SEX-Y SERMONS CAUSE STIR AT RURAL ALABAMA CHURCH

GOOD HOPE — It’s one thing for a church in a big city like Dallas or Atlanta to tackle the ticklish topic of sex. It blends in with the urban scene.
It’s another thing when a ll-town congregation puts up billboards with the phrase “Great sex: God’s way” on rural highways to promote a sermon series. You can’t even legally buy beer in Cullman County, and a preacher is talking about S-E-X on Sunday morning?
Daystar Church, whose congregation has grown dramatically under pastor Jerry Lawson, has run up against the sensibilities of a conservative north Alabama community with a monthlong focus on sex.
Sex just isn’t an appropriate topic for church, some say, and others are upset over the church’s signs, which advertise the sermon series and accompanying Web site.
“It’s really stirred up the people here,” said Good Hope town clerk Joann Jones.
Evangelist Roland Belew, a self-described fundamentalist and former trucker who now preaches at a truck stop, said the whole idea goes against the teaching of New Testament apostles.
“Paul said preach the Gospel,” said Belew. “Talking about sex ain’t gonna get nobody to heaven.”
The controversy is a bit ironic considering the church’s overall point is about as straight-laced as they come: That God intends for sex to be enjoyed solely within a heterosexual marriage, and that anything else — adultery, pornography, homosexuality, even “sexual arousal” outside of marriage — is sin.
Churches have been talking about sex and sexual purity more often. In November, the Rev. Ed Young of the Fellowship Church based in Dallas drew nationwide attention by challenging married couples to have sex for seven straight days in the name of strengthening marriages.
But an expert who tracks evangelical Christianity, Larry Eskridge, said few are addressing the subject as directly as Daystar.
“It sounds like an example of one of those church-growth, market-savvy campaigns going out to an area where you wouldn’t normally see it,” said Eskridge, associate director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College in Illionis. “I could see where in that particular setting, that could raise some eyebrows.”
City Hall has gotten a few complaints about the church’s sexy signs from a handful of people like Belew, 71, who preaches in a trailer off Interstate 65.
Even the 22-year-old mayor, Corey Harbison, worries that the “great sex” message will force parents to talk about the birds and the bees with inquisitive young children before either is ready.
“I understand what they’re trying to do. I get it,” said Harbison. “(But) some people just aren’t ready for that. Good Hope is just a good old, country town.”
Lawson, the pastor at the center of the debate, said the purpose of his sermons and the billboards was to get Christian parents talking to their kids about sex before they learn too much immorality from TV or playground buddies.
“I think some people are kind of missing the point,” said Lawson.
Lawson is the lead pastor at Daystar Church, which is affiliated with the Church of God and draws about 2,000 people on Saturday nights and Sunday to its $5.7 million campus on a hilltop beside I-65. People come from as far away as the northern suburbs of Birmingham, 45 miles to the south.
The church’s attendance is slightly larger than the entire population of Good Hope, which has three other churches in its town limits and five others within a stone’s throw. The community is a mix of farm homes, middle-class subdivisions, mobile home parks and a few McMansions.
Daystar was a country church called Glory Hill Church of God when Lawson arrived nearly nine years ago. The church “relaunched” itself in the pattern of an urban megachurch in 2002 — there’s Starbucks coffee in the lobby and video screens everywhere — and took off.
“In the next seven years 100 people became 2,000 people,” said Lawson, who sports the hip, young megachurch look — short hair, a goatee and dark clothes, minus a tie.
The church has a second-hand clothes shop for needy neighbors, and Lawson said it sends out 100 volunteers at a time for local work days. Members even are trying to raise $10,000 to put new sod on the baseball field at the local high school.
But it’s the “great sex” series — timed to coincide with Valentine’s Day — that got people talking about Daystar. More than anything, people noticed the blue billboard along Alabama 69 with the “GreatSexGodsWay.com” Web address beside a drawing of a bride and groom.
Belew worries that vulnerable teenagers will get the idea from the sign that God says it’s OK for them to have sex.
“It’s a delicate subject. Preach the word of God and people will live right and get right,” said Belew, who has a big wooden cross and U.S. flag in his front yard.
The mayor said some longtime residents already were a bit leery of Daystar because it’s gotten so big so quickly, drawing members from other cities and dwarfing everything else in town. The focus on sex — particularly the billboards — turned some off even more.
Lawson said his sermons are more than marketing at Daystar, which dreams of opening satellite churches in big cities. The church needs to be out front on the topic of sex when even kids’ TV shows depict illicit relationships and homosexuality, he said.
“It comes down to God saying the most healthy place for sex and the only right place for sex is within a marriage — one man, one woman, and one marriage,” Lawson said.
Ed Scarborough’s landscaping company is almost directly beneath one of Daystar’s “great sex” billboards. He doesn’t go to Lawson’s church, and he likes the idea behind the signs and the sermons. But still ....
“For Christian people I think it’s portraying the message God sent in the Bible,” Scarborough said. “But I do wonder if a non-Christian would get it.”

MISSIONARIES CELEBRATE NEW OPENINGS IN MACAU

Macau ― ReachGlobal staff recently joined a group of pastors from a local church (the Gospel Center) in Macau for an idol-removal ceremony.
An elderly couple formerly owned a shop that sold paraphernalia for idol worship. Their daughter, a Christian, had witnessed to her parents for years and finally saw them come to Christ a year ago.
As her parents' health deteriorated and they were unable to participate in the church services, their daughter asked the local pastors from the Gospel Center to keep discipling them in their new faith.
Roger, one of the pastors, visited them weekly for several months, and the results were evident as they declared their faith in Christ and rejected their former idols.
The Reach Global missionary team is encouraged by how Pastor Roger and his wife, Sarah, interacted with this couple and believe they will have an effective and caring ministry among the elderly as they reach out to them and include them at the Gospel Center.
Staff are in Macau helping to develop more ministries. One project that's continuing to grow is the Evangel Adult Education Centre.
The Evangel Adult Education Centre was opened in 1998 as a way of reaching out into the community with the Gospel. Its two main goals are to provide high-quality adult education for the people of Macau (social service), and to share the love of Christ with every student (evangelism). The hope is that new converts would be incorporated into EFC church plants.
Because the center has outgrown its present facility and needs additional classroom and office space for growth and development, EAEC rented a new facility and relocated to its new location in January 2004.
Before they could begin using this new facility, however, renovation work was needed, which included dividing walls, floor tiling, electrical wiring, painting, A/C, signage, furniture and equipment, such as computers, telephones, whiteboards, etc.
Keep praying for continued effective ministry efforts in Macau.

MUSLIM BACKGROUND CHRISTIANS TORTURED IN LIBYA; PRAY AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN LIBYA.....

Libya ― International Christian Concern (ICC), a Christian human rights group, says it has learned that Libyan intelligence officials have detained and tortured four Christians for converting from Islam, adding that the Christians have been imprisoned for the past seven weeks in Tripoli, Libya's capital.
A spokesperson for ICC told ANS, "Libya's External Security Organization is believed to be behind the detention and torture of the Christians, according to our sources. The security agents have barred the families from visiting the detained converts and are putting severe physical and psychological pressure on the Christians in order to force them to reveal the names of other converts. Fearing for their lives, other converts from Islam are on the run.
"The detention and the torture of the Christian converts come at a critical time in Libya's relations with the international community. The country has been improving its relations with the international community following the lifting of sanctions imposed on it due to its involvement in the bombing of an American airliner in which 270 people were killed.
"By torturing the four Christian converts and stifling religious freedom, Libya is once again violating basic principles of the international human rights law."
ICC's Regional Manager for Africa, Jonathan Racho, said, "We call upon Libyan officials to stop torturing the four Christians and release them from detention. Libya must respect the rights of its citizens to worship freely and not to be tortured. We particularly ask the Libyan leader and the current head of the African Union, Mr. Muammar Gaddafi, to set the prisoners free and demonstrate his country's commitment to respect human rights."
The ICC spokesperson added, "Please pray for the safe release of the detained believers. Also pray for comfort and strength for their families."
You can help secure their release by contacting the Libyan embassy.

PASTOR SHOT AND THE CHURCH EXPLODED BY CRUDE BOMB IN BIHAR ( INDIA )

In an effort to stop conversions to Christianity in the eastern state of Bihar, a 25-year-old ailing man on Sunday (March 8) exploded a crude bomb in a church and shot the pastor.
Police Inspector Hari Krishna Mandal told that the attacker, Rajesh Singh, had come fully prepared to kill the pastor, Vinod Kumar, in Baraw village in the Nasriganj area of Rohtas district, and then take his own life.
“However,” Mandal said, “believers caught him before he could do more damage or kill himself.”
The 35-year-old pastor was taken to a hospital in nearby Varanasi, in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh and at press time was out of danger of losing his life, according to a leader of Gospel Echoing Missionary Society (GEMS) who requested anonymity.
The church, Prarthana Bhawan (House of Prayer), belongs to GEMS. Around 30 people were in the church when the attack took place. Some women in the church sustained burns in the blast.
“Rajesh Singh threw a crude bomb from the window of the church, and the sound of the explosion created a chaos in the congregation,” said Inspector Mandal. As members of the church began to run out, he added, Singh came into the building and shot the pastor with a handmade pistol from point-blank range.
Singh had more bombs to explode and three more bullets in his pistol, but church members caught hold of him and handed him over to police, the inspector said.
“In his statement, Singh said he was personally against Christian conversions and wanted to kill the pastor to stop conversions,” Mandal said. “He wanted to take his own life after killing the pastor, and this is why he had more bullets in his pistol and an overdose of anesthesia in a syringe.”
Asked if Singh had any links with extremist Hindu nationalist groups, the inspector said no such organization was active in the area, though local Christians say Hindu extremist presence has increased recently. The GEMS source said people allegedly linked with a Hindu nationalist group had sent a threatening letter to the pastor, asking him to stop preaching in the area.
The source said the incident could have been fallout from conversions in nearby Mithnipur village, where a Hindu family had received Christ after being healed from a mental illness around six months ago. Singh also lives in Mithnipur.
“Pastor Kumar had not been visiting the village, fearing opposition from the villagers who were not happy with the conversion of this family,” the GEMS source said. “The same church’s cross had also been damaged about a year ago by unidentified people.”
The source said he believes that although Singh’s affiliation or linkage with a Hindu nationalist group has not been established, it is likely that he was instigated to kill the pastor by an extremist group. Pastor Kumar, married with three children, has been working in Rohtas district for the last 12 years.
Local Christians complain that the presence of the Hindu extremist Sangh Parivar (a family of organizations linked with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, India’s chief Hindu nationalist group) has recently increased in the area. They say the Hindu nationalist conglomerate has been spewing hate against Christians for more than 10 years, accusing them of using monetary incentives and fraudulent means and foreign money to convert Hindus.
The attacker has an amputated hand and was said to be mentally disturbed since 1996, when he was diagnosed with cancer, Inspector Mandal said.
“According to the villagers,” he said, “Singh had been mentally disturbed ever since he was diagnosed with cancer, and later tuberculosis, although there is no medical report to substantiate this.”
The government of Bihar is ruled by a coalition of a regional party, the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) party, and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The JD-U is also part of the National Democratic Alliance, the main opposition coalition at the federal level led by the BJP. The JD-U, however, is not perceived as a supporter of Hindu nationalism.
Of the 82 million people, mostly Hindu, in Bihar, only 53,137 are Christian, according to the 2001 census.

EGYPTIAN CHRISTIAN BURNED ALIVE; FATHER MURDERED; PRAY AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE....

A young Christian man was suddenly set on fire by a Muslim man in Egypt after a rumor circulated that the Christian man had a relationship with the Muslim man’s sister.
Yasser Ahmed Qasim approached 25-year-old Sabri Shihata and poured gasoline on the Coptic Christian and then set him on fire, reported the Voice of the Copts on Friday. The young Copt tried to put out the fire by throwing himself into a nearby canal, but the burns were too severe and he later died.
His 60-year-old father, Sabri Shihata, later arrived at a village rally where a group of Muslims stabbed him to death. One stab reportedly entered his back and came out of his abdomen below the rib cage, according to Voice of the Copts. The elder Shihata was taken to the hospital but nevertheless died from the attacks.
The Muslim group also attacked the Coptic man’s younger brother, 22-year-old Rami Sabri Shihata, causing a deep injury to his head.
Local police have arrested those involved in the attack, including Yasser Ahmed Kassem, as well as victim Sabri Shihata, who is being held in custody at Dmas Hospital, located in the northern province of Qalubiya, north of Cairo. The perpetrators are charged with deliberate homicide.
Security forces have also surrounded the victims’ house and extra security has been deployed throughout the village of 60,000 people.
A media blackout has been put in place as the prosecution and the State Security Services continue investigation.
In Egypt recently, sectarian violence has been on the rise as Christian-Muslim relations have been strained by conversions to Christianity and government opposition to recognizing the conversions.
Furthermore, changes in living arrangements have also contributed to increased tension between the two groups. Previously, Christians and Muslims used to live peacefully in mixed communities, but recently the two groups have tended to live separately only among their own religious communities and there have been less interaction between the two groups.
Egypt has the largest Christian population in the Middle East with an estimated 10 million Copts in Egypt, making up about 10 percent of the country’s population.