Dagestan police try to find answers to pastor's murder

Authorities in Dagestan are trying to get to the bottom of the July 16 murder of 49-year-old Artur Suleimanov. He  pastored the largest church in the capital city, with an active inner city outreach. Joel Griffith with Slavic Gospel Association says, "There's a question as to whether or not this might have been committed by Muslim extremists. There were some other questions about whether it might have been because of the church's businesses that were involved. You have an awful lot of organized crime that tries to put pressure on private businesses of any sort." Could this incident be a precursor to more? "It's troubling in the sense that, I think, for the first time that I can think of in recent years, we've had an evangelical pastor within Russia murdered like that." SGA sponsors a church planter in the region and partners with another pastor. Will their ministry suffer? "The growing pressure on evangelical Christians in these regions, I think, is such that we're probably going to being seeing a lot more security consciousness
in terms of ministry and supportive ministries."

--MNN