Author: Gordon Govier

CHICAGO (RNS) — On a near-perfect late summer evening, about a dozen people gathered on a picnic blanket in Chicago’s Palmer Square Park, spread between kids playing on playground equipment and young adults throwing a Frisbee disc on the lawn. Accompanied by the crunch of joggers’ footsteps on the gravel path circling the narrow strip of green in the city’s trendy Logan Square neighborhood and the rumbling of a passing El train, one of the picnickers took a piece of pita bread and broke it in half. “This is our body,” he said, passing it to the person sitting next…

A single van-full of 6 middle school students and their leader spending a week in the summer serving at a local school. This is how Blackhawk Church’s Madison Missions began back in 2001. It was an idea to teach middle school students the vision and mission of Jesus to serve in the community. Since then, has grown into a summer of week-long service camp; this year has seen 293 students with 60 leaders serving a total of 5,500 hours with 70 different organizations. It is a classic example of how one congregation (yes, a very large congregation) can collaborate with lots…

Rev. Staci Marrese-Wheeler isn’t sure exactly when the idea for the school Weekend Nutrition Program started. All she knows is it neither began nor ends with her. Her particular involvement started about five years ago. “A few years ago a colleague of mine at St. Luke’s Episcopal, the Rev. Dr. Paula Harris, and I had been talking about ways our churches could better serve our neighborhoods,” Marrese-Wheeler said. She is pastor of Lakeview Moravian Community Church on the east side of Madison, near St. Luke’s, as well as Glenwood Moravian on the west side.

After a heated months-long battle with the city of Madison over whether Edgewood High School’s athletic field can be used to host games, the Catholic school filed a federal lawsuit against the city Wednesday alleging religious discrimination. The lawsuit claims Madison has imposed city ordinances in an “arbitrary, unequal and unlawful” way by restricting the use of Edgewood’s athletic field to only team practice and gym classes, and refusing to give the school an electrical permit to add lights to the field.

The train stopped at the border between Hungary and Romania. Bob Grahmann was sitting in the last row of seats. He saw the glaring searchlights, the dogs, and the barbed wire outside. He watched as guards boarded the train with their machine guns and methodically rifled through the passengers’ luggage. It was 1983, at the height of the Cold War. Bob was an InterVarsity Area Director in New Jersey with four years of campus ministry experience preceded by four years as a local church pastor. A friend working in Eastern Europe had invited Bob to teach church history to Romanian…

This summer I set out on a mission to get to know the congregation and amplify your voices. Coming in, I never imagined the pure depth of the congregation and how incredibly diverse the different niches are. Every story I wrote, every person I was introduced to seemed to have a different thing they were passionate about and was able to bring that energy to help further the church. Admittedly, I’m not a particularly religious or spiritual person. I grew up Jewish, going to temple a few Friday’s of the year and for the High Holidays (some would dub me…

Madison, Wis (WMTV) — The Catholic Multicultural Center (CMC) in Madison is breaking employment barriers by providing culinary arts training and creating a recipe for change. A former participant, Joseph Crenshaw, said the program changed his life. Crenshaw came from the inner city of Chicago and made his way to Madison –searching for a second chance. “Change is hard, but you can do it,” Crenshaw said.

The steeple and bell tower of a 127-year-old church in Mazomanie burned down early Sunday during a thunderstorm. The fire at the United Church of Christ occurred at about 2:50 a.m., and firefighters put it out shortly after, the Dane County 911 Center said. No one was injured. Pastor Denise Cole said her church was not able to hold services Sunday morning, and is looking for elsewhere in the Mazomanie community to hold services while repairs are made.

MILWAUKEE (RNS) — More than 500 years ago, a monk named Martin Luther nailed 95 theses outlining his grievances with the Roman Catholic Church to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. On Wednesday afternoon (Aug. 7), members of the mainline Protestant denomination bearing Luther’s name taped 9.5 theses — expressing their concern for immigrants and refugees — to the door of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Milwaukee. The action was part of a prayer vigil for migrant children and their families during the ELCA Churchwide Assembly this week at Milwaukee’s Wisconsin Center. It took place on…

A Pentecostal church on Madison’s east side has concealed allegations of sexual assault among its congregants for over 30 years, and continues to perpetuate a culture of fear and control that fosters abuse, former members say. The Cap Times interviewed 13 people, four of whom said they were sexually assaulted and manipulated as children attending Calvary Gospel Church. Nine others, including parents, siblings of alleged victims, members who witnessed sexual misbehavior and one pastor who was in leadership at the time of many allegations, corroborate the description of the church’s culture, numerous accounts of sexual abuse in the congregation and…