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By Christ Rickert – Wisconsin State Journal – Becky Mack had a rough start to life. Raised along with her four siblings by a drug-addicted, “nomad” father, she suffered abuse and was intermittently removed from his care by child welfare workers until she went into foster care for good at the age 8 when the family moved to Madison. But 28 years later, Mack is proof that a rough start doesn’t have to define the finish. With some help from sources both earthly and divine, Mack got her high school diploma, then her certified nursing assistant license, then her nursing…

Nationally recognized Christian Hip Hop artists Steven Malcolm and George.Rose are headlining an afternoon of music at Madison’s Olin Park this coming Saturday, September 27. The concert runs from 11:00 am to 5:00pm, and will also include local artists. Clear Hits Radio, an internet radio station is sponsoring this concert, with financial support from United Madison Christian Givers. Clear Hits Radio was one of the first winners in a new granting procedure started earlier this year by United Madison Christian Givers, formerly the Madison Christian Giving Fund. Their winning proposal featured a “Welcome Back Hip Hop” concert for UW students…

By Cara Buckley – New York Times The prairie sisters of Wisconsin would never call themselves renegades. Not in their decision to open their Roman Catholic community to Protestants. And not in their decades-long work restoring 170 acres around their monastery to ecological health, transforming lawns and farm fields into thriving oak savanna and native prairie that is riotous with wildflowers and grasses, insects, rabbits and birds. The sisters of Holy Wisdom Monastery outside Madison, Wisc., say these actions fulfill their highest calling: to welcome all people and care for the Earth as a sacred place. The sisters have won…

In a message at the beginning of the 2025 fall semester, the University of Wisconsin urged students to review their class schedule and “note with your instructors any need for academic flexibility due to religious or cultural observances.” The note added that relief from an exam or assignment should be requested within the first two weeks of classes. The university and other state schools have a religious observance policy as mandated by state statute. The UW policy states: “A student’s claim of a religious conflict, which may include travel time, should be accepted at face value. A great variety of…

By Nicole Pollack – Wisconsin State Journal – The former Lakeview Moravian Community Church has stood for about 70 years on a triangular block in Madison’s Eastmorland neighborhood. Now empty, the single-story building at 3565 Tulane Ave. will soon be demolished for 26 lower-cost apartments and a new Eastmorland Community Center. The church’s two congregations, known collectively as Common Grace, have relocated temporarily to St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Monona but will return after construction to worship in the community center’s multi-use performance space. Upwards of 75 people showed up Wednesday to celebrate the church and community center breaking ground…

The 74th Annual Tour of Madison for New International Students was one of the largest tours in recent memory. An announced total of 358 student signed up for the tour, arriving at Engineering Hall on the University of Wisconsin campus on a sunny Labor Day afternoon to be introduced to their new home city. In a second auditorium in Engineering Hall almost 200 volunteers from several dozen Madison area churches gathered to be briefed on the logistics of this annual all-volunteer effort. Students and volunteers alike had to navigate a disruptive construction zone on the engineering campus, due to the…

By Barry Adams – Wisconsin State Journal – The mission here is care and compassion. And over the years, Madison’s oldest church congregation has lived up to its charge, behind and beyond the red doors that stand out amid the weathered sandstone at the corner of West Washington Avenue and Capitol Square. Grace Episcopal Church hosted the city’s men’s homeless shelter from 1984 to 2020 and continues to minister to the homeless. The church has operated a food pantry for more than 50 years, offers free concerts and has undertaken mission trips to Haiti. But caring for its own building…

By David Dahmer – Madison365 – End Time Ministries International, in partnership with Families Back to the Table Inc. and Darren and Shoney Pruitt, owners of The Nutrition Lounge in Rockford, Illinois, partnered to give away over 300 backpacks filled with school supplies to children in the Madison area during the annual End Time Back to School giveaway and mini-carnival on Saturday, Aug. 16. “We strategized and pooled our resources together,” Bishop Godfrey Stubbs of End Time Ministries International tells Madison365. “We had a budget of $5,000, and although we went a little over, we didn’t mind because we genuinely…

After President Trump suspended the refugee admissions program, some new arrivals found themselves out in the Wisconsin cold. With help, they have survived. Story by Kurt Streeter for the New York Times in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The January wind stung Luismar Liendo and Edwin Perez the moment they stepped from the plane into Eau Claire, Wis. They had landed in a place colder than they had ever known, a biting contrast to the swelter of their native Venezuela. The married couple, political dissidents, had been granted refugee status by the United States, and pictured this new land as a welcoming…

By Chris Rickert – Wisconsin State Journal – Over nearly 40 years working with Madison-based InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Scott Bessenecker has helped send thousands of college students on trips to “slum communities” overseas as part of programs to build bridges between those of us living in developed, rich countries like the United States and those of us who don’t. The point is not to proselytize, Bessenecker says, and not even necessarily to help people dig wells or build community centers or do other immediately tangible good works like in the Peace Corps. Instead, the summerlong programs might be called “incarnational,”…