Author name: Adrienne S. Gaines

P.P. Job paid a high price for preaching the gospel when his two sons were martyred. But Today his adopted daughters—504 in all—are a legacy of his faith in Christ.

“Girls are not wanted in India.” The Rev. P.P. Job says this as a matter of fact, without a hint of irony in his weathered brown face, and then rattles off a string of statistics to prove his point. Each year, he says, 5 million baby girls are aborted in government hospitals; last year 25,000 married women were burned alive; every day 1,200 girls go missing, likely unaccounted victims of domestic abuse.

United Nations reports support Job’s claims, as they reluctantly acknowledge the persistence of female infanticide and gender inequality in India even as the nation becomes an economic success story. “When a boy is born there is a dance,” says Job, a longtime evangelist and leader with the religious liberty advocacy organization Voice of the Martyrs (VOM). “A girl is born—it is like a death. Everyone will be weeping and crying.”

P.P. Job paid a high price for preaching the gospel when his two sons were martyred. But today his adopted daughters—504 in all—are a legacy of his faith in Christ. “Girls are not wanted in India.” The Rev. P.P. Job says this as a matter of fact, without a hint of irony in his weathered brown …

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Servant’s Heart in Louisville, Ky., doesn’t hold a traditional Sunday service and doesn’t consider itself a church. Instead, the Assemblies of God mission is taking ministry to residents in a low-income community known as Portland.

Teams witness during weekly prayer walks, regularly visit a liquor store to share Scripture with customers and hold home Bible studies. The mission has held clothing and food giveaways and helped sponsor free medical clinics.

The pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church says it is poised for growth—now that it’s smaller 

On Jan. 1, the world’s largest church got considerably smaller—and its pastor says the move has led to growth and spiritual renewal.

After boasting more than 780,000 members, Yoido Full Gospel Church released 20 satellite congregations to become independent, effectively reducing the church roll by some 360,000 members.

Yoido pastor Young Hoon Lee, who succeeded church founder David Yonggi Cho in May 2008, says he has no regrets. “Each church is experiencing new revival,” he told Charisma. “Yoido Full Gospel Church is also continuing to grow, and more than 1,000 new converts are being added to the church membership every month.”

Killed in a church shooting, Sydney Browning never had a chance to meet the 62 second-graders of Granada Primary School. But today she’s changed their lives, thanks to a university’s 11-year promise fulfilled.

Some things are hard to make sense of, like the evening of Sept. 15, 1999, when Larry Gene Ashbrook walked into Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and opened fire, killing seven people before turning the gun on himself. 

The first to die was a woman named Sydney Browning, the children’s choir director and a teacher at an alternative school for at-risk youth. The 36-year-old had been sitting on a sofa in the foyer, chatting with friends as she waited for choir rehearsal to start. Somehow she came into Ashbrook’s line of sight, so he shot her in the head and kept walking, ultimately firing more than 60 rounds.

Next week, for the first time in its 103-year history, the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) will not hold its annual Holy Convocation in Memphis, Tenn.—and city officials there have been bracing all year for the economic hit. 

The nation’s largest Pentecostal denomination is still headquartered in the city known for its blues and barbecue. But the $35 million its 40,000 delegates spend each November on hotels, food and shopping is headed to St. Louis. With nearly twice as much hotel space, St. Louis offered COGIC deeper discounts and facilities that allowed all of its activities to be housed in one 500,000-square-foot location. 

A network of healing rooms is spreading internationally, with several hundred being commissioned in India this week.

Launched in 1999, the International Association of Healing Rooms (IAHR) now oversees some 1,300 rooms in 52 nations. Roughly 400 are in India, and IAHR founder Cal Pierce is commissioning 600 more healing rooms there this week.

“In India that will be nearly 1 million people each year receiving healing ministry,” Pierce said.

Photo: Cal Pierce prays for visitors at the Spokane, Wash., healing room.

One of the most diverse groups of Christian leaders is gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, this week to discuss the future of world missions.

Some 4,200 selected participants from 198 nations are meeting for the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, the third such gathering in the last 36 years.

After four years of legal battle in a Turkish court, a judge acquitted two Christians of insulting Turkey and its people by spreading Christianity, but not without slapping them with a hefty fine for a spurious charge.

Four years ago this month, Turan Topal, 50, and Hakan Tastan, 41, started a legal battle after gendarmerie officers produced false witnesses to accuse them of spreading their faith and allegedly “insulting Turkishness, the military and Islam.”

A charismatic church in Florida is protesting a Tampa theme park’s Halloween show, and several area churches and community leaders have joined the effort.

Ignited Church in Lakeland, a city roughly 35 miles east of Tampa, has united area churches, business leaders and school board members in opposition to Busch Gardens’ Howl-O-Scream show, which they say makes light of criminal brutality in a letter being sent this week to officials at the African-themed park. Florida state Rep. Kelli Stargel also has signed the letter.

A Jesus T-shirt worn by several Chilean miners during their miraculous rescue this week has created a “deluge” of public interest and may soon be widely available for purchase, with the proceeds benefiting the miners’ families.

A gift from Campus Crusade for Christ Chile, the tan T-shirts read “Gracias Señor! (Thank you, Lord!) on the front, and on the back is a reference to Psalm 95:4, which says, “In His hand are the deep places of the earth; the heights of the hills are His also.” A logo for Campus Crusade’s The Jesus Film Project is on the left sleeve.

Photo of Mario Gomez, 59, the oldest of 33 miners liberated Oct. 13, wearing a T-shirt that says “Thank you, Lord” in Spanish. Image by Hugo Infante/Government of Chile