Culture

Having a good laugh with Taylor Mason

Anitra Parmele
1 Feb 2011
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A man walks into a church holding a life size pig puppet. The pig says… Have you heard this one before? Then you might have seen comedian, musician and ventriloquist Taylor Mason on one of the Thou Shalt Laugh DVD’s, Gaither Homecoming Concert Tour DVD’s, or at one of his numerous concerts around the country. Taylor grew up the son of a radio farm broadcaster and a stay-at-home mom in suburban Chicago. After discovering that his ability to make people laugh wasn’t restrained to his college classmates, Taylor began working in the piano bars that dotted Chicago. The next several […]

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Interview with Dr. John Sowers of The Mentoring Project

Bryon Mondok
14 Jan 2011
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Dr. John Sowers is the president of The Mentoring Project which was founded by New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller. Sowers mission at The Mentoring Project is to rewrite the stories of fatherless young men. The Mentoring Project received the faith-based Partner of the Year Award in 2010 from Big Brothers and Big Sisters, the oldest and most established mentoring organization in America. Dr. Sowers released a book in September 2010 called Fatherless Generation. I caught up with Dr. Sowers to discuss his book and the issue of fatherlessness. As both the product of a broken home and former […]

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Fatherless Generation; Redeeming the Story

Bryon Mondok
12 Jan 2011
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By Bryon Mondok The Good News My family is under attack. So is yours. It’s a concentrated spiritual effort designed to undermine our civilization’s reliance, dependence, and turning to God. That’s the conclusion you come to when you read Fatherless Generation, by Dr. John Sowers. “No longer do we have to travel abroad to make war. America is making war on itself,” Sowers writes. Sowers is the national director of the Mentoring Project founded in Portland, Oregon by New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller. Miller serves on the Task Force of Fatherhood and Healthy Families for Barack Obama. The […]

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Christian movie Standing Firm stands apart

Marisa Zeppieri Caruana
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By Marisa Zeppieri-Caruana The Good News What do you get when you combine a driven, God-loving, 22-year-old with a desire to make an independent Christian film that stands apart from the rest? You get the movie Standing Firm. Now available on DVD, Standing Firm deals with a subject that everyone has either dealt with already or will deal with at some point in his or her life – death and suffering. Viewers will watch as the main character Dave loses control of everything around him after his wife’s death as the movie explores how he seeks to answer the one […]

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Revealing truth on the The 12 Biggest Lies

Marisa Zeppieri Caruana
3 Dec 2010
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It has been said that it takes two to establish a lie – one to lie and one to listen. Today’s society is full of opinions and deceptions being sold as “truths.” How do you react when you hear these opinions? How do you weigh out the facts from the deception? Do you consider yourself an independent thinker…one who doesn’t immediately take what is being given to you as solid truth, but one who prefers to uncover the whole truth for yourself?   Director, writer and producer, Andre` van Heerden is on a mission to uncover the truth in his […]

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Out Live Your Life by Max Lucado

Bryon Mondok
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Get out? Or get in? You’ve heard the saying, “she’s so heavenly minded she’s no earthly good.” In a time when Christians in American culture myopically focus on their own heavenly evacuation, Max Lucado issues a challenge: leave something behind. Be a world changer.   In his newest book Outlive Your Life, Lucado celebrates the otherwise uncelebrated. In vivid prose, unsung heroes are brought to life as examples of people whose work benefits the world beyond the span of their lives. They’ve left a legacy behind that continues to point people to Jesus even though they’ve gone to be with […]

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The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Anitra Parmele
25 Nov 2010
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The majestic face of Aslan looms large in the movie trailer. His regal voice booms, “You have returned for a reason. Your adventure begins now,” as posters that accompany the film invite us to “Return to Hope, Return to Magic, Return to Narnia.” Narnia fans have eagerly awaited the release of the third film based on C.S. (Jack to his friends) Lewis’ internationally popular novel series that includes The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. Due out in theaters on December 10, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the first of the series to be produced […]

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The story behind the songs at Christmas time

Anitra Parmele
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It’s the moment when the phrase captures you…”O come, O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel” as you’re standing in the coffee aisle at the grocery store. It’s the CD where you listen to the whole thing and not just cherry pick your favorites off iTunes because this is Bing Crosby. It’s the neighbor’s little boy dressed up in his dad’s bathrobe as he tilts back his head and belts out We Three Kings. It’s the recognition that regardless of our church attendance record, most of us know the words to Silent Night’s second verse. It’s the realization that the […]

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New book argues for spontaneous creation

Bruce Gordon
1 Oct 2010
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Stephen Hawking’s new book, The Grand Design, co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow, contends that God is not necessary to create the universe because the laws of physics can do it alone. The “new atheist” crowd will cheer this message, but their credulity is a matter more of fiery sentiment than of cool-headed logic. Hawking asserts that “as recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke […]

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Secretariat

The Good News
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In the midst of economic uncertainty, with technologies like smart phones, texting, and social media threatening to isolate us even further, comes Secretariat, a movie that director Randall Wallace prays will inspire and entertain the entire family. Known for his work as an Oscar and Golden Globe nominated writer (Braveheart), as well as producer/director (The Man in the Iron Mask, We Were Soldiers, Pearl Harbor), Randall reflected in a recent interview with me on the potential for movies to reflect God’s redemptive qualities. “That is an aspect of this movie that was really important to me – other stories have […]

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