News

Christians reportedly beheaded in Somalia

The Good News
3 Sep 2009
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Four more Christians have been beheaded in Somalia, according to the Washington-based human rights organization International Christian Concern (ICC). The four Christians had been working for a non-governmental organization that aids orphans in southern Somalia. The Islamic extremist group al Shabaab, which has ties to al-Qaida, “kidnapped and eventually beheaded the Christians after they refused to renounce their faith,” ICC reported Aug. 11. According to the ICC report: “On Aug. 4, a junior [al Shabaab] militant notified all the families of the victims that the four Christians had been beheaded for apostasy. He described the Christians as promoters of ‘fitna,’ […]

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Iranian Christians refuse to deny faith

The Good News
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Two Iranian converts to Christianity are standing strong in their faith, according to a report from Iran by the Farsi Christian News Network. The two converts, Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30, and Maryam Rustampoor, 27, were summoned to appear in what FCNN described as “the revolutionary court” in Tehran on Aug. 9. The women have been detained since their arrest on March 5 and have been held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison since a March 18 court hearing. The Farsi Christian News Network, describing the women’s five-month ordeal, said they have “suffered greatly while in prison, suffering ill health, solitary confinement and […]

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Episcopal Church votes to lift ban on gay bishops

The Good News
2 Sep 2009
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Leaders at the Episcopal Church’s tri-annual convention voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution that opens “any ordained Life ” to homosexuals. The move lifts a moratorium on ordaining gay or lesbian bishops that the church passed three years ago. Biblically orthodox Anglicans, many of whom are part of the newly-formed Anglican Church of North America, decried the move as heretical. “It appears that the Episcopal Church is determined to move its own agenda forward despite calls from various senior levels to respect the order and discipline of the church,” said Rev. Canon Julian Dobbs, canon missioner for the Convocation of […]

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Green means go

The Good News
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Sometimes, God gives us a green light, but we’re too busy texting at the wheel to notice. Have you ever been in your car behind someone at a stoplight when the light turns green, and the person just sits there? The driver has a green light to go, but he goes nowhere. Somehow I always tend to find these people when I come to a light. In my observation, it usually happens because of one or all of the following reasons: –The driver misunderstood the signal. As impossible as it seems to misunderstand a simple green signal, it happens. He […]

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Kennedy Shriver remembered for defense of unborn

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Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a lifelong Democrat and member of a political family that largely embraced abortion rights, but on that controversial issue, she was pro-life. Shriver died Aug. 11 at the age of 88 and is perhaps best remembered as the founder of the Special Olympics. But while she was a lifelong advocate of the intellectually disabled she also was an abortion opponent, and she saw her two positions as being closely aligned. More than four decades ago – before the Supreme Court issued its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion – Shriver began fearing that if abortion […]

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Mark Driscoll’s Training Center

The Good News
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Mars Hill Church’s controversial co-leader Mark Driscoll recently announced the opening of the Resurgence Training Center, a 36-hour graduate program in leadership for future pastors and church planters. Courses will also be taught by John Piper, Sam Storms, Ed Stetzer, Gregg Allison and Bruce Ware. The faculty also includes executive director Rick Melson and Bill Clem, a leadership coach with the Acts 29 Network, a church planting network Driscoll founded. The new school, according to the Mars Hill Web site, is intended to develop pastoral leaders for 100 new Mars Hill campuses and 1,000 churches to be started in the […]

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Modern evangelicalism builds empires, not disciples

The Good News
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A review of  ‘A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church’ Joel Osteen’s effervescent smile to the contrary, all is not well in American evangelicalism. If you grew up evangelical, or spent all your Christian life in that domain, you might, like the proverbial frog in the kettle, not know how influenced by American culture modern American evangelicalism is. Warren Cole Smith, veteran journalist and author of “A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church,” is our guide to how accomodative and consumeristic we evangelicals are in relation to culture. For instance, Smith argues that we evangelicals are just as prone to being […]

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Obama silent about provisions for abortion

Warren Cole Smith
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The Obama administration has initiated an effort to dispel what it describes as “wild rumors” about health-care reform, but, perhaps tellingly, it does not seek to deny that current congressional proposals will result in government funding of abortion. In his weekly radio address Aug. 8, President Obama sought to dismiss what he described as “the outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia or cut Medicaid or bring about a government takeover of health care.” “That’s simply not true,” Obama said. “This isn’t about putting government in charge of your health insurance. It’s about putting you in charge of your health […]

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Study says ex-gay Life has 53 percent success rate

The Good News
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In findings that directly contradict mainstream academic thought, 53 percent of subjects in a new seven-year study reported successfully leaving homosexuality and living happily as heterosexual or celibate persons. The study by psychologists Stanton L. Jones of Wheaton College and Mark A. Yarhouse of Regent University is a follow-up to one released two years ago in the form of a book, “Ex-Gays?” That study was called groundbreaking, and the latest set of data is no less significant, the researchers say. The men followed 61 subjects over a span of six to seven years, recording their failures and successes in their […]

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Slow and steady wins the race?

Dr. Tommy Boland
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Do you remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? This fable is attributed to Aesop and is about a race between a rabbit and a turtle. One day, the turtle was slowly walking down the road when he came upon a rabbit. The rabbit began to mock and laugh at the slow moving turtle. The turtle responded by challenging the rabbit to a race. The rabbit could not believe the turtle would do such a foolish thing and accepted the challenge. It wasn’t long after the race started that the rabbit was far down the road and way […]

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