Author: Gordon Govier

At 4:00 in the afternoon on April 30, 1959, the Federal Communications Commission granted permission for a new radio station to begin broadcasting in Madison at 102.5 FM. About half an hour later the new station – WRVB – signed on the air. The radio station was the fulfillment of a dream for a Christian Radio Ministry in Madison for local businessman Paul Stewart. Stewart and many others in the community prayed and worked and prayed some more before the station was finally a reality that April afternoon sixty years ago.

One young woman’s lengthy battle to spread the Gospel at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College is now dragging into its fifth year. Since 2014, Polly Olsen has handed out Valentine’s Day cards with biblically themed messages to students and staff on campus. During that time, she has often been met with resistance in the form of the school’s public assembly policy, which forbids the “displaying of signs or mass distribution of literature with offensive content or that is likely to or intended to cause a disruption.”

The children wanted to talk to Candace, alone. They were students at a Wisconsin school, where, according to the Rev. Rod Armon, there had been a crisis. He didn’t say what kind of crisis or where it occurred, only that it warranted sending counselors to aid the troubled and traumatized. Armon, pastor for pastoral care at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Portage, is the handler for Candace, a 2½-year-old golden retriever trained as a comfort dog for Lutheran Church Charities.

Theology at its most basic is words about God, taken from the Greek theos (God) and logos (word). Speaking and thinking about God, in an informed way, is something we can all do and were encouraged to do when Fleming Rutledge spoke at Upper House in Madison last week. Rutledge, in 1977, was one of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church. After serving in parish ministry in the New York area for 22 years, she is now an acclaimed writer and lecturer. And a theologian. But not an academic theologian, she said, noting…

Each moment of Shelia Stubbs’ day is guided by a deep, unwavering faith in God. Prayer is not a daily activity for Stubbs, it’s a throughout-the-day activity. She prays when she wakes up, before she makes phone calls, before she does interviews–it keeps her balanced. “It’s her faith that got her here. Her faith in God, her faith in people, her faith in family, but most of all trusting and believing in God and following her conscience, her heart,” said her husband, Godfrey Stubbs. Read more of this story.

SUN PRAIRIE, Wis. (WMTV) — A shelter in Sun Prairie is working to help homeless single mothers and their children have a safe place to stay as they work towards finding a home of their own. On Sunday evening, Shelter from the Storm Ministries hosted Hearts for the Homeless, a fundraising event to benefit the shelter.

Three private Christian schools in Dane County will join the state voucher program this fall after years during which only one private school in the county offered spots for students to attend using a taxpayer subsidy. Abundant Life Christian School and High Point Christian School in Madison and Westside Christian School in Middleton have signed up for the statewide voucher program in the 2019-20 academic year, expanding the options for income-eligible Dane County students to receive a public voucher to cover private school tuition.

Kraig Kalka and Ken Brown, neighborhood officers in the central police district, rolled slowly down State Street on Wednesday looking for anyone who might be homeless. But State Street, normally bustling with students and pedestrians on a Wednesday afternoon, was a ghost town of mostly shuttered restaurants and stores. On a normal winter day, Kalka and Brown see about a dozen homeless individuals. On Wednesday, as temperatures plunged below 20 degrees with wind chills in the negative 40s, they saw none. “The collaboration that has happened in the last couple of years between the city, all entities: The Beacon, First…

The bottom line is there’s a tremendous gap between how many international students there are and how many international students we are reaching. Most of them are not being reached. One out of 300 people living in the United States is an international student. People living in college towns like Madison, Wisconsin, have a great opportunity to make an international impact for the Gospel.

The audience gathered in the Capitol rotunda Monday for Wisconsin’s annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fell silent as Bernice Parks accepted the annual MLK Heritage Award on behalf of her daughter. Sandra Parks was killed this March at the age of 13 by a stray bullet fired into her home in Milwaukee. She had previously won an MLK essay contest, which she used to write about gun violence. “Please, please, I’m begging you, don’t forget my baby,” Bernice Parks said through tears. “I still look at her picture and say, how could this have happened? I still…