Representatives from more than 100 nations gathered at the World Assembly of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), held last month in Wheaton, Illinois. Reports from student movements around the world were featured during the week-long conference. Among the highlights: Christian students at the University of San Marcos in Cochabamba, Bolivia, once a hotbed of radical Marxism, sponsored several weeks of training and evangelistic outreach, backed by months of prayer. As a result, more than 700 people indicated decisions to accept Jesus as Savior, an unprecedented response for Latin American IFES movements.
At the assembly, a former staff worker from Vietnam joined his colleagues for the first time in almost 16 years. Choosing to remain and minister when Saigon fell in 1975, he was later held five and one-half years in prison, until his release and deportation in January 1990.
Leadership of the 45-year-old fellowship changed hands for only the third time in its history. After 20 years as general secretary, Chua We Hian of Singapore turned over responsibilities to Lindsay Brown of Wales.
Reflecting the global political changes that have occurred since its last quadrennial meeting, IFES welcomed eight new student groups as members, representing Poland, Hungary, Nepal, Angola, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and French-speaking Canada.
ENGLAND
Charismatics On Evangelism
Catholic and Protestant charismatics came together last month in Brighton, England, drawn past their denominational differences by the goal of seeing half the world’s population confess Christ as Savior by the year 2000. Approximately 3,000 delegates attended the International Charismatic Consultation on World Evangelisation, organized by Anglican charismatic leader Michael Harper and a planning committee that included Vinson Synan, head of the North American Renewal Services Committee; Larry Christenson, renewal leader in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; and other Roman Catholic and Pentecostal leaders. Anglican Archbishop George Carey addressed the opening session.
Though the conference failed to gather the wide range of support organizers had hoped for—in fact, few classical Pentecostal denominations or well-known figures participated—it did signal the continuing growth of the charismatic/Pentecostal movement worldwide. Mission statistician David Barrett estimates that of the 1.8 billion people who call themselves Christians today, about 372 million identify themselves as charismatic/Pentecostal. Observers noted a growing commitment to world evangelization among the groups present, as well as increased concern for historical and theological scholarship, often seen as a weakness of the charismatic movement.
China house-church movement leader Wang Mingdao has died at the age of 91. Wang passed away July 28, just before the regular Sunday morning service began in his third-floor flat in Shanghai.
Wang was the fifth child of Christian parents. In 1921, the year the Chinese Communist party was founded, he preached his first sermon and soon after became associated with the China Inland Mission (now Overseas Missionary Fellowship). Later he worked closely with China Inter-Varsity Fellowship. He also founded the Christian Tabernacle church.
Wang refused in 1950 to sign a “Christian Manifesto” and from then on was frequently at odds with China’s Three-Self Patriotic Movement. He and his wife were arrested in 1955; he spent 23 years in prison.
“I always thought of Wang Mingdao as a modern John the Baptist,” says David Adeney, minister-at-large for Overseas Missionary Fellowship, who worked closely with Wang. “China and the world have lost a great man.”
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
Briefly Noted
Elected:Benjamin de Jesus as the first executive director of the Alliance World Fellowship, composed of 41 autonomous church denominations in 41 nations and associated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. A Filipino citizen, de Jesus has graduate degrees from Southwestern Baptist Seminary.
Missing:Three employees of World Vision Peru and a community leader, since July 17. Luis Gutiérrez, 32; Marcial Sarmiento, 35; Ciro Casaverde, 39; and Cayo Vargas, a local community leader, disappeared en route from a provincial town to World Vision’s Lima office. Their disappearance has not been linked so far with the May 17 assassination of two World Vision workers, Norman Tatter sall and José Chuquin. Following the recent killing of an Australian nun, foreign clergy and church workers say they fear Maoist guerrillas have targeted them because of perceived connections to “Yankee imperialism.”
Denied: the request for a temporary resident’s visa in Israel by Alex Awad, a Palestinian born there, who holds U.S. citizenship. Awad has been seeking for several years to return with his family to serve a Baptist church in East Jerusalem and to teach at Bethlehem Bible College. No reason was given for his denial by the Israeli Consulate in Philadelphia.
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