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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,”…

By Patricio Crooker – Madison Capital Times – Led by retired Madison Police Chief David Couper, a crowd of protesters literally took up a cross on Saturday to send a message that President Donald Trump’s policies are cruel to vulnerable people. Marchers carried an 8-foot-long wooden cross, mimicking the suffering of Jesus Christ as he carried his own burden leading to his crucifixion, as told in the Christian bible. Couper and many of the other protesters are members of the clergy, representing a variety of faith communities. Read more of this story.

A few religious leaders will carry an eight-foot wooden cross up State Street at 11 a.m. Saturday to protest the cruelty of Donald Trump’s government. They will start at Lake and State streets and will finish at the state Capitol. Everyone is invited. Madison, of course, has many protests, but this one stands out because of the backstory of its principal organizer. For much of his adult life, David Couper was Madison’s transformational police chief, employing innovative policies and hiring a diverse and well-educated workforce. Couper’s mastery as police chief extended to peacefully accommodating Madison’s many protests, always honoring First…

By Nicholas Garton – Madison365.com – A few local churches are gathering on Sunday, July 27, at the Duck Pond, the home of the Madison Mallards and Madison Night Mares, for a special worship service. The service will run from 10:45-11:45 a.m. and will be followed by a Night Mares game at 1:05 p.m. The church service will be free and the game will have regularly priced tickets. Sherman Avenue United Methodist Church, Sugar River United Methodist Church, and St. John’s Lutheran Church will be involved in the worship service, with Sherman Church reverend David Hart speaking from the pulpit.…

Where else are you invited to a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how visionary, faithful Christians are creatively meeting needs in the local population, and then given the opportunity to vote on who might be the most deserving to receive extra needed funding? That’s was the format once again as United Madison Christian Givers (UMCG) met this week at the InterVarsity building in University Research Park, for their third quarterly Grant Award Meeting. Our previous reports are here: Winter and Spring.  “We are a Jesus-centered Christian organization,” UMCG president Josh Kaurich said as he introduced the evening. These ministries were then given the…