About 300 Muslims and 300 police surrounded recently the members of a Christian church menacingly while they held their Sunday service in an open field.

The Muslims surrounded the congregation of Batak Christian Protestant Church in a field in Ciketing, Bekasi despite the presence of some 300 police who were supposed to “protect” them. One Muslim attacker got through the police cordon and hit Rev. Luspida Simanjuntak on the cheek, Compass Direct News said.

Theophilus Bela, president of the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum said, “There were many police on guard, but the attackers were able to get very close to the congregation. We are afraid that they will attack the church again next Sunday,” CDN said.

The attacker, Murhali Barda, is the leader of the Front Pembela Islam in Bekasi. According to police commander Imam Sugianto, the police were there for the protection of both sides, CDN said.

Sugianto also said the Christians cannot worship in the open field without official permission. However, Simanjuntak said the church already had official approval to meet in the field, CDN said.

Simanjuntak asked the Bekasi administration to inform the public that the Christians have permission to pray in the field, CDN said.

The Batak Christian Protestant Church has a congregation of 1500 churchgoers. Fifteen years before, they regularly met in a house for worship. They filed a building permit application to local officials in 2006, CDN said.

Because Muslim leaders objected to the prayer meetings, officials banned the Christians from holding worship services there. Knowing that their application was pending, the Christians continued to meet. Local officials responded by sealing the church on June 20, CDN said.

On July 9, Bekasi Mayor Mochtar Mohammad said the congregation could meet in public areas. Simanjuntak chose the field in Ciketing, where the melee ensued. Since then, Simanjuntak has filed a suit against the Bekasi administration, CDN said.

Simanjuntak also said the church will still continue to hold their worship services in the open field because they have no other place to go, CDN said.

Barda, the Muslim who attacked the woman reverend, said it was an act of provocation for the Christians to worship in the open field. He also said Christians are trying to convert Muslims. To prove his point Barda cited an internet report that alleged a local Christian charity, the Mahanaim Foundation, recently conducted a mass baptism, CDN said.

Marya Irawan of the Foundation said there was no baptism and the group was only invited to the home of their leader Henry Sutanto in relation to their outreach program for the poor, CDN said.
Previously on June 20 and 27 Islamic hardliners held a congress where they decided to unite against the “Christianization” in their region. Indonesia’s Institute for Peace and Democracy said that misleading stories have abounded about Christians supposedly badgering Muslims to convert with the use of food, money and other incentives, CDN said.

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Ted Haggard is going to start a new church, nearly four years after he was embroiled in a sex scandal that caused him to resign from the megachurch he founded in Colorado Springs.

Haggard’s new church, St. James, will be launched from his home where he had been holding sporadic prayer meetings since May.

After the 2006 sex scandal Haggard kept an agreement with New Life Church not to speak to media or to start a new church for a period of time, according to USA Today.

New Life under Haggard grew to become a megachurch of 14,000.  Haggard was also president of the National Association of Evangelicals before the scandal which involved a male prostitute, USA Today says.

“This is my resurrection day,” he declared, according to the AP.

He said the ordeal he and his wife, Gayle, went through has prepared them to help others.  “I have an incredible heart for broken people,” he said. “I think we’re qualified to hold people’s hands” in times of trouble, the AP reported.

Haggard said the 2006 scandal was embarrassing and heartbreaking.  He said he was in counseling from 2006 until recently, and that his counselors told him he is heterosexual but that his behavior was influenced by a childhood incident when he was molested by an adult male, the AP said.

Haggard said he takes responsibility for his actions as an adult.  His new church will teach that God intended marriage to be a monogamous union of a man and a woman, the AP reported.

He also said that biblical ideals are sometimes hard to live up to.  “There is a complex process people have to go through between their personal beliefs and their own ideals that they themselves fail at, and I am a glaring example of that,” the AP reported.

Haggard said a television documentary on the birth of his new church was a possibility, although nothing is certain, the AP said.

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The Afghan government suspended recently the operations of two church-based relief groups on Monday over suspicions that they were involved in converting Afghans to Christianity.

The groups, Church World Service, an American organization, and Norwegian Church Aid were suspended after Afghan television station Noorin TV broadcast photographs that it claimed showed Westerners baptizing Afghans, and other Afghans praying to Jesus at private prayer meetings, according to The New York Times.

The same report mentioned the two groups but officials at Noorin TV said they had no evidence tying the two groups to the activities.  Converting to any religion from Islam is a crime in Afghanistan, as is proselytizing, The New York Times said.

The TV reports, which were aired last Thursday and Friday,  merely raised “suspicions” about the two groups after finding their names in a local telephone directory of nongovernmental organizations and noticing that they each had the word “church” in their names, Mr. Noori explained in an interview.

The photographs shown in the television reports were seven missionary safe houses in western Kabul, the TV station officials said, according to the New York Times.

The TV report triggered a protest by several hundred students at Kabul University.  Meanwhile both of the Christian groups, who disburse millions of dollars in aid, denied proselytizing, according to the Associated Press (AP).

Mohammed Sediq Amarkhiel, a spokesman for the Ministry of Economy, which regulates aid groups working here, said there was no actual evidence against the two groups.  However, the ministry decided to suspend them and the government will investigate them, the New York Times reported.

According to the AP, the Afghan government will also look at whether other groups are trying to convert Muslims.  Mohammad Hashim Mayar, deputy director of the Afghan government office that oversees nongovernment organizations said.

An investigation commission including officers from the National Security and Interior Ministries had been appointed, although Mayar said officials did not have any evidence of proselytizing beyond the TV report, according to the AP.

Maurice Bloem, deputy director of programs for Church World Service, said Church World Service has worked inside Afghanistan since 1979, always in partnership with local Afghan organizations, and has been serving half a million people of different faiths, the AP reported.

Church World Service is a ministry of 30 Protestant and Orthodox denominations and works in more than 80 countries. It is headquartered in Elkhart, Ind. Norwegian Church Aid, which is tied to Norway’s Lutheran state church, operates in about 125 countries, the AP reported.

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