More on Asian Christianity...

Can the Western press understand what vibrant Christianity looks like? The abduction and killing of South Korean missionaries by the Taliban has spurred many to explore the growth of the faith there.

To understand the phenomenon of Korean evangelism, he says, you need to go to where it all began. It is 4:30 on a frigid Monday morning in Seoul, but the parking lot is full and the church filled to its 9000-person capacity. In a city that also worships the work ethic, this is how tens of thousands of Koreans begin their work week. At the Onnuri church, it's a two-hour prayer service. Onnuri calls itself an evangelical Presbyterian church. It began 20 years ago and has seen massive growth.

Rev. Yongjo Ha of Onnuri Presbyterian Church explains more about mission:

When we were hopeless, the Western missionaries came, and they introduced us to the hope in Jesus Christ, so we have a very holy obligation to share this hope in Jesus Christ with those people who are still in their misery.

Read more in this week's Religion & Ethics News Weekly Report from PBS. Hat tip: Titus One Nine.

Horror of the Cheshire murders spotlights nationwide crime fears

Video courtesy of the Washington Post.

The horrors of the Cheshire murder continue to echo, with no less than the Washington Post riffing on what it all means:

The killings have stunned this state known for its staid insurance companies and old whalers in Mystic Seaport, sparking the broadest review of Connecticut's criminal justice system in modern history. But while rare in their scope and viciousness, the slayings, experts say, highlight a crime wave underway in small bedroom communities across America, where statistics are showing the biggest increase in violent criminal activity in years.

Not only was violent crime in suburban communities with populations between 25,000 and 49,999 up for the third year in a row in 2006, but it grew by 3.2 percent -- significantly faster than the nationwide increase of 1.3 percent, according to recently released FBI statistics. By comparison, during that same period, cities with more than 1 million people saw violent crime edge up by only 0.2 percent while rural areas saw a decrease of 5.3 percent. Only cities between 250,000 and 499,999 witnessed similar increases, with violent crime in those areas also surging by 3.2 percent.

It happens as fast-growing suburban regions find themselves coping with more drug-related and, in some cases, gang-related crimes that were once largely considered urban problems. Cheshire, a relatively affluent municipality of 29,000 between New Haven and Hartford, offers a micro-portrait of a town grappling with at least some of those ills.

Last month, Cheshire police recorded one of their largest drug seizures in years -- 22 bags of heroin found during a drunken-driving stop. Although smaller towns are more likely to witness broader fluctuations in crime than larger cities, this year Cheshire has had 28 burglaries, a 75 percent increase over the same period last year. Additionally, in February, the town witnessed a double murder (the perpetrator committed suicide) that brought its homicide toll for the year, including the Petit killings, to a record five, according to Cheshire police.

Read the rest here.

Abortionist repents, prays for an end to abortion in America

Dr. Patti Gibbink at the recent The Call rally in Nashville

From LifeSiteNews.com:

During "The Call" rally, former Planned Parenthood abortionist Dr. Patti Gibbink stood up and testified, confessing her sins and begging God to end abortion. She told the crowds, "Ten years ago, I did abortions for Planned Parenthood." Here she paused, overwhelmed with tears.

"Oh Lord, oh God, God most holy and just," she continued, quoting Psalm 51, "You hate hands that have shed innocent blood. God, I acknowledge my transgression. My sin is always before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight."

"God, I repent. I repent for myself and all abortionists all over. We have sacrificed innocent lives to the altars of Baal and Moloch. God, God….Forgive me Lord and other abortionists. God, hear our cry. Be merciful to us. Jesus, I plead your blood over my sins and the sins of this nation."

She then cried out amidst thousands of cheers, "God end abortion and bring revival to America. God end abortion! It's time, it's time."

Others got up and gave their testimony, including one young woman, the daughter of a pastor, who had had an abortion when she was seventeen. She said, "I feared man, my boyfriend, more than I feared the Lord." Referring to her boyfriend, she said, "He set life and death before me, and I chose death."

That's what it comes down to.

What are you reading this summer?

Lots of people start off the summer planning to read a good book or two, so let me ask - have you read everything you wanted to this summer? Only a few weeks left to finish that book everybody in church is talking about or read that big spy thriller. You know the one.

This is what's been on my summer reading shelf, although I have to confess it's mostly work-related:

Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches, by Christian Schwarz

The Volunteer Revolution: Unleashing the Power of Everybody, by Bill Hybels

The Making of a Leader, by Frank Damazio

Authority in Prayer: Praying with Power and Purpose, by Dutch Sheets

What have you been reading this summer?

Young people are leaving churches in droves. What's the answer?

Spiritual damage is harder to see than weather damage

What is the answer to the American church's inability to retain young people? LifeWay research points us the pressing problem:

Seven in 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 — both evangelical and mainline — who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23, according to the survey by LifeWay Research. And 34% of those said they had not returned, even sporadically, by age 30. That means about one in four Protestant young people have left the church.

"This is sobering news that the church needs to change the way it does ministry," says Ed Stetzer, director of Nashville-based LifeWay Research, which is affiliated with the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

"It seems the teen years are like a free trial on a product. By 18, when it's their choice whether to buy in to church life, many don't feel engaged and welcome," says associate director Scott McConnell.

The statistics are based on a survey of 1,023 Protestants ages 18 to 30 who said they had attended church at least twice a month for at least one year during high school. LifeWay did the survey in April and May. Margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Any clues as to what will hold them and, more importantly, help them continue to grow into solid disciples?

The survey found that those who stayed with or returned to church grew up with both parents committed to the church, pastors whose sermons were relevant and engaging, and church members who invested in their spiritual development.

"Too many youth groups are holding tanks with pizza. There's no life transformation taking place," Stetzer says. "People are looking for a faith that can change them and to be a part of changing the world."

Read the rest here from USA Today.

What can churches do?

Photo by "cottergarage." Some rights reserved.

Time profiles Billy Graham

Be sure to read the Time Magazine profile of the "Pastor in Chief," which explores the fascinating relationships Billy Graham has had with presidents going back to 1955.

One day [President Lyndon] Johnson took Graham on a walk around his Texas ranch, to a clearing in the trees near where his parents were buried. Johnson wanted to know if he would see them again in heaven. And then another question: Would Billy preach at his funeral? Johnson knew the world listens when a President dies. "Don't use any notes," he said, and no fancy eulogizing either. "I want you to look in those cameras and just tell 'em what Christianity is all about. Tell 'em how they can be sure they can go to heaven. I want you to preach the Gospel." And just one more thing. "Somewhere in there, you tell 'em a few things I did for this country."

Read the rest here.

Have you seen GodTube?

You've probably heard of YouTube, but have you heard of GodTube?

Here's a FoxTV interview with GodTube.com's CEO Chris Wyatt:

Updates to the Connecticut Church Map

A quick note to let you know that we've updated the Connecticut Church Map by adding an index. You can now search for churches by town, making the map much more useful for everyone. Check it out here!

Connecticut minister takes part in delegation to Iraq

From today's Bristol Press:

Back from Baghdad, missionary Kris Keating said he and others in a Christian prayer delegation spoke with the country's prime minister about religious liberty and discrimination against the Christian minority.

"It went really well," said Keating, the missionary minister at Hillside Community Church in Bristol.

Keating was one of a group of six who recently traveled to Iraq as official guests of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to discuss what Keating said is the "very real" persecution of Christians there.

"We were able to speak frankly about some substantive issues that Christians face in Iraq," said Keating, who traveled with the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Organization in Washington and a former Bristol pastor.

Read the rest here.

The rise of Asian Christianity

Section of the Great Wall of China

As the risk of generalizing, it will come as no great revelation to anyone who has spent much time with Asian Christians that they are people of prayer and passion for souls. So it's not surprising to see so much in the news lately about the rise of Asian Christianity, including its missionary thrust. Part of this is due of course to the hostage situation in Afghanistan, but this has really only spotlighted the trend in Korean and other Asian missions work for a wider audience.

This week's National Catholic Reporter featured a column called The uphill journey of Catholicism in China, which discussed the massive growth of Pentecostal and Charismatic groups in China, while noting the relative lack of success of Roman Catholics here.

Perhaps the most remarkable burst of religious energy is in China's Pentecostal Christian population. At the time of the Communist takeover in 1949, there were roughly 900,000 Protestants. Today, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, which puts out the much-consulted World Christian Database, says there are 111 million Christians in China, roughly 90 percent Protestant and mostly Pentecostal. That would make China the third-largest Christian country on earth, following only the United States and Brazil.

The Center projects that by 2050, there will be 218 million Christians in China, 16 percent of the population, enough to make China the world's second-largest Christian nation. According to the Center, there are 10,000 conversions in China every day.

Religious data is notoriously imprecise in an officially atheistic state, and not everyone accepts these eye-popping estimates. In the 2006 update of his book Jesus in Beijing, former Time Beijing bureau chief David Aikman put the number of Protestants at 70 million. Richard Madsen, a former Maryknoll missionary and author of China's Catholics, told me he would put the number still lower, at 40 million. That's in line with the CIA World Factbook, another widely consulted resource.

Various reasons are suggested for the relatively slow growth of Catholicism, but the writer, reporter John L. Allen, Jr., suggests the answer lies in the Pentecostals' expectation of the miraculous.

How would a "Christianized" China affect the region - and the world? Allen says,

By universal consensus, China is an emerging global superpower. Its economy grew at an average annual rate of 9.4 percent over the last 25 years, and today has a GDP of $11 trillion, making it the second-largest economy in the world after the United States. Foreign companies have poured more than $600 billion into China since 1978, far eclipsing what the United States spent rebuilding post-war Europe in the Marshall Plan. China now has a middle class of 200 million people, 80 million of whom are quite well-off. The country exports more in a single day than it did in all of 1978.

How things shake out religiously, therefore, is of tremendous strategic importance, even for people who don't feel any particular spiritual stake in the result. If Christianity ends up at around 20 percent of the population, for example, China could become an exponentially larger version of South Korea (where Christians are between 25-50 percent of the population, depending upon which count one accepts) -- a more democratic, rule-oriented, basically pro-Western society. On the other hand, if dynamic Muslim movements create an Islamic enclave in the western half of the country, with financial and ideological ties to fundamentalist Wahhabi forms of Islam in Saudi Arabia, at least that part of China could become a wealthier and more influential Afghanistan. If growing religious pluralism in China becomes fractious, it could mean that a well-armed and wealthy superpower is destabilized by internal conflict, posing risks to global peace and security.

Asia Times columnist Spengler discusses Allen's article in a piece entitled Christianity Finds a Fulcrum in Asia, exploring both the religious and geopolitical aspects:

Where traditional society remains entrenched in China's most backward regions, Islam also is expanding. At the edge of the Gobi Desert and on China's western border with Central Asia, Islam claims perhaps 30 million adherents. If Christianity is the liquidator of traditional society, I have argued in the past, Islam is its defender against the encroachments of leveling imperial expansion. But Islam in China remains the religion of the economic losers, whose geographic remoteness isolates them from the economic transformation on the coasts. Christianity, by contrast, has burgeoned among the new middle class in China's cities, where the greatest wealth and productivity are concentrated. Islam has a thousand-year presence in China and has grown by natural increase rather than conversion; evangelical Protestantism had almost no adherents in China a generation ago.

Read more here.

Photo by Michael Mooney, some rights reserved.

Christian Events in Connecticut This Week (August 6 - 12)

Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church

The following events are taking place in Connecticut this week. For more information, or to add an event to our Connecticut Christian Events Calendar, please visit our website here.

(Ed. note: sorry this information is being released late this week!)

Monday, August 6:
Litchfield County Regional Prayer Meeting (Torrington)

Wednesday, August 8:
Intercessory Prayer (Colchester)
Fairfield County Pastors' Fellowship Lunch (TBD)

Thurdsay, August 9 - Saturday, August 11:
Willow Creek Leadership Summit (via satellite in Bloomfield, Greenwich)

Thursday, August 9:
Prayer in the Park (Hartford)
Regional Prayer Meeting (New Haven)

Friday, August 10:
Men 4 Men Ministries Coffeehouse (Clinton)
"The View From The Top" Youth Leadership Development Summit (New Haven)

Saturday, August 11:
Statewide Intercessors Gathering (Kensington)
House of Grace Community Coffeehouse (Milford)

Miracles in Minneapolis

"As she's approaching the bridge, the Holy Spirit speaks to her to turn off of the freeway and take a different route home. She began to argue with herself. She said 'Pastor Rich I have never heard the voice of the Holy Spirit as loud as I did that day.'"

More on Minnesota miracles here from CBN. (Video interview with Pastor Rich Scherber of Minnesota Teen Challenge.)

Have you heard of other testimonies of God's grace in connection with this tragedy? Share them with us.

Photo by Joshua Nixon, some rights reserved.

What's new at Pray Connecticut?

Summer can be a bit lazy, but exciting things are still happening around here.

First, Pray Connecticut was featured in an interesting article in the August 4th edition of the Connecticut Post called "Cyber Church." Greater Bridgeport area pastors were interviewed for this article about the use of technology and the internet by the church. There's no version of this story on the Web yet as far as we know, but if you spot it let us know.

Thanks to Jamie Fleming at the Post for a fine story!


Second, we've been adding some new and useful things to the site lately:

1. We've added an "Email this" link to the bottom of each article. This will help you to share stories with people. If you enjoy our blog, tell a friend!

2. We also have added a Bookmark Button to the site and to each article. This will enable you to save articles to your bookmarks or to popular bookmark services like Google Bookmarks. You can also share at popular social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Facebook, Digg, and StumbleUpon. The Bookmark Button looks like this:

3. You can also subscribe to receive our posts by RSS or via e-mail without even needing to return to the site. Look for the orange button in the left-hand column - it looks like this:

4. We've also started running a daily devotional from The Daily Spurgeon. Just look in the left-hand column and you'll find it.


Thanks for your continued support. If you have any upcoming events you'd like us to help you publicize, drop us a line at info@prayct.org.

God bless!
Nick

What about Connecticut's bridges?

In Connecticut of all places, we should not have bridges in a state of disrepair.

Overall, Connecticut's bridges, many of which are pounded by daily interstate traffic far beyond the loads expected when they were built, are rated below the national average, according to a regional policy watchdog group.

While about 26 percent of bridges around the country are rated as deficient, nearly a third of Connecticut's are, the group said.

"The bridge collapse in Minneapolis serves as a tragic reminder that we must invest our transportation dollars in our existing infrastructure, and take infrastructure maintenance very seriously. said Kate Slevin, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which used 2005 statistics.

"Other countries invest much more in sustaining their roads, highways, bridges and transit systems — we should follow their lead," she said.

But compared to other states, Connecticut is in relatively good shape when it comes to bridges, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

The 2006 National Bridge Inventory, maintained by the FHA, listed 351 of 4,166 Connecticut bridges as being "structurally deficient" — 8.4 percent of the state's total. Eleven states have a lower percentage.

Typically, a structurally deficient bridge has weight restrictions, including a prohibition on heavy-truck traffic.

More in the Connecticut Post.

Pray Connecticut listed among the State's most influential political blogs

We've been ranked # 19 on Blog Net News's list of Connecticut's most influential political blogs. Although we are not a political blog per se, nowadays it's not easy to separate the political world from the religious world!

Thanks to all our readers and users of our main site for helping us grow!

Courant profiles Peter Wolfgang of Family Institute of Connecticut

The Courant has a profile piece on Peter Wolfgang, who has assumed leadership of the Family Institute of Connecticut from Brian Brown.

Wolfgang's steady voice and earnest, scholarly demeanor are markedly different from the in-your-face style of his predecessor, Brian Brown, who has been the group's public face since 2001.

Brown, who hails from Orange County, California, predicted that Wolfgang's Connecticut roots will serve him well in the land of steady habits.

"Peter has connections around the state," said Brown, who is leaving to take charge of a new group dedicated to fighting same-sex marriage at the national level. "He's very much a go-getter and he's in this for the fight."

We wish Peter all the best as he carries the ball forward for Connecticut's leading pro-family organization!

A window into the occult in Connecticut

Nothing is more common in Connecticut these days than the local New Age shop.

And although she doesn't push it on customers, she also offers Tarot card readings for $5 — for those who can use a little of her intuitive insight.

In a small room lighted by a white candle on a mantelpiece and closed off with a thick drape, she demonstrated her reading ability for a visitor. Through card-reading, she was able to discern a variety of personal information about the subject, such as how old he was when he first got married. Then, having established a base of credibility for her intuitive abilities, she talked a little about his future.

More here (Connecticut Post).

Light blogging

Blogging will continue to be light over the next couple of weeks as we enjoy the summer. Keep praying!

Evangelist Tommie Zito to hold series of meetings in Waterbury

Evangelist Tommie Zito returns to Connecticut for a series of meetings hosted by First Assembly of God in Waterbury. From a press release:

"My prayer is that as we take this gospel truth to Connecticut, individuals will realize that we as a church have been asleep for way too long," Brother Tommie says. "God desires for this state and the rest of the nation to be awakened to the fact that He must be their all."

Each year, Brother Tommie is called to carry out the "American Awakening" in specific regions in an attempt to bring the nation back to the principle it was founded on; One Nation, Under God. Through worship, prayer and evangelism, Tommie Zito Ministries is stirring up people's spirits and impacting entire regions. Pastor James Lilly of First Assembly of God has invited Brother Tommie to continue his mission of waking up the church and crying out to those who are hungry for God and address residents in Waterbury and surrounding cities in Connecticut next week.

Lives will be transformed and hearts renewed at the "Connecticut Awakening." This experience is open to the public and is free to attend. Residents will have the opportunity to witness Brother Tommie's fiery, radical-edge preaching on Sunday, July 29 at 8:30am, 11:00am & 7:00pm and Monday, July 30 - Saturday, August 4 at 7:00pm nightly. Outreach services take place Tuesday - Saturday at 10:30am. First Assembly of God is located at 1263 Thomaston Ave, Waterbury, CT 06704.

Update to Christian search engine site

Our friends at Kingdom Engine have revamped their Christian search engine site with a more pleasant appearance and some useful custom search engines available on a variety of topics such as:

• The Bible
• Apologetics
• Creeds and Confessions
• Spurgeon
• Worship Music
  

You can also add these searches to your own site or blog, if you have one.

As they note, the Web has grown so much that searching for "King David" on Google gives you 84,700,000 results. Custom search engines limit searches to just a few hand-selected sites that deal with the topic you're interested in. They're great for research.

Happy searching!