InterVarsity to host Urbana18 conference
USA (MNN) – InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is inching towards hosting Urbana18, a college-aged student missions conference. The conference is held every three years in St. Louis, Missouri and is considered the largest missions conference in North America.
What is Urbana
(Photo courtesy of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship via Facebook)
“The upcoming Urbana18 is actually the 25th conference that we will have. Its focus is really on inviting the student generation to give their whole lives to God’s global missions. So, the focus is two things; students and global missions,” InterVarsity’s Joyce Hiendarto shares.
“It features powerful multicultural worship, closely studying scripture, well-known speakers, testimonies from the global Church, and over 200 missions organizations for you to connect with. This is all designed to help you gain a bigger, more global view of God and challenge you to seek how he wants you to use your gifts and passions to influence the world.”
Urbana started in 1946 in Urbana, Illinois. This year’s conference lasts for five days and will take place December 27-31, 2018. The overall theme for the Urbana conferences usually focuses on how God works in different parts of the world, what global expression of missional work looks like, and how North American students can get involved in God’s global mission.
How it Works
What’s more is Urbana helped inspire these students to intentionally serve and share the Gospel. And, Urbana18’s scripture topic will be looking at these ideas through the book of Revelation and it’s teachings about Jesus.
“Our desire is that the book of Revelation would offer a renewed perspective for this generation to see Jesus Christ as the Lord and King,” Hiendarto explains.
“The fact that he will come in all his power and glory to redeem and renew us and to bring his kingdom on Earth. The book of Revelation also has elements of how the Holy Spirit actually plays a role orchestrating the redemption.”
Registration for Urbana18 begins March 1, 2018. People interested in attending Urbana can get more information at here. InterVarsity has Urbana18 information and updates on their social media sites. So, if you’re not already following the ministry, you should.
Why Attend Urbana18
Still wondering why you might want to participate?
Well, the Urbana conferences are no doubt life-changing.
“A lot of our [Urbana] participants have said that Urbana helped open their eyes up to the global realities and global opportunities that they were not aware of before,” Hiendarto says.
“A lot of the Urbana stories over the years have been all about [exposure to topics] related to missions, and they were able to make connections from their life and their passions, their gifts or their major, into how that can be used in participating in God’s mission in whatever field they were exposed too.”
(Photo courtesy of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship via Facebook)
In fact, since Urbana first began, it has helped send over a quarter million students into their callings; either back to their college campus or around the world.
“Somehow God has used this event to be a sacred space for a lot of people to discern and really have their views of God and God’s mission in the world be expanded and enriched, while at the same time being challenged to participate,” Hiendarto shares.
“The way the Holy Spirit works throughout the Urbana conference is powerful, and challenges people, [and] calls people out of their comfort zone and exposes them to how and what they can do and set the projector of their lives, aiming to use it for God’s global mission.”
How to Join or Help
So, if you know someone who is college-aged, consider sharing this information with them. Maybe even take this encouragement a step further and offer to help send a student to the conference. Either way, will you be praying for the conference, too?
Please, pray for God to plant seeds in students’ hearts with a desire to join God’s global plan. Pray for the student’s hearts to be open to God both before, after, and during Urbana18.
Also, pray for InterVarsity and speakers as the ministry prepares for the conference. Pray for the way Urbana 18 teams are being formed, and discernment for the conference as it is planned.
To learn more about Urbana18, click here!
Wycliffe Associates launching hundreds of translations in next few months
Int’l (MNN) – In many ways, the Great Commission is a task of intention and urgency. This is especially true when it comes to Bible translation. Bruce Smith, President and CEO of Wycliffe Associates, recently shared some exciting news.
“We have helped to launch 383 new Bible translations over the past 12 months. So that’s an unprecedented pace of new Bible translation starts.
“The interesting thing is what it has actually done is actually increase the demand of support from language groups that are still without Scripture who are looking for help starting their translations. We’re currently facing a backlog of about 600 languages now that are asking for assistance to train them with our MAST methodology and provide technical resources to help them get started.”
(Photo courtesy of Wycliffe Associates)
The uptick in requests has called for Wycliffe Associates to pick up the pace and shift into a new gear. They’ve established an astonishing goal to launch hundreds of new translation projects in less than 90 days from now.
MAST, or Mobilized Assistance Supporting Translation, is Wycliffe’s translation support methodology. Through collaboration with mother-tongue translators in the field, this method is dramatically reducing the translation process from several years to months.
Teams trained in the MAST methodology are positioned around the world. They are ready and scheduled to work with different translations groups. This involves on-site training and support to make sure translation teams have what they need for high-quality translations.
“We have partners that are ready, willing, and able to begin these translation projects. What they need is training and some technical resources to get them out of the gate,” Smith says.
Because the training quickly multiplies the number of people equipped to work in the translation, more projects can be started and finished, all while ensuring there is the proper focus on each individual project.
To see hundreds of projects started within the next 90 days is an incredible and, as Smith puts it, unprecedented goal. But the urgency is justified with the number of people who still have not heard God’s Word in a way they can understand in their hearts.
(Photo courtesy of Wycliffe Associates)
“The concentration of these groups are in Asia and in Africa. Those are the two regions of the world that have the greatest number of Bibleless people remaining in the world. They’re really spread throughout a whole host of countries.”
More specifically, the focus in on Southeast Asia and in the Pacific as well as Central Africa.
Along with the training and the support teams, this kind of project requires technology. One of the tools Wycliffe Associates is utilizing is a tool that is being integrated into many fields: the tablet. Wycliffe calls the program “Tablets for National Translators”.
“These tablets are about $300 apiece. We look forward to engaging between 1,000 and 1,500 translators in these languages in the coming weeks with multiple translators working on each language.”
The cost of this project adds up quickly. The total funding Wycliffe is raising for the launch is around two million dollars. But compared to the costs of translation launches in the past, $20,000 per language is a very low cost.
And the impact of these projects is priceless.
Smith says recently, he received word from a group of Deaf Christians in central India who, until recently, had no contact with Scripture. They were not bilingual, and their sign language was limited to their area.
Smith shares, “In a workshop that we did this past summer, they began translating Scripture into their sign language for the very first time. The message I received is that they’ve now got a church planted entirely of Deaf believers–about 45 Deaf believers there. And they’re reaching out into their community of Deaf for the first time ever.”
Through Bible translation, this sort of thing is happening in hearing and Deaf communities all around the world.
“We’re excited that God has opened these doors and we see God’s provision increasing every day. This is a great season for people to become involved in Bible translation and come alongside of us.”
If you would like to join Wycliffe Associates in this audacious goal, visit their website here. You’ll find opportunities to pray, give, and volunteer.
You can also call 1-800-THE-WORD for more information.
Literacy changes lives for children in India
India (MNN) – Americans spend a huge amount of money on Christmas. In 2015, the average American spent almost $900. On that scale, $22 won’t get you very far. But in the right place, it makes a life-size difference over and over again.
In the next few weeks as we gear up for Christmas, we’ll be looking at how we can bring hope to the people of India through India Partner’s gift catalog. Today, we’re talking about literacy. Current numbers estimate that about 70 percent of India is literate.
While that is the overwhelming majority of the nation, we have to take India’s size into consideration. This percentage means that nearly 400 million people still cannot read or write in India.
(Photo courtesy of India Partners)
There’s also a difference in literacy rates between genders and locations. Women have a significantly lower rate of literacy, as do people from rural areas.
India’s constitution guarantees the free and compulsory education for all children between the ages of six and 14. Education is viewed as a basic right. However, in some rural areas or in tribal villages, schools don’t exist. We know the lack of education can arrest communities in cycles of poverty. The lack of the most basic education, not being able to read or write, can make things difficult for people trying to run a business or ensure they are getting paid fairly for their work.
Donna Glass of India Partners says they work in many remote tribal areas to provide literacy classes.
“A teacher goes in and offers these classes and … almost everything is done on chalk and slate.” She says. This means the costs for teaching supplies are kept low because the boards can be used over and over again.
“A lot of times in these remote villages, they don’t even know how to read or write in their [mother tongue]. There are so many different languages in India.”
But because there isn’t a school around, many parents never even think about the importance of education for their children. Glass says they will engage their children in household work, instead.
(Photo courtesy of India Partners)
For those who work as day laborers, work is unreliable and inconsistent. Making ends meet is difficult. But without education, their children likely have the same struggles to look forward to. Part of what India Partners does is share with the parents why education is so important.
But the classes they offer don’t just impact the children, but entire families as well.
“A lot of times what happens is the child will come to these literacy classes and then they take this information home to their parents. So their parents, then, learn. And this often times does help them in being able to better communicate and to be able to make sure that when they are doing whatever work they do… that they can make change properly, and they are paid fairly.”
For the children, being able to read, write, and do simple math can open doors of opportunity.
“It brings hope to the child because it’s like, ‘I’m not going to have to spend my life, you know, watching the cattle, or collecting the firewood, or being a day laborer, doing heavy work that I’ve seen my parents do.'”
The classes have proven to be very effective. Children with no previous education have gone through the literacy class, and are able to continue their education at government schools. Being able to read and write bridges the gap so that they can learn English at the government schools, and maybe even continue to higher education. Glass says classes at the University level are all taught in English.
(Photo courtesy of India Partners)
One boy, named Montu, came from a forest village so remote that the teachers had to take motorcycles for part of the way and travel the rest of the way on foot. This boy attended the literacy class. What he learned allowed him to join a government school at the 5th-grade level. These schools, while away from family, provide housing for the students who come from afar.
“So he learned all his basic skills—his reading and writing and math… He learned in his mother tongue, the language that the village speaks, and he learned in English, and he was able to enter into the government hostel so he could continue his education. And the hope is that he will be able to graduate, and perhaps even go on to University,” Glass says.
So this Christmas, would you consider giving the gift of literacy? The cost for these classes might surprise you. For only $22, you can sponsor four children. That cost covers the materials and the teaching.
Alternatively, you can sponsor a teacher in a village for four months for $45. This means the whole village will have the opportunity to learn how to read and write. To learn more, click here.
U.S. pastor has been imprisoned in Turkey for one year
Turkey (MNN) — Tomorrow marks exactly one year since U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson was imprisoned in Turkey. It has been a tumultuous year for Brunson and those fighting for his freedom.
Brunson’s Case
Andrew and Norine Brunson (Photo courtesy of World Watch Monitor)
Brunson was initially charged with “membership in an armed terrorist organization.” However, when Brunson’s lawyers tried to discover what evidence these charges were based on, they got nothing.
Then in August, Brunson was slapped with a new set of charges that included “gathering state secrets for espionage, attempting to overthrow the Turkish parliament and government, and to change the constitutional order,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Tat Stewart, a pastor who was on the mission board that sent Brunson to Turkey, says, “My understanding is that in Turkey if you charge somebody, you have to have a trial within a year. You can’t just keep them in prison indefinitely. So as the anniversary rolled around, which they would’ve had to have a trial…they upped the charges to treason, which is a very serious charge for any country to be charged with treason. So I think they mainly did that to buy them more time.”
From Prisoner to Pawn
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Image Courtesy: World Economic Forum, Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic | Wikimedia Commons)
Brunson and his family lived in Izmir, Turkey for 23 years while he served as a pastor. He was swept up in the string of arrests amid Turkey’s political purge after that summer’s failed coup attempt. But whatever the circumstances leading to his strange arrest, it is clear that Brunson is now a pawn in the hands of the Turkish government.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames Fethullah Gulen and his followers for the coup attempt. Gulen is an exiled cleric currently living in the United States. The Turkish government wants the US to extradite Gulen and send him back to Turkey for trial. But the US demands more evidence of Gulen’s involvement before they would take action. And Brunson’s position as a pawn has grown more apparent since.
According to NPR, President Erdogan stated in a speech at a police academy last week, “You have a pastor too…. You give us that one and we’ll work with our judiciary and give back yours.”
Remembering Those In Prison
Stewart is one the founders and chairman of the board of SAT-7 PARS, a Christian satellite television ministry to Persian-speakers in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. He was also formerly the Persian Ministry Director for the World Witness missions agency of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
Brunson’s parents were missionaries with World Witness. When Brunson wanted to go into the mission field as well, he initially wanted to go to Egypt. But World Witness didn’t have work in Egypt, and it was Stewart’s prompting that led the ministry to send Brunson and his family to Turkey. Stewart acts as their supervisor on the field.
“I, numbers of times, went to Turkey and spent days in their home listening to them, their frustrations in learning the language, the trials of just adjusting to Turkey, [and] praying together. So I have a long personal relationship with them.”
Stewart lived in Iran for 17 years and has an understanding of what incarceration in the Middle East tends to look like. “I know that his first incarceration was in one room with 23 or 24 other prisoners and I can only imagine how smelly and how uncomfortable [it was] …. So I know it was very challenging physically. And I’m sure it was perhaps even more challenging spiritually and emotionally.”
Stewart sympathizes with Brunson in the tenor of Hebrews 13:3 where we’re commanded to remember those in prison.
“I can’t say I know exactly what he’s feeling, but I know and believe and trust that he has been relying very strongly on the Lord and trying to be useful for the Lord in prison as Paul was useful for the Lord in prison. We read in Philippians the first chapter, he said, ‘Don’t worry about me. God has put me in prison, and he’s advancing the Kingdom of God through my being in prison.’”
Stewart has been in touch with Brunson’s wife through digital communication. “She asked me recently and a number of people to write a special message to Andrew. So I had recently preached a sermon on Revelation 12 and I had the five marks of an overcomer because there it talks about how the believers overcame the Devil. So I sent that message to him of five ways to be an overcomer. I haven’t heard back on whether he was able to receive it.”
Advocacy and Prayer for Brunson
So how can we be a help and encouragement? First, Stewart suggests, “I think we need to pray for him but also very much for God to change the heart of the Turkish government…. I know some of our high officials in this country have been in touch, and I pray that they might have wisdom how to encourage Turkey to do this.”
He adds, “Certainly, for his wife, Norine, we need to pray for just courage and fortitude as she’s been without her husband for a long time. They’re very comfortable in Turkey so I’m not worried about that. They have a lot of Turkish friends.”
You can also be an advocate for Brunson’s case. Click here if you’d like to sign a petition for his release from prison in Turkey!
“I look forward to when he comes out because I think he’s going to have a pretty interesting story to tell, and I think it’ll be a story of courageousness and faithfulness to the Lord.”
Global Advance trains Pakistani pastors
Pakistan (MNN) — Global Advance has a had a good year in both training and laying the groundwork for the future. Through its South Asia Advance initiative and its Alpha Relief initiative, the ministry has been training frontline leaders in some hard to reach places.
Reaching Pastors in Pakistan
(Photo courtesy of Global Advance)
“Pakistan is an incredible opportunity that has opened up for the Gospel’s advance recently. So far, we have held six training events in the nation of Pakistan, training and equipping indigenous leaders,” Global Advance’s Ken Janke shares.
“So far this year, I’m excited to report that we’ve trained 948 frontline leaders.”
The ministry still has two more training sessions to do in Pakistan before the year is done. Furthermore, there are over 400 unreached rural villages in Pakistan and one Global Advance pastor want this to change.
In fact, because of how unreached parts of Pakistan are, some of the frontline leaders being trained by Global Advance have never heard the Gospel preached in Pakistan. Now, Global Advance is trying to help change this by traveling into rural Pakistani villages where few Christians live.
“Our intent is to begin to serve the basic needs of these villages by providing water and resources. We have individuals who are going to these villages on a regular basis to share the Gospel and minister and encourage these families that are believers,” Janke explains.
Because of drought, sometimes water just simply isn’t available in these villages. And when it is, the water isn’t always drinkable. Global Advance is working with these villages to begin drilling wells and give these people access to fresh water.
By providing these basic needs, Global Advance pastors are building relationships through which they can share the Gospel, with the ultimate goal of bringing biblical training and seeing churches planted in these villages. Still, the process of getting to this point has taken three years.
Road to Success
“Part of our process has been one of building key relationships in the country with top leaders. And these leaders have effectively been able to gather and train believers, and these believers are being very careful and effective in the propagation of the Gospel,” Janke shares.
A major roadblock Pakistani Christians need to be careful about working around is the anti-conversion law. One way Global Advance is helping get around this law is through a satellite TV in the country.
Rather than going door to door to share the Gospel, Global Advance pastors wait until people come to Christ through the satellite TV, and then comes alongside them in their walk of faith. But, this method doesn’t take care of all the risks because Christians converting from Islam are often shut out and persecuted by their friends, family, and communities. They can even lose their jobs and careers.
(Photo Courtesy Global Advance via Facebook)
“When they are abandoned, it’s often nearly impossible for the local Christian church in Pakistan to receive them into the church immediately because of these laws,” Janke says.
“We’re in the process of developing safe homes throughout Pakistan where people who do convert can go … where they’ll be discipled, trained, and equipped–sometimes even taught business skills so that they can start new jobs.”
The combination of satellite TV ministry, training pastors, and reaching rural villages has helped Global Advance create a workable method to evangelize and reach Pakistan’s unreached. Global Advance helps connect pastors with each other so that they can keep in contact, pray for, and encourage each other.
How to Help
This month, Global Advance will be having some of these pastors come to the United States for more a time of training and encouragement.
“Please don’t give up on the Islamic nations. Please keep praying for our brothers and sisters in those nations. Pray for Pakistan. Pray for the leaders who are courageously and boldly standing up and declaring the Gospel,” Janke asks.
“Let’s not forget them and there is still work to be done. The Gospel is advancing, [but] there are people who still have not heard the Gospel message. Jesus Christ must be lifted high in Pakistan.”
Continue to pray for the Christians in Pakistan, their safety, and the Gospel’s advancement. Pray also for their encouragement, growth, and boldness in their faith.
For more ways to get involved, click here!
To give to Global Advance’s work in Pakistan, click here!
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