DAWN Fridayfax 1997 #19

DAWN News from Romania, Israel, South Africa, Germany, Worldwide

Romania: small churches also plant others

Rovinari, a small town in Romania, has around 20,000 inhabitants and around 100 bars and cafes. Until recently, however, it did not even have one evangelical church. The mission agency "Licht im Osten" (Light in the East), based in Korntal near Stuttgart, reports that the first evangelical church was planted in the Rovinari in mid-1994; this church now has 30 members, and has planted a daughter church in a nearby mining village. "New churches are being planted all over Romania, through which very many people hear about Jesus," says the mission agency.
Source: Licht im Osten/Light in the East, fax (49)-711-8399084

Israel: over 40 Messianic churches

"The people in Israel are more open to the gospel than people in, for example, Germany, says Jakob Damkani of the "Shofar Jeshua" mission agency in Jaffa, Israel. In 1982, there were only a few Messianic churches in Israel; there are now over 40. Israel also has a national evangelisation committee with members from various Messianic churches throughout the country. While an anti-evangelistic bill recently passed 21-7 by the Israeli Parliament is waiting for three more readings before it can become law, Messianic Jews are planning a new evangelistic initiative for Tel Aviv: between 19 July and 9 August 1997, they want to "stop Tel Aviv for Jesus, to cooperate with Christians all over the world to give this first modern Hebrew city a spiritual rebirth and spread the gospel in Tel Aviv." The initiative was started by Jakob Damkani, among others, who evangelises alone and in teams. "Through Jakob Damkani's autobiography, many Jews have come to believe in Jeshua," according to the German magazine "Gemeindeerneuerung."
Source: Birgt Schindler, GGE, and Schofar Jeshua, fax (972)-3-6810096.

South Africa: man survives 9 bullet wounds

"He was completely closed to the gospel," says Dr. Johan Combrinck, director of AFNET (Africa Network Evangelism Task) about his brother-in-law, Gert Bender. "There seemed to be nothing which moved him spiritually." That all changed on 9 November 1995: Gert was mugged, and was shot 9 times. After a 6-1/2 hour operation, the doctors didn't give him much chance of surviving. "Many people prayed for him with us, and we were happy to report that God brought him wonderfully back from the edge of death. He is not only physically healthy, but he and his family are now serving the living God!", says Dr. Combrinck in a recently-published newsletter.
Source: Dr. Johan Combrinck, AFNET, fax (27)-12-3323824

Germany: Alpha at the Church Congress

The Alpha Course: it has moved and shaken churches of all confessions and types since its inception 20 years ago in the Anglican church "Holy Trinity Brompton" (HTB). Today, 550 mostly non-churchgoers take part in an average Alpha course at HTB, and in 1996, around 250,000 people attended one of the courses in Great Britain alone. Over 5,000 churches in 40 countries run Alpha courses, and the course's inventors, Nicky Lee and Nicky Gumbel, have been named official "Alpha Chaplains" by the Anglican Church. The Alpha Course will now be presented daily at the annual German church congress in Leipzig from 19-21 June 1997, to which over 100,000 people are expected.
Source: Alpha-Deutschland e.V, and GGE, FAX (49)-40-322403

When the focus is prayer

In his address at the Mission America seminar on 28 and 29 April 1997, C. Peter Wagner, leader of the AD2000 Movement's United Prayer Track, spoke of how "pro-active, powerful, strategic and targeted prayer can exponentially increase the spread of the gospel." 10 years ago, viewed statistically, prayer was not considered important; today, according to Wagner, it has become the main activity of many Christians. It is estimated that there are 180 million active praying Christians in the world today, and Wagner is currently investing his time in building up the World Prayer Center in Colorado Springs, USA. 2,000 churches in the U.S. have already decided to set aside a room for round-the-clock prayer, linked electronically to the World Prayer Center.
At theMission America seminar, Wagner introduced Michael Fletcher of the Manna Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, whose aim was to find ten churches for each of the Joshua Project's 1,739 unreached people groups, to "adopt them in prayer". Over 12,000 of the necessary 17,390 churches have volunteered in the last few months, so Fletcher has doubled his aim. "In the last 10 years, more people have become Christians than in the whole of Christianity's history", says Fletcher, and attributes this to "an ocean of prayer which God has set in motion."
Source: C. Peter Wagner, M. Fletcher.

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