MC News

Have you noticed how many young Christian leaders have hit Madison in the last year or so? For me, anyone under 40 is really young! It almost seems like God is in the process of calling a new generation of leaders to break new ground to expand His Kingdom here in Madison and beyond.  For someone like me with a relatively short runway, this is very exciting.   These new young leaders, called by God to areas of significant responsibility, are not intimidated by the anti-Christian environment here.  They don’t even recognize it.  They are not affected by the old paradigms,…

The state’s new concealed carry law is causing churches to discuss whether to post signs banning concealed weapons, and at least some parishioners are finding the discussion pretty tricky.

  While some Protestant churches deal with divisions within their congregations, one Wisconsin church will be taking its affiliation dispute to court. About 70 members of Grace Lutheran Church of Eau Claire are asking a judge to declare their church exclusively affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. An initial vote taken by the congregation to disaffiliate from the ELCA and join the more conservative Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ failed, but in April Grace Lutheran’s church council then decided to have their church be affiliated with both groups.

To certain Catholics, Peter Kreeft is a rock star. That was evident Nov. 18, when nearly 500 people filled an auditorium at the Bishop O’Connor Center in Madison to hear him talk. Kreeft, a Catholic author and Boston College philosophy professor, had been asked by the Catholic Diocese of Madison to speak on whether “a Catholic can be a liberal.”

To certain Catholics, Peter Kreeft is a rock star. That was evident Nov. 18, when nearly 500 people filled an auditorium at the Bishop O’Connor Center in Madison to hear him talk. Kreeft, a Catholic author and Boston College philosophy professor, had been asked by the Catholic Diocese of Madison to speak on whether “a Catholic can be a liberal.”

Some people come to the University of Wisconsin to play football. And some football players come here to make an impact. From the first time people meet UW senior free safety Aaron Henry, there is no question to which group he belongs. “God has put me in a position where I choose my path. Nobody else can choose it for me. I easily could have been on a corner, doing drugs, or in jail. I chose the alternate route. It probably wasn’t the cool thing back then, but me graduating and getting a college degree, it’s definitely going to be cool…

The votes are in, and from five finalists Andy Czerkas has been selected winner of AARP Foundation’s Hunger Hero contest. Andy’s charity, The River Food Pantry, will receive a $15,000 donation from AARP Foundation to help that organization continue its work to end senior hunger. In addition, he will receive an AARP The Magazine Inspire Award in December 2011, and will be featured in the December/January 2012 issue of AARP The Magazine.

Bethel Lutheran Church in Madison, one of the largest ELCA churches in the state at 6,000 members, has hired a new senior pastor. The Rev. Scot Sorensen will begin his ministry at Bethel Nov. 28 and lead his first Sunday service Dec. 4. He comes from Sacramento, Calif., where he has served as senior pastor at St. John’s Lutheran Church since 1999.

They were dubbed the Millionaire Monks, a small monastic community in rural Wisconsin feted around the world for its wildly successful Internet business selling laser printer inks and toners. As recently as 2009, the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank was projecting annual sales of $3.5 million for its for-profit business, LaserMonks Inc. And their prior and chief executive officer, Father Bernard McCoy, was talking expansion – of both the company and the abbey. Today, the monks’ 15,000-square-foot home on 500 acres in Sparta is all but empty.

The dinner at Lakeview Lutheran Church on Madison’s North Side had just begun when church volunteer Dale Matthews burst into the kitchen yelling, “More lutefisk!” To many people, that’s a counter-intuitive phrase. The Scandinavian dish — cod treated with lye, then boiled — is more often the butt of jokes than the cause of a culinary stampede.