DAWN Fridayfax 1996 #17

DAWN News from Brazil and WHO

Football World Championships '94: Why Romario didn't score...

"Maybe you remember the Football World Championships in the USA in 1994", writes DAWN missionary Berna Salcedo. "Most people heard nothing of the immense spiritual wrestling which took place behind the scenes, particularly in respect to the Final. The Brazilian spiritists prayed to demons that the football star Romario would shoot the winning goal. A national prayer chain of evangelical Christians, however, prayed against Romario, because if he scored, the public would interpret it as a triumph for the spiritists and would be more open towards them. Brazil won the match, but Romario couldn't score! The newspaper headlines read 'Christian prayer defeated spiritism!'"
More from Brazil

Brazil: ratio of occult centres to evangelical centres has changed

Two years after these reports, spiritism in Brazil is retreating before evangelical Christianity. 15 years ago, for example, there were 30 spiritist centres for each evangelical church in Rio de Janeiro. Today, the ratio is the opposite: there are 40 evangelical churches for each spiritist centre!
More from Brazil

Strategic long-term plan for planting 150,000 new churches by 2010

According to recent reports, there are around 70,000 churches in Brazil, and people are still very open to the gospel. Evangelical leaders in Brazil, coordinated by Mario Scartezini, are currently preparing a long-term plan based on the DAWN strategy to plant 150,000 new churches by the year 2010. If this happens, there will be one evangelical church for every 1,000 of Brazil's population, which is projected to have reached 210 million by then.

Source: Berna Salcedo, Fax (+1) 719-548-7475, 76025.2660@compuserve.com

Can Christians learn from the WHO?

"World mission is not the only global campaign with the aim of reaching an important milestone by the year 2000," writes Steve Goode. The United Nations World Health Organisation is leading a coalition of partner organisations including UNICEF, Rotary, governments and sponsor countries such as Finland, Japan and Sweden with the aim of eradicating polio by the year 2000. A total of 600 million children, including 300 million under 5 years old, must be vaccinated.

National efforts have led to an 80 percent reduction in the number of polio cases since 1988. Dr.Hiroshi Nakajima, WHO's General Director: "The final victory over polio is possible today. We owe it to the following generations not to let this opportunity slip out of our hands."

WHO's strategy includes so-called "National Immunisation Days", three-month initiatives, vaccination cease-fire agreements in war zones and setting up strategic vaccination stations. In India, for example, 500,000 vaccination stations have been set up in strategic locations around the country, in order to reach all the children in the 650,000 villages with 2 drops of the vaccine OPV. According to a press release, US$500 million will be needed in order to eradicate polio by the year 2000.

However, the US$1.5 billion spent on treating polio cases each year will then be saved. And the lessons for the churches, if they really want to fulfil their worldwide commission? Goode sees three:

Global movements are built on national campaigns
Humanly speaking, it is not impossible to reach a whole nation with the gospel if it is possible to vaccinate children in war zones. For example, violent battles in Sri Lanka were interrupted for 8 hours while the country's 1.6 million children were vaccinated. According to Goode, there are already some examples of national initiatives, such as EHC (Every Home for Christ) and DAWN.
Global campaigns require strategic partnership and coordination
Goode: "The WHO's procedure is characterised by the cooperation of various groups and organisations towards a common aim. In the Christian world, a similar evangelistic cooperation must occur."
Global campaigns require detailed planning
"The WHO's press releases," says Goode, "contain clear, verifiable statistical information collected from careful research and observation of trends in literally every area. Their aim? To constantly demonstrate the size of the remaining task, the progress which has been made, to document and to explain the measures required in order to reach the aim."

Source: Steve Goode and WHO press release of 5 January 1996

This Web version of the DAWN Fridayfax is maintained by the Jesus Fellowship Church (Jesus Army) as a service to the Christian church. Please visit our web pages which feature the e-zine Streetpaper and its special Revival section.