1. World: The Status of Global Bible Translation
2. China: Rewriting the Bible to Align with Communist Values
3. Egypt: President Affirms Building Churches in Every New City
4. Ukraine: 48 Hours and a Journey to a New Life
5. Philippines: The Blessing of the Pandemic—God’s Deconstruction of My Ministry

World: The Status of Global Bible Translation

Source: Missio Nexus, March 8, 2022

Imagine your life if you didn’t know the truth of God’s Word. Didn’t know the unconditional love of Jesus. Didn’t know God’s plan for you. Because it didn’t exist in your language. That’s the grim reality for over one billion people around the world.

Today there are more than 3,000 language groups with little or no access to Scripture, and about 2,000 of those don’t have a single verse of Scripture in the language they best understand. Many of these language groups include followers of Christ and even established churches. But with their only access to Scripture being in another language, the deep truths of God’s Word are difficult, if not impossible, to access.

But there is hope! Unprecedented advances in technology, innovation, and collaboration among the global church are accelerating the pace of Bible translation like never before.

See the full story with infographic.

Visit illumiNations.bible to learn how you can help. Visit progress.bible for more data on the state of Bible translation.

China: Rewriting the Bible to Align with Communist Values

Source: Christian Headlines, February 18, 2022

A spokesperson for the Christian persecution watchdog group The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) warned that the Chinese government is currently attempting to rewrite the Word of God in accordance with communist values.

“This is a project that the Chinese Communist Party announced in 2019. At the time, they said it would be about a 10-year process … to release a new translation of the Bible,” VOM spokesman Todd Nettleton told Faithwire in a recent interview.

He noted that the reimagined Scriptures would include a variety of principles, including Confucianism and Buddhism.

"This new translation … would really support the Communist Party," Nettleton added.

Read the full story or watch the 10-minute interview with Nettleton. (Though the American flag in the background is a bit distracting.)

See also Dangers of Openly Worshiping Jesus in China: One Man’s Harrowing Story (The Christian Post).

Read on for another story about government and faith.

Egypt: President Affirms Building Churches in Every New City

Source: International Christian Concern, March 14, 2022

President Abdel Fattah al Sisi confirmed Egypt’s initiative for constructing a church in every newly built city, saying, “Where there is a mosque, there must also be a church. And if the church to be built will be attended by even only 100 people, it must be built anyway.” The country’s urban development program includes regulations that a church must be constructed as part of city planning.

Though the presidential announcement and commitment to church building was celebrated by the Orthodox and evangelical communities across the country, the new church construction has one major downfall.

Whether intended or not, the new regulation severely limits and poses threats to Egypt’s Muslim-background believers (MBBs). Al-Sisi continued his statements above adding, “so no one will have to meet in an apartment and present that private house as a church.”

MBBs are generally unable to enter clearly identified churches for fear of persecution from their Muslim community or families. Instead, MBBs and those seeking to share the gospel with their Muslim neighbors utilize house churches, meeting in homes.

Read the full story.

See also a story about combating persecution in Niger which explains some of the challenges and strategies for overcoming them in another majority-Muslim country (Words of Hope).

Shifting our eyes to Europe, the next story reminds us that the refugees from Ukraine may have a variety backgrounds and beliefs.

Ukraine: 48 Hours and a Journey to a New Life

Source: WorldVenture, March 5, 2022

Donna and Mark McDonnel are WorldVenture global workers to Ukraine temporarily evacuated to Poland. And they just spent 48 hours straight helping Ukrainian refugees. Because sometimes, that’s what it means to serve.

Donna received a call from her friend and Arabic-language teacher, a Jordanian man teaching in Kyiv.

Donna’s teacher managed to escape with his Ukrainian wife—who was very distressed—and their two kids in their car. “That little suburb, across the street from Kyiv Christian Academy was home to a good-sized Tatar community, and he was teaching Quranic Arabic at a school there,” [she says]. It was recently shelled by the Russian military.

This man and his family traveled with different caravans of people of different nationalities and spent over 48 hours waiting to cross the border into Poland. Donna and the teacher spoke throughout this time of escape, and she helped him think through where to find a new home.

Donna [and others] arranged for lodging to house them on their trip through Poland—an adventure all its own. Eventually, the teacher and his large group made their way to Berlin, Germany, en route to their hoped-for destination of Switzerland. But the start of their new lives has begun with a new challenge: All 11 have tested positive for COVID-19. They are now quarantined. It’s a rough way to start a new life after a harrowing experience fleeing their former lives.

“They are not going back to Ukraine,” Donna reports of her friends. “He sees this as starting a whole new life. His biggest concerns were being received as a Muslim and the rumors of prejudice.”

Read the full story with prayer points.

See also Russian Evangelical Leader Apologizes to Ukrainian Christians and The Wartime Prayers of Ukraine’s Evangelicals (Christianity Today) as well as How the Ukraine War Is Dividing Orthodox Christians (The Conversation).

As the man in the next article found, sometimes having your life turned upside down can be a tremendous blessing.

Philippines: The Blessing of the Pandemic—God’s Deconstruction of My Ministry

Source: Asian Access, March 8, 2022

God has used the pandemic to dismantle the ministry construct under which I had been working. The pandemic forced me to embrace undoing ministry. I had no choice because pandemic rules and restrictions grounded me at home. Slowly, the restrictions created by the pandemic became God’s instrument to deconstruct my ministry practices and perspective.

Deconstruction made it clear that what I had prioritized and pursued in life and ministry needed radical review and revision. The time and space created by the pandemic provided needed time to lazily linger in Bible reading and reflection, writing, and prayer. I grappled with the truth that ministry is all about participation in the work of God, not performance in the ministry.

God deconstructed my ministry so that he could do the spiritual reconstruction needed to help me to focus on what really matters as defined by the values and vision of the kingdom of God. God let me see that many things I had considered as success were not really significant in the kingdom of God. In the eyes of God, small works of love in the obscurity of the ordinary are significant and rewarded (see Matthew 25:34-40).

Read the full story. The author leads the A2’s ministry in the Philippines.

Asian Access also shared A Call to End the War and Pray for Peace, with prayers and statements about Russia and Ukraine from ministry leaders across Asia.