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"A Natural Connection"
In keeping with this week’s externally focused theme, we share news of ministries reaching out—way out! From India to Israel to the United States, here are churches and parachurches making an international difference.
Under the Gun
A minister forced to sign his own death warrant and preach at gunpoint: it sounds like a scene from a movie. Unbelievably, Ajai Lall, director of Central India Christian Mission, actually lived this experience, and then inspired a film.
A few years ago, Lall planned to preach at a conference in Punjab. When Hindu extremists threatened to protest the event, local authorities forced him to make a choice: sign a document giving police the right to shoot him if the protestors begin to riot, or don’t speak at all. After calling his family, Lall signed the paperwork and preached for 40 minutes—with five AK-47s pointed at him and a police chief ready to pull the trigger.
Lall lived to tell the story; when Dondra Vaughn Maynor heard it, she knew she’d found the topic for her senior thesis film.
Maynor, a student at Savannah College of Art and Design and a member at Savannah (Georgia) Christian Church, spoke to SCC’s missions pastor and then Lall about the idea.
“Ajai is always humble,” she says. “He agreed to the project as long as the film avoided glorifying him and could instead be used as a ministry tool.”
Maynor assembled a team, including a fellow student born in India, and began raising funds for the trip. The group received donations from churches, friends, and family and also dipped into their own savings to finance the project.
“This is especially remarkable because I was the only Christian on the crew,” she says.
The group spent a week with the Lall family, conducting interviews, filming, and building friendships.
“Everyone at the mission was wonderful,” Maynor says. “They sheltered us and kept us safe. Ajai has to go through life with armed security guards, and the guards protected us, as well.”
The financial sacrifices and personal risks paid off; Binding Faith received a nomination for best documentary at the 2007 “SCADemy Awards,” and Maynor was nominated for her role as the producer. She received the school’s Outstanding Achievement Award for Film and Television and now works at the national PBS show Farmer’s Almanac TV.
She also continues to work with Lall and CICM; the ministry has already sold hundreds of copies of Binding Faith and plans to market the film in bookstores and other venues.
“This story is so powerful,” she says. “I wanted our film to honor it with the most professional and high-quality production possible.”
To order Binding Faith, contact Central India Christian Mission at info@indiamission.org. A $10 donation is requested for each copy.
Holy Land
A new Christian church for Arab believers recently launched in a northern Israeli town overlooking the border with Lebanon. The Church at Fassouta is led by Bishara Khazen; he is one of six Arab-Israeli ministers supported in full-time ministry by the Christian HolyLand Foundation (CHLF), a Restoration Movement-based organization supported by churches throughout the United States.
Bishara and his wife, Randa, began working in Fassouta with home groups and women’s groups more than a year ago. After the groups expressed an interest in worshiping together, a donor contributed an unfinished space. The building is now nicely designed for use as a church, and the congregation also uses a nearby home for youth services.
www.chlf.org
Booking It
Fifteen years after its launch, Literature and Teaching Ministries (Joplin, Missouri) recently celebrated the production of its millionth book.
LATM, founded to supply the mission field with Christian literature, has published more than 400 evangelism, Bible study, and leadership training books in 49 languages. In addition to Spanish, French, Russian, and other common languages the ministry has also published its volumes in Haitian Creole, Arabic, Tamil, Khmer, and many more.
“We are a facilitator of international Christian publishing,” says Phil Casey, who has served as executive director of the ministry since its inception. “We don’t actually print the books—we don’t even own a printing press—we simply help missionaries and national church leaders publish the books they need in the languages of their fields. Usually they already have the books in mind they’d like to see produced; many times they’ve already had them translated or written in their original language on a computer. What they don’t have is the funding required to print the quantity they need. So we make their need known, raise the funds, and do whatever it takes to see that it is printed, usually at a commercial printing company in their own country. These books are then quickly distributed through an already existing network of churches and national leaders who are eager to start using the material.”
www.latm.info
Jennifer Taylor, one of CHRISTIAN STANDARD's contributing editors, lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
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