February (Web-only) 2004

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Rhode Island pastor killed in Iraq
There's now identities to go with yesterday's story on the shooting of a taxi full of American Christians returning to Baghdad from Babylon.

The Providence Journal reports that John Kelley, pastor of the "tiny" Curtis Corner Baptist Church in Wakefield, Rhode Island, was killed. Three other pastors were injured: Kirk DiVietro of the Grace Baptist Church in Franklin, Massachusetts; David G. Davis, of the Grace Bible Baptist Church in Vernon, Connecticut, and Garland Carey, of the Valley Bible Baptist Church in Newburgh, New York.

"They were helping an Iraqi man start a church, the first Baptist church in Baghdad," DiVietro's assistant pastor, Doug Pettit, told The Woonsocket Call. "They were going to ordain him."

Kelley, a former Marine who had pastored Curtis Corner Baptist for about 18 years, had been in Iraq for about a week. They were due to return this Friday.

Jane Kelley, the deceased pastor's wife, "played hymns the next day during two Sunday services," the Journal reports. "She kept a box of tissues on the floor while the congregation sang 'Count Your Blessings' and 'Nothing But the Blood.'" The couple had four children: Jenney, 15; Jason, 17; James, 21, and Julia, 23.

"I feel like I lost a brother," Roland Vukic, one of Curtis Corner Baptist's 120 congregants, told the Journal. "Pastor Kelley was not aloof — he was not one to run around in fancy robes. He could be your brother, he could be your best friend."

Evangelical church attacked in Thessaloniki "A homemade gas-canister bomb, placed at the entrance to offices housing Thessaloniki's Missionary Evangelical Church — on the third floor of a seven-floor block in the northern city — caused 3,000 euros of damage when they detonated [Friday] ...