INDONESIAN SEMINARY DIRECTOR AND STUDENT MURDERED
By Jeremy Reynalds
Special Correspondent for ASSIST News Service
SPOKANE, WA (ANS) -- A peaceful Sunday afternoon
turned violent recently on the small island of Ambon, Indonesia with the violent
death of a seminary director and student.
According
to Partners International (a global ministry that helps indigenous Christians
share their faith with their own people), on Apr. 25 Septer Sanabuky, a
Christian seminary director, and seminary student Berti Manopo were riding a
motorcycle to a ministry outreach when they were viciously attacked by a mob.
Both Sanabuky and Manopo were tortured, beheaded and their bodies burned. Their
bodies were later recovered and buried.Sanabuky leaves behind a wife, a three-year-old son and a baby boy. Information was not immediately available about Manopo’s family. According to a source at the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Indonesia (ETSI) which operates the Ambon seminary and 23 others, this is the first time in the agency’s 25 year history that anyone has been killed in the line of ministry.
Partners International works closely with ETSI.
In contrast to his violent death, ETSI reported that Sanabuky had a history of working with the local government to keep the situation in Ambon peaceful. In Sept. 2002 he wrote, “The Christians and Muslims are becoming more compatible with each other. They have agreed to live together peacefully which makes the situation in Ambon much better than before.”
Jon Lewis, President and CEO of Partners International, said, “It is at times like this that partnership is more important than ever. We are committed to standing by and upholding our Indonesian partners during this time of tragedy.”
The mission of ETSI is to plant one church in every Indonesian village by 2015. The cornerstone of this effort is a network of 24 seminaries with more than 2,000 current students and 2,000 graduates. Partners International assists in the building of the seminaries and in supporting workers in ministry.
The deaths of Sanabuky and Manopo come in the wake of other violence in Ambon last weekend, with the deaths of both Christians and Muslims. Fires were set to several hundred houses and a Christian university, Partners International reported. The province's approximately 2 million people are evenly divided between Muslims and Christians.
According to Partners International, the violence is the worst since warring factions signed a peace deal in Feb. 2002 to end three years of clashes between Christians and Muslims that killed 5,000. It also comes as Indonesia prepares for its first direct presidential election in July.
Partners International is a global ministry that works to create and grow communities of Christian witness in partnership with God's people in mostly unevangelized areas of the world.
According to the group's web site, “Our partners are local Christians who already have a vision. They are passionate about sharing God's love with their own people and with nearby unreached people groups. They speak the language. They understand the culture. They rarely need a visa. They live at the same economic level as the people they serve. They work against all odds, often risking persecution, imprisonment and even death.”
