Author: Gordon Govier

Many young people rank listening to a sermon right up there with a trip to the dentist’s office or taking a pop quizBut what if that sermon included miming, inspiring music and dramatic dance moves?"Some people go to sleep listening to preachers," said Mason Porter, a Dallas mime who uses his talent for the dramatic to encourage people to embrace the Christian faith. "We’re outta the box."Read more of this story.

Could the next Harry Potter be a devout Christian?As the days tick down until Saturday, when a breathless world learns the fate of the teenage wizard, a new breed of fantasy fiction, with Potter-style stories, is emerging.Read more of this story.

Francine Tate disappeared after attending a Tuesday night prayer meeting at the offices of MadCity Church on East Washington Avenue. She never made it to her home in DeForest. She said she was going to stop at Token Creek Park on the way home to look for something she had lost while visiting the park on Sunday.Francine Tate is a kindergarten teacher at Abundant Life Christian School and helps lead the Alpha program at Mad City Church. The family is asking for prayers of safety, protection and that everything is okay, and that they will hear from her soon. Her…

COMMENTARY "There is nothing new under the sun," proclaims the Book of Ecclesiastes. The rise of the new new atheism confirms this ancient biblical wisdom.Of course the famous words of Ecclesiastes should not be taken in a slavishly literal sense, a technique that is all-too-common among those who think they can refute belief in God by showing that the Bible abounds in demonstrably false and self-contradictory statements.Read more of this story.

COPENHAGEN — The "Amens!" flew like popcorn in hot oil as 120 Christian worshipers clapped and danced and praised Jesus as if He’d just walked into the room. In a country where about 2 percent of the population attend church regularly and many churches draw barely enough worshipers to fill a single pew, the Sunday morning service at this old mission hall was one rocking celebration.Read more of this story.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA (ANS) — This month, The JESUS Film reaches an astounding milestone with the debut of its 1,000th translation, making it the most-translated film in history. According to a media release, if you took some of the biggest box office hits of all time, blockbuster films like Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Titanic, and The Lion King — all have been translated into multiple languages and shown to audiences around the world. But if you added them all together they wouldn’t reach even half the number of translations of JESUS, the most-translated film in…

COMMENTARYChurch "hopping" is the ultimate "all about me" experience.I’m not talking about church "shopping" — say, moving into a new community, or deciding to start attending church altogether, and then visiting churches until becoming a member of one as soon as reasonably possible. And I’m not talking about leaving one’s church after finding unaddressed scandal in a church’s leadership, for instance, or when a person’s conscience becomes persuaded that something foundational to the belief system of that church is very wrong.Read more of this story.

WASHINGTON — The morning meeting could have been at any news outlet, with discussion around the glass conference-room table about stem cells, Iraq and the presidential candidates. But afterward the members of the small group in the room bowed their heads in prayer.Read more of this story.

A president has to be a preacher of sorts, instructing, consoling, summoning citizens to sacrifice for some common good. But candidates are competitors, which means they seldom manage to talk about faith in a way that doesn’t disturb people, doesn’t divide them, doesn’t nail campaign posters on the gates of heaven. Republicans have been charged with exploiting religious voters, Democrats with ignoring them: Hillary Clinton’s voice gets tight as she recalls the mocking response she received when she first spoke in spiritual terms about the longing that people felt to invest in causes larger than self-interest. "I talked about my…

The love of money doesn’t have to be the root of all evil, according to several organizations active in "values investing." The search for stocks and mutual funds known for religious virtue as well as financial vitality has shot up in recent years with a proliferation of evangelical Protestant, Catholic and Muslim investment companies.Read more of this story.