News
By Daniel Silliman – Christianity Today – Paul Eshleman, an evangelism strategist who organized one of the largest outreach efforts of the 20th century so that everyone in the world could hear at least once that God loved them, died on May 24 at age 80. Eshleman was the director of the Jesus Film Project, producing the 1979 feature for Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) in partnership with Warner Bros. and overseeing its translation into more than 2,000 languages. Eshleman arranged for the film to be shown across the world, from places in rural Asia and Africa where people…
By Sophie Carson – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – When Judge Christopher Foley made official the last adoption of his career Friday, he threw his arms in the air and cheered with the little boy he’d invited to sit on the bench. Foley’s family, filling the courtroom gallery, applauded too. A longtime institution of Children’s Court, the judge known for his joyful approach and care for the well-being of Milwaukee County’s kids is retiring at 70 having presided over about 4,000 adoptions. He united families, fiercely advocated for children’s best interests and in some cases, welcomed them into his own family.…
Madison’s Brat Fest started 40 years ago with a table, three chairs and a grill. So selling over 100,000 brats over a holiday weekend is impressive. So was what looked like the largest crowd ever at the annual Brat Fest community worship service. For the second year in a row, the 2023 worship service was hosted by Sun Prairie’s Heartland Church. A show of hands revealed about two-thirds of the crowd at the Main Stage Sunday morning were from Heartland. One count put attendees at 950. Looking out over the sun-soaked crowd, Heartland pastor Jon McNary said, “I think this…
by Gordon Govier, MadisonChristians.com – Lighthouse Church is not the first in Madison to offer a food pantry…or a Christian school. But few churches offer both in such a robust manner. The newly built Extended Hands food pantry attached to the northwest end of the Lighthouse church and school building was dedicated with prayers and a ribbon-cutting ceremony, Thursday afternoon, May 18, 2023. The growing complex is located at 6402 Schroeder Road on Madison’s westside in what started out as a Rayovac office building, and then for many years served as the national office of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Andy and…
This month a new organization aimed at keeping children safe and families together is officially launching in Madison. The goal is to provide support for families in order to keep children from ending up in the foster care system. “Safe Families For Children is already at work in 15 counties of Wisconsin,” says Brit Grange, Dane County Director. “Across the state, through Safe Families, 971 children were hosted and kept out of foster care last year.” Safe Families For Children began 20 years ago in Chicago as an effort to provide a safety net for vulnerable children. Founder and Executive…
By David Dahmer – Madison365 – Sherman Avenue United Methodist Church, a multicultural community of faith on Madison’s north side, will host a worship service event on Saturday, April 22, titled “God is Love: Radical Inclusion” to acknowledge the United Methodist Church’s 55th anniversary of its decision to be fully racially inclusive. “It’ll be a worship service where we acknowledge the 55th anniversary of the United Methodist Church combining into one organization and becoming fully inclusive racially,” Sherman Church Rev. David Hart tells Madison365. Read the rest of this story.
By Tom Lin – InterVarsity Christian Fellowship – If you were in an InterVarsity chapter in college, you know InterVarsity focuses on developing student leaders who follow Jesus as Lord and see their campus as a mission field. But doing this for the current student generation, Gen Z, has seemed like a daunting challenge for some. How do you equip an un-churched generation that struggles with mental health into Christian leadership? Besides leading InterVarsity, I’m also a father of two Gen Z daughters. And I want to say at the outset, this generation has the curiosity, the heart, and the…
By Dcn. Kaitlyn Wallett – For the Collaboration Project – I moved to Madison in 2018 to help plant Christ Church Madison, having no connections in the city outside our little church plant community. I’d been on staff at our sending church for the last four years, alongside nearly two dozen incredible brothers and sisters, spiritual moms and dads, serving our congregation of 1000+, where I had worshiped since my first year of college. The shift to a brand new city, and a baby church with a two-person staff team was exciting, but also felt really isolating. I arrived in…
By Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra – The Gospel Coalition – Kenosha Christian Academy was supposed to be a church plant. “Throughout seminary, I had a growing desire to do ministry in a hard place,” said Justin Denney. After finishing his MDiv at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), he came on staff at Crossway Community Church in Bristol, Wisconsin, as a church planting resident in 2018. Crossway knew exactly where they wanted him to go—into the Wilson neighborhood of nearby Kenosha, where they’d been running an after-school program for the past eight years. Read the rest of this story.
By Olivia Herken – Wisconsin State Journal – A new private Christian school will open in Verona in the fall of 2024 after the City Council reconsidered a rezoning request that had been denied in January. Impact Christian Schools plans to open the high school in the top floor of the Verona Athletic Center, 411 Prairie Heights Drive, in what had been a banquet space that has gone mostly unleased, Impact Christian Executive Director Charles Moore said. The space fits Impact’s desire to have a private school near Madison’s West Side and already includes a large kitchen and plenty of…