A firing squad in Yemen has executed a second Islamic militant who killed three American missionaries in a Yemeni hospital in 2002. Abed Abdul Razak Kamel had been convicted of opening fire on a staff meeting at a Baptist hospital, killing hospital director William Koehn of Kansas, purchasing agent Kathleen Gariety of Wisconsin and Dr. Martha Myers of Alabama. Another Islamic militant, Ali al-Jarallah, was executed last November. Yemeni officials said that both may have been linked to al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden, who has ancestral roots in Yemen. Police found bin Laden audiotapes at Kamel’s house.

See story about 2002 shooting

(AgapePress) - Thousands of pastors from around the globe have been challenged to reach one billion people with the gospel. Last month, ministers gathered in Orlando, Florida, during the Global Pastors Network (GPN) Billion Soul Partners Conference.

The pastors heard from Christian and business leaders who provided strategies for fulfilling the Great Commission within the next decade. James Davis, co-founder and president of GPN, says those attending the conference were encouraged to plant churches in unreached areas of the world and reach out to people who have yet to hear the good news about Jesus Christ.

“The Great Commission is so big,” Davis notes. “There are so many people in the world who do not know the Lord that one single organization by itself will never be able to finish the assignment. We’re thankful there’s 1.2 billion Christians in the world; but there’s still 5.3 billion lost, and there’s still 1.8 billion who have never heard the gospel for the first time.”

The GPN spokesman says the “Great Commission” mandate to preach the gospel to people of every nation in the world is within reach, if God’s people will only cooperate. “It is unacceptable for people to live in darkness when we have the opportunity to take to them the marvelous light,” he insists.

“The vision is that we can work together,” Davis continues. “We can network, train, and focus together, sharing key resources that others have with others who don’t have. Thus, he says, believers “can strategically work in areas where the church is not so we can get closer to the finish line with the Great Commission.”

More than 2,000 pastors representing more than 40 denominations attended the GPN Billion Soul Partners Conference in January. Davis says participants were encouraged not only to equip their congregations to win people to Christ, but also to help reach the goal of planting five million churches in unreached areas of the world in the next decade.

(AgapePress) - The director of the Christian Defense Coalition says it is troubling that the White House has been silent when it comes to a string of recent church arsons in Alabama.

In recent weeks, ten rural churches in that state have been destroyed or damaged by suspicious fires. Also, last weekend, a Christian business in Alabama was destroyed in a fire, which officials are investigating as arson.

Pastor Pat Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, believes in light of these apparent arson attacks against churches and other religious establishments that a statement of support from the White House would be comforting and would offer some measure of reassurance.

“We think it’s important for President Bush to come out publicly and address this issue,” Mahoney says. In so doing, he asserts, the White House could “assure the good citizens of Alabama that the federal government is doing all within their power,” and at the same time, “send a very strong signal and message across the country [that] we won’t tolerate this kind of bigotry.”

Mr. Bush wastes little time speaking out against religious bigotry directed at Muslims, the Coalition spokesman contends. He feels the President should likewise send a clear message when Christian churches in the U.S. come under attack.

What makes Bush’s silence in the wake of the Alabama church fires even more troubling, Mahoney asserts, “is that the President did speak out — which I applaud him for — about the religious intolerance of the cartoons concerning the Prophet Mohammed. Our concern is that the President has addressed that, but yet the President has said nothing about ten churches, five burned to the ground. He’s said absolutely nothing.”

The Christian Defense Coalition’s director adds that he wonders what the White House response would have been if ten U.S. abortion clinics or ten mosques had been torched, rather than 10 Christian churches.

Another Christian group, the Christian Coalition of Alabama, has put up matching funds to enhance the rewards being offered by the government and insurance companies for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the Alabama church fires. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials are continuing to follow a number of significant leads in their investigation of the arson attacks.

Also, investigators have consulted with the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes and monitors extremist groups. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is exploring whether the fires can be designated as a federal hate crime.