* REFORMING OUR CHURCHES - Are our churches changing the world, or is the world changing our churches?

If Martin Luther, John Calvin, R. C. Ryle, D. L. Moody or Charles Spurgeon were to walk into our Sunday morning service, what would they think? Would they be shocked at the type of clothes worn? Would they be able to recognise any of the great hymns of the Faith, or have drums and choruses taken over in your congregation?

What would they think of the preaching? Is the Word of God faithfully expounded? Or has anti-nomianism and existentialism taken over? Would they hear the Faith once delivered unto the saints or a cheap grace and easy believism? Would they find worship or worldliness? Spirituality or sensationalism? Education or entertainment? Would they find a congregation or an audience?

Were some of these believers from previous centuries to visit our church would they find us praying or playing?

Over a century ago General Booth of the Salvation Army warned that a time may come when churches will preach a Saviour without a cross, salvation without repentance, heaven without hell and Christianity without holiness.

When a good friend who have survived the severe persecution behind the Iron Curtain in Romania visited South Africa I asked him what he thought of our churches. Awkwardly, he responded that we had a lot of programmes, but he didn’t see much power.

This same brother commented that in Eastern Europe they did not count the number of members by who attended the Sunday morning service, but by who attended the Bible study and prayer meeting. By that accounting, many of our largest churches have few who would qualify as members – by the definition of our friends in Eastern Europe.

Friends from Sudan and Eastern Europe have expressed their shock at how many of the "men" in Western congregations have long hair, pony tails and earrings. They have also expressed their shock at the attire, and lack of attire, of many women in Western churches, even wearing the belly rings and nose studs which they had associated with paganism. From the perspective of many missionaries and persecuted Christians, a significant percentage of the Western churches seem shallow, superficial, self-centred and materialistic.

Numerous pastors have commented to me on their frustration over the general lack of commitment evidenced by many church members and adherents. Many of today’s churchgoers seem more distracted, less committed and less accountable. Instead of commitment and accountability wild-geese-member-migration seem more common. Many Christians seem aimless and drifting, more committed to reading the newspaper every day than the Bible, and more dedicated to watching TV than to witnessing for Christ and winning their world.

Several pastors have commented to me of their frustration over a general apathy and lethargy in their congregations – especially with regard to missions. We agreed that missions is an overflow of worship. Biblically the church’s first priority is worship. Missions exist because not everyone worships. The Great Commission must be our supreme ambition, because our great God and loving Saviour deserves all honour, glory and worship. A Church that is truly worshipping the Lord will be involved in missions. When a congregation is apathetic and half-hearted about missions, it is a symptom of a church that is also lukewarm in its worship.

There is an urgent need to Reform our churches, to bring all aspects of our congregational and personal life in line with the Word of God. We cannot allow the Great Commission to be "the great omission" in our local churches. Missions are the very lifeblood of the Church. We exist to be a house of prayer for all nations, making disciples, teaching obedience to all things the Lord has commanded. The last Command of Christ must be our first concern. We cannot afford to be ignorant of our history, or selective in the use of Scripture. "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God…we will…give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word." Acts 6:2-4.

We need to be "full of faith and of the Holy Spirit" Acts 6:5.
And our church ought to be "…a house of prayer for all nations" Mark 11:17.
(Peter Hammond from Frontline Fellowship, May 2009) (to index)

* BROTHEL OWNER LOSES PROPERTY - In a first for KwaZulu-Natal, a house belonging to a brothel keeper has been forfeited to the State.
And the judge who granted the order against Lorna Monica Bosch says he hopes the message will go out to others "that this conduct will not be tolerated by the courts".
Durban High Court Acting Judge Ben van Heerden also warned Bosch "to be careful" because there was "more than a hint in the (court) papers that she also owns other properties which are likewise utilised".
The house in question - which was raided twice by police in two years - is situated at Isleworth Avenue, Montclair.

According to documents before the court, a policeman, in a sting operation in 2004, had been offered a "full house" for R180.
Three women were arrested and all made statements admitting they were employed by Bosch, that she took a cut of R80 for each R180 they earned and that liquor was sold on the premises.
Bosch was arrested in October that year and paid a R1 500 admission of guilt fine for keeping a brothel.
In 2006, newspaper advertisements prompted police to raid the house again.
Another police officer was used to set a trap and four women were duly arrested.
(IOL, 29 April 2009) (to index)

* CHRISTIANS IN MIDEAST LOSING NUMBERS AND INFLUENCE
* SCHOOL SUED OVER PUPIL FORCED INTO PROSTITUTION
* SURVEY: ABORTION SUPPORT FALLS 8 PERCENT IN US
* ON A LIGHTER NOTE

* CHRISTIANS IN MIDEAST LOSING NUMBERS AND INFLUENCE - Christians used to be a vital force in the Middle East. They dominated Lebanon and filled top jobs in the Palestinian movement. In Egypt, they were wealthy beyond their number. In Iraq, they packed the universities and professions. Across the region, their orientation was a vital link to the West, a counterpoint to prevailing trends.

A Syrian international aid worker said, "When other Arabs find out that I am Christian, many seem shocked to discover that you can be both an Arab and a Christian." The worker asked to remain anonymous so as not to bring attention to his faith. The Middle East is now, of course, overwhelmingly Muslim. Except for Israel, with its six million Jews, there is no country where Islam does not prevail. This includes Lebanon, where Christians now amount to a quarter of the population, and the non-Arab countries of Iran and Turkey.

Among Palestinians, Islam is also playing an unprecedented role in defining identity, especially in Gaza, ruled by Hamas. Benedict's arrival in Jerusalem on Monday prompted a radical member of the legislature in Gaza to call on Arab governments not to greet him because of his contentious remark in 2006 regarding the Prophet Muhammad.

The West Bank Palestinian leadership, more secular, tries to include Christians to ward off separatist sentiments and stop the population decline. It has been a losing battle. In 1948, Jerusalem was about one-fifth Christian. Today it is 2 percent.

Rafiq Husseini, the chief of staff of President Mahmoud Abbas's office, said of the exodus of Christians: "It is a very negative thing if it continues to happen. Our task, from the president downwards, is to keep the presence of the Christians alive and well."

In Bethlehem, where the Church of the Nativity marks where Jesus is said to have been born, Christians now make up barely a third of the population after centuries of being 80 percent of it. Emigration is the first option for anyone who has the opportunity, and there are large communities of Christian émigrés throughout the West to absorb them.

"Economy, economy, economy," said Fayez Khano, 63, a member of the Assyrian community, explaining the reasons for the continuing exodus while cutting olive-wood figurines in his family workshop on Manger Street. Mr. Khano's three adult children live in Dublin, and since business is slow he and his wife are about to go to Dublin for six months.

The story has been similar in Iraq. Of the 1.4 million Christians there at the time of the American invasion in 2003, nearly half have fled, according to American government reports and local Iraqi Christians. Many left early in the war when they were attacked for working with the Americans, but the exodus gained speed when Christians became targets in Iraq's raging sectarian war. Churches were bombed, and priests as well as lay Christians were murdered. As recently as March 2008, an archbishop was kidnapped and killed outside the northern city of Mosul.

And in Egypt, where 10 percent of the country is Coptic Christian, the prevalent religious discourse has drifted from what was considered to be a moderate Egyptian Islam toward a far less tolerant Saudi-branded Islam.

In Saudi Arabia, churches are illegal. In the rest of the Persian Gulf region, Christians are foreign workers without the prospect of citizenship.
The decline of the Christian population and voice in the region is not only a source of concern for Christians, but for broadminded Muslims as well.
"Here in Lebanon, Muslims will often tell you Lebanon is no good without the Christians, and they mean it," said Kemal Salibi, a historian. "The mix of religions and cultures that makes this place so tolerant would disappear."
(New York Times, 12 May 2009) (to index)

* SCHOOL SUED OVER PUPIL FORCED INTO PROSTITUTION - Lucie Mosterd, the mother of a girl who became the victim of forced prostitution, is demanding 74,000 euros in damages from the girl's former school in the eastern town of Zwolle. She says the school, the Thorbecke Scholengemeenschap, failed to provide a safe environment for her daughter Maria, and did not operate an adequate policy on truancy.

At the age of 18, Maria Mosterd authored a successful book on her experiences, entitled Real men don't eat cheese. The book recounts her time as the victim of a so-called 'loverboy', the popular Dutch term for a young pimp who seduces a teenage girl in order to force her into prostitution. She describes a four-year ordeal when she was aged between 12 and 16, enmeshed in a world of rape, violence, human trafficking and drug smuggling.

Ernst Muller, Lucie Mosterd's lawyer, confirmed the legal action following a report in the regional newspaper De Stentor. He says the school failed to take appropriate action despite Maria Mosterd's repeated absence from school during the time that she was being forced to work as a prostitute. Via her website she is appealing for eyewitnesses to come forward in support of the legal action.
(Dutch News, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 6 May 2009) (to index)

* SURVEY: ABORTION SUPPORT FALLS 8 PERCENT IN US - A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that the number of people who support legalized abortion has fallen by 8 percent.

According to the survey, 46 percent of people polled were in favour of legalized abortion, a drop from 54 percent last August.

"There has been notable decline in the proportion of independents saying abortion should be legal in most or all cases; majorities of independents favoured legal abortion in August and the two October surveys, but just 44 percent do so today," said the survey report. "In addition, the proportion of moderate and liberal Republicans saying abortion should be legal declined between August and late October — from 67 percent to 57 percent. In the current survey, just 43 percent of moderate and liberal Republicans say abortion should legal in most or all cases."

When broken down by religion, mainline Protestants showed a 15 percent decrease in abortion support since August, dropping to 54 percent from 69 percent support. The 33 percent support for abortion from evangelical Protestants fell by 10 percent to 23 percent. Among non-Hispanic Catholics, 49 percent favoured abortion, down from 51 percent in August and 55 percent in October.
(The Bulletin, 5 May 2009) (to index)