Author: Gordon Govier

Adrian Miller, a James Beard Award-winning author, will speak at two events celebrating Black food culture at Upper House on the University of Wisconsin campus on Wednesday, February 12. Madison365 is the media partner of the events. Local nonprofit organization Selfless Ambition is also a partner on producing the event. “Adrian Miller is a really interesting, kind of fascinating guy. He kind of lives in two worlds,” said Daniel Johsnson, director of technology and campus ministry engagement at Upper House. Those two worlds include the academic — Miller is a researcher in the history of food in the United States,…

MADISON, Wis. — If you were to Google the name “Roger Olsen” you would turn up two or three entries, one of them noting he was pastor of Grace Church in New Glarus and the other announcing he was speaking at another church. If all you had to go on was Google, you could be forgiven for thinking Olsen wasn’t much of a character. You could be forgiven, but you would be wrong. Roger, who died of cancer Thursday morning at age 74, was one of the best-loved pastors in Southern Wisconsin.

My first congregation was in Queens, New York. The church was small and I had an office in our home, next door to the church. This arrangement worked really well until kids arrived and began to invade my sanctuary. Kids were not the only ones to invade. I remember a week in the first year or two of ministry there, where I was studying the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). The point of that parable is to answer the question “Who is my neighbor?” It is interesting that the religious insiders did not do anything about the man…

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV)– During his visit to Madison on Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence gave a shout out to a local private school for their work with choice students. Pence was in Wisconsin’s capital city in part to voice his support for private school vouchers. Wisconsin was the first state to have a private school voucher program.

BARABOO (WKOW) — Governor Tony Evers is paying special recognition to a Baraboo pastor, who’s made it his mission to help his community. Rev. Dave Mowers has led the charge to find a new homeless shelter for his community after the only one in the area closed in 2018. “I felt like it was something that I could do that my faith compelled me to do,” Mowers told 27 News. Mowers says 70 percent of Wisconsin’s homeless population lives in rural areas, so the Sauk County community has stepped up to help him create a brand-new non-profit to tackle homelessness.

Blackhawk Church in Middleton has canceled its sixth annual Chinese New Year event amid growing concerns over a respiratory virus that originated in Wuhan, China, and may have sickened dozens in the U.S. The event celebrating the Chinese New Year is put on by the Blackhawk Chinese Ministry, a congregation of Chinese-speaking people under the umbrella of Blackhawk Church. Charles Huang, the Chinese ministry’s pastor, said the event was canceled as a “precautionary action” because several members of the congregation often travel back and forth to China, where authorities say the virus has killed at least 26 people and sickened…

What is something we can do together to better serve our schools?  This was a question at the center of the first School+Church Affinity Group back in September of 2019.  The answer that came out of this meeting was something that seemed like a simple food donation drive, but in reality is something unique and powerful because of the collaboration around the event. Collaboration for this specific event comes through six different churches who are conducting their own food collections.  Some churches are coming up with fun ways to get people to give such as trying to match the weight…

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) — The Salvation Army Emergency Shelter in Dane County sees around 134 families and women every night, but during the winter season that number rises as the need increases. When the temperature drops below 20 degrees the Salvation Army shelter does not turn anyone away. Melissa Sorenson, the Social Services Executive Director, said the need is greater this year. “We had 152 staying when the first winter storm hit and we’re expecting the same number for the next storm.”

Amidst the many ways that congregations have found ways to collaborate with each other and local agencies to serve the community, food has emerged as one common theme.

Formerly incarcerated individuals face many, many challenges. To raise awareness and to educate the community about the challenges and obstacles ex-offenders face when they return to the outside world, Madison-area Urban Ministry (MUM) hosted a Prison Reentry Simulation on the UW-Madison campus on Jan. 8. The simulation is something that MUM, an interfaith non-profit organization that helps provide resources to people who have been newly released from the prison system, hosts from time to time. It is comprised of three parts: Introduction, Role Play and Panel. This particular simulation was led by Shawna Lutzow, MUM Volunteer & Community Engagement Coordinator,…