News

Bearing One Another’s Burdens

Healthcare cost sharing ministries threatened by reforms President Obama says he’s looking for creative, “outside-the-box” solutions to the “healthcare crisis” in this country. But the plans that have the greatest likelihood of passing – including the so-called “Kennedy Plan” – put at-risk a Christian alternative to insurance that is now being used by more than 100,000 people in the U.S. James Lansberry is vice president of Samaritan Ministries, the largest of the self-described “healthcare sharing ministries,” whose members pay for each other’s healthcare costs. His organization’s members pay for about $3 million in healthcare expenses a month. Payments vary, but […]

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Churches bring The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry to Florida theaters

Five & Two Pictures is proud to announce the upcoming release of a very special film entitled “The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry.” Coming to theaters Sept. 18, “The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry” is an inspiring film for viewers from 8 years old to 80 years old. Set in 1970, the film follows three 12-year-old boys as they encounter the town bully and an older fellow named Jonathan Sperry (played by Gavin MacLeod) who encourages them to live out what the Bible says. Jansen Panettiere, the younger brother of Hayden Panettiere of “Heroes” fame, and Robert Guillaume also co-star. Fireproof actor […]

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Episcopal Church votes to lift ban on gay bishops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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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