Author: Gordon Govier

Madison has been home to a lot of failed church plants over the years. And one of them had a delicious ending.Lance Ratze moved to the Madison area from the Twin Cities in 2006 in order to plant a new Assemblies of God church. “As soon as we arrived in Madison, we were met by a lot of pastors who said, ‘This is a church planters graveyard.’ We were determined, this was going to be different.”

Julaine Appling was one of the leaders of the push for the 2006 Wisconsin constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage, and she says now she foresaw a judicial threat toward the definition of marriage. Appearing Sunday on journalist Mike Gousha’s statewide TV show “UpFront”, Appling, the executive director of Wisconsin Family Action, said it was “inappropriate” for U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb to rule against what state voters approved.

Today’s New York Times carries a front page article entitled Colleges and Evangelicals collide on Bias Policy. This is not a new issue for Madison-based InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

It was a funeral of sorts — a funeral for a church. Earlier this year, the congregation of Parkside Presbyterian Church, 4002 Lien Road, voted 17-4 to disband after nearly 100 years. Last Sunday was their final worship service.

MADISON — Bishop Robert C. Morlino announced “news of great joy” at a diocesan staff meeting on June 6: the Diocese of Madison would have its diocesan offices stay at the Bishop O’Connor Catholic Pastoral Center (BOC) along with a housing community being developed there.

Doctors once gave Kaity Klemp little chance of walking or talking or being fully functional. In July, she’s planning to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest free-standing mountain in the world.

The bishop of the United Methodist Church in Wisconsin said Tuesday that he disagrees with a national group of conservative clergy and theologians who believe the denomination is headed toward an inevitable schism over the homosexuality debate that has vexed the church for four decades. Bishop Hee-Soo Jung, who oversees the Wisconsin Conference, said the majority of Methodists would resist such a split and that it would be harmful to the denomination.

At the Alliant Energy Center — just across John Nolen Drive from Olin Park, where thousands of people once regularly gathered for the Wisconsin Sunday School Assembly meetings —  a thousand people gathered this morning for a Brat Fest worship service.”Welcome to the first-ever community wide worship service during Brat Fest,” said Blackhawk Fitchburg pastor John Rosensteel, as he gave a greeting to open the service at 8:45am.

In a meeting with Madison pastor Alex Gee today he revealed that he had not chosen the title for his December “Justified Anger” newspaper column in the Capital Times that has started a movement to address racial disparities in Madison. He acknowledged that some people are uncomfortable with anger. But, he said, “There’s no way you can identify injustices and not be angry about them.”Gee is not angry in demeanor. But as a long time resident of Madison, he has lost patience with the conditions that are holding back the city’s minority residents. He has examples from his own life…

A Wisconsin megachurch pastor hopes to entertain some of Hollywood’s A-list crowd at the Cannes Film Festival in France where he plans to present his popular and humorous “Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage” seminar.