A growing organization is convinced that consumer disgust directed toward advertisers will help improve the content of network television.

With entertainment personalities Steve Allen and Shirley Jones as honorary cochairs, the Los Angeles-based Parents Television Council (PTC) has undertaken a national advertising campaign proclaiming “TV is leading children down a moral sewer.”

Lately, the PTC has criticized Jif and Crest for advertising on the raunchy Howard Stern Radio Show (CT, Oct. 26, 1998, p. 15). Rather than sponsoring advertising boycotts as the American Family Association does (CT, Aug. 19, 1991, p. 14), the PTC, through ads, informs the public of the graphic contents of the shows.

“We try to get the attention of advertisers that have a responsibility to be family-friendly,” says Mark Honig, 33, PTC executive director.

PTC’s membership has grown to 20,000 since going national in 1995. It is a project of the Media Research Center. Each year, PTC issues a summary of how religion is portrayed on the tube plus a family guide to programs (www.parentstv.org). Honig praises wholesome shows such as 7th Heaven on WB, Touched by an Angel on CBS, and Christy reruns on the new PAX TV (CT, Oct. 5, 1998, p. 15).

While the controversial ratings system implemented by the networks last year is partly a result of pressure from groups such as PTC, Honig does not see the guidelines as a solution to the real problem. “Garbage labeled is still garbage,” he says. “There’s no incentive to create better quality programs without cheap sex humor, vulgar language, and senseless violence.” One of PTC’s chief goals is to have networks voluntarily reinstate the “family hour,” abandoned in the early 1980s.

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Canadian mission agencies and organizations working overseas in relief and development are struggling to keep paying their bills with dollars that are worth a lot less than they used to be.

The Canadian dollar-known as the “loonie” for the waterfowl on the back of the brass-colored coin-fell in value to 63 cents U.S. in late summer before rallying to 66 cents.

The problem for Canadian organizations is that virtually all transactions overseas are paid in U.S. funds. That means money for salaries, rents, equipment purchases, supplies, and even monetary aid must be converted into U.S. currency. Agencies are faced with tough choices -cut back on overseas programs or ask donors for more money.

“The first thing we do is look at things that don’t affect programs overseas,” says Philip Maher, World Vision Canada’s information officer. That might mean waiting until next year before buying new equipment for the Canadian office. Although wvc had budgeted for a devalued loonie this year, the dollar dropped lower than predicted.

Other organizations, such as Canadian Baptist Ministries, are preparing to ask supporters for increased donations. “We’re reluctant to cut back on programs,” says Blair Clark, CBM’s director of resource development. “We’re going after donors and asking them to dig deeper.”

Asking for more money is not easy when supporters are already giving sacrificially, says Ken Reeve of Far East Broadcasting Associates of Canada. “Many of them are giving as much as they can.” Despite the dollar doldrums, most Canadian agencies see little need for panic. “It’s hurting us, but we won’t call it a crisis to our donors,” says Paul Carrick of Cause Canada, which does development work in Africa and Latin America. “It isn’t the same as if a hurricane or typhoon wiped out a community.”

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As a teenager, Bill Lancaster began admiring Charles Haddon Spurgeon because he found the nineteenth-century English Baptist pastor’s theology concise and lucid.

Now, at age 58, when he is not working as vice president of sales for Associated Grocers in Grandview, Missouri, Lancaster spends much of his time diligently restoring the books of the “Prince of Preachers,” who lived from 1834 to 1892.

As president of FOSLs—Friends of the Spurgeon Library—Lancaster leads a corps of volunteers from around the United States. They work cautiously, knowing one false move could destroy the delicate material. They are archaeologists of sorts, preserving and repairing volumes from Spurgeon’s private library.

“I believe the Spurgeon Library represents a clear expression of the ministry of the gospel of Christ,” Lancaster says. “It would be a shame to see this collection deteriorate; so we dedicate our time to making the books useful again—for students, scholars, and the general public.”

Jerry Cain, vice president of William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, where the collection is housed, says volunteers repair about 50 volumes per year. Wearing cloth gloves, they pore over their subject, risking disease at every turn. “Many of the books are infected with a fungus that spreads to nearby books and to those handling the books,” Cain says.

Housed on the lower level of the college’s library, the Spurgeon collection contains 6,618 volumes. It includes many of Spurgeon’s own works, as well as those of other noted Christian writers.

The library also contains collections of hymns by Isaac Watts, John Rippon, and Samuel, John, and Charles Wesley. Editions of the Bible include the Englishman’s Greek New Testament, which provides the Greek text and interlinear literal translation, and The Prefaces to the Early Editions of Martin Luther’s Bible, which illustrate the Reformer’s principle of “justification through faith.” William Jewell College secured the collection in 1906.

As preservationists gingerly thumb through the books, they search for Spurgeon’s personal notes. “Any margin notes or underlined text give us insight into what Spurgeon found interesting,” Cain says.

Some of the books date from the late 1400s; most are in desperate need of repair. Despite the daunting task before them, volunteers believe it must be done. “We’re all busy people, but it’s important to come together to achieve a common goal,” Lancaster says.

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• The normally liberal American Civil Liberties Union and the Democrat-leaning afl-cio filed a friends-of-the-court brief September 29 in defense of the Christian Coalition, which is urging the dismissal of a 1996 Federal Election Commission (FEC) lawsuit (CT, Oct. 26, 1998, p. 82). The FEC suit contends that the Christian Coalition violated campaign laws by promoting the campaigns of Republican candidates. But the brief says the suit is a threat to free speech: “Citizens and labor organizations of every stripe will be severely restrained in their ability to speak out on policy issues of concern to their members and to the public.”
• The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has started to gather information to see if there is enough interest to change the name of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. The SBC Executive Committee has two motions to consider from June’s annual convention in Salt Lake City: to conduct a feasibility study on renaming the denomination or recommend a specific new name, the Baptist Convention of North America. Proponents of a switch say the Southern designation of the denomination’s name hinders growth. Those who want to retain the status quo say a change would be too costly and could cause the denomination to lose its identity.
• Meanwhile, the 1,350-member First Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina, voted September 23 to end its 153-year relationship with the SBC. The 264-to-23 vote came three months after the denomination issued a statement that “a wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband” (CT, July 13, 1998, p. 21). Members said the vote was in large part a rejection of what they called “authoritarian trend.” First Baptist helped create the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, and over the years many leaders at the SBC-affiliated Wake Forest and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary have come from the church, which established 38 other Baptist congregations in the region.
• The Greek Orthodox Church of America sued Greek Orthodox American Leaders (GOAL) in September for using an “apparently misappropriated mailing list of the archdiocese.” The litigation is in response to an eight-page mailing on “the crisis in the church” sent by GOAL in July to 122,000 households (CT, Sept. 7, 1998, p. 28). Spokesperson Dean Popps says “GOAL denies all wrongdoing” and plans “a vigorous defense.”
• Lee Gessner is the new publisher of the Nashville-based Word Publishing, succeeding Charles “Kip” Jordon, who died in October 1997. Gessner has been at Word, a division of Thomas Nelson, since 1989.

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In a flurry of activity, Latin American Christian media and church leaders are linking to blanket their continent with the gospel by the century’s end.

Dubbed “the Thousand-Day Plan,” the campaign involves mobilizing Christians to pray and fast, saturating the airwaves with programs and commercials pointing audiences to Christ, conducting evangelistic campaigns, and training disciples. The plan blends mass media with personal contact.

In September, media and church leaders from across Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking North and South America convened in San Jose, Costa Rica, for COICOM ’98, the confederation of Iberoamerican communicators. COICOM president Raul Justiniano, a Bolivian broadcaster and also the Thousand-Day Plan president, challenged coworkers to combine holy lives, evangelistic passion, and technological expertise to finish the task.

Justiniano says Iberoamerica has 600 million people in 300 cities in 26 nations. Latin America has 600 Christian-formatted radio stations, about 100 television stations, nearly 15 satellite radio networks, at least one satellite television network, 500 publications, and nearly 5,000 independent producers. COICOM believes the stage has been set for massive outreach (CT, Nov. 17, 1997, p. 82). Efforts to date have included a “World Cup” edition of the Jesus film featuring testimonies of Brazilian soccer players, prolonged citywide evangelism in Monterrey, Mexico, and stadium rallies in the Dominican Republic.

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India’s Christian leaders are putting pressure on the government to stop a tide of violence against Christian workers in the wake of the September 23 gang rape of four nuns in Madhya Pradesh State.

The assault occurred after 15 to 20 men dragged four Catholic nuns—all under age 35 and from Tamil Nadu—from their convent. One of the men earlier had feigned sickness in an unsuccessful effort to coax the nuns outside. The nuns operate a medical clinic as part of the work of their order, the Foreign Missionary Sisters.

Suspecting an attack, they barricaded themselves in the convent’s chapel, but later opened the doors when the men assured them there would be no violence. The gang rapes then occurred in a nearby field.

Police arrested five people the following day. Christian leaders are pressing the government to protect religious minorities, noting a rise in anti-Christian attacks. Archbishop Alan de Lastic wrote a strongly worded letter to the nation’s president warning that the Christian community is “feeling insecure and disturbed at this increasing violence against them.” Protestants make up a third of India’s 25 million Christians.

The attack came two weeks after the first National Consultation on Reconciliation, Religious Liberty, and Social Justice convened by the Evangelical Fellowship of India. More than 150 Protestant church leaders warned, “If we keep sowing the wind of hatred we shall reap the whirlwind of violence and destruction. The hatred, often spread by religious leaders, has already caused incalculable suffering to the families of the victims of riots, terrorism and religious persecution.”

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The world’s most famous twentieth-century evangelist has announced plans for a massive conference of preaching evangelists for the new millennium.

“In the midst of the rapid change in almost every phase of our lives, the task of worldwide evangelization remains a priority of the body of Christ,” Billy Graham declared in announcing the event, to be held July 29 through August 6 in the year 2000 in Amsterdam. “Decay in the societies of the world, consternation in the governments, and a deep heart-cry for revival throughout the church of our Lord Jesus Christ all point to the need of the world for our Savior.”

More than 10,000 participants, three-fourths of them itinerant evangelists, from 185 countries and territories, are expected at Amsterdam 2000. Theologians, strategists, and church leaders also will attend the conference, which will include daily prayer, worship, and seminars. John Corts, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), will be general director of the conference.

“Though the message of the gospel and the need for that message will not change in the next century, the methods and delivery systems will be different,” Corts says. “We can neither count on past victories nor look ahead to anticipate how evangelism will be done in the future.”

Graham has been involved in similar conferences in the past, including the Berlin Congress in 1966, sponsored by CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The BGEA sponsored the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974 in Switzerland. The BGEA also held international evangelism conferences in Amsterdam in 1983 and 1986.

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• Inclement weather and dense jungles have hampered search efforts for a Cessna airplane carrying a World Gospel Mission (WGM) missionary family in Bolivia. The plane disappeared September 28 en route from an Andean mountain village to Santa Cruz. Crews are combing the jungles around the Yapacani River in central Bolivia by land and air for signs of the plane. Passengers included John, 27, and Masako Trosen, 33, of Wadena, Minnesota; their children, Isaiah, 3, and Sophia, 8 months; Juan Carlos Zuazo, a Bolivian pastor; and Johny Mamani, a 25-year-old seminary student, and his wife, Lucy, 19. The Trosens were in their first year with the Marion, Indiana- based WGM.
• A Turkish court in September sentenced Mehmet Kurt, a member of the outlawed Islamic terrorist group vasad, to life in prison for a September 1997 bombing of a Turkish Good News Publishing Company Good News Publishing Company bookstand. A four-year-old boy died in the blast in Gaziantep, Turkey, and 25 people sustained injuries (CT, Nov. 17, 1997, p. 76). Seven other vasad members received prison terms ranging from 45 months to 18 years for the attack.

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