor Andreas Wurziger already had their eyes on a large complex and had asked God for confirmation. Although others offered twice as much money for the building, the church miraculously received it. Today, the church is attended by up to 400 people and as such is one of the fastest-growing in the ex-GDR. It has a youth centre, a child-care centre, a community for endangered youths and a mission project in Albania which 30 people from the church have already visited.

Source: Missionswerk Josua, Fax (D) 030-6721415

Pastor calms jails

A pastor is responsible for the decrease in crime in Columbian jails. For 11 years, Oscar Osario has been risking his life to preach the gospel to the inmates of the jails in Medellin, the capital. Most of the inmates are drug-dealers, who are in no way gentle in their dealings with others: until recently, the Columbian jails had a death rate of 600 per year, all murdered in jail. The figure has now sunk to only one per year. The government attributes this to Pastor Osario, the peacemaker, who is Columbia s first protestant jail chaplain paid by the government. According to Osario, hundreds of the 4,000 inmates of Medellin´s jails have been saved, with the result that the atmosphere in the jails has changed; violence and brutality have become rare. Many of the prisoners are taking correspondence courses about the Bible and have promised to reform themselves.

Source: Semaille et Moisson Nr. 107

South Korea: Students collect $1.5 billion for North Korea

In the last 3 years, hundreds of thousands of South Korea´s Christian students were challenged to live a modest lifestyle in order to save for one of the largest-ever mission projects. At a four-hour celebration on Saturday, 20th May 1995, 100,000 of these students assembled in Seoul s Olympic stadium, along with the president Kim Young Sam (an evangelical Christian) and 3,000 international guests, to commit themselves to the aims of the missionary mega-project:

1. 400,000 Christian students are aiming to witness personally to every student at Korea´s universities and seminaries.
2. Personal effort for the renewal of the Korean Christian churches.
3. Preparation for a peaceful invasion of North Korea when the border between the currently hostile countries falls, with the short-term aim of founding Jesus houses (house churches) in each district of North Korea, and long-term to plant 20,000 new churches. In the same time, the students will try to collect the equivalent of $1.5 billion in order to rebuild North Korea´s crumbling infrastructure.
4. 100,000 Korean students will be sent out as missionaries in order to evangelize students in the world´s 8,000 most influential universities.

North Korea is one of the world s most isolated countries, in which total media censorship, an institutionalised personality-cult and persecution of Christians are the order of the day. Christianity only reached Korea 110 years ago, and already over 25% of South Korea´s population consider themselves to be evangelicals. Seoul, South Korea´s capital city, is home to the world s largest church, Yoido Full Gospel Church, which has over 700,000 members. The 7 Sunday services are translated via headphones into 7 languages.

Source: Wolfgang Fernández, DAWN Ministries

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