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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.
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.
Members of Madison’s Jewish community will celebrate Sunday the completion of a new Torah scroll for Chabad of Madison. Celebrants will gather at Hotel RED, 1501 Monroe St., at 11 a.m. before parading a few blocks with the Torah scroll under a traditional canopy to Chabad of Madison, 1722 Regent St., where the scroll will be housed.
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…
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…
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.
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.
The train stopped at the border between Hungary and Romania. Bob Grahmann was sitting in the last row of seats. He saw the glaring searchlights, the dogs, and the barbed wire outside. He watched as guards boarded the train with their machine guns and methodically rifled through the passengers’ luggage. It was 1983, at the height of the Cold War. Bob was an InterVarsity Area Director in New Jersey with four years of campus ministry experience preceded by four years as a local church pastor. A friend working in Eastern Europe had invited Bob to teach church history to Romanian…
This summer I set out on a mission to get to know the congregation and amplify your voices. Coming in, I never imagined the pure depth of the congregation and how incredibly diverse the different niches are. Every story I wrote, every person I was introduced to seemed to have a different thing they were passionate about and was able to bring that energy to help further the church. Admittedly, I’m not a particularly religious or spiritual person. I grew up Jewish, going to temple a few Friday’s of the year and for the High Holidays (some would dub me…
Madison, Wis (WMTV) — The Catholic Multicultural Center (CMC) in Madison is breaking employment barriers by providing culinary arts training and creating a recipe for change. A former participant, Joseph Crenshaw, said the program changed his life. Crenshaw came from the inner city of Chicago and made his way to Madison –searching for a second chance. “Change is hard, but you can do it,” Crenshaw said.