Author: Gordon Govier

On International Women’s Day, one month from today, Madison’s David Lippiatt plans to be on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. He’s leading a group of climbers with his long-time friend and former colleague Belinda Bauman, the founder of One Million Thumbprints, a campaign to end gender violence in the war zones of South Sudan, Syria/Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lippiatt is the director of Madison-based NGO We International. He founded We International in 2007 “to serve the most vulnerable in developing countries through economic development, advocacy, anti-trafficking efforts, and peace-building.” A couple of decades earlier, Lippiatt…

A new sign has gone up at Bethany Evangelical Free Church, 301 Riverside Drive, showcasing the unique congregations that call Bethany home. The sign announces services in four different languages.

Bishop Hee Soo Jung of the Wisconsin Conference of The United Methodist Church announces the appointment of The Rev. Dr. Mark A. Fowler to become the Senior Pastor at First United Methodist Church in Madison, Wisconsin, effective July 1, 2016. Fowler, who is currently serving as the Murray H. Leiffer associate professor of congregational leadership at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston IL, will retain his responsibilities at the seminary until June 30, 2016.

I’ll admit it. Freely. When I was younger —I mean much younger — I thought that Betamax video cassette recorders were the bee’s knees. They were constructed better than any other video recorders, the sound quality was better, and the picture quality was superior. At one point, Sony, the producer of Beta video cassette recorders, had 100 percent of the video recorder market. Well, it doesn’t take a historian to know what happened with Beta. Market forces and better, cheaper, more-efficient technology made Beta obsolete in what felt like three-and-a-half months. I don’t mention Beta to wax nostalgic about my…

As an American citizen traveling through remote corners of Colombia at the height of the nation’s civil war, Russell Martin Stendal offered an enticing prospect for left-wing rebels who often kidnapped foreigners for ransom. So tempting, in fact, that Stendal was abducted five times by different units of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc.“I would be moving through the countryside and they would see this gringo and –pah! They would grab me,” he recalls. (Stendal, and members of his family, have visited Madison numerous times to participate in the missions programs of City Church, on Buckeye Road. Now…

GREEN BAY — More than 150 people from the Diocese of Green Bay, who participated in the 44th annual March for Life Jan. 22 in Washington, D.C., found themselves stranded on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Somerset, Penn., as a snowstorm made the freeway impassable.

Madison ranks #88 in a just released list of Bible reading amongst the top 100 cities in the U.S. The list is published by Barna Research and the American Bible Society.The most Bible-minded city in the U.S. is Chattanooga, TN, with the highest percentage of people “who report reading the Bible in a typical week and who strongly assert the Bible is accurate in the principles it teaches.”

The Madison Christian Giving Fund (MCGF) has announced its 2016 grant recipients, totalling $120,000. That’s the total amount of money raised in donations in 2015. The funds were distributed among 22 applicants. Fifty applications had been received, totalling $514,167; a total of 28 applications were rejected when the money ran out. “Ten community volunteers spent countless hours evaluating grants,” said MCGF chair Scott Haumerson. “If we had raised more, many more [ministries] would have received funding.”

Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Every year I’m a little bit amazed we have a national holiday for a pastor. And every year I’m a little bit amazed the church doesn’t embrace it more fully. This year I urge you to embrace Martin Luther King Jr. Day, even if it’s in your own small way. – See more at: http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/2016/01/embracing-mlk-day/#sthash.QhTHiIiV.dpuf

What if you were able to approach the grand narrative of the Bible by viewing brief, entry-level video summaries of each book of the Bible? Would you feel less intimidated and more able to comprehend the Bible’s complexities? Bible Gateway interviewed Tim Mackie (former pastor on the staff of Madison’s Blackhawk Church), and Jon Collins about The Bible Project.