Many evangelical Christians have been caught off guard by the sweeping changes in national leadership as a result of the September 27 German election that saw Helmut Kohl, his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and allied parties lose power after 16 years. Along with the CDU’s sister Bavarian party, the Christian Social Union, Kohl and company received only 35 percent of the vote, down 6 percent from the 1994 election.

The triumphant Social Democrats (SPD), with Gerhard Schroeder at the helm, gained 4.5 percentage points from 1994 results to win 41 percent of the national vote. The SPD immediately began building a coalition government with, for the first time, the environmental Green party. Together, those two parties achieved a majority in the new 669-seat federal Parliament.

The media-friendly Schroeder, 54, won over voters by pointing to high unemployment and suggesting that the 68-year-old Kohl had clung to power too long. With similar arguments, the Party of Democratic Socialism—the successor to the former East German Communist party—cleared the 5 percent hurdle necessary to be represented in Parliament.

In the wake of defeat, CDU leaders, one by one, dropped out to make way for a younger generation to modernize and reform the party that affirms a commitment to Christian values and a “Christian understanding of people and the knowledge of God’s good creation.”

The personal morality of the candidates did not play a role in the election. Schroeder, a Marxist-turned-moderate, is married for the fourth time.

EVANGELICAL RESPONSE: Many evangelicals, who represent only 3 percent of Germany’s 81 million people, are concerned about an SPD-Green government. They say Christian values, especially the unique legal status of marriage, could be challenged by increasingly liberal political winds blowing through the land of Luther.

“This will be the most unchristian Parliament in the postwar era,” says Wolfgang Baake, director of the Conference of Evangelical Publicists. “There will be ethical implications.”

Hartmut Steeb, general secretary of the German Evangelical Alliance, believes moral and ethical limits could be pushed back as more liberal politicians assume power. “The most absurd notions are becoming the norm,” he argues in connection with a proposed SPD bill that would put homosexual and other “out-of-marriage” couples on equal legal and financial footing as traditional husband-wife unions.

Green Party legal spokesperson Volker Beck argues that “legal recognition and equal status of homosexual couples takes nothing away from families, but gives gays legal protection in a democratic society.”

Steeb also is concerned about SPD-Green demands for dual nationality for foreigners who have long-term residency in Germany, particularly Turks. He notes that Muslim voters could one day outnumber evangelicals. There are more than 7 million foreigners in Germany.

“CHRISTIAN” ISSUES SIDELINED: Prior to the vote, the established large parties pledged more jobs while four small “Christian” parties alone spoke out on moral issues such as preventing introduction of the RU-486 abortion pill.

In a campaign urging a return to “ideals and values,” the Alliance of Free Citizens, which came out ahead of other Christian groups with 121,220 votes, or 0.2 percent of the vote nationwide, called for the abolition of legal abortion and opposed any form of legalized homosexual marriage. Party spokesperson Maria von Below says a new government may opt to replace religious instruction in schools with “ethics” training.

The pro-Israel Party of Bible-believing Christians (PBC) also deplored the “murder of children in the mother’s body,” which takes place in Germany at the rate of 1,000 a day, according to party leader Gerhard Heinzmann. Some 72,000 people, or 0.1 percent of the national vote, cast ballots for the PBC, which printed Bible verses along with slogans on its campaign posters.

Such issues, deemed important to conservative Christians, are far less pressing compared to unemployment and social justice, says SPD parliamentary group spokesperson Wolf-Michael Catenhusen. He told ct the new government does not intend to raise the issue of abortion and that both SPD and CDU members favor the RU-486 abortion pill.

LOW EVANGELICAL IMPACT: It came as no surprise to evangelicals that the small Christian parties combined received less than 1 percent of the votes cast. Demography and perhaps apathy have worked against new Christian political groupings. “Born-again Christians have for too long said we have nothing to do with politics,” says the PBC’s Heinzmann. He and other Christian party politicians say they have tried but failed to merge their parties because of deep theological differences.

“The political influence of the evangelical community is clearly very insignificant,” Steeb says. To combat this, he says the Evangelical Alliance plans to establish a political lobby office by early next year. The Union of Protestant Free Churches intends to set up a similar office in Berlin.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Convoy of Hope, a national food ministry to the urban poor, is expanding beyond one-day food giveaways to coordinate weeklong, citywide events that mobilize volunteers to shower inner-city neighborhoods with good works and the gospel.

The first event, called “We Care, L.A.,” will unite churches and potentially thousands of volunteers on the last week of 1999 to blitz Los Angeles with acts of kindness. Christians will visit hospitals; clean up parks; paint buildings; comfort the lonely; and deliver free groceries, toys, or clothing.

“We want to be a catalyst,” says David Donaldson, one of three brothers who helps lead ChurchCare America, the ministry that founded the Convoy of Hope. “God has already raised up an army of volunteers in Los Angeles. We Care, L.A. will integrate their efforts.”

The foundation for We Care has been laid by Convoy of Hope, which has grown exponentially since conducting its first major food outreach in 1995. Convoy events take place on a Saturday, bringing together resources from the evangelical community and making them available to the poor at a gathering that is part food giveaway, part tent revival, and part carnival. The two consistent features of each event are a semitrailer full of food, bagged and distributed by volunteers, and a series of brief tent services conducted by a slate of local pastors. One of the ministry’s goals is to “make the inner-city pastor a hero in his community,” says Steve Donaldson, one of the brothers leading ChurchCare America, which has offices in Springfield, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. Follow-up events pull new Christians and potential churchgoers back to church on Sunday.

Convoy of Hope has distributed 4.6 million pounds of food to 311,000 people in most major American cities since its inception. Nearly 80,000 people have become Christians at makeshift altars where Convoys are held.

ROOTED IN COMPASSION: The ministry has its roots in tragedy. Before they were teenagers, brothers Hal, Steve, and David Donaldson experienced poverty after their father, Harold, a pastor and church planter, died in 1969 when a car driven by a drunk driver jumped a divider and hit his auto head-on. Their mother, Betty, disabled by the accident, raised them with the help of members from Bethel Temple Assembly of God in Walnut Creek, California. Hal is now editor of the denomination’s magazine, Pentecostal Evangel.

The Donaldsons have made dignity a pillar of the ministry, refusing simply to unload food off the back of a truck. At Convoy events, the poor are respected as honored guests. Volunteers serve hot dogs and soft drinks and distribute the grocery bags. While parents wait in line, children ride ponies and play in inflatable gym equipment.

Convoy of Hope has largely succeeded in bringing churches together across racial, economic, and denominational lines by using food and the basic gospel as centerpieces and by not addressing thornier doctrinal issues.

A BIGGER VISION: But Convoy’s founders want to push the envelope of what suburban churches are willing to do in terms of serving the poor and performing community service. Recent Convoys have drawn on professional expertise within the Christian community to offer free haircuts, medical screening, dental consultation, legal counseling, and job training. The Donaldsons want to bring more of these workaday skills and services, plus compassion and long-term commitment, from affluent churches to the inner city.

“When Christians from suburban communities spend a day in a poor community, they discover that these are great people to know,” Steve Donaldson says. “People imagine the poor as homeless men on drugs who won’t work. These outreaches dispel those perceptions.”

Can the principles that have succeeded on a local level work on a much larger scale? An early supporter of We Care, L.A. and one of the leading churches in Southern California is Templo Calvario Assembly of God in Orange County, a bilingual church of 3,800. The congregation held a Convoy outreach on Easter weekend, which has spawned several “mini Convoys,” says pastor Daniel de Leon. Those events, made possible by the training his people received at the larger event (but planned without Convoy of Hope’s direct input), have drawn thousands, bringing hundreds to faith in Christ and earning applause from city leaders.

De Leon’s experience has convinced him there will be enough neutral ground to accommodate any evangelical church that wants to participate in We Care, L.A. “We had 40 churches of all ethnicities involved in the big Convoy event,” de Leon says. “Not too many things can unite churches. Even crusades are difficult. But everybody cares for the poor. The pastors in this area want to keep working together.”

We Care, L.A. is a natural extension of Convoy’s ministry, De Leon says. People in his congregation plan to serve as coordinators, ushers, security guards, food distributors, and children’s ministers during the outreach. “We Care is what the Convoy has shown they can do, but a lot bigger,” de Leon says. “It’s going to leave an impact on Los Angeles I hope will be lasting.”

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A year ago, the IRM Corporation sent letters to more than 1,500 investors, including Jim and Bertha VanderKodde of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The letter announced that IRM—Investment Research Management—could make no further payments.

“When we received that letter,” Jim VanderKodde told CT, “we said, ‘the Lord gave it to us, and the Lord took it away.’ We never lost a wink of sleep over it.”

For the VanderKoddes, the investment totaled $10,000, a relatively small part of their savings after he finished a 28-year career as a police officer. But for many other investors in IRM’s $400 million real estate operation, sleep did not come so easily. Many are retirees who had placed most or all of their life savings in the private company.

IRM founder John O. Van Hofwegen and most of its investors are members of the Grand Rapids-based Christian Reformed Church (CRC). The CRC is one of the principal heirs of the Dutch Calvinist tradition in North America. The company’s star salesperson, Jay Merron, formerly taught at the CRC-related South Christian High School in Grand Rapids. Besides the hundreds of individual investors, some of the largest CRC-related agencies, Home Missions Board, Calvin College, and the Back to God Hour radio ministry, invested a total of $11.4 million in IRM. The Barnabas Foundation, another major investor, while independent of the denomination, has many CRC clients. Potential losses for all parties could top $130 million.

CALIFORNIA CONNECTION: IRM began in the late 1960s as a limited partnership real estate management venture and eventually acquired 59 properties, mostly apartment complexes in northern and central California. For more than 20 years, IRM paid investors dividends of 9 to 11 percent.

In the late 1980s, however, two factors started IRM on a troubled path. First, Congress changed the tax laws on limited partnerships, making them less attractive as investments. Second, and more ominous, the bottom fell out of California’s once-booming real estate market.

What happened next is a matter of dispute. IRM “defrauded investors of over $100 million,” asserts Ken Horjus, CRC director of finance, in a court affidavit. A lawsuit filed in July by a group of CRC agencies and individual investors charged IRM with running a “Ponzi-like” operation that “created and perpetuated a real estate investment pyramid scheme.”

Not so, insists John Barnard, a lawyer specializing in real estate turnarounds hired by IRM management last winter. “There’s no Ponzi or pyramid scheme here,” he told CT, just a succession of business reverses resulting from a combination of a real estate recession, high interest rates, and financing problems. He notes that the Van Hofwegen family had most of its own capital at risk in the company, too, which is not the case with intentionally fraudulent schemes.

BLAME TO GO AROUND: Despite such reassurances, several other lawsuits followed, and in August IRM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Regulatory agencies in both California and Michigan have opened investigations into IRM’s activities.

Barnard still hopes that a buyer will be found for the IRM properties, and that a sale will recover much or all of the capital, especially of the smaller investors.

Jim VanderKodde is not as optimistic. “It’s very unlikely we’ll ever get our money back,” he says. VanderKodde does not see IRM management as crooked. “They just messed up and lost the money. I hold no bitterness toward anybody.”

Others are not so serene. Many think IRM might have been able to avoid bankruptcy if the CRC agencies had not insisted on court action. They became angry upon learning that the church agencies and the Barnabas Foundation had been reducing investments in IRM before October 1997. CRC officials did not help their cause when they reacted to the IRM letter by clamping a “no comment” order on all staff, including the denominational magazine, The Banner. The order was lifted after protests and the posting of leaked internal denominational documents on the Internet. The denominational synod in June extended its session for a day to hear from CRC staff about the IRM situation.

The Barnabas Foundation, a financial advisory company in Orland Park, Illinois, with 168 client groups—most of them CRC-related—also has been criticized. But executive director David Vander Ploeg says that he and others simply carried out “due diligence” they owed their clients. Vander Ploeg says the foundation uncovered IRM’s financial disarray during routine audits in the early 1990s, and the reduction of investments was simply responsible fiduciary management.

SETTLEMENT SCUTTLED: The sense of outrage among many small investors escalated when Christian Reformed Church officials opposed a Grand Rapids businessperson’s offer earlier this year to buy IRM’s obligations for five cents on the dollar. CRC officials say they felt they could find a better offer. But hundreds of investors who crowded into meetings in Michigan and California during the summer tied up denominational phone and fax lines to protest plans for court action and to demand acceptance of the deal.

Christian Reformed Church officials also came under fire for ignoring biblical guidelines that Christians avoid suing one another. In a July letter to investors, CRC’s director of ministries, Peter Borgdorff, responded, “This is a tragic misuse of Scripture. Of course it is true that we should not seek to use the law in an adversarial way. There is, however, no biblical admonition prohibiting one from seeking the rule of law and the protection of the courts when such rule and protection are sorely needed.”

In August, the court approved an 11-member creditors’ committee to consider new offers for IRM. Its chair is Grand Rapids businessman Jay Mol, who says he is the largest individual investor in IRM. Since his appointment, Mol has been fielding anguished calls from hard-pressed individual investors and trying to decide which are merely facing “hardship,” versus those who are in “dire hardship.”

Meanwhile, VanderKodde is not worrying much about the fate of IRM. “I do a lot of volunteer work in hurricane and tornado relief,” he says. “I’ll keep doing that as long as the Lord lets me.”

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The Senate ended months of political wrangling October 9 by unanimously passing a no-tolerance policy for religious persecution worldwide. The bill, which the House passed by a unanimous voice vote the following day, awaits White House approval. President Clinton opposed an earlier version, but he is expected to sign this one.

The International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), cosponsored by Sen. Don Nickles (R.-Okla.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D.-Conn.), requires the President to take action against nations that engage in “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” acts of religious persecution. A 1997 State Department report cites 77 countries—including China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan—that oppress religious freedom. Lieberman says “millions of lives” will be saved because of the legislation.

The 98-to-0 Senate vote came after tense negotiations with economic conservatives who originally opposed the measure (CT, Oct. 5, 1998, p. 26). An earlier version of the bill required mandatory economic sanctions, which free-trade Republicans argued would hurt U.S. business abroad. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R.-Neb.), an opponent of the earlier version, told CT that terminating relationships with allies that have records of religious persecution, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, would not be in the country’s best interest.

SELECTIVE SANCTIONS? But Stephen Rickard, legislative director for Amnesty International, says he believes most Americans want a values-based foreign policy. “They don’t want [human rights] sold out for trade opportunities.”

The revised bill allows the President to select from a broad menu of 15 options, including public condemnation, withdrawal of aid, and a variety of economic sanctions.

Some evangelicals fear punitive action could hurt the religiously oppressed by angering their governments. Mark Albrecht, with World Evangelical Fellowship’s Religious Liberty Commission, supports the bill, but says, “I get nervous when the U.S. starts throwing its weight around and determining policy for the church overseas.”

Hudson Institute’s Michael Horowitz, an ardent supporter of religious liberty, told CT he had been more concerned with the previous bill’s lack of an independent fact-finding commission than economic sanctions. Now, he says, politicians cannot ignore the issue.

POST, PANEL CREATED: The IRFA creates an ambassador-at-large in the State Department and a bipartisan ten-member commission, which will produce a country-by-country annual report on religious persecution.

Based on the report, the President is required to announce to Congress the action he will take against violators. But the bill allows the President to waive action if “important national interest” is threatened.

Evangelicals provided leadership to the campaign against religious persecution, working together with a diverse range of religious groups, including Catholic and Jewish congregations.

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The Mission Aviation Fellowship single-engine Cessna 185 flies low over the expansive rain forest in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan Province on Borneo, the world’s third-largest island. Pilot Dar Bone points out the wisps of smoke marking brush-clearing fires set by village farmers and then lands the Cessna on a tiny grassy plot. Because of drought, crops are meager and money from the sale of rice is scarce.

The cargo hold of the small plane carries supplies ordered by the Dayak villagers living in isolated settlements. With fuel costs rising, it is questionable whether these supply flights can continue. The Asian financial crisis has rippled into the remotest corners of Indonesia, a nation of 3,000 islands and 207 million people.

Despite the difficulties, even the smallest village supports a church. Evangelization of the 21 Dayak tribes began nearly a century ago. Formerly animistic headhunters and cannibals making intervillage raids, the Dayak now live peaceably, and 95 percent of those in East Kalimantan are Christian.

SURVIVAL AND REVIVAL: In spite of the success of evangelism among the Dayak, economic hardship has threatened the survival of their villages. At the same time, church leaders are engaged in a second battlefront for spiritual revival within their churches.

Dayak congregations are not immune from modern pressures. Church leaders say it is difficult to keep villagers focused on their faith, and pastors are not always accorded the respect they once received.

Ngau Ifung lives with his family in the small town of Long Nawang in the deep green thicket of rain forest along the Kayan River. Although a layperson, Ifung, a Christian since 1963, serves as district superintendent to more than 15 village churches.

“My parents were animists, but they thought that if I became a Christian I would be able to go to school,” Ifung says. He was pressed into service almost immediately as an overseer of the church. “In those days, a preacher was like an angel. Every word that a preacher said was accepted. But now it is not the case.”

Today, the educational level of the typical Dayak pastor and church members is almost equal. Ifung thinks that Dayak Christians have become accustomed to being instructed from outsiders and have difficulty trusting one of their own.

YOUTH FLIGHT: Dayak Christian parents watch as their children leave their village homes for postgrammar-school education or for work opportunities in cities. This conflicts with a tribal culture’s main means of perpetuating itself: through the support system of the tribal extended family. Some young people lose their way and their faith. To help those facing an unfamiliar world, Ifung writes letters to pastors of churches that young people attend in cities. He also leads weekly prayer meetings on behalf of those who have left.

Some Dayak young people aspire to Christian service. In 1978, the Christian and Missionary Alliance and Dayak leaders helped launch the Theological School of Tenggarong, along Kalimantan’s northeast coast. The school has a good reputation, and the government waives property taxes. Students and teachers gave money to support a building program. A new cafeteria and boys’ dormitory have recently been completed with financial gifts and volunteer help.

EXTERNAL PRESSURES: As a pilot for MAF, Bone knows that churches in the Kalimantan rain forest are subject to intense outside pressures. “There is nothing we can do to stop the process of globalization, because that is already in God’s plan,” Bone says.

Although the economic and political situation has caused strife, Dayak church leaders pray for revival within their churches and countrywide. Ifung, as he oversees village churches, urgently prays for “inspiration from the Holy Spirit” in facing the challenges posed by the global economy, which is opening up Kalimantan villages to economic development as never before.

“One of the things we struggle with in being here is how to help people with their [economic] needs,” says missionary Eric Maxey, a teacher at the Theological School of Tenggarong. “Just giving money creates dependency. So we asked God to show us ways that we could help them. And God opened up a marvelous handicraft business.”

Dayak leaders have trained 20 women to create beaded Christmas bells to be sold in North America through Bright Hope International of Wauconda, Illinois (847-526-5566).

Loly Dungau, the principal at Tenggarong, says his tribe has reserved the best of their art, dance, and beadwork. In turn, proceeds from selling beadwork may support a family, plus pay school costs.

Kelso Uleh, the student body president at Tenggarong, traces his commitment to Christian ministry to a time when he was nearly killed working for a logging company in Kalimantan. “I got stuck between a boat and a log on the river. The rapids were washing over me,” Uleh relates. “I was released and the boat went into the rapids and was destroyed.” Soon after that Uleh became a Christian. Now, at 31, he studies theology and is a student leader. The income his wife generates from beadwork allows the family to be self-sufficient and to pay for his education.

“It’s a good time to pray for Indonesia” Dungau says. “When the institutions we think are secure collapse under us, many people start to question eternal things. We’re praying that in this time of suffering, we’ll see God use it for his glory.”

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When we asked a dozen international evangelical leaders to report on the state of the church in their regions, we didn’t receive just cold statistics or idealized stereotypes. Instead, we heard from flesh-and-blood believers with attitude, telling their churches’ stories from specific points of view. At some points, old hurts poke through (brace yourself for a bit more scolding on the failures of Western imperialistic missions); at other places, joy for the work God is doing among them bubbles to the surface.

Perhaps the most practical reminder they give us is that the same problems and temptations that plague North American evangelicals-materialism, judgmentalism, evangelistic apathy, unchecked emotionalism, infighting-are found in full measure elsewhere in the church. From Russia we hear that the decades of persecution under communism have not automatically led to evangelistically effective churches now that there is more freedom. Religious fervor in Brazil has not directly translated into spiritual maturity. And material gain in South Korea has not necessarily turned into Christian generosity. The lesson: Christians everywhere walk their faith with feet of clay.

But we also learn that it is the clay-footed that God uses to do his work. Cutting through the fog of problems and issues is the clear sunlight of God’s work, specific and local, throughout the world. He is not the heavenly ceo giving target figures to his regional directors to meet. Rather, he is friend and partner to the local jungle pastor of Malaysia and the suburban missionary in Berlin. Our God is involved with the details.

One reason these reports reveal clay feet so clearly-unlike the glowing articles in old-time missions bulletins-is because of the unfiltered directness of the reports, thanks to e-mail and the rise of English as the lingua franca of the world. In our “global village,” such unmediated directness keeps us from romanticizing the faith of faraway Christians and presenting our own faithfulness with ostentation. It also calls for greater measures of not just honesty, but charity, and not just openness, but respect.

The following reports necessarily represent only a sampling of the global evangelical fellowship. Whole regions go unmentioned, and in those regions we do cover, other worthy spokespersons could have described the state of affairs with a different interpretation. Still, we hope that the following pieces will help us both to see the big picture and to connect at a more personal level with our brothers and sisters around the globe. Most of the contributors have listed their e-mail addresses and welcome your comments. Let the conversations-and prayers-begin.

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