Author: Gordon Govier

Fifty years ago, Marlys Mittelstadt, of Monona, put off starting her new job as the organist and choir director at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Madison because she was having a baby. She officially started serving the congregation when her youngest child was six weeks old. “It was 50 years (of performing) on Sept. 15,” she said. On Sunday, she played at her last service and while she plans on performing recitals in the future, she said she will miss Sundays.

  This Sunday, September 18, is National Back to Church Sunday, when people in churches across the country are encouraged to invite their friends and neighbors to join them in church. More than 7500 U.S. churches are participating, including Lutheran, Assemblies of God, Methodist, and Nazerene churches in southern Wisconsin (although none actually in Madison, according to the event website). Although participation seems limited in the Madison area, the idea is a good one. A quote from LifeWay Research, featured on the website, says, “82% of the unchurched are likely to attend church if invited.. yet only 2% of church…

The University of Wisconsin-Madison will have to pay nearly $500,000 in legal costs incurred by a Catholic student group that sued over the university’s refusal to fund some of the group’s activities. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 decision a year ago that UW-Madison’s policy of turning down funding requests from student groups for student activities involving prayer, worship and proselytizing violates their First Amendment right to free speech. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the UW-Madison’s appeal of the ruling.

MADISON–For many of us, we’ll never forget where we were when the images of airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers seared their way into our collective memory forever. As the death toll continued to climb, some started searching for answers from a higher being. “Most every church saw a dramatic increase in worship attendance,” said Rev. Scott Carlson, of the Sun Prairie United Methodist Church. “I think it was in part, people trying to make sense of the tragedy that took place.”

The sky over Madison was filled with contrails on this evening ten years ago. I was with my son and my dog and sat for awhile in a park along Lake Monona as the sun dropped toward the western horizon. I counted four jets in the air at the same time. Earlier in the day a vintage WWII B-17 bomber had been flying around Madison. The next evening, of course, there were no planes in the air over Madison or anywhere else in the country.

News Release (Madison WI) – More and more students are attending college but they are looking for more than just getting an education. InterVarsity’s mission on campus is to help students complete their search for meaning and purpose in life through a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. The number of students finding new faith in Jesus Christ through the witness of InterVarsity staff and students has increased by 30 percent over the past five years.

USA (MNN) ― It’s only been a few weeks, but already Madison-based InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is excited about a new season of ministry on college campuses around the United States. Vice President of InterVarsity Jim Lundgren says, “We’re on 557 campuses across the United States. We have 866 chapters that involve about 37,000 core students and faculty.”

Over the past year two east-side Madison churches, Mad City Church and Lake City Church, worked through a merger to become City Church (located at 4909 E. Buckeye Road). Church mergers may be a growing trend, according to an article in Christianity Today.

Our church, The Journey Community, has been meeting at Brittingham Park for the last three summers and for every challenge inherent in this decision, a blessing of equal value is apparent. We initially started meeting at the park out of necessity. Our regular meeting place (the Senior Center on Mifflin) was renovating, so we relocated for that summer. It was fun and new to begin with. Then the challenges started to become more obvious.

It’s not everyday you see a governor blush, rarer still when your grandmother is the cause of it. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker commemorated the 20th anniversary of Family-PAC’s Boat Cruise in Chicago on Tuesday and I had an opportunity to sit down with him. I invited my grandparents down from Sauk County, Wisconsin to meet the man they had voted for.