MC News
MADISON — For years, people have come to the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry on Fish Hatchery Rd. in Madison to get a helping hand to feed themselves and their families. Now, just one floor below the pantry, people with nowhere else to turn can get assistance with their medications.
It was getting pretty steamy this week at The River Food Pantry on Madison’s north side after thieves stole copper tubing and condensers from two industrial-size air conditioners there, disabling the cooling system. “It was brutal in here yesterday, over 90 degrees,” pantry co-founder Jenny Czerkas told me Tuesday amid a busy food pantry session. The crowd that attracts — in addition to heat from the open kitchen where daily meals are prepared — means the building at 2201 Darwin Road warms up pretty quickly.
A few months ago, Stephen Marsh, my fellow pastor, and I walked into Chief’s Tavern on the east side of Madison, Wis., ordered a couple pints, sat on a pair of stools and discussed an idea that would eventually have a massive impact on the congregation we serve together. In specifics, we wondered whether we could spark a ministry by fusing two of our most treasured Lutheran traditions: beers and hymns.
God may be omnipresent — but His priests aren’t. So a holy man in Madison, Wisc., has turned to app development, along with divine guidance, to find a better way to tend to the needs of his 800-family flock. Father Richard Heilman is launching a My Confessor App that will let his parishioners know when and where he is available to listen to their sins. Read more of this story.
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans said its members have approved selling insurance products to other Christian denominations for the first time in its 111-year history. The change will enable the fraternal benefit organization’s 2,300 financial representatives to sell insurance products — such as life, disability, long-term care and annuities — to people who are not Lutheran.
RACINE — Interfaith religious leaders from throughout Wisconsin made a call for “compassionate and just” immigration reform on Tuesday in Racine. As momentum to reform the national immigration system builds in the U.S. Senate and House, religious leaders and people of faith must mobilize to help push it through, speakers said.
Immigration as a political issue lives mostly in the shadows in the Madison area. Sure, there’s the march up West Washington Avenue to the Capitol on May 1 with a few hundred immigrants and their supporters calling for reform. Sure, there were recent meetings with Madison Mayor Paul Soglin to organize the business community for reform and with a representative of Republican Sen. Ron Johnson to throw cold water on the hopes for reform. But immigration is not the hot-button issue here that it is in many states.
The view is tranquil. The quiet is calming. A step on the path is meant as the start of a journey toward inner peace. Meet the brick labyrinth on the Middleton farm known as Hillsong Ridge. It is only the latest of nearly 20 labyrinths to spring up in and around the Madison area over the past decade, part of a growing movement to counter modern-day stresses with an ancient and mysterious tool.
All movies have a message, multiple messages in fact. The main message of Not Today, opening at the Marcus Point Cinema this Friday is that you, here in Madison, can have an impact on the terrible scourge of human trafficking.
Thirteen Elmbrook members arrived in Oklahoma City last week to volunteer with the international Christian relief agency Samaritan’s Purse. Part relief workers, part Christian evangelists, the volunteers are part of Elmbrook’s disaster relief ministry, which grew out of its work in the Gulf Coast region after Hurricane Katrina.