Adrienne S. Gaines

  • How to Change the World From Your Bed

    How to Change the World From Your Bed

     How to Change the World From Your BedDick Woodward can’t move anything below his neck. But that hasn’t prevented him from training and mentoring pastors around the world.

    Despite a degenerative spinal disorder that slowly robbed him of the use of his arms and legs, the veteran pastor provides audio Bible studies and ministry-training materials through the Mini Bible College (MBC) he founded in 1974. The college offers nearly 800 programs, which have been translated into more than 25 languages and are being used in 50 nations, including India, China, Sudan and Haiti.

    Strange as it may seem, Woodward, 80, believes the MBC may never have been more than an idea had he not gradually lost mobility. He was a busy pastor. He founded Virginia Beach Community Chapel—which he led for 23 years before planting Williamsburg Community Chapel—hosted a TV and a radio program, and taught weekly Bible studies. Because of his hectic schedule, he never found time to record the Bible training materials he’d been sensing God wanted him to produce since he was in seminary in the 1950s.

  • Saving India’s Daughters

    Saving India’s Daughters

    Saving India’s DaughtersP.P. Job paid a high price for preaching the gospel when his two sons were martyred. But Today his adopted daughters—504 in all—are a legacy of his faith in Christ.

    “Girls are not wanted in India.” The Rev. P.P. Job says this as a matter of fact, without a hint of irony in his weathered brown face, and then rattles off a string of statistics to prove his point. Each year, he says, 5 million baby girls are aborted in government hospitals; last year 25,000 married women were burned alive; every day 1,200 girls go missing, likely unaccounted victims of domestic abuse.

    United Nations reports support Job’s claims, as they reluctantly acknowledge the persistence of female infanticide and gender inequality in India even as the nation becomes an economic success story. “When a boy is born there is a dance,” says Job, a longtime evangelist and leader with the religious liberty advocacy organization Voice of the Martyrs (VOM). “A girl is born—it is like a death. Everyone will be weeping and crying.”

  • Saving India’s Daughters

    Saving India’s Daughters

    P.P. Job paid a high price for preaching the gospel when his two sons were martyred. But today his adopted daughters—504 in all—are a legacy of his faith in Christ. “Girls are not wanted in India.” The Rev. P.P. Job says this as a matter of fact, without a hint of irony in his weathered brown …

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  • Kentucky Ministry Takes Church Outside

    Kentucky Ministry Takes Church Outside

    Servant's Heart in Louisville, Ky., doesn't hold a traditional Sunday service and doesn't consider itself a church. Instead, the Assemblies of God mission is taking ministry to residents in a low-income community known as Portland.

    Teams witness during weekly prayer walks, regularly visit a liquor store to share Scripture with customers and hold home Bible studies. The mission has held clothing and food giveaways and helped sponsor free medical clinics.

  • Pruning the World’s Largest Church

    Pruning the World’s Largest Church

    Pruning the World’s Largest ChurchThe pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church says it is poised for growth—now that it’s smaller 

    On Jan. 1, the world’s largest church got considerably smaller—and its pastor says the move has led to growth and spiritual renewal.

    After boasting more than 780,000 members, Yoido Full Gospel Church released 20 satellite congregations to become independent, effectively reducing the church roll by some 360,000 members.

    Yoido pastor Young Hoon Lee, who succeeded church founder David Yonggi Cho in May 2008, says he has no regrets. “Each church is experiencing new revival,” he told Charisma. “Yoido Full Gospel Church is also continuing to grow, and more than 1,000 new converts are being added to the church membership every month.”

  • Scholarship Promise Upheld 11 Years Later

    Scholarship Promise Upheld 11 Years Later

    Sydney’s PromiseKilled in a church shooting, Sydney Browning never had a chance to meet the 62 second-graders of Granada Primary School. But today she’s changed their lives, thanks to a university’s 11-year promise fulfilled.

    Some things are hard to make sense of, like the evening of Sept. 15, 1999, when Larry Gene Ashbrook walked into Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and opened fire, killing seven people before turning the gun on himself. 

    The first to die was a woman named Sydney Browning, the children’s choir director and a teacher at an alternative school for at-risk youth. The 36-year-old had been sitting on a sofa in the foyer, chatting with friends as she waited for choir rehearsal to start. Somehow she came into Ashbrook’s line of sight, so he shot her in the head and kept walking, ultimately firing more than 60 rounds.

  • When the Saints Go Marching In

    When the Saints Go Marching In

    When the Saints Go Marching InNext week, for the first time in its 103-year history, the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) will not hold its annual Holy Convocation in Memphis, Tenn.—and city officials there have been bracing all year for the economic hit. 

    The nation’s largest Pentecostal denomination is still headquartered in the city known for its blues and barbecue. But the $35 million its 40,000 delegates spend each November on hotels, food and shopping is headed to St. Louis. With nearly twice as much hotel space, St. Louis offered COGIC deeper discounts and facilities that allowed all of its activities to be housed in one 500,000-square-foot location. 

  • Sydney’s Promise

    Sydney’s Promise

    Killed in a church shooting, Sydney Browning never had a chance to meet the 62 second-graders of Granada Primary School. But today she’s changed their lives, thanks to a university’s 11-year promise fulfilled. Some things are hard to make sense of, like the evening of Sept. 15, 1999, when Larry Gene Ashbrook walked into Wedgwood Baptist Church in …

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  • Pakistani Muslims Beat Elderly Christian Couple Unconscious

    An 80-year-old Christian in southern Punjab Province said Muslims beat him and his 75-year-old wife, breaking his arms and legs and her skull, because he refused a prostitute they had offered him.



    From his hospital bed in Vehari, Emmanuel Masih told Compass by telephone that two powerful Muslim land owners in the area, brothers Muhammad Malik Jutt and Muhammad Khaliq Jutt, accompanied by two other unidentified men, brought a prostitute to his house on Oct. 8. Targeting him as a Christian on the premise that he would not have the social status to fight back legally, the men ordered him to have sex with the woman at his residence in village 489-EB, he said.

  • Healing Rooms Movement Spreading Worldwide

    Healing Rooms Movement Spreading Worldwide

    A network of healing rooms is spreading internationally, with several hundred being commissioned in India this week.

    Launched in 1999, the International Association of Healing Rooms (IAHR) now oversees some 1,300 rooms in 52 nations. Roughly 400 are in India, and IAHR founder Cal Pierce is commissioning 600 more healing rooms there this week.

    "In India that will be nearly 1 million people each year receiving healing ministry," Pierce said.

    Photo: Cal Pierce prays for visitors at the Spokane, Wash., healing room.

  • World Leaders Discuss Global Evangelism in South Africa

    World Leaders Discuss Global Evangelism in South Africa

    One of the most diverse groups of Christian leaders is gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, this week to discuss the future of world missions.

    Some 4,200 selected participants from 198 nations are meeting for the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, the third such gathering in the last 36 years.

  • Christians in Turkey Acquitted of ‘Insulting Turkishness’

    Christians in Turkey Acquitted of ‘Insulting Turkishness’

    After four years of legal battle in a Turkish court, a judge acquitted two Christians of insulting Turkey and its people by spreading Christianity, but not without slapping them with a hefty fine for a spurious charge.



    Four years ago this month, Turan Topal, 50, and Hakan Tastan, 41, started a legal battle after gendarmerie officers produced false witnesses to accuse them of spreading their faith and allegedly "insulting Turkishness, the military and Islam."

  • Charismatic Church Protests Theme Park’s Halloween Show

    Charismatic Church Protests Theme Park’s Halloween Show

    A charismatic church in Florida is protesting a Tampa theme park's Halloween show, and several area churches and community leaders have joined the effort.

    Ignited Church in Lakeland, a city roughly 35 miles east of Tampa, has united area churches, business leaders and school board members in opposition to Busch Gardens' Howl-O-Scream show, which they say makes light of criminal brutality in a letter being sent this week to officials at the African-themed park. Florida state Rep. Kelli Stargel also has signed the letter.

  • Christian in Bhutan Imprisoned for Showing Film on Christ

    A court in predominantly Buddhist Bhutan has sentenced a Christian to three years in prison for "attempting to promote civil unrest" by screening films on Christianity.



    A local court in Gelephu convicted Prem Singh Gurung, a 40-year-old ethnic Nepalese citizen from Sarpang district in south Bhutan, on Oct. 6, according to the government-run daily Kuensel.

  • Miners’ Jesus T-Shirts Spark Flood of Interest

    Miners’ Jesus T-Shirts Spark Flood of Interest

    A Jesus T-shirt worn by several Chilean miners during their miraculous rescue this week has created a "deluge" of public interest and may soon be widely available for purchase, with the proceeds benefiting the miners' families.



    A gift from Campus Crusade for Christ Chile, the tan T-shirts read "Gracias Señor! (Thank you, Lord!) on the front, and on the back is a reference to Psalm 95:4, which says, "In His hand are the deep places of the earth; the heights of the hills are His also." A logo for Campus Crusade's The Jesus Film Project is on the left sleeve.

    Photo of Mario Gomez, 59, the oldest of 33 miners liberated Oct. 13, wearing a T-shirt that says "Thank you, Lord" in Spanish. Image by Hugo Infante/Government of Chile

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