Pastors Arrested

[irishcowboy]

Saturday evening, in Galena Kansas, Rev. Richard Graves and Rev. John Durham were arrested.

They were leading the Youth ( Jr. Hi thru College age ) in Prayer and worship time during a 30 hour fast and prayer.

The police came in and arrested them and removed them from the building, leaving the youth in the care of the interim youth leaders, outside the church.

They decided they had better depart from the church to seek shelter and continue praying. some of the youth members were pretty shook up about this, and wanted the pastors to come back.

after going to several peoples houses that they thought they could seek shelter at and being turned away when the people heard what had happened to the pastors, they finally came upon a house that would allow them to come in and stay and continue with prayer.....

a while later the pastors showed up and explained what had happened......

the youth were now relieved that the pastors were ok....

as the pastors began their story, to the youth, they explained that in some countries this is a normal ordeal, to be arrested for preaching and teaching the Bible, and that it has begun to happen in the USA.....

and then they explained what had happened to them had all been staged to put the point into a different perspective, so that they would remember that what they have now, is not guaranteed, and that one day this may be a normal occurence in the USA........

a staged event to drive a point home..... a high impact lesson that will be remembered for a good long while.....

folks, this thing is happening now, i have seen several college students get arrested for street preaching, sharing the gospel with people on the street, the excuse that was used is that they were loitering, and if they did not have a certain amount of cash in their pockets it would be vagrancy. they were released and ended up going to court, some recieve minor fines others dropped....

mike

[kittylover0991]

That is really really sad.. our guest speaker was just talking about things like that today...

Thankyou for sharing

[Guest mona t.]

omygosh how is it possible to be arrested for preaching the gospel?i could never move to to the U.S.A. in my country there is like a church on every corner, we pray before EVERYTHING we do,we pray at least 3 times a day in school,we are so Jesus based that i find it reallllyyyyyy wierd that you guys who basically brought this religioin to this region now forsake it.how is that possible?

[mrs]

Our previous pastor told us the story of this happening one time...

The youth group was staying overnight in a house, girls upstairs with counselors, guys downstairs.As the girls are listening to the radio they hear that Russia has invaded the states, so they start wondering if this really happened or not. The next thing they know, soldiers burst through the doors and drag them outside. There they are lined up and are told if they are Christians they will be shot.So the girls are standing there terrified as the soldiers ask them point blank.The first girl says, yes she is a Christian.The soldier grabs her, shoves her to the ground and turns to the next girl who denys being saved.He gives her a disappointed look and said he had hoped she would tell him how to become a Christian.Then to the relief of the girls the 'soldiers' explained that it was all rigged.

Meanwhile the boys are killing themselves laughing as they watched, being in on the plot as were the girl's counsellors.

But I am sure this little scheme also left its mark, especially on the girl who denyed being saved.

[Leonard]

Years ago when I was about 18 or 19, they staged one of these things at a weekend Christian Coffeehouse in Phoenix. Armed, uniformed guys came in and began demanded everybody give up their Bibles. Well, there were only 5 of them, and we numbered about 200 youths. I started shouting 'Come on! Get 'em! They can't get us all!'

Still when they told us all to stand up and crowd toward the back wall, nobody did ANYTHING but what they were told.

But they just seemed too incompetent, and I realized these guys didn't know one end of a gun from the other. I figured with a surprise attack, and these guys not knowing how to handle their weapons, we had a pretty good chance, so I elbowed one guy in the face and had his gun pretty quick, and the masquerade fell apart....fortunately to everybody's amusement....even the guy with the black eye!

Over all I thought it was a pretty classless thing to do to a bunch of kids. Those who willingly gave up their Bibles were really humiliated. I don't know, maybe they learned to be more dedicated to the Lord, but I know a lot of them were embarassed to come back to the Coffeehouse after that.

[Iryssa]

We had a World Missions Awareness day in our church (actually, it might be a week-long thing, but I only made it to the Youth Group portion of it), and we talked about this a lot during our Small Groups time, and then had a taste of the way heavily persecuted Christians experience church.

As everyone arrived at the church, we found the lights darkened and people at the door, "guarding" it. They ushered us inside, urging us to be quiet, and handing out flashlights so that we could get down the stairs to the youth room. At the youth room, the door was locked, but there was another leader at the storage room door opposite it. He showed us in, to where our youth pastor was waiting.

For the sermon and the singing, our youth pastor took us behind the storage room of the church, into an unfinished basement area that is basically exposed concrete with only enough headroom to crawl around in. In there, with flashlights, Bibles, and hushed voices, we sang quietly to God and Pastor J. led us in prayer and study. At the conclusion of the singing, he said "we have just experienced something like what many Christians across the world have had to do in order to meet together..." Anyway, it was all very well put together!

[yomotalking]

The first post was sad.