Author: Gordon Govier

COMMENTARYIs it a show about a modern-day shipwreck, featuring misfit castaways trying to survive increasingly bizarre circumstances on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean?Or is the island just a metaphor? Is it really a show about faith, redemption, evil, predestination, love, suffering, free will and human understanding of the supernatural?

COMMENTARYIf you are at all familiar with the mainstream American contemporary megachurch – a video currently seen on the internet is brilliant satire. Which makes it uncomfortable. It will be very easy for many such churches, and the ones aspiring to join their club, to see themselves in it.

TIPP CITY, Ohio (RNS) It’s often hard to find signs of hope in Sudan’s Western Darfur province, which is considered one of the bleakest places on the planet. Civil war rages in what many call a campaign of genocide that has killed hundreds of thousands of Darfuri civilians and displaced millions of others. But while the Sudanese government in Khartoum has expelled most international relief groups, there are surprising signs of continuing aid from a United Methodist congregation a half a world away.

WAKE FOREST, NC (ANS) — With divorce rates among Christians comparable to those within the culture generally, churches across the nation are reaching out and helping children whose parents are separated or divorced.The Barna Group found in its latest study (2008) that born again Christians who are not evangelical were indistinguishable from the national average on the matter of divorce with 33 percent having married and divorced at least once. The Barna report states that among all born again Christians, which includes evangelicals, the divorce figure is 32 percent, which is statistically identical to the 33 percent figure among non-born…

LONDON (BP)–A shocking video has emerged showing a Baptist street preacher in the United Kingdom being arrested for calling homosexuality a sin.Newspaper stories about 42-year-old Dale Mcalpine have received attention in the United Kingdom and the United States, but the video — which Mcalpine recorded with a hidden camera — did not surface publicly until May 14. It lasts just under two minutes and makes it clear that he was arrested for expressing a biblical view of homosexuality.

There are times to be competitive. Moments when all you want to do is humiliate your opponent as you defeat him. It’s the nature of sports, and what our internal competition meters usually read.That, we all know, is how athletes feel most of the time. But, at times, and these are few and far between, we see acts that defy wins and losses.

RNS) After a decade-long clergy shortage in America’s pulpits, Christian denominations are now experiencing a clergy glut—with some denominations reporting two ministers for every vacant pulpit. “We have a serious surplus of ministers and candidates seeking calls,” said Marcia Myers, director of the vocation office for the Presbyterian Church (USA), which has four ministers for every opening. The cause of the sudden turnaround: blame the bad economy.

POTOSI, Mo. (RNS) About 50 teenagers and their parents gathered at the YMCA Trout Lodge near here recently, in the middle of the Mark Twain National Forest, to praise Jesus Christ. “We pray that this weekend our hearts are touched, Lord,” one of the group leaders, Mark Patterson said, “and that we grow closer to you.” But this was not one of the many church retreats that meet here, and Patterson is not a pastor. He’s the program director of the South City Y in St. Louis, and the group he prayed with was there for FaithFest, the most public…

Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was…

With Mother’s Day looming this weekend, I’ve found an unlikely advocate for single moms, a neglected population in the world of religion. She is Ann Kiemel Anderson, whose popular titles like "I’m Out to Change My World" (1974) and "I Love the Word Impossible" (1976) were meditations about Jesus in freestyle verse.