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South Sudan Reflects Power of Prayer
CHICAGO, IL (November 11, 2000) - More than 300,000 churches in at least 130 countries will take part tomorrow in the Fifth International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP) with a main service to be held in Melbourne, Australia.
Current persecution of Christians is increasingly a topic of international attention, according to the World Evangelical Fellowship's Human Rights Commission. At present, some 200 million Christians are persecuted because of their faith. Despite persecution, Christianity often grows fastest where human rights are least respected, observers report. That has been the case for the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) in South Sudan, which has been decimated by civil war, but encouraged by God's providence in recent years.
The ECC in South Sudan has 170 different congregations with some 30,000 people, according to Jerry Rice, director of administration of the Northwest Conference and coordinator for Sudanese ministry for the ECC's Department of World Mission. Rice heads to Ethiopia November 13 and will contact various churches in Gambella, Ethiopia, which is close to the Sudan border and a refugee camp with some 15 Covenant churches in existence.
"In the upper Nile region (the Northeast corner of South Sudan), that's where many churches are," said Rice, who will stay in Ethiopia for a month with Jim Sundholm, associate superintendent of the Northwest Conference. "In the Bentiu area, the furthest interior in Sudan, that's closer to the Sudan government and it's more tense," Rice said. "That's been the hardest place for us to communicate to; it takes four weeks to walk there. And there's fighting on and off and you never know when a plane's going to come and bomb or people are going to come and steal cattle. It's very unsettled."
Still, many positive things are happening there, including Sundholm's teaching at a school in Ethiopia. Rice said there are at least four South Sudanese Covenant pastors being taught by
Sundholm, which bodes well for area congregations. And, according to secretary of the ECC Mary Miller, some $123,000 has been sent to that area via an offering received during CHIC2K
in Knoxville, Tennessee, last July.
More information on IDOP is available on the Internet by visiting www.idop.org. For more information on the ECC's South Sudanese work, contact Rice by email at nwc@isd.net.
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
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