Author: Gordon Govier

After a devastating July fire, Boomerangs Resale Store is ready to move back into its spot at Northgate Shopping Center, where it will be joined by a new non-profit tenant in the refurbished mall owned by Madison-based developer, The Alexander Company.  Boomerangs began as an outreach ministry by Madison’s Door Creek Church in 2008. It sells donated items including new and used clothing, shoes, jewelry, furniture, artwork, housewares, books and small appliances, with all profits serving local charities such as Salvation Army, The Road Home and Nehemiah Corp.

If you tell Mark Wilson that the Lord works in mysterious ways, he’ll tell you he can’t help but agree. How else to explain how his job managing a Taco Bell store on State Street, and a friendship with one of the homeless men who frequented it, led to a growing web of support for the homeless at one of Madison’s largest mainline churches?

What city’s Jewish mayor recently welcomed the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and directors of 13 federal agencies to meet with area clergy to discuss cooperative efforts to meet the needs of families who are “falling through the cracks” and suffering as a result?  Hint: it was not Madison’s mayor. “I need the ministers to come outside the door of the church where there is warmth and bring that warmth out into the streets,” said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, according to the Chicago Tribune. “I cannot achieve the goal without the partnership of people of faith.”

Leading worship at a recent Sunday morning service at City Church, 4909 E. Buckeye Road, was City Church worship pastor Brian Montrey and members of the band Spasenie, from Brest, Belarus. It’s not unusual to have visiting musicians leading worship for a Sunday morning service. But in this case, the relationship between Montrey and the members of Spasenie goes much deeper. Montrey has also traveled to Belarus to lead worship in Spasenie’s home church. And a year and a half ago he traveled to Belarus to record an album with the band.

His Sunday mission was laughably straightforward. Seek and destroy the opposing team’s quarterback. Yet as serious as Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila approached his chosen profession as a defensive end for the Green Bay Packers, that wasn’t the mission that caused him to routinely fall to his knees. To ask for guidance. To weep for teammates.

Primarily utilized as a defensive player when she did get on the floor her first three years, Ashley Thomas has demonstrated improved offensive skills. Thomas admits there were times when her outlook on life and basketball was tested. “It’s not easy … it was hard,” she said. “It was very humbling for me. “My faith has been the main thing that’s gotten me through my four years here in college. Read more of this story.  

Have you noticed how many young Christian leaders have hit Madison in the last year or so? For me, anyone under 40 is really young! It almost seems like God is in the process of calling a new generation of leaders to break new ground to expand His Kingdom here in Madison and beyond.  For someone like me with a relatively short runway, this is very exciting.   These new young leaders, called by God to areas of significant responsibility, are not intimidated by the anti-Christian environment here.  They don’t even recognize it.  They are not affected by the old paradigms,…

The state’s new concealed carry law is causing churches to discuss whether to post signs banning concealed weapons, and at least some parishioners are finding the discussion pretty tricky.

  While some Protestant churches deal with divisions within their congregations, one Wisconsin church will be taking its affiliation dispute to court. About 70 members of Grace Lutheran Church of Eau Claire are asking a judge to declare their church exclusively affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. An initial vote taken by the congregation to disaffiliate from the ELCA and join the more conservative Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ failed, but in April Grace Lutheran’s church council then decided to have their church be affiliated with both groups.

To certain Catholics, Peter Kreeft is a rock star. That was evident Nov. 18, when nearly 500 people filled an auditorium at the Bishop O’Connor Center in Madison to hear him talk. Kreeft, a Catholic author and Boston College philosophy professor, had been asked by the Catholic Diocese of Madison to speak on whether “a Catholic can be a liberal.”