The pastors are part of a growing movement to help start Christian churches in Muslim countries.

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 29, 2004

BY PAUL DAVIS
Journal Staff Writer

A month before Wakefield Pastor John Kelley was killed by gunmen near Baghdad, Sam Stricklin flew to Iraq on a similar mission.

The Warwick pastor went with a small group of friends to "plant" what he believes is the first Baptist church in Baghdad -- a big house with a lighted cross in a Christian neighborhood.

But unlike Mr. Kelley, Mr. Stricklin did not venture far from his gated church near Baghdad's center.

"We stayed low," says Mr. Stricklin, a pastor at the First Baptist Church.

"I asked one day if we could go to Babylon" to see the historic ruins. But the Arabic-speaking friends he traveled with said no. "They said, 'You need to stay with us.' "

In Baghdad for just nine days, Mr. Stricklin helped an Iraqi store owner start the New Testament Baptist Church in Baghdad. More than 300 people came to hear the one service.

"The people came in droves. They stood outside the windows and listened, and thanked us for bringing them political and religious liberty."

IN RECENT YEARS, the number of U.S. missionaries has steadily increased in the Middle East, especially with the end of the war in Iraq. Church members -- traditionally involved in relief efforts -- are passing out Bibles and food and helping start Christian churches in Muslim countries.

"Since 9/11 there has been an intense amount of interest" in the Muslim world, says Roscoe Brewer, executive director of EPIC International, a Holly Springs, Ga., organization that works with missionaries in seven nations. "For 1,400 years the church has basically ignored or run away from the Muslim world."

Brewer believes that fewer than 5 percent of America's 65,000 missionaries are working in the Middle East. But exact numbers are elusive, in part because many Baptist churches work independently of each other.

"There's no Baptist clearing house," says Ruby Burke, director of membership services at Baptist World Alliance, a Virginia-based group of 211 Baptist unions and conventions. Many independent churches have their own programs, she says. The alliance supports missionaries in Israel and Egypt but not in Iraq.

Also, some church leaders are reluctant to discuss their activities. They say publicity could jeopardize their missions and even endanger U.S. sponsors and churches.

"Everybody is pretty tight-lipped," says a Baptist filmmaker planning a trip to Iraq in April. "There are outreaches in the Middle East, but they are more like covert operations."

MANY COUNTRIES forbid proselytizing, but welcome relief efforts from Western religious groups.

"Our people are focused on humanitarian projects," says Mark Kelly, a spokesman for the International Mission Board, which last year raised $290 million to support missionary work in more than 100 countries.

"They distribute food boxes and help purify the water. It's more of a tangible expression of God's love."

Kelly says the board works with military and local officials, even mosque leaders, "to make sure that something is needed and won't be offensive" to Muslims.

"We're not going to do anything that exerts pressure," the spokesman says.

The Baptists work at a time when a radical, anti-American form of Islam has surfaced in Baghdad and elsewhere. Because of recent attacks on civilians and soldiers, the U.S. State Department warned civilians in October not to travel to Iraq.

"It's a dangerous place," says State Department spokeswoman Mandy Morgan.

ON FEB. 14, a group of gunmen in two cars ambushed a van full of Baptist ministers near the town of Mahmudiyah, about 15 miles south of Baghdad.

Mr. Kelley, the 49-year-old pastor of the Curtis Corner Baptist Church in Wakefield, was killed almost instantly in the "execution-style" ambush. Two others -- Pastors Kirk DiVietro, of the Grace Baptist Church in Franklin, Mass., and David G. Davis, of the Grace Baptist Church in Vernon, Conn. -- were wounded.

The pastors, turned away on a trip to see Babylon, were headed back to Baghdad when gunmen in two cars -- one red, one white -- sprayed their taxi with bullets, says Mr. DeVietro.

"I was hit in the back of the head by a spent bullet," he says. "When I came to, I saw bullets come through the side of the van."

Mr. Davis was wounded by a bullet that tore "a 1-inch-deep gash" through his left shoulder, Mr. DiVietro says.

Mr. Kelley was sitting in front. Mr. DeVietro saw him slumped against the passenger window.

The four men, part of a small group of mostly Northeast pastors, "had absolutely no bad experiences with the Iraqi people" their first week in Baghdad, Mr. DiVietro says. Their plan -- which they carried out after Mr. Kelley's death -- was to train and ordain an Iraqi minister.

"We let our guard down," says Mr. DiVietro. "We were there for a noble cause, but we did a stupid thing."

MR. KELLEY and five other pastors had driven into Baghdad from Jordan on Feb. 6, on a mission organized by Pastor Robert Lewis, head of Global Resource Group, a Cumberland organization that trains and supports missionaries.

Mr. Lewis, who has worked in Russia, Romania and Hungary, won't talk about the Baghdad trip.

Mr. Stricklin, who went to Iraq with two Middle Eastern men now in the United States, says getting into Iraq isn't difficult.

Despite State Department warnings, the government "won't stop you," he says. "If you have an American passport, you can get in."

In early January, Mr. Stricklin flew on a commercial jet from Boston to Ahman, Jordan. In Jordan, he boarded a 20-seat plane owned by a company that helps with relief work.

When the pilot reached the Baghdad airport, he turned the nose straight down. "We went down like a corkscrew," to avoid gunfire, says Mr. Stricklin. Some passengers got sick.

"The military was everywhere," he says. "But they didn't tell us we shouldn't be there."

Working with Lebanese and Iraqi Christians, Mr. Stricklin and others provided instruction to the pastor of the new church, a furniture store owner who was jailed for nearly five months during Saddam Hussein's rule.

Still, when he got the chance, the pastor erected a big sign on his Baghdad church, saying: "Jesus said unto you, I am the way, the truth and the light."

THE MISSIONARY impulse is strong in Rhode Island's independent Baptist churches.

Mr. Stricklin, who studied law and history, came from Oklahoma to start a Rhode Island church in 1975.

"God just put a burden in my heart," says Mr. Stricklin. "I can't explain it."

Today, flags from 40 foreign countries hang above the front door of the Warwick church, under a sign that says The Missions Link. In all, the church supports about 100 missionaries.

"Generally speaking, independent Baptist churches have an understanding of the mandate of Christ to go into the world and preach the Gospel," says Pastor Thomas G. Crichton III, with the Greater Rhode Island Baptist Temple in Johnston.

The Johnston church, he says, supports 116 missionary projects, 70 of them outside of the United States. Last year, churchgoers raised $150,000 -- above and beyond their support of the local church -- to help missionaries in foreign countries.

"It starts in the local church and it spreads to regions beyond it, but then the mandate goes out to the world," Mr. Crichton says.

Eight years ago, the Johnston pastor's son, Dan, went to South Africa to help build a church in Rustenburg, a mining town.

"It's not a war zone but it is a dangerous place because of tribal factions" and a volatile government, Mr. Crichton says.

"He lives in a compound. There are walls around the houses and bars on the doors. They have to lock themselves in. They live a life of looking over their shoulder."

As a father, he worries about his son, who visits every three years. He was home last September.

But as a Christian, he understands the need to spread God's word.

"The message of Christ has never gone forward in the world without someone risking their life," he says. "But I'm convinced the safest place to be is in the center of God's will."