DAWN Fridayfax 2000 #25

Peru

17-year-old saves denomination

In the early 1990's, the IEP (Iglesia Evangelica Peruana, Peruvian Evangelical Church) was having a hard time, having shrunk from 50 to less than 20 churches in the Andahuailas region in the country's south. At the time, the Shining Path terrorist group killed many pastors and Christians, and many Peruvians lived in fear and uncertainty. As the result of a mistake, the 17-year-old Jacob Huaman was elected President of the IEP's Synod. His first deed was to issue the following declaration: "Now that I am President, I can choose one of two paths. I can pretend that everything is fine, smile and make everyone happy, or I can name the problems and try to improve things. I choose the second path. My first official act is to declare that, effective immediately, no sin will be tolerated in the churches." He started by going to two of the church's leaders who obviously led a bad life, and called on them to repent of their sin. They both just laughed. The following Sunday, he called on them to repent in front of the congregation. One became angry, the other took it seriously and repented. One week later, Jacob openly recognised the one man's repentance, and subjected him to church discipline for a limited time; he gave the other over to Satan because of his refusal to repent, following Paul's example. The people were then gripped by a fear of God, repented, and the denomination started to grow again. It now has over 400 churches in the region. Jacob has since moved on, and works in Abancay, where he encourages young people to plant new churches in the mountain regions.
Source: David Quispirocca, Peru Para Cristo, e-mail dq@terra.com.pe

India

Chain reaction - "Jesus" on TV

Ajay, a student at Delhi University, came to know Jesus through the North India Campus Ministry, an evangelistic ministry to students, and attended Tamil Mani's Bible study group. He brought his brother to the group as well, and he also decided to become a Christian. Later, Ajay's brother visited Sonipat, his home town, and brought Sushil, a member of the fundamentalist Hindu movement RSS back with him to the Bible study group. Sushil also decided to follow Jesus. When he returned home, he showed the Jesus film not only to his friends, but also arranged for it to be broadcast on the local television cable network, where it could be seen by some 5,000 people.
Source: India Focus / D. Sathiaraj / IMA, e-mail imahq@vsnl.com

England

Church takes over disco in Sheffield

"The English Anglican Church is not in its heyday," says Sheffield's Rev. Mike Breene in a new report from the Synod. In 1989, some 1,000 people left the Anglican church each week; today, the number has increased to some 2,000 per week, around half of which are young people. The total attendance of Anglican services has dropped to below 1 million. In Sheffield, a university town in the north, only 2% attend church services. Stirred by the figures, the leader of the Anglican St. Thomas Church decided to focus on the 18- to 35-year-olds by specifically building youth church structures.

Belong - believe - behave

"It is relatively easy to reach today's youth with the gospel if you know what is important to them, and see them not as object but as subject," says Mike Breene. "The post-war generation (Builders) can be characterised with the following three priorities in their faith: behave, believe, belong. Actions and moral imperatives came first (behave), followed by the appropriate faith (believe), then you belonged. The Baby Boomers, born in the 1960s and 1970s, re-ordered the priorities: believe, belong, behave. Young people (under 33) think differently; they first want to know whether they are accepted and may belong, then come the questions of faith, which results in a transformed life," he writes. Recently, the church took over the Roxy disco in the town center, in order to create an atmosphere which would not immediately be associated with church. The figures speak for themselves: today, some 2,000 people attend the church, which has started 18 more clusters (groups of four to six cells) in the city. 80% of the congregation is under 40. Church members have created a web site which experts judge as technically one of the world's best, and which is rapidly becoming a forum for youth church movements (www.tribalgeneration.com ).
Source: Mike Breene, St. Thomas Church, Nairn St, Sheffield S101UL, UK.

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