The Christian Chronicle (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 71, No. 7, Ed. 1 Tuesday, July 1, 2014 Page: 3 of 34
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THE CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE 3
JULY 2014
Pro-Russian gunmen seize church in Ukraine
Five ideas
BY ERIK TRYGGESTAD | THE CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE
Paziura
Bobby Ross Jr.
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BY ERIK TRYGGESTAD | THE CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE
to improve
Sunday night
PHOTO PROVIDED
Jason and Kala Leger, with their four children,
stand in the doorway of their rebuilt home.
UKRAINE IN CRISIS
CHURCH-SUPPORTED MINISTRY HOUSES REFUGEES.
JESUS: "THE MOST STABLE THING IN OUR COUNTRY'
.12
.27
NEWCASTLE, Okla.
he Bible bookshelf is back. And the
Fpizza’s here, too.
In this Oklahoma City suburb, just
I south of Will Rogers World Airport,
about 20 teenagers are busy doing what
they do on Thursday nights — making
themselves at home. They drift in from
playing basketball in the backyard and
grab slices of pepperoni.
Along with a small group of adults, the
youths search the shelf for the paperback
Bibles bearing their names, scrawled in
silver marker on the spine. Everyone who
attends a devotional at the Legers’ house
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the graduation in spite of the turmoil in
Ukraine,” Ferguson told The Christian
Chronicle. “They never expected something
like what happened ... during worship.”
Another ministry training school, the
Ukrainian Bible Institute in Donetsk, is
closed until further notice, said director
Jay Don Rogers, currently in Canada.
The school is associated with Sunset
International Bible Institute in Lubbock,
Texas. Recently, Rogers received a report
that about 20 armed men broke into the
school’s facility and searched its dormi-
tory and classrooms. The facility was
unoccupied and nothing was taken.
During Sunday morning worship, armed
men seized a building used by a Church
of Christ and a ministry training school in
the eastern Ukrainian city of Gorlovka.
The men, who call themselves soldiers
of the Russian Federation, interrupted the
worship service “and demanded we leave,”
said Olga Paziura, a member of the Central
Church of Christ, which meets in the
building. “After much negotiation, we were
given two hours to remove contents from
the building that we wanted, and (they told
us that) the rest would be destroyed.”
The building also is the home of the
Bear Valley Bible Institute of Ukraine,
an extension program of the Bear Valley
Bible Institute of Denver.
and watched, Paziura said.
They left behind a televi-
sion, washing machines and
refrigerators.
“It was just very shocking
and stressful,” Paziura said.
“Some girls lost conscious-
ness (or) started crying.”
None of the church mem-
bers were injured.
The day before, seven students graduated
from the institute’s two-year program, said
Howell Ferguson, stateside coordinator for
Bear Valley. The school’s director “went
to bed Saturday night feeling good and
relieved that they were able to accomplish
FAMILY THAT SURVIVED killer tornado gives advice - and Bibles
gets a Bible. That’s the rule.
A year ago, torn, soggy Bible pages
were strewn across a massive field of
debris here. A tornado spun up just down
the street, collapsing the 2,100-square-foot
home as the Legers — Jason, Kala and
children McKenzie, Madison, Jett and
Hutton — huddled and prayed in a tiny
concrete shelter.
The May 20, 2013, storm intensified as it
smashed through Moore, Okla., toppling
two elementary schools and killing 24
people — 10 of them children.
Members of the Legers’ congregation, the
Southwest Church of Christ in Oklahoma
City, helped the family sift through the
See DISASTER, Page 14
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JASON LEGER
Moments after a tornado destroyed their home on May 20,2013, Jason Leger snapped this photo. The remains of Leger's home are at the far left.
After the disaster
j ■ don’t like Sunday night
I services,” said a minister
I friend, whose congrega-
tion draws 250 for morning
worship but only 100 for the
evening assembly.
“Our Sunday night
attendance
Inside Story is plum-
meting,” a
different
preacher
said. “We go
from 130 in
the morning
to 30 at
night.”
In many —
but certainly
not all —
Churches of Christ, the
Sunday night gathering has
a glorious past, a lackluster
present and an uncertain
future.
In our fellowship, the
tradition can be traced to
the earliest days of the
American Restoration
Movement, which began on
the U.S. frontier in the 1790s
and called for Christians of
all denominations to follow
the Bible only.
“Multiple meetings on
Sunday were common from
the beginning, including
some in the evening for
prayer and Bible study,”
said John Mark Hicks, a
Restoration scholar and
theology professor at
Lipscomb University in
Nashville, Tenn.
“Revivalism in the late
19th century and the rise of
better lighting encouraged
Sunday evening gatherings
for evangelistic preaching,
and then shift work during
WWI and WWII encouraged
Sunday evening offerings
See SUNDAY NIGHT, Page 4
Church members spent three hours
removing the congregation’s belongings
from the building as the armed men stood
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Tryggestad, Erik. The Christian Chronicle (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 71, No. 7, Ed. 1 Tuesday, July 1, 2014, newspaper, July 1, 2014; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1509342/m1/3/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Christian University Library.