Missionaries: Fewer Conflicts When People 'Absorb' Scripture

By Michelle A. Vu

Christian Post Reporter

Mon, Aug. 03 2009 05:07 PM EDT

A mission group that will soon open a new center in a war-torn African country says missionaries often report fewer conflicts once locals absorb the Bible.

Related
• Congo Remains World's Deadliest Humanitarian Crisis, Study Says
• Thousands Flee Congo Fighting
• Congo Fighting Spurs Push for More Aid, U.N. Troops
• Bible Translators' Campaign Draws Over $117M in Support
• Jobless Christians Invited to Join Bible Translation Teams

Wycliffe Associates, which supplies skilled volunteers to support Bible translation efforts, recently announced it will construct a Bible translation center in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The DRC, located in central Africa, has been at war since 1997. The conflict has resulted in some 4 million deaths, with some aid agencies estimating upwards of 1,400 deaths per day because of conflict-related causes, including disease and malnutrition.

World Vision calls the conflict in DRC the deadliest since World War II. Meanwhile, Belgium-based Crisis Group describes the country as the “the site of one of the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crisis.”

Amid the turmoil, Wycliffe will establish a permanent language translation center in the city of Bunia, located in the northeastern part of DRC.

“The violence has quieted in the Ituri region of the DRC and Bunia in particular," said Bruce Smith, president and CEO of Wycliffe Associates. "There's a window of peace, of security. If we move quickly, we can establish a permanent translation center. The Christians of the Democratic Republic of Congo are begging for this opportunity not to be missed."

At the translation center, which will be established at Shalom University, the Bible will be translated into five new languages, making it accessible to about 1.6 million for the first time in history.

But aside from making the Bible available in local languages, Wycliffe Associates believes the translation of the scriptures can help reduce violence in the DRC.

“Missionaries tell us again and again that conflict subsides when people begin to absorb the Bible in their own heart language,” Smith said.

He added that with the violence in a lull, workers are available right now and the price of building materials have dropped dramatically.

“The work can go forward faster than it ever could have before if we can provide the funding for construction,” Smith noted.

Currently, Wycliffe Associates has provided half the funding for the library of the translation center. DRC nationals have made and donated 50,000 bricks and put together a labor force for construction. Wycliffe Associates will also provide volunteers to help with the construction work.

The DRC translation center still needs another $100,000 for construction. Efforts are underway to raise the remaining amount.

Last year, Wycliffe Associates recruited 4,124 volunteers who served in 49 countries alongside Bible translation teams. The organization hopes to mobilize more than 4,800 volunteers this year to serve in 41 countries with building and renovating facilities, constructing roads and airstrips, teach Vacation Bible School, and help with language development and office work, and computer related activities.

Worship Wars~Chuck Colson

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Worship Wars

How Do We Determine Musical Excellence?

By Chuck Colson

Christian Post Guest Columnist

Fri, Aug. 07 2009 01:03 PM EDT

Longtime readers know how I feel about church music. I prefer the older hymns of the faith over modern praise choruses. Other people feel strongly the other way. So I’m not surprised that full-scale music wars have erupted in some churches.

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But is there a right and wrong kind of music for worship?

One expert on church music says yes, there is.

Donald Williams is director of the School of Arts and Sciences at Toccoa Falls College in Georgia. In his excellent Touchstone magazine article, “Durable Hymns,” Williams notes that there have been wars over music almost as long as there’s been a church. So what’s the answer?

Williams says we should study the music of the past to “learn the criteria by which to discern what is worthy in the present.”

Much of today’s music is of poor quality, he writes. But so was some music written centuries ago. The difference is the old hymns have endured a centuries-long weeding-out process. If we hope to identify the best new music, Williams writes, we must know “those marks of excellence that made the best of the past stand out and survive so long.”

These marks of excellence “are not arbitrary.” They “are derived from biblical teaching about the nature of worship.” They come, Williams writes, “from an understanding of the nature of music and how it can support those biblical goals.”

Among these marks of excellence is biblical truth. Lyrics need not to be literal Scripture, but they do have to be faithful to it.

Another mark of excellence-theological profundity. Think of how the words to this great hymn encourage us to worship God with our minds:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes

By contrast, some contemporary choruses are often “so simplistic and repetitive that theological reflection never has a chance to get started,” Williams says.

A third mark of excellence is poetic richness. For instance, the use of a question in the hymn “What Child is This?” helps us capture “the wonder of the Incarnation.” In “Amazing Grace,” the word “wretch,” Williams notes, is “a simple but evocative” choice.

A fourth mark is musical beauty. In great music, “there are certain contours, structures, and cadences that make for a singable melody.” And the right harmony “can make that melody more memorable . . .,” he writes. For instance, “Be Thou My Vision” “rises and falls like an ocean wave or a sine curve.”

Tragically, Williams notes, “more recent praise choruses seem to ignore all the rules of good composition, giving us not well-shaped melodies but just one note after another.”

Now, some songwriters are creating excellent music today. But, warns Williams, only those musicians who are musically gifted, and historically, biblically, and theologically trained are qualified to help churches choose the best new music “as a supplement to the church’s rich musical heritage.”

I couldn’t agree more. And-in the end-all sides of the music wars can agree that we want to praise God by singing hymns and spiritual songs that are biblically true, theologically profound, poetically rich, and, yes, musically beautiful.

Jewish "falling away?"

US survey: Number of religious Jews drops sharply

Study shows number of American Jews who define themselves as religiously observant has dropped by 20% in last two decades; Jews more likely to be secular than Americans in general

Associated Press

Published:

08.09.09, 10:37 / Israel Jewish Scene

The number of American Jews who consider themselves religiously observant has dropped by more than 20% over the last two decades, as the share of Jews who consider themselves secular has risen, according to a survey.

Heritage

Oldest active US synagogue opens visitors center /Associated Press Dedicated in 1763 by local Sephardic community, Touro Synagogue in Newport Rhode Island is the oldest in the US to still maintain an active Orthodox congregation. Its new visitor center aims to share places 'great story and history' Full Story

The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found that around 3.4 million American Jews call themselves religious — out of a general Jewish population of about 5.4 million.

The number of Jews who identify themselves as only culturally Jewish has risen from 20% in 1990 to 37% last year, according to the study. In the same period, the number of all US adults who said they had no religion rose from 8% to 15%.

Jews are more likely to be secular than Americans in general, the researchers said.

About half of all US Jews — including those who consider themselves religiously observant — claim in the survey that they have a secular worldview and see no contradiction between that outlook and their faith, according to the study's authors.

Researchers attribute the trends among American Jews to the high rate of intermarriage and "disaffection from Judaism" in the United States.

The survey of more than 900 self-identified Jews has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The broader findings of the American Religious Identification Survey, based at Trinity College in Hartford, had been released last spring. The study began in 1990 and has been conducted about once-a-decade ever since.

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(Not another Christian Zionist) One that Calls for a Response ~ Bible Prophecy Today

One that Calls for a Response ~ Bible Prophecy Today

Christian Zionism is wrong. There are those who say, RIGHT or WRONG, support Istrael no matter what.

No. We don't, I don't, nor should you.

The point of having a personal Lord and Saviour is about making decisions. You and your Lord.

What God tell you to do, that you should do.

Jesus Never supported Zionism in His Day nor does He now.

His Will is about doing the Will of the One who sent Him. Jesus Was sent by the Father. He said So,

He said,

"I came not to to do my will but the will of the one who sent me."

This is Jesus pure and simple.

Doing What God Told Him.

What is God telling you?

What is God's will for you?

What is Jesus Commnadement to you?

The gospel, not Zionism, Christian or otherwise.

God did not come to save a Jew, he came to save you, to save me, to save the World.

For God so Loved the World...., not israel.

Sorry, you are commanded to pray for the peace of Jerusalem not promote Communism, Zionism, Democracy, or Judaism.

You are called to preach the gospel to every living creature.

The person who loves Israel today seems to forget the Land the Son of God walked on is planted Six feet under in a grave of which current Jerusalem stands, and with good reason, God Himself judged.

When ever I hear a Christian Zionist preach the ungodly support of any people without the Lord I am reminded what Jesus said to Peter,

Shut up. You don't know what you are talking about.

We are to be about Salvation of the soul, not a band aid to anyone chosen by God or not who is in rebelllion to His Will.

Israel, Israeli, Judaism, is in rejection and denial mode.

We can save many souls before many more persih if we quit worshipping the ground people walk on and get back to the Cross Jesus carried for those who watched Him die....,

It's not about knowing how, it's about sharing what Jesus did for you, and I can tell you this, no Jew respects your faith when you idealize Israel or Jewish lifestyle and not be true to the Son of God in you.

Any Jew and all Jews would rather see the Living God in you, then hear all the malarky about loving Jews, Jewish things, or Israel.

Get real about your faith, you will be respected.

Don't and follow Christian Zionism and you are being used.

And satan is laughing.....

Michael James Stone