Ethiopia: Evangelical Prime-Minister helps end church schism
With the help of the nation’s new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a professing Evangelical Protestant, Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia and America reunited, thus ending 27 years of schism in one of the world’s oldest churches.
“It is impossible to think of Ethiopia without taking note of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which is both great and sacred,” said Abiy Ahmed at the July 27 ceremony in Washington. In JNI 1063 we published an update on the Tewahedo Church, the fastest growing segment of Orthodox Christianity.
The Tewahedo church split in 1991 due to political manipulations. After the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) removed the Derg military junta from power, Patriarch Abune Merkorios was forced to abdicate. He later fled to the United States, where dissidents and diaspora Ethiopians formed a rival patriarchate.
Following the reconciliation, Patriarch Merkorios will return to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, to serve alongside the incumbent Patriarch Mathias, who will maintain administrative authority. Their honor will be equal. All mutual excommunications will be lifted, and bishops appointed by the rival synods will continue in service. Significantly, delegates unanimously requested forgiveness from the “heartbroken” children of the church. “Division has no benefit,” Aba Efrem, head of Saint Marcos Church, told the Ethiopian Herald. “Unity can do more for the church to strengthen peace and love in Ethiopia.”
'Unity can strengthen peace and love in Ethiopia'
Peace and love have been a rallying cry for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who in only four months in power has overturned the political status quo. He has forged peace with neighboring Eritrea, ending a 20-year militarized border conflict. He has fired controversial generals and freed political prisoners. And he has already survived an assassination attempt. “We have a country that is endowed with great bounty and wealth,” said Ahmed at his first subsequent rally, “but is starving for love.”
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The 42-year-old prime minister is Africa’s youngest head of state. The son of a Muslim father and an Orthodox Christian mother, he professes Evangelical Protestantism, according to OPC News. Possessing a PhD in Peace Studies, as a member of parliament Ahmed earlier fostered reconciliation between Muslims and Christians in his hometown of Beshasha. And from his first days in office, he met with Patriarch Mathias to assure him of support in ending the schism. Due to his purposeful intervention the Orthodox Christians are united again. “The people of Ethiopia rejoiced, and I truly felt great joy,” said Patriarch Mathias, reported by the Ethiopian Herald. “By the will of God, the day has finally come.”
Roughly 44 percent of Ethiopia’s population are Orthodox, while 19 percent are Evangelicals of different denominations. Muslims constitute roughly a third of the population. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church began in 330 AD, when the kingdom of Axum became the second state after Armenia to adopt Christianity. Two kidnapped brother sailors from Syria, Frumentius and Aedesius, were taken as slaves to the king and taught the faith to royal family. The word Tewahedo means “being made one,” in reference to the Oriental Orthodox belief in Jesus’ one, unified nature - both human and divine.
Source: Jayson Casper, Christianity Today
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USA: The stunning success of the YouVersion Bible app
On its 10-year anniversary, the founders of Bible app YouVersion have announced that their smartphone app has been downloaded 330 million times.
Life.Church launched the app back in July 2008. Since then, 70 billion chapters of the Bible have been read through the installation, 12 billion audio chapters have been listened to and 2.4 billion Bible plan days have been completed. “We never could have predicted the results we’ve seen as millions of people around the world have read, listened to, shared, and interacted with the Bible and each other in new ways,” Life.Church pastor and YouVersion founder Bobby Gruenewald said of the milestone.
“Early on, we discovered that proximity helped us engage with the Bible. As soon as I had access to the Bible on the phone that’s always in my pocket, my connection to it naturally became more frequent,” he said. Ten years ago, the Bible was available in just 15 languages. Today, the app offers versions in more than 1,200 languages.
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The story of the YouVersion Bible app. Click to play.
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In a video released to mark the 10-year anniversary, Gruenewald talked of the monumental moment his app was featured on the first version of Apple’s App Store. “Our church started YouVersion as a website in 2007. But it didn’t work as we’d hoped. We realized that if we put it on our smartphones it really would change how we engage with the Bible. At that same period in time, Apple announced that they were going to make it possible to develop apps for the iPhone and create this thing called the App Store. We thought, what if the Bible could be amongst the very first group of apps in the App Store. So we built an app, submitted it to Apple, and on July 10, 2008, Apple launched the App Store and the YouVersion Bible App was among the very first 200 apps that were available that day.”
From the moment it was launched, the app experienced tremendous success. “In the first weekend, we saw 83,000 people install that app,” Gruenewald said. “It blew our minds. When we see God move, and we see momentum like that, we like to put everything behind it. Over the next several years, we saw a coalition of partners assemble.” With the vital partnership of various Bible translation services, YouVersion is well on its way to translating the Bible into every single language on earth. “83,000 became 1,000,000, became 10,000,000 and now its influencing people all over the world, in every sphere of life,” he said.
Source: Bobby Gruenewald, YouVersion
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