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Tuesday,
December 14, 2010
Come
to this page first...
it is
the quick and easy way to miss nothing
of
All the National PC(USA) news
Something we may have overlooked? Please, tell
us |
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Presbyterians
sued over alleged sex abuse
By Peter Smith / Louisville Courier-Journal |
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A
California man sued the Louisville-based Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.) Monday, saying the church failed
to protect him and other children from an alleged
sexual predator who assaulted him in 1988 in a
Congo mission boarding house.
The lawsuit, filed
in Jefferson Circuit Court, comes two months after
the church issued a 546-page report documenting
sexual or physical abuse involving its overseas
missions between 1950 and 1990. |
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| New
books offer spiritual renewal for individuals
and families this Christmas / PPC |
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"Anyone
looking for stocking stuffers this holiday might
try two new books from Westminster John Knox Press.God
is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
presents forty stirring devotions from Dietrich
Bonhoeffer...
"Popular Presbyterian
author and pastor Kathy Bostrom offers fun, practical,
and thought-provoking ideas for nurturing the
spiritual lives of children, parents, and families
in 99 Ways to Raise Spiritually Healthy Children..." |
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| Scripture
readings for today – from
the Lectionary |
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"...the
word of the LORD is upright,
and all his work
is done in faithfulness.
He loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full
of the steadfast love of the LORD..."
"The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great
light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness –
on them light has
shined.
"....For we did not follow cleverly devised
myths when we made known to you the power and
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been
eyewitnesses of his majesty..."
"...Now
the men who were holding Jesus began to mock him
and beat him; they also blindfolded him and kept
asking him, "Prophesy! Who is it that struck
you?" They kept heaping many other insults
on him..." |
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Today
in the Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study
Middle
East |
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"Because
of the Mission Yearbook production timeline, you
will be reading this introduction roughly eighteen
months after I have written it. It’s a challenge
to project what to pray for that far in advance!
Year after year, we write about – and pray
for – peace in the region, reconciliation
among its peoples, and freedom from all manner
of human repression: injustice, hostility, fear,
violence, political abuse of power, economic and
social alienation, religious intolerance. Our
prayers seem pervaded by the restive cry, “How
long, O Lord...?” But within that plaintive
appeal to the Divine lies a fundamental affirmation
of the sovereignty of God over all human history..." |
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News of all other churches.
in the USA and worldwide.
and their interaction with
the world around them.
Included: opinions, resources
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Voices
from the entire spectrum
Therefore:
Always something to like,
always something to dislike,
always something to ponder...
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| Muslims
in Pakistan burn, beat evangelist unconscious
/ CDN |
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SARGODHA,
Pakistan – An evangelist is still recovering
from burns after six young Muslim men beat him
with clubs and belts and set him on fire last
month in a village near this Punjab Province city,
the Christian told Compass.
Area Christians
said they found the Rev. Wilson Augustine, 26,
of Village No. 44-SB, unconscious with burns on
his head, hand and arm on Nov. 22 near the bus
stop of Village No. 101-NB on the outskirts of
Sargodha. |
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| HAITI:
Between violence and cholera: “the situation
is dramatic. Help us, here they need everything”
/ Fides |
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PORT
AU PRINCE – “The situation is deteriorating
further and further on the island. We have already
arrived at 2,100 dead and we are taking about
400,000 infections and 200,000 deaths if this
pandemic continues without being stopped”,
Father Antonio Menegon, Head of the Camillian
Mission in Haiti, revealed to Fides |
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| Couple
who turned to prayer instead of medicine found
guilty of manslaughter – by
Lawrence D Jones / Christian Post |
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The
Pennsylvania parents who turned to prayer instead
of medicine as their son died of bacteria pneumonia
were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter
and child endangerment on Friday.
Herbert and Catherine
Schaible could face 10 years in prison for the
manslaughter charge and up to seven years for
endangering the welfare of a child in the death
of their two-year-old son in 2009.
During the trial,
defence attorneys argued that faith played no
part in the parents' decision to forgo medical
care for their son, Kent Schaible. They said the
couple thought their son was suffering from a
severe cold and was not very sick. |
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| Celebrating
Christmas behind walls in Iraq |
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Concrete
walls up to 10 feet high are being erected around
churches in Baghdad and Mosul to protect Christmas
worshippers from being targeted by extremists.
With access points
for church-goers controlled by police with scanning
equipment, the barriers are the Iraqi government’s
response to reports of increased threats to churches
and other Christian communities in the run-up
to Christmas.
The walls, some
of which are already in place, are the strongest
signal yet of the Iraqi government’s determination
to avoid a repeat of the October 31st massacre
at Baghdad’s Syrian Catholic Cathedral of
Our Lady of Salvation, where 58 people were killed
and more than 70 others were injured. |
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Digitally
dangerous – Rewiring
our minds
By Chuck Colson |
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Vishal
is a bright high school senior who hopes to study
filmmaking in college. There’s just one problem:
Vishal is rewiring his brain in such a way that
he may never enjoy the career he dreams of.
Matt Richtel reports
in the New York Times that the digital world –
cell phones and computers – may actually
be changing how developing brains work. He notes
that many kids do homework at the same time they’re
texting friends. Others talk on the phone while
texting other friends at the same time. And they
all spend many hours every week surfing the Internet.
his kind of activity,
according to Richtel, means that the brains of
kids like Vishal “can become more easily
habituated than adult brains to constantly switching
tasks – and less able to sustain attention.”
In effect, they
develop a need for stimulation.
Christian parents
have additional reasons to be concerned. Digital
distractions may make it harder to focus on faith. |
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Love
the ones you're with
Fantasizing about the congregation you wish you
had isn't ambition, but sin.
By Doug Basler / Leadership Journal |
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My
insomnia was sin. I spent hours a week awake in
bed envisioning our church as another church.
I even had a new name and logo, Emmaus Road Presbyterian,
in the trendy all lower case letters with an ancient,
but modern, open Bible and broken piece of bread.
At 2 a.m. I agonized over our worship, wishing
it was passionate, "authentic" (whatever
that means).
Committee nights
were either couch nights, so my wife could sleep,
or medication nights, so I could sleep.
Insomnia and church
transformation are not a good combination. |
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For
the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it
Commencement message by R. Albert Mohler, Jr |
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Though
his work is almost universally known within the
English-speaking world, Charles Jennens is virtually
unknown. He was a brilliant librettist –
a writer of texts to be put to music by others.
Born in the year
1700... Jennens was greatly concerned to confront
the deism that was then spreading so quickly among
the educated classes in England in the wake of
the Enlightenment. Deism rejected the self-revelation
of God in the Bible, the need of humanity for
salvation, the deity of Christ, Christianity’s
message of salvation, and any divine judgment
to come. Deists rejected the very idea of a personal
God who can be known, the intervention of God
into human history, and all of the Bible’s
claims of miracles, prophecies, and divine promises.
Jennens went to
work on a great project he called “another
Scripture collection.” On the tenth of July
1741, he wrote a friend, stating: “Handel
says he will do nothing next winter, but I hope
I shall persuade him to set another Scripture
collection I have made for him, and perform it
for his own benefit in Passion Week. I hope he
will lay out his whole genius and skill upon it,
that the composition may excel all his former
compositions, as the subject excels every other
subject. The subject is Messiah.”
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Market
instability raises concerns about church pensions
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald / RNS |
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Religious
denominations have long provided retired clergy
and staff with secure pension payments -- more
secure, in some cases, than corporate retirement
plans.
But some recent
bumps have drawn attention to the vulnerabilities
of so-called "church plans," which are
exempt from federal regulations aimed at safeguarding
retirement funds for private-sector retirees.
"As a group,
employees in so-called church plans are far more
at risk than other private sector employees,"
said Karen Ferguson, director of the Pension Rights
Center, a Washington-based watchdog group. |
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Habitat
for Humanity ‘preaches’ Gospel to the
poor
By Jennifer LeClaire / Charisma |
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There’s
more than one way to preach the Gospel.
While five-fold
ministers and missionary groups go to the nations,
one ecumenical Christian ministry dedicated to
the cause of eliminating poverty housing is finding
success with a different approach.
Much like Jesus
met the physical and spiritual needs of the lost,
Habitat for Humanity is showing people the love
of God by rehabbing, repairing and building new
homes. Habitat just announced that it has surpassed
its 400,000th house milestone, reaching more than
2 million people around the world since the ministry
launched in 1976. |
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God's
quiet signature – Why
the rescue of the Chilean miners was a "great
miracle," and what it tells us about Hanukkah.
A Christianity Today editorial |
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"...When
you came up in October—two months before
many observers expected you to see sunlight—we
joined countless others, including your families,
in saying, "Gracias, Señor. It is
a miracle from God."
"Was it, though?
The families of the 37 miners killed a few days
later in a Chinese coal mine might ask that question
fairly...
"A common
Hebrew Hanukkah saying is nes gadol haya sham
("a great miracle happened there").
But nothing in the Maccabean revolt clearly required
divine intervention..." |
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Joseph
heard the troubling news
New hymn text for 4th Advent Sunday / Year A
By Carolyn Winfrey Gillette |
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Joseph
heard the troubling news: Mary was expecting!
What should he, a just man, do? He sought God's
directing... |
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| Letters
from readers – email
us |
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Mike
Armistead "Walter Taylor...
addresses the critics of The Fidelity And Chastity
clause in the Book of Order (G.6-0106.b) who say
that the word "chastity" is unclear
or has no precise meaning and therefore should
be discarded. Taylor is correct to point out that
this line of thinking is nothing more than deliberate
obfuscation... If the word has come to be less
clear in its meaning in the last fifteen years,
it is only because those who now oppose that standard
have tried to erase its precise use from our theological
memories..." |
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