MC News

When Casey Johnson and Nathan Hobert five years ago were starting what is now Redeemer City Church in Fitchburg, they had a broad vision of what it could be. “We knew we wanted to be a church that was going to bless the community,” Johnson said. “We wanted to be very involved and we wanted to be Jesus incarnate in our city.” Now Redeemer City has its own building on the west side of Fitchburg in a neighborhood that is short on community resources. They have partnered with two elementary schools, helped create an afterschool-program for children in a neighborhood isolated…

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The small wooden church is half-hidden, nestled on a hill in southeastern Wisconsin in the city of Delafield. St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church was built in 1851, one of the historic “carpenter Gothic” churches surviving in the United States, and on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s such a quiet place residents often forget it’s there, though it was established by the pioneer founders of the city.

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In a world of digital communication and fast responses, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church and Orchard Ridge Elementary are slowing it down in an ongoing pen pal partnership. Each year, third grade students at the southwest Madison school are paired with a community member from Good Shepherd, which is only about a block away. They participate in regular communication through the writing of letters once a month. As they connect through written words, a relationship is formed.

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The photos and video footage has been terrifying from the Bahamas the last couple of days where seven people have died and Hurricane Dorian has inflicted unprecedented devastation. It’s been a nightmare for End Time Ministries International Senior Pastor Godfrey Stubbs here in Madison who grew up in the Bahamas and still has family and friends there who have been devastated by the hurricane and are facing the daunting task of rebuilding and restoring their residences after the damage.

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CHICAGO (RNS) — On a near-perfect late summer evening, about a dozen people gathered on a picnic blanket in Chicago’s Palmer Square Park, spread between kids playing on playground equipment and young adults throwing a Frisbee disc on the lawn. Accompanied by the crunch of joggers’ footsteps on the gravel path circling the narrow strip of green in the city’s trendy Logan Square neighborhood and the rumbling of a passing El train, one of the picnickers took a piece of pita bread and broke it in half. “This is our body,” he said, passing it to the person sitting next…

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A single van-full of 6 middle school students and their leader spending a week in the summer serving at a local school. This is how Blackhawk Church’s Madison Missions began back in 2001. It was an idea to teach middle school students the vision and mission of Jesus to serve in the community. Since then, has grown into a summer of week-long service camp; this year has seen 293 students with 60 leaders serving a total of 5,500 hours with 70 different organizations. It is a classic example of how one congregation (yes, a very large congregation) can collaborate with lots…

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Rev. Staci Marrese-Wheeler isn’t sure exactly when the idea for the school Weekend Nutrition Program started. All she knows is it neither began nor ends with her. Her particular involvement started about five years ago. “A few years ago a colleague of mine at St. Luke’s Episcopal, the Rev. Dr. Paula Harris, and I had been talking about ways our churches could better serve our neighborhoods,” Marrese-Wheeler said. She is pastor of Lakeview Moravian Community Church on the east side of Madison, near St. Luke’s, as well as Glenwood Moravian on the west side.

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After a heated months-long battle with the city of Madison over whether Edgewood High School’s athletic field can be used to host games, the Catholic school filed a federal lawsuit against the city Wednesday alleging religious discrimination. The lawsuit claims Madison has imposed city ordinances in an “arbitrary, unequal and unlawful” way by restricting the use of Edgewood’s athletic field to only team practice and gym classes, and refusing to give the school an electrical permit to add lights to the field.

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