Mount Everest

Until a few years ago, Nepal was proud of being the world’s only Hindu kingdom.  Now it is neither Hindu nor a kingdom.  The constitutional settlement which deposed King Gyandendra in 2008 also introduced secularism, although approximately 80% of the population is Hindu.  So now Nepal is mostly famous for its altitude, since eight of the world’s ten highest mountains are in this small landlocked country, or on its borders, including of course Mount Everest.  In sharp contrast, in the south of the country the tropical lowlands are a mere 100m above sea level.  The country’s other claim to fame is having the world’s only national flag which is not rectangular.

My recent two-week visit involved a lot of trekking in the foothills amid breathtaking scenery, but also provided some amazing ministry opportunities.  Each day I shared a message on ‘The spiritual significance of topographical features in the Bible’, and with topics like mountains, rivers, trees and rocks there was plenty of opportunity to meditate on these while walking between villages in the Annapurna foothills.  Every now and again I would meet Christians from the city, who had migrated into the hills to find employment in the hostels catering for backpackers, or I would find modest little church buildings by the wayside.  Even in the Himalayas there are believers unashamed of the gospel!  I also had the opportunity to pray with some of them, and to witness to non-Christians I met.  I even did an impromptu Bible study with a man I gave a Nepali New Testament to.  Please pray for him to read it and find Jesus through it.

Back in Kathmandu, Aanandit (= ‘rejoicing’) Church in the suburb of Imadole is one of a group of four planted under the enthusiastic leadership of Milan Adhikari, who spent a year in England training with Ichthus.  I had the privilege of preaching there and of praying for the sick.  It was exciting to find that many churches in Nepal are non-denominational, and while there can be disagreements between them, they tend to focus on what they have in common rather than what divides them.  Truly refreshing!

Christians in Nepal tend not to be seriously persecuted, although they may well be passively victimised by being passed over for promotion.  Nevertheless, in a meeting with the president of the Armed Forces Christian Association I was encouraged to find that they have some 500 members, including a major and a police inspector.  However, a significant cause for concern is the draft text of the new constitution, which will make it an offence to try to convert somebody to your religion.  Not only will this outlaw evangelism, it may affect the activities of Christian organisations which run hospitals or schools, since this may also be interpreted as evangelistic activity.

A Nepali Christian

One such organisation is the International Nepal Fellowship (http://www.inf.org/) which has a variety of projects including the Green Pastures Hospital in Pokhara which I visited.  An impressively efficient establishment, largely run by Nepali people, it was originally founded to treat leprosy patients, but as numbers have dwindled it has evolved into a spinal injuries unit as well.  Ironically, like many such establishments in the current economic climate, it has no difficulty raising large grants to build new facilities but struggles to find the money for the running costs.

I also had the opportunity to visit the highly-respected Dr Mark Zimmerman of the Nick Simons Institute (http://www.nsi.edu.np) and hear about his significant work training health workers in some of the poorest regions of a poor country.  Many of the outlying areas get neglected, and because they are remote and have poor facilities, many healthcare professionals refuse to work there.  The solution is partly to upgrade facilities like schools to make the rural areas more attractive, and partly to train the existing healthcare workers so that they are more multi-skilled.

Please pray:

• for the Christians in Nepal, that their churches would thrive and take advantage of the current peace that Christians will continue to have the legal freedom to evangelise;
• that the gospel would spread among the armed forces, and that people at senior levels of government would meet Jesus;
• that a new generation of church leaders would be bold, zealous and equipped for the task;
• that funding would continue to be available to Christian charities working in Nepal.

Visit http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=289551&id=625609602&l=12d06f0aeb for more pictures.

It’s a scam that generates billions of dollars even when only 5 percent of the darts hit the target, it threatens the integrity of online transactions between customers and e-business houses, it’s a constant cat-and-mouse game between the perpetrators and the security guys hot on their heels – phishing, carding, brand spoofing, web spoofing – call it what you will, there’s no escaping the fact that the threat of this swindle is getting more dangerous by the day.

The offenders have at their disposal an arsenal of weaponry – seemingly innocuous links embedded in emails that redirect to fake sites, pop-up windows that encourage you to enter sensitive information, URL masks that conjure up real Web addresses, and keystroke loggers that are lurking around waiting to capture your user ids and passwords even as you type them. You don’t necessarily have to be tech-savvy to protect yourself from phishing attacks, it’s enough if you keep your wits about you, are a little aware that not all sites on the Internet are the genuine article, and follow one or a combination of the following tips.

1. Never trust strangers: The same rules you were taught as a child come into play here; DO NOT open emails that are from people you don’t know. Set your junk and spam mail filter to deliver only content from those in your address book.

2. Sidestep those links: What happens if your spam filter is fooled into delivering junk mail to your inbox, and you happen to open it? Simple – NEVER click on links embedded in your email.

3. Guard your privacy: Your mouse just happened to move over the link and lo and behold, you’re transported to another website where you’re asked to provide sensitive information like user names, account numbers, password and credit card and social security numbers. Just one word for you – DON’T.

4. Fear Not: More often than not, these phony websites come with threats or warnings that your account is in danger of being deactivated if you don’t confirm your user information, or that the IRS is due to pay you a visit if you don’t comply with what’s written on the page. Just IGNORE them.

5. Pick up the phone and call: If you are in doubt that it just may be a legitimate request, and that your bank is actually asking you to reveal sensitive information online, CALL your customer service representative before you do anything foolhardy.

6. Use the keypad, not the mouse: TYPE in URLs instead of clicking on links to online shopping and banking sites that typically ask for credit card and account numbers.

7. Look for the lock: Valid sites that use encryption to securely transfer sensitive information are characterized by a lock on the bottom right of your browser window, NOT your web page. They also have addresses that begin with https:// rather than the usual http://.

8. Spot the difference: Sometimes, just the presence of the lock alone is proof enough that the site is authentic. To verify its genuineness, double-click the lock to display the site’s security certificate, and CHECK if the name on the certificate and the address bar match. If they don’t you’re on a problem site, so get the hell out of there.

9. Second time right: If you’re worried that you’ve reached a phishing site that’s masquerading as your banking page, sometimes the easiest way to check is to enter a WRONG password. The fake site will accept it, and then you’re usually redirected to a page that says they’re having technical difficulties, so could you please check back later? Your original banking site will not allow you entry.

10. Different is the keyword here: Use DIFFERENT passwords for different sites; I know it’s a tough ask these days when most functions of the brain are being passed on to technology, but this is a good way to prevent phishers from getting at all your sensitive transactions, even if they’ve managed to compromise one.

11. Keep your eyes open: A spam email is littered with grammatical errors, is generally not personalized, and usually has either some link or a suspicious attachment. RECOGNIZE and report them as spam.

12. Familiarity breeds contempt: Not sure that you can spot a phisher’s email when you receive one? Well, take a LOOK at these examples and you’ll know how they’re generally framed. By and by, you’ll learn how to spot the fake ones.

13. Greed doesn’t pay: NEVER be taken in by offers of money for participating in surveys that ask for sensitive information. These are always fraudulent attempts to get hold of your personal details. You may get the $20 that’s promised, but there’s also a high probability that you may find your account cleaned out.

14. No stepping out: Do not leave your computer UNATTENDED when logged into your bank account or when you’ve provided credit card information on a shopping site.

15. Proper exits count: Once you’ve finished your business, LOG OUT properly instead of just closing the browser window, especially if you’re using a public terminal.

16. You can never be too careful: LOG INTO your bank account on a regular basis and keep tabs on your money. You don’t want to wake up one fine day and find that a phisher’s been siphoning off a few hundred dollars every now and then.

17. A little knowledge is not dangerous: Keep yourself up to date with the latest news and informationon phishing.

18. Hard evidence: Be very careful when disposing of old computers and hard disks. Recycled computers have been found to retain confidential information pertaining to Internet banking. Use software to ERASE and over-write data on your hard disk to ensure that it is not recoverable.

Adam Brown,

Technical Advisor

OSCAR is an online mission support service which has been in existence for over 10 years. Its broad remit is to provide information, advice and resources for all those involved or interested in world mission. This covers anyone who falls into the following categories:

• Missionaries and Christian workers on the field
• Prospective missionaries and Christian workers
• Missionaries and Christian workers recently returned from the field
• Christians open to the possibility of working cross-culturally
• Supporters of missionaries, Christian workers and world mission in general
• Non-UK Christians coming to the UK as missionaries or Christian workers
• Anyone responsible for ‘resourcing’ any of the above

OSCAR began when founder Mike Frith returned from the field having served with MAF as a pilot. In his time overseas meeting and serving missionaries, Mike was surprised by the lack of support that so many of them had … not just financial but in so many other different areas. Many of these areas boiled down to either poor information or communication. With the advent of the internet, Mike saw an opportunity to improve this by creating a central service that would encourage both information sharing and communication between all the parties involved in mission. Hence, OSCAR was born.

The OSCAR website has a vast amount of information across a 1000+ page website on almost any area you can think of related to mission. It also has its own mission-focused online social network, which gives the opportunity to interact and discuss with others in the community. Alongside all the activity online, OSCAR also provides mission advice and opportunities at various Christian events, including New Wine.

So … whatever you’re looking for in mission, ask OSCAR! www.oscar.org.uk

The success of the work of missions and the work of evangelism depends upon the ability to arouse envy.

With these words Dutch missionary J H Bavinck hit the nail on the head.  All too frequently the church seems to be selling a product that the consumer doesn’t want.  The bulk of non-Christians simply do not believe that our faith would add anything substantial to their lives, and in fact would probably stop them enjoying themselves.  We might claim that meeting Jesus is the best thing that ever happened to us, but do we really show it?  Where in the Christian community is the real incontrovertible evidence of transformed lives?  If Jesus has made such an impact on us, why does it not show?

The reason for this is that the bulk of the Christian community, at least in the West, does not want its lives transformed.  We are quite comfortable as we are, and if a veneer of religiosity on top of our materialistic consumerism helps us find meaning in life and feel better about ourselves, that’s as far as it goes.  This increasingly prevalent attitude has recently been called Moral Therapeutic Deism, a term coined by Christian Smith of Notre Dame University.  He suggests that “a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition”.

So what is our response to the lack of public interest in the Christianity we are modelling?  We ramp up our marketing.  Millions of pounds are spent on running and promoting the Alpha Course (which is arguably the most effective evangelistic tool of this generation) while we completely ignore the best marketing tool in the business: a satisfied customer.

It has long been my contention that if we were all living transformed lives we wouldn’t need to ‘do’ evangelism – our very lives would speak good news to others.  This is one of the reasons why the early church (as recorded in Acts) grew so rapidly without any preaching of good news specifically mentioned till the end of chapter 5, by which time there were already some 10,000 believers worshipping regularly together, with a fellowship fund and a soup kitchen.  Everyone in Jerusalem could see the difference in the lives of the Jesus-followers.

Nearly 20 years ago, Bill Hybels wrote: “Authentic Christians are persons who stand apart from others, even other Christians, as though listening to a different drummer.  Their character seems deeper, their ideas fresher, their spirit softer, their courage greater, their leadership stronger, their concerns wider, their compassion more genuine, their convictions more concrete.  They are joyful in spite of difficult circumstances and show wisdom beyond their years.”

Sadly these authentic Christians still seem far too few in number.  While people see us stressed by our ministry, frustrated with our church, confused about our beliefs, heartless towards the needy, and unwilling to talk about Jesus to the lost, we will never convince them that what we have is better than what they have.