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PARKERSBURG, Iowa – Not far from the cornfields, in the cool of the morning, Gary Hinders stood waist-deep in a grave. He held a shovel, just like the other four men who took turns digging, first through a foot-and-a-half layer of black dirt, then a mix of sand and clay and finally the stubborn hardpan.Hinders paused.“Never thought I’d be digging this one,” he said.“Not in a million years,” one of the other men said.“At least not for this reason,” added a third.This grave was for Ed Thomas, the high school football coach who a year ago served as a driving…
(UNDATED) As a crime reporter working in a rough stretch of South Dallas in the early 1990s, nothing shocked Julie Lyons. Prostitutes wandering the streets, addicts getting high on the corner, gunshots ringing through the air—it was all the norm. There was something, though, about a tiny church that got her attention. In her book, “Holy Roller,” Lyons, 46, writes about how she “got a news tip from God” that lead her to a preacher and his small black Pentecostal church that was changing lives. After writing about The Body of Christ Assembly for her alternative newspaper, Lyons, a middle-class…
Jim Stevens competed in his first Wisconsin Ironman triathlon in 2007 as a personal challenge. The hardest part was the first part, swimming. After he finished swimming 2.4 miles across Lake Monona, he found biking 112 miles and then running 26.2 miles much easier."When I came out of the water I almost dead last," he said. "I got on the bike and proceeded to pass about 700 people. On the run I passed another 700 or so." He still had 700-800 ahead of him at the finish line, but ended tenth in his 55-59 age group. After establishing the fact…
Jacob Zuma’s recent election as South Africa’s fourth president since the end of apartheid was a foregone conclusion. The question that captivated observers has been which of the Zulu traditionalist’s several wives would be first lady: The media-shy senior wife? Or the middle wife who responds to reporters’ questions with "Jesus is Lord"?Zuma’s election has raised the profile of polygamy, a mostly rural practice that has long been a challenge for Christians in Muslim nations, some parts of India, and many parts of Africa.Read more of this story.
Nearly nine months after it hit the road, Zondervan’s hand-written Bible Across America came home Wednesday bearing Scripture verses inscribed by 31,173 people.Among them: a little girl who guided her blind sister’s hand; a father who flew from Baltimore to Los Angeles to write in it with his son; and Antoinette and Jim Barry, a couple from Palos Heights, Ill., where church leaders 44 years ago conceived of the New International Version Bible.Read more of this story.
PASADENA Calif. – Dr. Ralph D. Winter, his wife Roberta, and his secretary Prudence had only about $100 in cash when they placed a bid for the $15 million campus of Pasadena College in California in 1976.The educational institution of the Church of the Nazarene, which had recently been renamed to Point Loma College, was trying to sell the campus after having purchased a new and larger campus in San Diego three years earlier, in 1973.But already on the campus was a cult known as Church Universal and Triumphant (Summit Lighthouse), whose members revere a mixture of “ascended masters” including…
Columbia Theological Seminary, in Decatur, Ga., has appointed the Rev. Stephen Hayner as president beginning on July 1. Hayner, who has taught at Columbia since 2003, has been an ordained minister in the PCUSA for 36 years.From 1988 to 2001, Hayner was president of Madison-based InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a prominent evangelical campus ministry. Read more of this story.
WASHINGTON, DC (ANS) — In a world of corruption and injustice, a single courageous voice can tell a story that changes everything. This is what lies at the heart of the emotionally-charged movie THE STONING OF SORAYA M., written and directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh, a 1974 Madison West High School graduate. Read more of this story. "The Stoning of Soraya M." – Breakpoint Commentary by Chuck Colson
ON THE campaign trail, Barack Obama famously claimed that blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania clung to religion because of bitterness over lost jobs. Americans are now truly fearful, as unemployment has mounted and house prices fallen. Yet the theory that church attendance grows in times of economic crisis seems to be a myth.Read more of this story.
(UNDATED) When cartoonist Johnny Hart died more than two years ago, many feared that his strips of spiritually probing prehistoric cavemen and talking animals would become extinct.But this May, the Hart family bound his religion-themed "B.C." comics into a new collection, bringing Johnny’s Stone Age pals back to life.And they’re still causing controversy. Read more of this story.