Author: Gordon Govier

More than 7500 participants committed themselves to long term or short-term missions involvement, by filling out commitment cards at InterVarsity’s Urbana 09 Student Missions Conference. The conference was held December 27-31 at the Edward Jones Dome and The America’s Center in St. Louis.

The head of a conservative media watchdog group is alerting the “Religious Right” of the race-related issues that he says has been and still remains in their “blind side.”

Participants at Urbana 09 were challenged to be counter-cultural followers of Jesus by the speakers at Tuesday night’s general session in the Edward Jones dome in St. Louis. The challenge set the stage for Wednesday’s call to commitment to the 16,000 participants at InterVarsity’s student missions conference.

SEOUL, South Korea — An American missionary carrying a letter for the North Korean dictator crossed illegally into the reclusive country to try bring international attention to the North Korean suffering, South Korean activists said Saturday.

ARIEL, West Bank (RNS) After their teenage son was nearly killed last year by a bomb disguised as a holiday gift basket, few people were as eager for Ya’acov Teitel to see justice as Leah and David Ortiz. Teitel, an Orthodox Jewish loner who confessed to placing the package in the family’s stairwell said he targeted the Ortiz family because they are Messianic Jews—Jews who believe in Jesus as the Messiah. “We want justice, not revenge,” said Leah Ortiz, who has lived in this religiously mixed city of 30,000 since the late 1980s. “This happened because Teitel had hate in…

Lauren Green was third runner up in the 1985 Miss America contest and a winner of the talent competition for playing immaculately a Chopin etude, "Opus #4 in C Sharp." She continued her music while working as a television journalist in Minnesota, Chicago, and New York: She entered the Van Cliburn Competition and has written a fascinating theoretical essay about the connection of music, physics, and faith. Green grew up going to church and Sunday school. Today she goes to Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York and is a FOX News religious correspondent.

COMMENTARYI have a Christmas story to tell you, but not one you’d expect. And certainly not from where you would expect. At Christmastime, we’re reminded that our God is the God of great reversals. As we set out humble nativity scenes, we may forget how unthinkable it is that the King of Kings lowered himself not just to be born in human flesh, but in a lowly stable amidst the braying of animals and the smell of manure.

CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. (BP)–Thousands of soldiers will be away from their families this Christmas, but graduate student Matt Hodge hopes a Christmas carol he has written will help them feel closer to their families during the holiday season.

For James Govan, Christmas starts before Thanksgiving and doesn’t end until early in February as he displays some of his 500 Nativity scenes around his home in Arlington County. "I keep telling people it’s a disease without a cure," he joked. For Govan and other fans, creche collecting is serious business — with a biennial national convention, commissioned works of art, online shopping and collections displayed in churches and museums.

MADISON (WKOW) — Local churches are giving the gift of water this holiday season, as part of the worldwide Advent Conspiracy movement that involves more than 1,000 congregations.Door Creek, an evangelical free church located on Madison’s east side, is one of the churches participating in the movement. Its senior pastor, Mark Maillefer, says the "conspiracy" is to restore the true meaning of Christmas, which Maillefer says is about giving to one another the way God gave his son.