‘This country wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for a deep-seated belief in God and firearms’

General MacArthur goes to war

John MacArthur writes…

“Former NASDAQ chairman Bernie Madoff ran a ponzi-scheme swindle for nearly 20 years, and he bilked an estimated $18 billion from Wall-Street investors. When the scam finally came to light it unleashed a shockwave of outrage around the world. It was the largest and most far-reaching investment fraud ever.

But the evil of Madoff’s embezzlement pales by comparison to an even more diabolical fraud being carried out in the name of Christ under the bright lights of television cameras on religious networks worldwide every single day. Faith healers and prosperity preachers promise miracles in return for money, conning their viewers out of more than a billion dollars annually. They have operated this racket on television for more than five decades. Worst of all, they do it with the tacit acceptance of most of the Christian community.

Someone needs to say this plainly: The faith healers and health-and-wealth preachers who dominate religious television are shameless frauds. Their message is not the true gospel of Jesus Christ. There is nothing spiritual or miraculous about their on-stage chicanery. It is all a devious ruse designed to take advantage of desperate people. They are not godly ministers but greedy impostors who corrupt the Word of God for money’s sake. They are not real pastors who shepherd the flock of God but hirelings whose only design is to fleece the sheep. Their love of money is glaringly obvious in what they say as well as how they live. They claim to possess great spiritual power, but in reality they are rank materialists and enemies of everything holy.

There is no reason anyone should be deceived by this age-old con, and there is certainly no justification for treating the hucksters as if they were authentic ministers of the gospel. Religious charlatans who make merchandise of false promises have been around since the apostolic era. They pretend to be messengers of Christ, but they are interlopers and impostors. The apostles condemned them with the harshest possible language. Paul called them “men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain” (1 Timothy 6:5). Peter called them false prophets with “heart[s] trained in greed” (2 Peter 2:14). He warned that “in their greed they will exploit you with false words” (v. 3). He exposed them as scoundrels and dismissed them as “stains and blemishes” on the church (v. 13). 

Those biblical descriptions certainly fit the greed-driven cult of prosperity preachers and faith healers who unfortunately, thanks to television, have become the best-known face of Christianity worldwide. The scam they operate ought to be a bigger scandal than any Wall Street ponzi scheme or big-time securities fraud. After all, those who are most susceptible to the faith-healers’ swindle are not well-to-do investors but some of society’s most vulnerable people—including multitudes who are already destitute, disconsolate, disabled, elderly, sick, suffering, or dying. The faith-healer gets lavishly rich while the victims become poorer and more desperate.

But the worst part of the scandal is that it’s not really a scandal at all in the eyes of most evangelical Christians. Those who should be most earnest in defense of the truth have taken a shockingly tolerant attitude toward the prosperity preachers’ blatant misrepresentation of the gospel and their wanton exploitation of needy people. “But we don’t want to judge,” they say. Thus Christians fail to exercise righteous judgment (John 7:24). They refuse to be discerning at all.

How many manifestos and written declarations of solidarity have evangelicals issued condemning abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and other social evils? It’s fine, and fairly easy, to oppose wickedness and injustice in secular society, but where is the corresponding moral outrage against these religious mountebanks who openly, brashly pervert the gospel for profit 24 hours a day, seven days a week on international television?

Advocates of abortion and euthanasia don’t usually try to pass their message off as biblical. The people who say we need to redefine marriage haven’t portrayed themselves as an arm of the church. But the prosperity preachers deceive people in Jesus’ name, claiming to speak for God—while stealing both the souls and the sustenance of hurting people. That is a far greater abomination than any of the social evils Christians typically protest. After all, what the prosperity preachers do is not only a sin against poor, sick, and vulnerable people; it also blasphemes God, corrupts the gospel, and profanes the reputation of Christ before a watching world. It not only tears at the fabric of our society; it also befouls the purity of the visible church and abates the influence of the true gospel. It is surely among the grossest of all the evils currently rampant in our culture.

In the weeks to come, we’re going to be looking at the preposterous claims and false teachings of some of religious television’s best-known figures. We’ll analyze why a disproportionate number of celebrity faith-healers and prosperity preachers have succumbed to serious immorality. And we’ll see what Scripture says about how Bible-believing Christians ought to respond. I hope this series will challenge you to take a more active stand against the phony miracles and false teachings that are being peddled in the name of Christ.”

From http://www.shepherdsfellowship.org/pulpit/posts.aspx?ID=4459&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PulpitMagazine+%28Pulpit+Magazine%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

From Moral Majority to Jesus Minority

The Battle Creek Enquirer reports…

“Ed Dobson, wearing a suit too large for his thin frame, paced across the stage as he preached Sunday at Second Missionary Baptist Church.

He pumped his legs and spoke in short, punctuated phrases, firing up the congregation like a piston in an engine.

The crowd called out in response because they knew this little, white man had a big story to tell.

The 46-year-old Grand Rapids pastor devoted a year of his life to living like Jesus.

That meant that during 2008, he kept a kosher diet, attended synagogue and observed Jewish holidays. He did not trim his beard, which grew past his shirt’s third button.

It also meant picking up hitchhikers and taking them wherever they needed to go. The normally teetotaling Dobson did not refuse a drink when preaching in bars, just as Jesus reached out to sinners and drank wine on certain occasions.

And in a move that defied the conservative politicians with whom he had been associated, he told Good Morning America in January that he voted for Barack Obama because that’s the president he thinks Jesus would have chosen.

Claps of approval erupted from the pews at his omission.

For a man who was once an executive in the Moral Majority, a conservative Christian political lobbying group, he is fond of admitting that really living like Jesus will, “mess you up.”

Dobson joked that the first thing he ate New Year’s Day was a shrimp wrapped in bacon — the kosher thing didn’t work out — but he continues to sport a shortened version of his black-and-gray-streaked beard.

He said his journey was not a gimmick to write a new book — though his book, “The Year of Living like Jesus,” was published earlier this year. It wasn’t about becoming a more spiritual person either.

It was simply three things: to live more like Jesus, to think more like Jesus and to obey Jesus’ teachings.

“I’ve always tried to follow Jesus and this was the next step,” he said.

Dobson preached Sunday on the story of Jesus walking on water. He described a storm that ripped across the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus’ disciples were trying to row to shore.

Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples known for his impulsivity, saw his master walking on the water and asked to join him. Jesus called, and Peter stepped out of the boat to walk with him.

Dobson bobbed faster across the stage in his peculiarly undulating way, as if he were there on the water with Jesus and Peter.

The Grand Rapids pastor has been distinguished in his career as an author, minister and community leader, yet he felt constrained in his ability to know Jesus better, like the disciples who tried in vain to paddle against the waves.

So Dobson did what Peter did. He stepped out of the boat.

“For the first time in my life, I was able to follow his teaching outside the confines,” he said.

His wife did not follow him, but supported his decision. His kids thought his journey was at times “funny, weird, convicting and challenging,” he said.

Every day he listened to the Gospels on his iPod, which he said begs the question, “Would Jesus use an iPod?”

Dobson said he listened because he didn’t want to fall into skimming the first four books of the New Testament. Each time he listened, he grew deeper in his understanding.

It moved him to pick up hitchhikers and hand out money, no matter how far a person needed to travel or how many times they asked for help.

In one instance, Dobson said he was driving in the “hood” in Grand Rapids on a snowy February day. The sidewalks had not been cleared, and a 6-foot-7-or-possibly-8-inch tall man, weighing probably 350 pounds, was walking in the street.

Dobson, whose frail hands show the effects of a muscular deterioration due to Lou Gehrig’s disease, pulled the car over and asked, “Hey dude, you need a ride?”

The man silently slipped into his vehicle, and after a few moments said, “You’re a little, white dude and I’m a great, big, African American man. Why in the world did you pick me up?”

Dobson wanted to say because he was trying to be more like Jesus, but instead said, “Dude, it’s cold. It’s winter and it looks like you need a ride.”

Besides, Dobson thought, if he killed me he’d be doing me a favor. Lou Gehrig’s disease, scientifically known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a slow deterioration of muscles and nerves leading ultimately to death.

Dobson said the experts gave him two to five years to live. That was more than nine years ago.

“When I get ticked that another muscle doesn’t work, I remember God wrapped himself in human flesh and it encourages me,” he said.

It encourages Debra Evans, too. She has been a member of Second Missionary Baptist Church since the beginning of the year, but a Christian most of her life.

When her baby boy was born seven years ago with what the doctors called abnormal brain development, she wasn’t sure she had the faith to help her son.

Doctors continued to monitor him for mental development. Scans of his brain indicated he should be disabled, but he ate and laughed like any other baby. Today, she said, he is in school and doing fine.

Though she said she didn’t know it then, now she understands — as Dobson also said — that all you can do it trust God to have mercy and know that he has it in abundance.

“You have to believe to receive,” she said. “Unless you’ve been there, you’ll never know.”

From http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20091207/NEWS01/912070311/Living-the-gospel

We just want some coffee

I ‘checked my brain somewhere’

The Citizen reports…

“A superior court judge has ordered all of Pastor Robert Farah’s assets, including his three properties, frozen despite his personal pleas to release them.

Farah, who represented himself before Judge Kathleen McGuire in Belknap County Superior Court Friday, had been named as a respondent in a suit filed by Robert Furgerson, one of the alleged victims of his son, Scott David Farah’s alleged Ponzi scheme. After the suit was filed, McGuire ordered that all of the respondents’ assets be temporarily frozen until Friday’s hearing.

“Everything I own is attached,” said Robert Farah. “Me and my wife. We can’t pay for anything.”

Furgerson came from Arizona to testify and said he was enticed by Robert Farah to invest the proceeds of a real estate sale into some investments coordinated by Scott David Farah.

Represented by attorney Chris Carter, Furgerson needed to show that Robert Farah substantially influenced Furgerson’s decision to invest through Financial Resources Mortgage, Inc. and that his finances were linked to that of his son.

Furgerson said he first became aware of Financial Resources Mortgage, Inc. when he received a postcard solicitation and, after some investigation, he made a $60,000 investment. He said after that he often received phone calls from Scott Farah but, when Scott Farah learned of his real estate sale, the frequency of the calls increased.

He testified that Robert Farah called him once or twice, a claim Robert Farah denied.

Furgerson said he continued to demure on the larger investment and Scott David Farah invited him to visit New Hampshire and offered him his father’s cottage on Lake Winnipesaukee to stay.

“It was kind of like Beaver Cleaver,” said Furgerson as he described how both Farahs and their wives and children made him dinner during his visit.

“We held hands and prayed and part of that prayer was that [his son's] business continued to prosper,” Furgerson said. “It was like a movie set.”

He said it was just before the meal that Robert Farah encouraged him to invest, adding, in retrospect, he thinks he must have “checked his brain somewhere.”

As Robert Farah continued to deny he had any active role in his son’s business, Carter provided document after document that he said proved just the opposite — including one that listed Robert Farah as one of the incorporators of Financial Resources Mortgage, Inc., in 1989 when the company was formed.

Robert Farah admitted to lending his son the money to start FRM but said he withdrew his interests once the company got going.

Carter also stated that one parcel of land that was sold to Furgerson through a realty trust was once owned by the Center Harbor Christian Church.

Robert Farah replied that the Center Harbor Christian Fellowship once owned the land while the church he ministers is the Center Harbor Christian Church.

He denied that either he or his son used the pulpit to solicit investors. “We are a poor church. Many of my parishioners are unemployed,” Robert Farah said.

Carter also called on Oskar Klenert, the owner Earth Protection Systems, who claimed Scott David Farah raised $2.5 million, allegedly for his company, and Furgerson was a supposed investor.

Klenert said he had not planned to testify, coming to Laconia from his home on Cape Cod like many other erstwhile investors to see the proceedings and to try and learn what was happening. He said he had known Robert Farah for nearly 40 years and Farah encouraged by him to go see Scott David Farah to raise money for his invention, the Earth Cell Module.

“Do you know [Robert Farah]?” McGuire asked him.

“Yes,” said Klenert.

“Is what is represented by Mr. Carter true?” she continued.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Did he induce you?” she asked.

“No,” replied Klenert. “It was some kind of plan and after the loans were paid I agreed to give him part of the business.”

Following the hearing, Klenert and Farah spoke briefly though it is not known what the two longtime acquaintances said to each other.

In the hallway, Robert Farah acknowledged the hearing did not go the way he had hoped but he declined to say more.

Klenert said he was completely taken aback by what he heard in court about Scott David Farah’s dealings and the number of people he allegedly defrauded. He said he hoped the Farahs live the rest of their lives with some element of remorse.

“I say, let the truth prevail,” said Klenert. “

From http://www.citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091205/GJNEWS02/712059957/-1/CITNEWS

NIMBY ministry

NPR reports…

Play audio

“More than 20 states, including Florida, limit where convicted sex offenders can live — keeping them away from schools, parks and other places where children congregate.

In Miami, dozens of homeless sex offenders live under a bridge because there are few, if any, options nearby. But 90 miles away, there’s a community dedicated to housing sex offenders.

Where Electronic Monitors Fill The Pews

On a recent Sunday morning, a few dozen men and just a few women gather at a little country church near Pahokee, Fla. They sing, pray and stand up to testify about the importance of God in their lives.

About the only sign that there’s something unusual about this church comes when it’s time for communion. Many of the men making their way to the altar are wearing ankle bracelets and electronic monitors on their belts.

This is the church at Miracle Park, a community mostly made up of sex offenders. Dick Witherow is their pastor.

Standing at the altar, he challenges the congregation. “How many of you were looking for God when you got saved?” He laughs, “You didn’t choose God. He chose us.”

Witherow is a tall, spare man, 76 years old, a former private detective.

Shortly after he entered the ministry some 30 years ago, he began working in prisons, holding prayer services and doing addiction counseling.

Then, about a decade ago, he began focusing on sex offenders. After some horrific sex crimes involving children, Florida became one of the first states to pass laws restricting where sex offenders could live after they’re released from prison — effectively banning them from some communities.

Ministering To ‘Modern-Day Lepers’

Witherow began looking at places where he could open a residential program for sex offenders, which didn’t endear him to nearby communities. “I tell people I’m the most popular man in town,” he says. “And of course, I’m saying that facetiously.”

Witherow believes people can change. At Miracle Park, those on probation attend weekly court-ordered sex therapy sessions. He also offers anger-management classes and sessions on relationships, inner healing and life skills.

Witherow has authored a book about sex offenders called The Modern Day Leper. He says he could have worn the same label as the men at Miracle Park. He was 18 years old when he met his first wife. She was just 14, and before long she was pregnant. A judge allowed them to get married but told Witherow he could have been charged with statutory rape.

“If that would have happened in today’s society, I would have been charged with sexual battery on a minor, been given anywhere from 10 to 25 years in prison, plus extended probation time after that, and then been labeled a sex offender,” he says.

Witherow knows that there are those who argue that’s what should have happened.

‘The Cry Was So Loud … All Over Town’

Witherow once had a ranch for sex offenders in Okeechobee County. But zoning law changes forced that facility to close. His search for another spot brought him here, to a small community he renamed Miracle Park. It’s a collection of duplexes about 3 miles east of the town of Pahokee, in rural Palm Beach County.

It’s surrounded on every side by sugar cane fields. About 40 of those living there now are sex offenders.

“It’s open to everybody,” Witherow says. “However, the only ones that are really looking to be out here in the boondocks and pay $100 a week to live with somebody else, basically, are those who don’t have anyplace else to go, which are the sex offenders.”

Witherow didn’t have the $5.5 million the owner wanted for the property. So instead of buying it, he became the property manager. One of his first acts was to let families with children know that a community of sex offenders was moving in, and that they might want to move out.

Most of the families left. Several later sued, saying they were forced from their homes unfairly.

Henry Crawford, the vice mayor of Pahokee, says, “The cry was so loud, man, you could hear it all over town.”

On the western edge of Palm Beach County, Pahokee is a poor and mostly black community in one of the nation’s wealthiest counties.

Crawford says that because Miracle Park is located outside of the city limits, there wasn’t much local officials could do about it. He believes the sex offenders deserve a place to live. He just wishes it wasn’t here.

“If this was in other parts of Palm Beach, I don’t think this would occur,” he says. “But I think the good reverend knew that it wouldn’t be much pressure from rural Palm Beach County … not to do this. So the fight was easier here than it would be anywhere else.”

Not all the people who had been living in Miracle Park moved out. Stroll through the grounds and you’ll run into elderly residents who have lived there for years. Many are former sugar company workers or their relatives.

Barbara Haywood lives there with her daughter and 9-month-old grandson. When she first heard that sex offenders were moving in, she says, she was scared. But not anymore. In her Bahamian accent, she says, “I’m [not] scared any of them because everyone pass, they give me a respect, you know?”

‘God Has Forgiven Me Now’

Across the nation, communities are debating where sex offenders can live after they’re released from prison. That includes Miami-Dade County, where a colony of sex offenders live under a bridge on the causeway leading to Miami Beach.

Witherow believes shared living arrangements like Miracle Park offer a solution. He says he screens the sex offenders who want to live here. Repeated offenses, burglaries and violent crimes are all red flags. And he says that, as a general rule, he won’t accept pedophiles.

But these are still sex offenders, people who in many cases have done terrible things.

The operations manager at Miracle Park is Pat Powers, an efficient, compact man in his 60s. Twenty years ago, he was a racquetball coach who pleaded no contest to molesting 11 of his teen and pre-teen students.

“I was guilty as could be,” he says. “Even to this day, there are times where I just feel like, you know, I let people down. But God has forgiven me now, and so now my life is changing.”

Shared Space, Self-Policing?

Jill Levenson, an associate professor at Lynn University in Boca Raton, says it’s possible that clustering so many sex offenders in one place could increase the risk for nearby communities, like Pahokee. But, she says, research shows that there are also benefits to placing sex offenders in shared living situations like Miracle Park.

She says the sex offenders often begin to police themselves. “If somebody is doing something that’s risky,” she says, “the others will call him out on that or report that to authorities because, in their mind, if one person goes on and re-offends, that’s going to be problematic for everyone else that’s living there.”

It’s been nearly a year since Witherow opened his community of sex offenders at Miracle Park, and financially, things aren’t going well. He has used up $300,000 in savings and is running a deficit, in part because many of the sex offenders have been unable to find work and pay their rent.

Ever a man of faith, he says “God will provide.”

But in the meantime, he is talking to corrections officials about a whole new group of sex offenders who need housing: senior citizens who have served their sentences and have Social Security but need just one more thing — a place on the outside where they will be allowed to live.”

From http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121089157&ps=cprs

The long-standing Christian tactic of using bait-and-switch movie screenings to present the Gospel

Pakistan Christian TV reports…

“An Australian missionary was arrested on false charges of “forceful conversion” by the Andhra Pradesh State Police on November 24, 2009 at Utnur in Andhra Pradesh state, India.

According to the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) the trouble erupted when at around 7.30 in the evening of the 24th, Paul Jemison (40), an Australian missionary accompanied by Joy Carol, daughter of a local Pastor Premanandam (50) had gone to an Industrial Training Institute (ITI) hostel campus for a movie screening for about 200 students.

The source reported that, as the movie ended at around 8.30 pm, Jemison shared about the “Love of Christ” to the students present. As he was sharing from the Word, a mob of 20 Hindu radicals suddenly barged into the event and accused him of indulging in “forceful conversion” and abused him for his foreign origin.

The source also said that the Hindu radicals then dragged him to the nearest Police station and filed a complaint against him of “forceful conversions to Christianity.”

It was known through the sources if the Police confiscated his Indian visa and other documents.

Missionary Paul Jemison called the Australian embassy to check the possibilities to his quick release.

ANS has learned that he was detained in the station until late that night and later released.

The source said that Hindu radicals and Locals of the town have warned Pastor Premanandam and his daughter Joy Carol not to invite anymore foreign missionaries to the town.”

From http://pakistanchristian.tv/news/2009-11-28_Australian_Missionary_Arrested_in_Andhra_Pradesh_State_India.cfm

‘Speaking in tongues’ for dummies – if you speak English then you’ve buggered it up

Margaret Court’s Perth Victory Life Centre notes…

“How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit….

…..Prayer: Jesus, I ask You to fill me with your Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. By faith I believe that I receive.

Now begin to speak out in the language that the Spirit gives you (not in English).”

From http://www.victorylifecentre.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=79&Itemid=97

Joyce Meyer security guard charged with killing family *updated

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports…

“While accused killer Christopher Coleman has welcomed numerous jail visits from pastors and ministers, he has turned away a former co-worker from his old employer, the Joyce Meyer Ministries.

The relationship between Coleman and the worldwide television ministry, where he had been security manager, has played a significant role in the criminal case and in a wrongful death suit filed by his slain wife’s family.

Monroe County Jail records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that in September, Coleman turned away Michael Shepard, the leadership training coordinator for the ministry — and its only official to attempt to see him.

Shepard declined to comment about it, referring all questions to Michael King, the ministry’s lawyer. King said the two were friends prior to the killings, and that Shepard tried to visit in a personal capacity.

Police have said that Coleman faked threats against himself and family that were made to appear as if they came from an enemy of the Jefferson County-based ministry.

Officials have suggested that he may have strangled his wife Sheri, 31, and sons Garett, 11, and Gavin, 9, in their beds at home in Columbia, Ill., to be with an extramarital lover named Tara Lintz. Police testified that Meyer had a no-divorce policy, raising the question of whether Coleman killed rather than risk his job, although the policy wasn’t specifically mentioned in a ministry handbook released by attorneys.

In addition, relatives of Sheri Coleman are suing Christopher Coleman for wrongful death, and seeking to add the Meyer ministry as a defendant on claims that its leaders knew about the affair with Lintz and should have known Christopher Coleman was behind the threats.

The ministry says it did not know of the affair. And it has pointed out that Columbia police had been notified of the threats several months before the murders.

The Meyer operation had fronted $10,000 to Coleman for funeral expenses the day after the murders. He quit days after that.

Coleman claimed his family was alive when he left for a workout at a gym before dawn May 5, and dead when he returned. But charges were filed after officials said they determined the victims died earlier than that.

Jail visitors must fill out a form listing their identification and relationship to the inmate. Shepard listed his relationship to Coleman as “minister.”

Coleman traveled the world with Meyer. So did his wife, who participated in missionary trips to Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, where Shepard led a leadership training program.

Coleman admitted to Shepard a week after the murders that he had an affair with Lintz, who lives in Florida, according to a memo in Coleman’s personnel file at the ministry. It says Coleman said he had met her on trips to Hawaii and Texas.

Lintz is not listed on his jail visitor records. She has declined to comment on the case.

Coleman largely spends his jail visitation days — Sundays and Wednesdays — with family members or ministers affiliated with Grace Church Ministries in Chester, Ill., where his father is pastor.

Ken Gaub, a minister and speaker based in Yakima, Wash., visited Coleman in August. He told a reporter recently that Coleman appeared “devastated by the whole thing.”

Gaub said he came to the St. Louis area, spoke at Grace Church and then went to visit Coleman.

“I said a prayer with him,” Gaub said. “We didn’t really speak about the details of what happened.”

Gaub said Coleman told him that the relationship with Lintz “was a mistake” and that he has been framed for the killings.

“I just don’t think he did it,” Gaub said. “I don’t think he has it in his heart to do something like that.”

From http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/laworder/story/7B7D06BB3A04BBFB8625767F000983B0?OpenDocument

How to lick the boots of your Hill$ong pastor 101

Nathan McLean blogs…

“Tuesday’s from 10:30-11:15am would be my favourite meeting of the entire week.   Its our staff meeting at Hillsong Church and is the time when we get to worship as a staff and also be challenge in leadership from, in my opinion, the greatest church leader on the planet Ps Brian Houston. Its not always Ps Brian speaking but it is always a really practical, challenging message on leadership and culture when he does speak.

This week he brought a message on ‘Empowering Upwards’ and I want to share some of it with you.  When it comes to the word empowering most of us, myself included, automatically think of the people in our world that we lead and empower to do all they can in life, we are empowering downwards.  Ps Brian however challenged us as leaders to empower those above us by making their leadership of us easy.

Now, when it comes to Children’s Ministry, I know that we would never be the ones to complain about not getting enough budget or blame others such as youth for getting more focus. HA!!! We are the worst at it so dont log off now but read on and be challenge…take on the attitude of my good mate (and boss) David Wakerley who always says “I am not here to build a great children’s ministry but rather to build a great church through the children’s ministry.” So here comes a few thoughts:

1. Put yourself in the shoes of your leader.

If you want to empower up then spend a moment thinking of what they want to see you achieve in the children’s ministry.  Dont work separate to your Senior Pastor but get in his shoes and see what you could do to make his life easier.

2. Picture the decisions that are being made above you

Sometimes we want our questions answered now but the reality is that often our leaders above us are dealing with bigger things then we could imagine so if we need to wait for them to tell us which artwork design they like best then so be it.  Avoid pulling your leaders head down to the decisions that you are making when they should be soaring and trying to see vision for the future. You can be the one that releases them to soar!

3. Refuse to blame.

Be the sort of Children’s Pastor who doesn’t blame anything on anyone but rather sees it as your responsibility to do whatever it takes to help your leader take the church forward.  If families need someone to inspire them to come to church, be that person.  If you need more leaders, dont wait for your pastor to announce it to the church, be the recruitement person.  If you need more fun in your children’s ministry, be that person.

I think I shall leave it at that for now but I want you to feel the challenge like I did to re,ease those above you and look out for them as they are the Godly leaders you have been given!!!”

From http://nathanmclean.com/2009/11/11/empowering-upwards/

Tony Abbott is ‘answered prayer’:Nalliah

Danny Nalliah blogs…

“Catch The Fire News/ Congratulations to Tony Abbott as the New Leader of the Opposition

Dear family & friends in Christ,

“We want to take this opportunity to CONGRATULATE Tony Abbot (sic) for winning the position as the New Leader of the Opposition. He is one of the best you can get in the Australian Parliament to protect good Christian moral values. Thank God for answering prayer. Now we have a good chance of the Carbon Emission Treaty (Copenhagen Treaty and One World Government) not being signed by Australia this month. Thank you every one for continuing to pray and lobby…..”

From http://catchthefire.com.au/blog/2009/12/01/ctfm-newscongratulations-to-tony-abbott-as-the-leader-of-the-opposition/

 

Love blasting thy neighbor – updated*

The Courier-Mail reports…

“New-age churches are fast becoming the scourge of suburbia, with residents fed up with booming rock music that has become the hallmark of their services.

Communities at Yeronga, Annerley, Salisbury and New Farm are among those angry about marathon sermons and “Christian karaoke” which they say are making their weekends a misery.

Kathy Davis, of New Farm in Brisbane’s inner north, said police were regularly called to the Metro Church in Sydney St because of ear-splitting music.

“As soon as they go the music is turned up again. It can go for eight hours and there’s no escaping it,” Ms Davis said.

Police confirmed they had been called to the address on a number of occasions in relation to excessive noise.

Despite complaining to local councillor David Hinchliffe, State Labor MP Grace Grace and the Metro Church itself, residents have been unable to get any peace.

“The council did impose an 8.30am curfew for Sunday, which is something. Prior to that we were being blasted as early as 7am on a Sunday,” Ms Davis said.

Another New Farm resident, Malcolm Rough, said he used to attend the church until the noise got too loud.

“I’d take ear plugs to wear during the service,” Mr Rough said.

The Rock church at Annerley has also received complaints about noise and neighbours of Life Church at Salisbury said the behaviour of young patrons left much to be desired.

“They come out on the street and make a hell of a mess,” said a long-term resident who did not want to be named. “I don’t know what happened to ‘love thy neighbour’.”

State president of Australian Christian Churches pastor Wayne Alcorn said the approach to services varied from church to church.

“There are definitely a significant number of our churches that use modern, contemporary music,” Mr Alcorn said. “This is one of the reasons we are growing through attracting young people.”

Residents in a long-running dispute with the Anglican Church at Yeronga said they had made some progress after dispute resolution mediation.

But Jenny Johansen said they were still subjected to hours of amplified music every Sunday afternoon.

“It really drives up the stress levels when all you want is to have a quiet sit in your back yard,” Ms Johansen said.

“The last thing you want is to have to listen to Christian karaoke.”

Reverend Trevor Butler said he was working with the local Ethiopian community which conducted the Sunday afternoon service, to limit the noise.”

From http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26353896-952,00.html

Mr. 1% for President

ABS-CBN reports…

“Jesus is Lord (JIL) Church founder Eduardo “Bro. Eddie” Villanueva will once again seek the highest post in the land “in the name of the Lord.” 
 
In the 2004 elections, Villanueva was the first evangelist to run for president. His party, the Bangon Pilipinas Movement, presented Villanueva as the righteous leader to usher in “new politics.” He was badly defeated.
 
In 2001, the Social Weather Stations estimated that the JIL’s voting strength was 307,000 or only 10% of its claimed membership. Today, JIL has 4 million members, Villanueva said. Both the SWS and Pulse Asia surveys show Villanueva’s poll rating at 1%.

He started off with 0.3% in the July 28-August 10, 2009 survey of Pulse Asia but climbed to 1% during the next two surveys.
 
In the series of SWS surveys conducted since September 2007, he started off with 0.5%. In the middle of the series, he scored lowest with 0.1% and took him a year to consistently move up in the standings until he reached 1% in the September 2009 survey.
 
Villanueva said in GMA 7’s presidential forum “Isang Tanong” that his 1% will be higher when the formal campaign period begins.
 
Analysts say his TV talk shows at QTV, Zoe TV and GMA 7 would not help him get votes: “TV exposure does not translate to votes,” Benito Lim, a Ateneo de Manila political science professor,  said.
 
Baggage
 
The murder charge against Villanueva’s son, Bocaue Mayor Eduardo “Jonjon” Villanueva Jr., is an issue that continues to surround the self-proclaimed “chosen President of God.”
 
It was “in the name of the Lord” that Villanueva appealed to the administration to dismiss the case filed against his son in 2007. This is in relation to a soldier’s death in the shootout between the army and the Villanuevas in his hometown of Bulacan on May 4, 2007. Eleven died on that day alone.
 
“God’s prophet” cried foul and said that this is the administration’s way of harassing him for asking President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to resign from her post following the 2005 “Hello Garci” scandal.

 In 2005, Villanueva and his television network Zoe Broadcasting Network, Inc. were sued for not paying back Vintage TV (VTV) Corporation the amount of P20 million after their memorandum of understanding was mutually rescinded. He was later on dropped from charges filed by VTV Corporation with the appellate court in 2008.
 
Villanueva evaded arrest in 2005 after a graft case was filed against him by Benito Araneta, cousin of first gentleman Mike Arroyo. Villanueva entered into agreement to turn over the management, programming and marketing of Zoe Broadcasting to Araneta’s Entertainment Network Ltd. Araneta issued checks to Villanueva that totaled P15 million before finding out that Zoe broadcasting made previous agreements with VTV Corporation.
 
This was months after 200,000 JIL members rallied and asked GMA to step down.
 
The misdeeds of one of JIL’s prominent members somehow reflected negatively on Villanueva. Early 2009, Securities and Exchange Commissioner Jesus Martinez was accused of receiving house and lot gifts from Legacy Group founder Celso delos Angeles.
 
Martinez , in 2001, was a 3rd nominee of the Citizen’s Battle Against Corruption (CIBAC), JIL’s anti-corruption party-list. CIBAC only gathered enough votes to accommodate 2 seats in Congress.
 
In the heat of the Legacy Scandal [13], Martinez was disowned by the CIBAC party-list. CIBAC representative and JIL founder’s son Joel Villanueva said that Martinez is not even a JIL member and has not been active after the 2001 elections. 
 
Artistas and Josiah’s army
 
In the 2004 race, Christian showbiz personalities formed the “Bangon Artista” organization to support Villanueva. Big names—including matinee idol Piolo Pascual, former MTV VJ Donita Rose and singers Gary V. and Kuh Ledesma—publicly testified to Villanueva’s goodness and righteousness.
 
Villanueva’s campaign leaders called their electoral campaign “Oplan Josiah.” It was inspired by King Josiah of Judah who campaigned against pagan worship and idolatry.
 
Similar to Josiah’s story in the bible, Villanueva presented himself as someone who wanted to fight against “moral bankruptcy” and corruption, but in the Philippine setting.
 
Oplan Josiah’s strategy was similar to multi-level marketing or “networking.” They planned to recruit 7,000 Christian Church leaders who would recruit 7 volunteers; those 7 would recruit 7 more and so on. They hoped to get a total of 16.8 million votes come election time—higher than Estrada’s presidential win in 1998.
 
But this did not happen. Despite boasting of the then-3 million strong JIL, Villanueva only got 1.9 million votes, according to the final Congressional canvass. He did not even win in his hometown of Bulacan where he placed 4th (out of the 5 candidates) with only over 100,000 votes.
 
But this was to be expected. Pre-election surveys conducted by the SWS on the registered voters’ preferred presidential candidates from January to May 2004 showed that his highest poll rating was 4%.
 
Beyond the Church
 
Villanueva blamed “wholesale, nationwide cheating” for losing. But, campaign analysts said that Oplan Josiah limited its campaign to Christian groups.
 
Political analyst Ramon Casiple said that in order to win in the 2010 elections, Villanueva should not present himself as a religious candidate.
 
Voters, he said, do not vote based on a candidate’s religious beliefs. Even though Villanueva presents himself now as a morally upright candidate and not a religious leader, Casiple added that the public could not be blamed for associating Villanueva with the JIL.
 
Casiple said that in past elections people voted based on: 1) how platforms could help them in supporting their families, 2) recommendation of others and 3) media popularity which Villanueva’s camp failed to consider.
 
The seven E’s platform
 
Villanueva disclosed his 7 E’s platform during his declaration of candidacy at the Barasoain Church in Malolos, Bulacan.
 
He said that should he win, he will:

1. Empower the Filipinos;
2. Emancipate the Filipinos;
3. Educate the Filipinos;
4. Elevate the standard of living;
5. Energize the economy;
6. Eradicate corruption; and
7. Establish peace in the land.

 
Days before his declaration, The Inquirer reported that should he win, he would postpone the appointment of Secretary of National Defense (SND) and he would act as SND to overhaul the Armed Forces. He would demolish and destroy “the apparatus of corruption and all forms of injustice.” 
 
During his declaration, he mentioned that he will create more state colleges and universities and increase the education budget. 
 
Creating “economic growth centers” in each province will also be a priority. But he did not explain what these centers are.
 
Separation of Church and State
 
When Villanueva was studying bachelor of laws at the University of the Philippines , he said that he learned that separation of Church and State meant that the government has no say in the ecclesiastical duties and functions of the Church. He finished his law studies but failed to take the bar examinations because he devoted his time to activism during the Marcos regime.
 
He said that the separation meant that the government respects the religious freedom of the people and not prohibiting Church leaders to run.
 
He cited former US President John F. Kennedy’s experience as the first Catholic president of America : a Catholic bishop asked him to favor Catholics. To which JFK responded that he is a full-blooded democrat, his religion is secondary to him and that he will favor only what is favorable to all.
 
“I am a full-blooded democrat, religion cannot intrude in establishing a humane and just society,” the evangelist said.”

From http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/11/30/09/tv-evangelist-seeks-presidency%E2%80%94again

The Bishop, the snakes and the body parts

Joy online reports…

“The General Overseer of the International God’s Way Church has promised to fully cooperate with the police in their investigation into a case of conspiracy to attack a rival evangelist.

The Suame police are investigating a case where Bishop Daniel Obinim is alleged to have contracted one Frank Annor who claims to be a former confidante to bury snakes and suspected human parts at the church premises of a rival pastor, Reverend Adarkwa Yiadom at Ahenema Kokoben in a scheme to ruin his reputation.

Bishop Daniel Obinim who was at the Suame police station over the weekend after a warrant was issued for his arrest has denied contracting anyone and ever knowing the so-called confidante.

Speaking to Nhyira FM’s Ohemeng Tawiah, the pastor referenced portions of the Bible – which suggested Jesus Christ survived several temptations – and said the allegations would amount to nothing.

For him the ordeal Christ suffered was worse than he is going through, insisting, it is all a frame-up.

Bishop Obinim said he believes strongly that Frank Annor had been contracted to disgrace him and collapse his church but adds that the God’s Way Church is strongly rooted in Christ and that these trials would amount to nothing.

“I am not disturbed at all by these developments,” he suggested.

Meanwhile the Christian Council of Ghana says recent war of words between the two Kumasi-based ministers of the gospel, calls for complete vigilance among Christians.

The council said the occurrences must give Christians a clear sense of direction in deciding their spiritual faith.”

From http://news.myjoyonline.com/news/200911/38633.asp

God made Adam and Eve, not Steve Fielding

The Age reports…

“Family First senator Steve Fielding has compared same-sex marriages to incest, as a Senate inquiry …… recommended against allowing gay marriage in Australia.

A day after the first legally recognised same-sex civil ceremony in Canberra, Senator Fielding spoke out against allowing gay couples to wed.

”A bloke cannot marry his brother; it is not right,” he said. ”A woman cannot marry their sister; it is not right. A bloke cannot marry a bloke because it is not right, and a female cannot marry a female because it is not right. I don’t support this.”

Labor senator Joe Ludwig reiterated the Rudd Government’s stance that gay relationships should be recognised across the nation in civil partnership schemes and not with marriage.

But Greens leader Bob Brown said the Government was made up of ”undemocratic wowsers” and ‘’sad sacks” who wanted to override the Australian Capital Territory laws allowing gay couples to hold a ceremony to create their legal relationship.

He said Labor’s reluctance to embrace gay marriage was a ”Howardian hangover”.

”Why on earth in 2009 can’t this Labor Government remove discrimination from people who care to love each other and want to engage in the same rights to publicly celebrating that connection that everybody else in the community has?” he said.

”It is just Howardian hangover by Rudd Labor. It is offensive, it is hurtful and it is destructive.”

Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland this week asked the ACT Government to amend its civil partnerships ceremonies scheme, and it agreed…..

After strong advocacy from the Australian Christian Lobby, Mr McClelland sought changes meaning same-sex ceremonies would remain but they would have little legal effect.

After the ACT Government said it would adopt the changes, he indicated the Commonwealth would not seek to quash an amended scheme. But many gay activists were unhappy at the changes. Activist Corey Irlam said: ”The critical difference between the ceremonies originally sought by the ACT and those allowed by the Federal Government is that the latter have little legal effect, leaving the formal declaration of a civil partnership in the hands of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages and not in the hands of civil partnership celebrants.

”It is a step forward that Prime Minister Rudd has backed off from a veto, but the system the ACT Government has now accepted is still essentially a paper process without legally binding ceremonies.”

From http://www.theage.com.au/national/fielding-likens-samesex-marriage-to-incest-20091126-juo3.html

I still wonder how Guglielmucci got away with it

The New Zealand Herald reports…

“A churchgoer pleaded guilty to fraud today after gambling away money that fellow parishioners thought they had donated for his “medical” treatment.

Gerard Francis Marychurch, 39, was remanded on bail to reappear in Auckland District Court in February for sentencing.

He admitted 14 charges of obtaining money by deception. Eight of the charges related to sums of over $1000.

Marychurch is alleged to have used the pretext that he needed cancer treatment and parishioners at a number of churches collected money on his behalf.

Last month, a letter of apology bearing his name was handed out at St Francis and St Therese church in Pt Chevalier.

In the letter, he said he had been unwell and some of the money had been used for medical bills, but most had gone towards his gambling addiction.”

From http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10611805

Bunbury church believes gays shouldn’t be on town streets

The Bunbury Mail reports…

“A Bunbury church has attacked a proposed gay parade in the city, describing homosexuality as an “abomination.”

Calvary Assembly Foursquare Gospel Church pastor Frank Mitchell told the Bunbury Mail the act of homosexuality was unnatural and a gay and lesbian Pride Parade would threaten Bunbury’s peaceful community atmosphere.

Pastor Mitchell said he was confident his 130 strong congregation shared his view.

“I want to emphasise we are not against homosexuals as individuals but, as the Bible says, the act of homosexuality is an abomination and is not natural,” Pastor Mitchell said.

“Bunbury has a lovely community atmosphere and the last thing we want is for this to be disturbed.”

At a City of Bunbury council meeting last week councillor Wayne Major wanted council to investigate the feasibility of Bunbury hosting a gay and lesbian parade but no councillors were willing to second the motion.

Council received petitions in opposition to the parade from the Calvary Assembly Foursquare Gospel Church, the Spencer Street Seniors, the Catholic Community of Bunbury and the Salvation Army.

Cr Major was undeterred by the lack of support and introduced the idea of conducting a cost benefit survey at last night’s full council meeting.

Mayor David Smith said council would consider fairly any proposal to hold a Pride Parade.

He said the outcome of last week’s council meeting was not just about supporting a gay parade in a general sense but about council’s financial involvement.

“We are an inclusive community and if the gay community applied to council to hold their own activities they would be considered fairly,” Mayor Smith said.

Mayor Smith said money had already been allocated for different events to be held next year and he emphasised that council was not homophobic.

A majority of Bunbury Mail readers voted no in the website poll which asked readers if they supported Bunbury holding the next gay and lesbian Pride Parade.

Yesterday the poll stood at 45.6 per cent in support and a 54.4 per cent in opposition.”

From http://www.bunburymail.com.au/news/local/news/general/pride-slammed/1687555.aspx

Guess who’ll never get to preach at Hill$ong?

Christian Sh*tty Church still supporting Mercy Ministries

Pic - nancyalcorn.blogspot.com

Nancy Alcorn blogs…

“I first met pastors Phil and Chris Pringle from Christian City Church (C3) in Australia over 10 years ago during one of my first trips to Australia. I had the pleasure of speaking in a Sunday morning service at their beautiful campus in Sydney. Pastors Phil and Chris have planted close to 300 churches around the world, and one of those churches is in the Atlanta, Georgia area. The pastors of the Atlanta church are Dean and Jill Sweetman. Pastors Dean and Jill also oversee all of the C3 churches in the U.S. under the leadership of Phil and Chris Pringle.

In March of this year, I had the privilege of speaking at Jill’s annual women’s conference called Imagine. Our hearts connected, and the rest is history! The ladies of this church have now made two trips to Nashville, spending two days with us each time. In the first group there were approximately 30 women, and just this week, we hosted another 12. Our staff and girls had the privilege of hearing Pastor Jill as she brought a special word to our staff and girls. Our time together was so encouraging!!

I want to give a big shout out to Pastors Dean and Jill and also legends Phil and Chris Pringle for the amazing network of churches they oversee around the world. Both our girls and staff loved having them here!! I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the pictures. I hope everyone has a great weekend!!”

From http://nancyalcorn.blogspot.com/2009/11/atlanta-christian-city-church-visits.html

3 Hebrew Boys

The Times and Democrat reports…

“A federal jury on Friday found three South Carolina men guilty of swindling more than $80 million from thousands of investors, many of whom prosecutors say fell victim to the Ponzi scheme because of their mounting debt.

The jury of five men and seven women deliberated for less than four hours before finding Timothy McQueen, Joseph Brunson and Tony Pough guilty of nearly 60 charges each, including conspiracy, mail fraud, and money laundering.

The three showed no reaction during the 15 minutes it took to read the lengthy verdict. An hour later, the same jury ordered the men to forfeit $82 million, the maximum sought by authorities.

The trio called themselves the “3 Hebrew Boys” after the biblical tale of three men who were thrown into an inferno after refusing to bow to a statue, but emerged unscathed because of their faith. The three preyed on debt-plagued investors to ensnare them in a Ponzi scheme — “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Moore has said.

The men called their scheme a ministry, telling people their mailed-in investments would earn fantastic rewards that would pay off their mortgages, car loans, or other debts, or pay lifelong dividends. Despite almost no financial training, they convinced at least 7,000 people they knew the secret of how to make money on the foreign currency exchange market. However, they invested less than 0.01 percent of their collections there, prosecutors said.

Investors from two dozen states, plus soldiers serving in Iraq, gave the men money to invest beginning in October 2004. Authorities seized $17 million when the operation was shut down less than three years later.

The men paid themselves salaries of about $1 million and spent more than $25 million on assets including three suburban Atlanta condos, luxury suites at football stadiums, a Gulfstream jet, limousines, a motorcoach and 20 acres in Orangeburg, prosecutors said. Defense attorneys claimed those were investments that would make money for clients

Their attorneys argued the three intended to honor the contracts and paid out more than $22 million to early investors. Contract clauses warned the investment was risky, they argued, but prosecutors said the three lied about how they would invest the money.

While jurors debated the amount of forfeiture Friday, U.S. District Judge Margaret Seymour revoked the trio’s bond until their sentencing hearing, which should be in several months. Before doing so, Seymour read from a rambling motion filed Friday by the defendants in which they called any charge against them “a deliberate act of war … and treason against the United States.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Holliday called that argument “the nail in the coffin” in his request to revoke the bond.

Brunson, McQueen and Pough handed ..money, jewelry and neckties over to supporters seated behind them in the courtroom. Led out of the courtroom by federal marshals, they exited without commenting to reporters.

Before leaving, Brunson turned to whisper to supporters, “We don’t walk by sight. Don’t walk by what you see. Walk by what you know.”

Outside the courtroom, Brunson’s wife expressed disbelief at her husband’s fate.

“I’m completely shocked, because of the complete and total injustice,” Isolde Brunson said.

Attorneys for all three men declined to comment on the verdict or if they were making plans to appeal it. The men face decades in prison and millions of dollars in fines.

As for the money in forfeiture, court-appoint receiver Beattie Ashmore said Friday his team is still searching for missing assets and need prospective victims who are seeking relief to fill out a proof of claim form.”

From http://www.timesanddemocrat.com/articles/2009/11/22/business/doc4b0722a85d3a6344458873.txt

 

Rhema pastor fraud probe

The Sowetan reports…

“Pastor Tshifhiwa Muligwe of the Rhema Kingdom Life Church in Limpopo and his wife have allegedly defrauded their congregants in Thohoyandou of about R1,6million.

It is alleged that the two duped 10 members of the church to invest in a scheme that would enrich them. The scheme was allegedly started in December 2004.

The congregants claim that unbeknown to them, “Muligwe’s wife was the sole member of the scheme”. The congregants are now livid after being told that the investment experienced a deficit “because of the recession”.

From http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1086773

Former Perth Scientologist blows the whistle

The Australian reports…

“The Church of Scientology is a “criminal organisation” hiding behind religion, the Senate was told last night.

Independent senator Nick Xenophon tabled explosive letters from former Scientology officials and staff alleging a litany of abuses, including coerced abortions, assault, imprisonment, covering up sexual abuse, embezzlement of church funds and blackmail.

Senator Xenophon, who said he had referred the allegations to police, demanded a Senate inquiry into the church. And he questioned the tax-exempt status given to the church, which he said “turns supporters into victims in its pursuit of power and wealth”.

“In my view, this is a two-faced organisation,” he told the Senate.

“There is the public face of an organisation . . . that claims to offer guidance and support to its followers and there is the private face of an organisation that abuses its followers and viciously targets its critics, and seems largely driven by paranoia.

“Scientology is not a religious organisation; it is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious belief.”

Senator Xenophon tabled a letter from Perth man Aaron Saxton, in which he admits to torture and blackmail while working for the Church of Scientology in Australia and at its American headquarters between 1989 and 1996.

Mr Saxton says he assisted in the “forced confinement and torture” of a female church member who was kept under “house arrest” on a farm in western NSW for a month.

“Several abortions were ordered as well,” his letter states.

“The staff that got pregnant were taken into offices and put under duress.” His letter says the victims were “always in fear” because they were told they could be expelled from the church and “severed” from their family.

“We had one staff member who used a coat hanger and self-aborted her child . . . all her files were destroyed.”

Senator Xenophon also tabled a letter from a former executive director of the Sydney branch of the church, Carmel Underwood, in which she alleges a child abuse cover-up. In the mid-1980s, the letter states, a trainee Scientologist counsellor had been molesting his stepdaughter, but church officials “coached” the girl to lie about it to the NSW Department of Community Services.

Another former Scientologist, Sydney man Dean Detheridge, who spent 17 years on church staff, stated that parishioners’ counselling sessions were “culled for embarrassing revelations and confessions” to be used against them if they criticised the church.

He also wrote that he had witnessed and participated in “concerted efforts to extract as much money as possible from parishioners with absolutely no regard for the financial security of the individual or his or her family”.

The Church of Scientology released a statement last night accusing Senator Xenophon of an “outrageous” abuse of parliamentary privilege.

“Senator Xenophon is obviously being pressured by disgruntled former members who use hate speech and distorted accounts of their experiences in the church,” the statement read.

“They are about as reliable as former spouses are when talking about their ex-partner.”

The church described the former members’ statements as constituting a “propaganda campaign that would suit a totalitarian regime, not Australia, a country that recognises freedom of religion”.

The church’s statement did not respond to any of the specific allegations made against it.”

From http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/scientology-criminal-says-senator-nick-xenophon/story-e6frg6nf-1225799077820

Borrowing from the Pente fob-off playbook

A Church of Scientology media release states…

“Statement from Church of Scientology Regarding Senator Xenophon’s “Xenophobia”

This is an outrageous abuse of Parliamentary privilege from a Senator who would not even meet with Church representatives several months ago to discuss his concerns.

Senator Xenophon is obviously being pressured by disgruntled former members who use hate speech and distorted accounts of their experiences in the Church. They are about as reliable as former spouses are when talking about their expartner.

Senator Xenophon’s attempt to marginalize Scientologists by saying that they should not be believed, is fascistic and violates freedom of speech and the right to religious beliefs. It is former members or apostates that are notoriously unreliable as witnesses.

The late Bryan Wilson, Ph.D. of Oxford University, one of the most renowned sociologists of modern times, put it this way:

The disaffected and the apostate are in particular informants whose evidence has to be used with circumspection. The apostate is generally in need of selfjustification. He seeks to reconstruct his own past, to excuse his former affiliations, and to blame those who were formerly his closest associates… Apostates, sensationalized by the press, have sometimes sought to make a profit from accounts of their experiences in stories sold to newspapers…”

As various instances have indicated, he is likely to be suggestible and ready to enlarge or embellish his grievances to satisfy that species of journalist whose interest is more in sensational copy than in an objective statement of the truth.

This is a propaganda campaign that would suit a totalitarian regime not Australia, a country that recognises freedom of religion.

Scientology has fought for and upheld religious freedom around the world and is accepted as a religion throughout the world. In a few countries, the Church has been forced to litigate the issue of its religiosity, either affirmatively or in response to outrageous unfounded charges. Inevitably, the Church has prevailed in these cases and its religious bona fides have been unequivocally recognized. Some of these decisions, including decisions by the Cassation Court in Italy and the 1983 decision by the High Court in Australia, are now considered by leading scholars and judicial authorities to have established the standards regarding religious recognition that all religions must meet.

The High Court of 1983 that decided the case that declared Scientology was a bona fide religion in Australia was one of the most venerated benches in the history of the High Court. Moreover the decision was a unanimous decision of the full bench.

The decision has stood the test of time and has proven an authority on issues related to religions and tax status in Australia and throughout the Commonwealth.

The Church of Scientology internationally has grown from one Church in 1954 to more than 8,000 Churches, Missions and groups in 165 countries today. The Church sponsors an international human rights education initiative as well as the world’s largest nongovernmental drug education program. Four new Churches have opened in 2009, most recently the Church of Scientology of Rome on October 24, with a new Church opening in Washington, DC, on October 31. In April, three new Churches were dedicated: in Malmo, Sweden; Dallas, Texas; and Nashville, Tennessee. The Scientology religion has expanded more in the past year than in the past five years combined and more in the past five years than in the past five decades combined.

SOURCE: Church of Scientology”

 

Pente pastor Australia’s ‘biggest bankrupt’? – updated*

*The Brisbane Times reports…

“Creditors of former Gold Coast solicitor and preacher Glenn Phillip Duker have a glimmer of hope of recouping some funds after his accountant and auditor was struck off last week.

The Companies Auditors and Liquidators Disciplinary Board (CALDB) cancelled the auditor registration of Allan Gregory Walker following an application by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Mr Walker, of Melbourne, worked as auditor for Mr Duker’s failed Gold Coast property development company, RVP Group Limited. The company went into liquidation last year owing 63 creditors more than $40 million.

Mr Walker also worked as accountant for Mr Duker and his wife, Lorilea also a bankrupt.

A damning ASIC report released last week found Mr Walker failed to carry out his duties in relation to the audit of RVP’s financial reports for the 2005 and 2006.

The report said Mr Walker was: “an incompetent auditor who has demonstrated ignorance of or indifference to important statutory requirements and a lack of understanding of or indifference to rudimentary professional requirements,” the report said.

“ASIC submits that the protection of the public requires the cancellation of Mr Walker’s registration.”

Mr Walker had blamed investors who had lost their money of being ‘‘stupid’’. Many investors were also members of the Christian fundamenatlist church, Revival Centres International of which Mr Duker was a pastor.

Accountant Scott Bennison who is also a member of the church took up the cause for some creditors, claiming Mr Walker had a conflict of interest.

ASIC’s report agreed with Mr Bennison: “Mr Walker does not have an adequate understanding of or is indifferent to important standards of professional conduct relating, in particular, to independence and conflict of interests.  We believe Mr Walker is not a competent auditor and he should not be allowed to continue auditing.”

Mr Bennison said the findings meant the company’s liquidator was in a stronger position to claim against Mr Walker’s insurance.

“This means that creditors have a greater chance of receiving some money back,” he said.

Former church members and creditors, Sue and Craig Williams of Runaway Bay on the Gold Coast had been ostracised by the church for trying to get their $150,000 back.

Mrs Williams said “the saga” continued to put emotional stress on her family.

“Both Glenn Duker and Allan Walker tried to blame Craig (her husband) for the troubles with the company,’” she said.

“The ASIC report is further confirmation that we have spoken the truth and eventually we hope people will be held accountable for their actions.”

Mr Walker could not be reached for comment. Mr Duker is reportedly working as a solicitor in Victoria.”

From http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/glimmer-of-hope-for-gold-coast-preachers-prey-20091114-ifk2.html

Cult de sac

The Sacramento Bee reports…

“The message members of Radiant Life Church said they heard was this: To receive blessings from God, they must honor, submit and give to their pastor, Tony Cunningham.

One family said it paid for the pastor’s family vacation to Maui and a stay at a five-star hotel. Another said his wife was encouraged to leave him because Cunningham said he was spiritually unfit. Many purchased upscale homes in the same Elk Grove neighborhood, at his urging, they said. On his street, so many bought homes that former church members call it a “cult de sac.”

Allegations about Cunningham first came to light in a lawsuit filed by one couple in Sacramento Superior Court.

Since then, more members have come forward accusing the pastor of abusing his authority as a spiritual leader. Recently, they have complained, sometimes with hurt and anger, on a Web site devoted to controversial religious movements. They have detailed in interviews how their relationship with a pastor they once revered was fractured.

“This has been devastating for us and a lot of people who have been hurt,” said Daniel Plant, 45, a former member. “So many families are trying to pick up the pieces.”

Plant and his wife, Callie, 43, who own an Elk Grove mortgage company, filed the suit last year against Cunningham, accusing the pastor of psychological manipulation and forcible indoctrination. They claim Cunningham used his position as their spiritual adviser to defraud them of more than $221,000.

The lawsuit reflects other former church members’ contentions that Cunningham, 46, abused his position as their spiritual leader, as the lawsuit states, “to give up basic political, social and religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept Cunningham’s regimented ideas.”

The Bee requested an interview with Cunningham and received an e-mail from the church declining the request, citing pending litigation. Cunningham did not respond to phone calls. The five members of the church’s board of elders declined to speak on the advice of legal counsel, or did not return phone calls. The church’s attorney, Talia Delanoy, did not return phone calls.

However, in a deposition for the Plant lawsuit obtained by The Bee, Cunningham said he could not remember the gifts the Plants gave over the years. He was asked about a time when the couple allegedly came to his office with an envelope with $2,000 cash inside.

“I don’t recall that,” Cunningham said under oath. “But I don’t find that difficult to believe.”

Experts said spiritual abuse complaints are rare but have surfaced in other churches nationally. Also rare, experts said, are lawsuits by members seeking restitution for money they said they were misled and coerced into giving. “It’s unusual to file suits because for them it would be like taking God to court,” said Jeff Van Vonderen, an author and leading authority on spiritual abuse.

Radiant Life Church is an independent evangelical congregation that recently moved from Elk Grove to south Sacramento. In the deposition, Cunningham said church attendance has dropped significantly in recent years. Cunningham has led the congregation for 17 years. At a recent 8 a.m. service for about 50 members, he delivered a sermon in a conversational manner about “threats, tests and trials” facing churches today.

The dozen former members interviewed by The Bee include middle-class professionals, business owners, college students and church staff. Many purchased homes in Cunningham’s neighborhood and still live there.

“We now call it a ‘cult de sac,’ ” said former member James Carmazzi, 48.

Members paid $500,000 and up for their homes during the height of the real estate boom because, they said, Cunningham told them it would be good for the church community.

“It’s like a messy family breakup and a divorced man living next to his ex-wife,” said Matt Wanner, 46, who served 15 years as a church elder before leaving.

Daniel Plant stood in the living room of the 4,200-square-foot, six-bedroom home he paid $785,000 for in 2005. “We can’t even go outside without being reminded,” Plant said.

Critics: Obedience rewarded

According to former members, those who were obedient to Cunningham were rewarded with jewelry – typically, gold rings for the men, tennis bracelets for the women. Carmazzi said they were given the gifts in a special covenant ceremony and were allowed into what Cunningham described as his inner circle.

That group consisted of about five families, said Carmazzi and Matt Michalak, 27, another former member, who were both part of Cunningham’s circle.

“It was an honor,” Carmazzi said. Carmazzi said he funded several vacations for the Cunningham family, including the trip to Hawaii, while his family vacationed modestly. Carmazzi said he lost more than $1 million in his dealings with Cunningham.

Michalak, of Carmichael, still has his ring from the covenant ceremony. He said Cunningham believed gifts were the best way to show honor.

After a sermon in which Cunningham said he admired classic cars, members restored a replica 1965 red Cobra, designed by Carroll Shelby, for the pastor. The car was appraised at $65,000, according to Jesse Mancillas, the former president of the board of elders who spearheaded the restoration.

“We thought, OK, this is one way to honor him,” said Mancillas, 53, who has since left the church. “He drove it up and down the street, racing it.” Members said this was one of several vehicles given to the pastor over the years, but DMV records show no Cobra registered to Cunningham.

In his deposition, Cunningham was asked if he ever received honoraria from his members on Sundays. “I received a pumpkin pie last Sunday,” he replied. He was asked if he received cash. “I think the most recent time that I could think of was about four months ago. Someone gave me some, like $20.”

Daniel Plant said the pastor was given money after Sunday worship services. Michalak, who often met Cunningham in his office after Sunday worship services, said many gave twice. “A lot of people were asked to pay second tithes.”

Seen as a prophet

Former members said they were easily swayed by Cunningham. They described him as a smart, charismatic pastor who makes instant connections with people and who comes across as deeply spiritual.

“I met him at a River Cats game and I was very impressed because he talked about helping people,” said Carmazzi.

Some believed he was a prophet.

Michalak, a married father of three, said he gave nearly half his annual income to the church even though he was a student making only $18,000 a year. The Plants gave so much – nearly 41 percent of their annual income – that they were audited by the Internal Revenue Service in 2007, according to the lawsuit. The Plants, according the lawsuit, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008.

Former followers said they allowed their pastor to dictate their lives because they believed Cunningham had the answers to their spiritual questions. “And that’s what we were all looking for,” Carmazzi said.

The Plants said they know how difficult their actions are to comprehend.

“You have to understand, there are a bunch of smart good people in that church and you felt like, wow, they get it. What’s wrong with me?” said Daniel Plant. “And you felt that if you questioned him, it was like questioning God.”

In their lawsuit against Cunningham and the church, the Plants say they met Cunningham in 1998 and began regularly attending Radiant Life soon afterward. In 2001, Cunningham encouraged Daniel Plant to become his “disciple” which he defined as a “submitted, committed relationship,” according to the lawsuit.

Plant said over the next few years, he began attending church almost daily as Cunningham grew more involved in his life and business decisions.

He described his business dealings with Cunningham as “completely out of character,” but said he felt compelled to continue giving.

“He (Plant) had no ability to say no to any directive given by Cunningham,” the suit states.

By 2007, the Plants said, they were under “tremendous financial, emotional and social stress.” When Daniel Plant asked Cunningham for his money, he said he was shunned. The Plants were “in constant fear of not pleasing God by not pleasing and caring for Cunningham,” according to the suit.

The Plants left the church in the fall of 2008, a break Callie Plant compared to a death in the family. “It became a nightmare,” she said.

The congregation of Radiant Life Church, formerly Elk Grove Community Church, now meets on 44th Street. On the church Web site, their vision is described as “Win the Lost, Equip the Saints, Raise Up Leadership, Plant New Churches.”

Cunningham has been challenged legally before. In 2003, the church sued Marvin “Buzz” Oates, alleging the church was duped in a $1.2 million deal. A letter from Cunningham, however, showed the church had agreed on the deal. It dropped the suit and publicly apologized to Oates in an ad in The Bee. Church members said Cunningham apologized to the congregation.

Stories posted on Web site

James Carmazzi and his wife, Angela, 42, Elk Grove business owners, said they joined the church in 1999. In 2003, they met with the pastor regularly for marriage counseling together and then sessions alone. Their families spent holidays together.

Those who didn’t show him the proper of amount of honor – or who questioned his teachings – were publicly berated and shunned, according to Plant and Carmazzi.

“He gave the impression that he was spiritually elevated,” said Michalak. “You believed he had the gift of prophecy and he told you that you could get it, too.”

Michalak said that both he and his wife, Sarah, 28, stopped talking to their parents for a year at Cunningham’s counsel. Michalak said he left the church after he learned the pastor was urging his wife to leave him because he wasn’t spiritual enough.

Several members have written about their experiences with Cunningham and Radiant Life Church and have posted their stories on a Web site run by the Rick Ross Institute (rickross.com), a New Jersey nonprofit organization that studies controversial religious movements and cults.

“A lot of people started leaving when they saw the blog,” said Michalak. Several of the people who wrote had been among Cunningham’s closest advisers. “Before, everyone wondered what was going on, but no one talked about it.”

Carmazzi said Cunningham dismissed his detractors. “He has said several times that he’s righteous with God and there will be other casualties along the way.”

Several former church members contacted by The Bee did not want to discuss their experiences, saying they had been too painful and they were embarrassed by their involvement.

The ones who did speak say they believe they need to talk about what happened to them – even at the risk of public ridicule.

“This has been a humiliating and humbling experience,” said Carmazzi. “But I would be disgusted with myself if I didn’t say anything and other people got hurt.”

The Carmazzis, the Plants and other once active members of Radiant Life no longer attend church anywhere. “I’m disgusted with the church right now,” Carmazzi said.

Callie Plant said she and her husband are still believers. But they are now skeptical of becoming involved in a church again. Their children want nothing to do with pastors or organized religion, she said.

“I would never in my life imagine that something like this could happen,” said Callie Plant. “But what I’ve learned is that it could happen to anyone.”

From http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2326224.html

The non-lucrative underground trade in Jesus All About Life banners – updated*

The Hills Shire Times reports…

“The Jesus. All About Life advertising campaign seen all over the Hills has become a target for thieves.

Kenthurst Anglican minister David Misztal said his church’s banner had been cut down from its poles outside the church.

“All that was left was the rope tied to the poles,” he said.

“When I drove past the other local churches, I noticed that their banners had been cut down too.”

He said in Kenthurst alone the Nazarene Church and the Uniting Church had lost their banners, which cost $300 each.

“The campaign is designed to raise awareness about Jesus,” Mr Misztal said. “Obviously the campaign is making an impact on someone out there for them to steal our banners.”

Signs have also disappeared recently from outside Hillsong Church, Norwest and the Wesley Uniting Church Castle Hill.”

From http://hills-shire-times.whereilive.com.au/news/story/thieves-take-jesus-from-all-over-hills/

It’s now actually possible to number the hairs on Pat Mesiti’s head

This Parrott has ceased to be

The Star-Ledger reports…

“After bilking Newark parishioners out of nearly $160,000, disgraced Pentecostal bishop Steven Parrott pleaded guilty to misconduct by a corporate official, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram announced Friday.

“In pleading guilty, Parrott admitted that he stole $157,580 from five victims named in the indictment,” according to a statement released by the AG’s office. “Under the plea agreement, Parrott must pay full restitution to the victims, and the state will recommend that he be sentenced to three years in state prison.”

In 2005, Parrott, former pastor of the Lighthouse Temple on Market Street, borrowed money from parishioners, saying he was about to receive a major grant from the government and would pay back the loans with interest. Depending on the victim, Parrott at turns said the money was going to a fictitious after-school program, necessary church repairs, or burying a family member.

According to Cynthia Fleming, Parrot’s lifelong friend and principal victim, the guilty plea helps ease the pain of the swindle, but after four years she said she is still suffering. Because of poor treatment by church officers in the intervening years, Fleming said she is suing the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith — the umbrella church under which Parrott served.

“I was unable to buy a house, and because of what he’s done to me I have so much debt,” Fleming said today. “Even to the point where me and my grandkids were homeless.”

After her son, James Jenkins, a decorated Iraq war veteran, killed himself in 2005, Fleming was awarded a sizeable death benefit. Throughout her battle with insurance agencies, Fleming said Parrott was a constant source of support. When the settlement was awarded, Parrott called the grieving mother and said God wanted him to borrow $25,000.

“The Lord told me to ask,” Fleming recalled Parrott saying at the time. “It’s for my church.”

Parrott invoked God several more times before claiming a total of $75,000 from Fleming, who today said she never imagined he was capable of such treachery.

“Ever since we were children, I never knew anything bad about him,” Fleming said. “He was always a very gentle person and I had great respect for him and that’s why it’s so devastating.”

Worse, said Fleming, the Church of Our Lord has washed its hands of Fleming and her family and has offered no assistance since the theft.

“Bishop Rubin was nothing but nasty,” Fleming said of Rev. Fred Rubin, a church leader. “I told him I was being evicted and he said ‘I’ll pray for you.’”

Bishop Rubin declined to comment for this story.

According to Fleming, the checks she wrote to Parrott had a stamped endorsement from the “Metropolitan Diocese,” which she said makes the church liable for monetary damages. She says the church’s refusal to offer any kind of assistance exacerbated her suffering, already profound from the loss of her son, and the betrayal of her pastor.

“I endured such a hardship and no one would reach out and help me,” Fleming said. “It was like I never existed.”

Fleming is currently living in Burlington County with her daughter and grandchildren because she cannot afford her own home. While the attorney general says Parrott will be responsible for paying back all of the victims, he declared bankruptcy in 2005 and has not worked as a pastor since 2007, when the church barred him from performing services. Despite her ordeal, Fleming is not without mercy.

“God forgives,” Fleming said today. “And I have to forgive him as well.”

From http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/disgraced_newark_pastor_admits.html

Turn to the person next to you and :)

CNN reports…

“Hjalti á Lava was searching his iPhone for a Bible app when he stumbled across Church Online, a service of Web site LifeChurch.tv. Soon he was regularly logging into the Oklahoma-based cyber-church — some 4,100 miles away from á Lava’s home in the Faroe Islands, west of Norway.

“It allows me to connect with others and have conversations about the message,” says á Lava, who shares his faith with other believers in the site’s live chat room. “Technology allows us today to have fellowship across borders and cultures.”

In doing so, á Lava joined growing numbers of Christians worldwide who are migrating from the chapel to the computer. A map on the Church Online site showed users from 22 countries logged into a recent service.

Online religious services offer convenience to those who are too isolated or infirm to attend a real-world church. But can worshipping via a computer offer true spiritual fulfillment?

Internet pastors and parishioners cite their 24-hour access to interactive tools and social-networking platforms to show their online experiences are as meaningful as those that take place with face-to-face congregations.

“We were blown away at how people could actually worship along [online],” says Craig Groeschel, senior pastor at LifeChurch.tv. “The whole family will gather around the computer, and they’ll sing and they’ll worship together. Instead of trying to get people to come to a church, we feel like we can take a church to them.”

But critics believe virtual worship separates followers from a trinity of spiritual essentials found in brick-and-mortar Christian churches: community, Communion and connection with Christ.

“Online church is close enough to the real thing to be dangerous,” says Bob Hyatt, a pastor who leads the brick-and-mortar Evergreen Community Church in Portland, Oregon. In a blog post for ChristianityToday.com, he writes that calling it virtual church “gives people the idea that everything they need is available here.”

The debate is an extension of a wider argument over social interaction in virtual environments versus the physical world. But because practices of faith are involved, both sides are deeply invested in the outcome, seeing it as a statement on the nature of the Christian person’s relationship with God.

Supporters of online churches have a common response to their skeptics: Try before you criticize. The virtual experience goes far beyond using live chat rooms to exchange emoticons instead of hugs and handshakes, they say.

Links allow congregants to “raise their hand” and publicly commit to Christ, while prayer requests and one-on-one guidance are a click way. Sermon notes can be shared and discussed. And many online churches are aided by volunteers, allowing them to hold services several times each day.

The Internet campus of the Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, Florida, pulls in more than 2,000 congregants from around the world during its Sunday services. Pastor Doug Gramling said his three children are part of the Internet generation that will eventually decide the future of worship. They use Web tools to stay in constant connection with friends over vast distances, which Gramling says “gives me confidence that it can happen in online church.”

But the disconnect from physical closeness is what Hyatt said he’s “fighting hardest against.” His own church offers online extensions such as podcasts and forums. But he believes “the computer screen is a supplement, not a replacement.”

Hyatt and other critics are particularly distressed by the online offering of traditional sacraments, such as Communion and baptism. He believes it is “ridiculous” that someone can grab grape juice and a cracker from the fridge and watch a computer screen, thinking they are truly participating in a gathering of the faithful.

“Something about the physical presence, breaking the same bread, is what Communion is meant to be,” he says.

But Church Online participant Donna Coledisagrees.

“Knowing that others are also celebrating Communion, regardless of location, makes it an especially wonderful time,” says Cole, who believes real-world Communion can ring hollow. “When I’ve taken Communion in live surroundings, I often got the sense that it was ritualistic and without meaning.”

Matthew Bailey, aparishioner in the Franktown United Methodist Church in Virginia, believes that the meaning of the ritual is what matters.

“If people are willing to go to the trouble of giving their own Communion, then it is quite probably ‘real’ for them,” he says. While Bailey chooses to remain at his face-to-face church, he believes any person “faithfully attending an online church service, is being more proactive, and thus probably more attentive, than many longtime churchgoers.”

Douglas Estes, lead pastor of Berryessa Valley Church in San Jose, California, andauthor of “SimChurch,” a book about Internet church services, would like to see this debate go away.

“The Bible sees church not as a man-made building but as a people gathered to glorify God with their lives,” he says. Estes believes the quality of a community should be judged by the spiritual fellowship it offers.

“There is only one substantive difference between an online church and a brick-and-mortar church: The place where they meet.”

From http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/13/online.church.services/

Ted Haggard can still draw a crowd

The Denver Post reports…

“Former megachurch pastor Ted Haggard led worshipers for the first time since scandal forced his exile from his New Life Church congregation as about 110 people showed up for a prayer meeting in his home Thursday evening.

Haggard said he had expected perhaps five to 20 people and that it was not his plan to start a new church.

“I don’t have that hope,” Haggard said. “I was a 28-year-old boy when I started that (New Life).”

Yet, he said, he knew at his age, 53, that things can evolve in unpredictable ways. And he does anticipate holding regular prayer meetings.

Haggard left New Life and Colorado Springs in November 2006 after his relationship with a Denver male prostitute came to light.

Haggard and his family moved to Arizona, where he underwent part of a “restoration” process supervised by several ministers. He took up insurance sales to support his family, later returning to Colorado Springs in mid-2008.

“I died. I was buried,” Haggard said. “The sun didn’t come up for me for a year and a half.”

However, he also said he has felt God’s touch in his life more in the past three years than in the previous 30.

“I believe Jesus came for the sinner. God loves people like me,” he said.

Haggard, clad in jeans, a T-shirt and stocking feet, talked briefly with a handful of reporters, who were barred from the prayer service. He said his remarks that night would be on 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13 — St. Paul’s homily on the patience and endurance of love.

“People treat me better now than they had at any time in my life,” Haggard said. “They realize my frailty and my weakness.”

People love a resurrection story, he said.

About a quarter of those who showed up Thursday night were strangers to him. Most guests brought cookies or other food to share in the living room of his handsome brick Colonial-style home just down the road from New Life Church.

“It’s a Norman Rockwell scene,” Haggard said. “It’s a ‘Kumbaya’ moment.”

An HBO documentary about his downfall and exile, “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” premiered in January. During a media campaign to promote it, Haggard appeared on programs such as CNN’s “Larry King Live” and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Since then, he’s been traveling the lecture circuit with his wife, Gayle.

Her book about their travails, “Why I Stayed,” should be out Jan. 26, her publicist said.”

From http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_13777156

How rooting his Personal Assistant brought Pastor Gary Lamb face to face with the truth about church

Gary Lamb blogs…

“At this time in my life, I am no longer in “full-time” ministry though I would argue that I have had more opportunities to do ministry since not being on a church staff than I ever did while on a church staff. After 10 years of being in a paid staff position, the change to the “real world” was HARD! Actually, I was shocked at how hard of a transition it has been.

As I begin to think of what God has next for me in regards to starting another church, I can’t help but think of how out of touch pastors are with the world they are called to reach.  However, if I write this post about how out of touch pastors are with the real world, people will say I am jealous, bitter, and angry because I am no longer a pastor so instead I thought I’d share some things I’VE learned during this transition.

• I had NO clue the kind of financial, job, and family pressure most of our people were living with
• Getting up and preaching what people should do is easy. Living it out is not.
• So much of what I preached, I will never preach again because the fact is it is not possible to do in the real world.
• I worked less than the people I pastored. Ministry was my job yet I asked our people to serve, volunteer, etc. AFTER they have worked 50-60 hour work weeks.
• There are a lot of hurting people in the real world. As a pastor I preached this but I had lost touch with how true it was.
• People HATE the church. Wow! Again, I knew the church was a sore subject for people but I had no idea how deep the feelings ran. People hate churches and to be honest, I can’t blame them.
• Divorce is the Scarlet Letter. Trust me, I know it is awful, grieves God, and ruins lives but the church better learn what to do with it because marriages are falling apart everywhere and cute little sermon series [aren't] cutting it. Divorced people are the ones I meet most hurt by the church.
• You aren’t someone’s pastor because you have the title.
• Criticism makes me better. I had shielded myself from criticism to the point that I couldn’t see my flaws. In the “real world” I don’t have that luxury.
• Just because you left the church I pastored while I pastored there doesn’t mean you were a bad person. I use to joke that I was the Godfather to people that left. Some of the people who left Revolution before I left have been the most gracious to me.
• God provides. I honestly didn’t understand how huge this statement was while I was a pastor.  Today I understand it.
• God forgives. People don’t.
• Men are pigs.  I was the king of sexual jokes, second looks, and inappropriate thoughts (yes as a pastor and you’d probably be shocked at some of your current pastors in this area) but this is one of the areas I have been getting the most help to overcome. As I overcome it, I am left speechless at how little respect men have for women.
• “I’m sorry” goes a long way.  I have been blessed to rekindle some old friendships with people I hurt and it was simply because I said “I’m sorry.” As a pastor I would have never said this, but the real world lets you know you aren’t always right.
• Revolution Failed. That is not a knock on Revolution, the people or the staff, it is a knock on me. Big freaking deal that we ran the numbers we ran. The fact is the people in Canton aren’t going to church, want nothing to do with the things of God, and are searching for answers.  They could care less how cool the show was every week.
• It will take a different type of church to truly reach communities. I’m not sure what that looks like but I’m praying and thinking about it a lot. Once God shows me what that looks like, I’ll be a step closer to doing it again.
• I had some of the fakest friendships in the world.  People I thought were my best friends I haven’t spoken to once since I had an affair.  However, God has brought some friends that are the real deal. Sad thing is that some of them are pastors I wouldn’t make time for when I was a pastor. You can’t make it in this world without friends.
• I missed out on so much. As a pastor, I was so busy trying to build a great church (notice I didn’t say change a community) that I missed out on enjoying life, my children, and blew my marriage.  Working in the “real world” I refuse to allow that to happen again. I am taking time to smell the roses.

Overall, it is just amazing how out of touch I was with what was going on around me. God had to knock me down, humble me, and let me hit rock bottom where I can be more effective for Him in the future.  If God ever allows me to do it again, I think I will be much better at leading the people God trusts me with because I will have been there, done that, have the T-shirt to prove it.   “

From http://www.garylamb.org/2009/10/31/transition-from-pastor-to-real-world/

Ray McCauley – where did all the money go?

Times Live reports…

“His megachurch collects tithes and offerings of around R70-million a year and he lives the life of a millionaire, but Pastor Ray McCauley needs his flock to bail him out financially.

His son, Joshua, 26, has gone cap in hand to about 100 close friends and family to help get his dad, the leader of the Rhema Bible Church, out of debt.

Joshua’s impassioned plea was attached to an invitation to McCauley’s surprise 60th birthday party at the Sandton Convention Centre on Thursday night in “Old Hollywood” style.

“I would love nothing more than to help my father settle his existing debt and see him go into his 60s debt-free,” he wrote.

“As his son, I have felt it in my heart and now humbly request that, should you be considering giving him a gift for his 60th, you consider participating with me in this endeavour.”

McCauley and his wife, Zelda, recently announced that they would be moving back to Johannesburg, after several years of flying from Durban – where they lived in a R6.5-million beachfront mansion – to lead services at the 40000-strong Randburg congregation.

Depending on how the offerings went this week, this year’s gift is likely to be more substantial than the R2030 pair of Prada sunglasses Joshua bought for his dad in 2007. At the time, he billed the church for “Ps Ray’s birthday gift”.

In his quest to help his dad, Joshua described how “from a young boy”, he watched his father “do his utmost to walk the talk”.

“You may be aware of the challenges my family has faced, but no matter what the circumstances, I saw my dad be true to the convictions of his faith,” his letter read.

“As his son, it is my greatest wish to honour him with a gift that I know will change his life forever.”

Joshua has refused to reveal how guests responded.

“I don’t believe it’s anybody’s business. I only gave that letter to his close private friends and family. It probably went to about 100 people,” he said.

“The reality is that I did it without his knowledge.”

The charismatic pastor’s money woes come as a surprise, as he is believed to earn more than R100000 a month, and he and his wife have often hit the headlines over their penchant for the finer things in life.

A few years ago, Zelda arrived at a Sunday Times interview carrying a Fendi handbag, and McCauley rode up on his Harley-Davidson motorbike.

Zelda once told the Sunday Times that the secret to her cleavage was Victoria’s Secret, the exclusive underwear range.

“I particularly love French and Italian lace. It may be a bit pricey, but a girl has got to feel good about how she looks,” she said.

McCauley’s birthday was celebrated just days before the 30th anniversary conference of the Rhema Bible Church at the Dome, north of Johannesburg, this weekend.

Guests at the conference included pastors Joel and Victoria Osteen, from one of the fastest-growing churches in the US, pastor Joseph Prince from Singapore and two-time Grammy winner Israel Houghton and New Breed. According to the church website, Karen Zoid, Joe Niemand and Kabelo were also due to perform.

Thursday night’s birthday party was only for the “rich and famous,” according to a disgruntled church member.

“Ordinary citizens and staff of the church were not invited. It’s an abomination what’s happening in that church,” he said.

McCauley has been under pressure over his lavish life-style. Last year he was criticised for spending R25000 on meals, including R365 bottles of Meerlust Merlot, in just over a month.

Zelda, who grew up in an orphanage, said in a magazine interview in 2004 that she set aside Wednesdays for personal pampering, including Botox treatments and massages.

“My appearance is important to me,” she said. “I believe God expects a wife to look good for her husband.”

She said she also shared a weakness with her husband – shopping. “In America, we love hunting for bargains in big shopping centres such as Saw Grass Mill. We love giving to others just as much.”

From http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article165051.ece

The corporatising of Paul Andrew

Before

 

After

 

‘If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off..’

The Brisbane Times reports…

“The mother of a 15-year-old girl suspended from school for shaving her head to raise money for cancer charities says her leukemia-stricken husband is proud of her actions.

Emily Pridham was sent home from Mount Alvernia College yesterday and will not be allowed back until her hair regrows after she shaved it off as part of a cancer research fundraiser on Saturday.

The Catholic girls’ school has cited its dress code policy for the temporary ban.

Emily’s mother Barbara Pridham said she was “gobsmacked” at the school’s punishment and said the family had been given no warning about the possible consequences.

She told ABC radio her daughter had made the decision to part with her locks as a way to cope with her father’s battle with leukemia.

“I understand that school rules have to be abided by. However, I’ve gone through the school rules and the uniform policy and nowhere does it say that a girl cannot shave her head,” Ms Pridham said.

“At no stage did [the school] contact me or tell me. At no stage did I think I needed their permission for Emily to do this.

“I am absolutely gobsmacked that this can happen for the reason that it has happened.”

A Facebook group supporting Emily’s decision to shave her head has appeared, with members calling the school’s decision a ‘joke’ and an ‘absolute disgrace’.

Emily’s mother said her daughter had struggled with her father’s diagnosis and saw the fundraiser as a way to deal with it.

“Ten months ago he was given six months to live and we had to explain all of this to Emily,” she said.

“I didn’t want her to do it. She had beautiful, long blonde hair halfway down her back and I told her she might regret it because she can’t just stick it back on … but she’s just been so determined to do it.”

The school has defended its actions to enforce uniform guidelines and has said other, “ongoing issues” were behind the suspension.

But Ms Pridham said the only trouble her daughter had been involved in included a warning over nail polish after the school formal two weeks ago and her use of a rude word in the presence of a teacher.

She said her husband, who has undergone a bone marrow transplant, was supportive of Emily’s decision to go bald.

“He is very proud of her as everybody that knows her is,” Ms Pridham said.

“He is very angry and worried about the rest of her academic year.”

Ms Pridham said she had been in contact with the school about the suspension order.”

From http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/schoolgirl-suspended-for-cancer-head-shave-20091110-i6ee.html

Questioning Hill$ong for dummies

The Thinking Theologian blogs…

“It’s possible for a person to be a member of a church like Hillsong for years, and have deep concerns about its doctrine and practices which are never properly addressed. After a while, the tendency is to accept things as “just the way it is”, and hold on to some vague hope that, in time, things might improve.

But how will things improve? If something is never recognised as being a problem, time and effort will never be put in to changing it (“if it aint broke, don’t fix it”). For something to be recognised as a problem, those in positions of power must be made to pay attention.

The challenge for the earnest Christian then, is to voice their concerns to the right people, and in such a way that the underlying issues can not be ignored. So I’ve put together a few thoughts on how to navigate through the false walls and mirrors that are the maze of Hillsong’s rhetoric and spin, so that the concerned Hillsonger might have half a chance of having their questions heard.

Rather than address each and every issue, I will deal in general terms with the common problems that someone questioning Hillsong is likely to come up against. Hillsong spokesmen approach sceptics in much the same way, and I suspect their tactics are common to most other cult-like organisations. By being wise to their devices, I hope you’re able to survive them.

1. Damage Control
When a person first questions an element of Hillsong, whether it be their “open book policy”, or some dodgy doctrine, the first response is invariably damage control. You see the problem is not really with Hillsong, they’ll say, but with your perceptions of it. In the nicest possible way, it’ll be suggested that you’ve been listening to negativity, and should check your attitude. If you persist, the responses will gradually become less and less ‘pastoral’ as they move away from their defensive stance, toward an offensive one.

2. Personal Contact
Usually, a leader who is closest to the dissenter will be dispatched to smooth things over. This might be a youth pastor if you’re under 25, or the leader of the team in which you serve on a weekend. If you’re on staff, it’ll be your department head, or oversight. But the strategy is always the same: a friendly face.
By trying to make your concern a person-to-person disagreement, the hope is that you’ll fold, in favour of maintaining brotherly unity.

3. The Personal Contact Taking it Personally
If the usual rhetoric and spin doesn’t wash, your contact (whether it’s still the ‘friendly face’, or a ring-in tag-teamer) will feel personally wounded by your “attack” on Hillsong. This is probably a legitimate response in most cases. After all, for you to insist that something is wrong, the fact they believe everything’s fine means that you’re suggesting they, too, are wrong. The hope at this stage of course, is that by appearing hurt and saddened by your behaviour toward them, you’ll admit that perhaps you have been a bit harsh, and maybe its just all been a big misunderstanding. Nonsense. The important thing to remember is that your concerns are not personal, but relate to systemic problems of a far more pressing kind.

4. The Stone Wall
If your argument is sound, and leads to the logical conclusion that Hillsong is flawed, what happens next is a little discouraging, and quite anti-climatic: you’re stone walled. You’ll simply be ignored. Suddenly your friendly faced contact is swamped with work and can’t spare even a moment; your phone calls are never returned; people you thought were your friends won’t look you in the eye, and walk past you as if you don’t even exist. This, fellow-dissenters, is when Hillsong proponents show their true colours. “If you don’t toe the party line, you’re not one of us”, is the message sent loud and clear.

This is the point where I suspect most dissenters either leave Hillsong altogether, or admit defeat and convince themselves they were wrong, and everything’s alright really. I would really suggest the former: leave, and never look back.

You see, what matters to people who want to get ahead at Hillsong, isn’t Christ’s love, or even the salvation of souls. It’s “building the church”. And to build it, you’ve got to believe in it… and believing means giving your life to it. Once they have your heart, your mind will not be far behind.

But with any luck, you won’t reach the stone wall. If you insist that your concerns be taken seriously, and don’t cave-in at their tried and tested tactics, you may yet stave the terminal write-off.

But remember that the issues at Hillsong are not down to petty differences of opinion, or mere methodological disagreements; they are fundamental problems of Christian doctrine and practice. There is far more at stake that one person’s ostracization from the ‘Hillsong club’. In the grand scheme of things, what does it really matter if you have to find yourself another church? Surely of more importance is Christ’s bride who, thanks to the likes of Hillsong, is far from blemish-free, and covered with spot and wrinkle.

If each and every member of Hillsong who has a legitimate concern (and there are more than you might think), were to pluck up the courage to speak up, I believe there would be cause for hope; and hope for positive change.”

From http://tttdiscussionforum.blogspot.com/2009/08/hillsong-heretics-dissenters-guide.html

Basil Faulty

The Star reports…

“A number of parents are stuck in a desperate battle with a church in Durban’s upmarket suburbs that they accuse of “stealing” and brainwashing their teens.

Calling Grace Gospel Church in Pinetown a “mind-controlling” Christian cult, the parents claim girls have been married to men they hardly know, chosen for them by the church.

The church is a branch of Church Team Ministries International (CTMI), an international Christian group with head offices in Mauritius.

The group’s leader, Basil O’Connell-Jones, was sent to Durban from another CTMI branch, Selborne Park Christian Church in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in 2003.

He is well known in charismatic Christian circles for his autobiography Amazing Grace, which details his time as a soldier in the then Rhodesian army and his near-death experience of being shot in the head and then overcoming the injury.

Now O’Connell-Jones is accused of ministering to many young people, aged between 18 and 30, and encouraging them to abandon their tertiary studies and careers and leave their families to live with him in his Hillcrest home or in other church leaders’ homes.

CTMI is led by founder and televangelist Miki Hardy, who is said to live in luxury in Mauritius. The group is alleged to encourage its members to leave their home countries and go to the island to help build the Mauritian church and “serve the Lord”.

Parents who have lost children to the group have formed the Concerned Parents Group, to fight the church.

They tell of how, when pastors initially approached the Grace Gospel Church with their concerns, including the church’s aggressive recruitment of children from their churches, they were called “pathetic Pharisees”, jealous of the church’s secret doctrine, which no other church apparently has.

CTMI is considering suing the parent group for defamation, for calling it a cult and for accusing it of kidnapping children.

But the parents are undeterred. They believe that any court case would lift the lid on the church’s activities.

Keith Brown, who was part of a team of members from other churches at a meeting with GGC leaders, says a CTMI leader bluntly told them: “Jesus did not come to bring peace in families but a sword”.

Brown says his eldest son Stuart (then 27) was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and died in a hospice after being cared for in church leaders’ homes because the leaders “felt uncomfortable visiting Stuart in our home”.

Steve and Heather Goddard, of Kloof, say their daughter, who they did not wish to name, has been a member of the church for almost three years and started avoiding her other Christian friends “in favour of members of Grace Gospel”.

Anthony and Romaine Chaplin, of Durban North, say their son had been a top pupil at Kearsney College before going to study at the University of Cape Town.

Last April, he abandoned his studies to go to Mauritius.

The parents have now set up a website – www.ctmi concernedparents.com – with stories about their children and links to websites about dangerous cults and the characteristics of cults.

“This church has brainwashed our children. They are encouraged to reject their biological families and their studies and will more than likely be pushed into an arranged marriage,” says one of parents.

But O’Connell-Jones’s daughter Kara-Jane and her husband Richard Seynisch have defended the church, saying they are like any other young person in their age group.

“My life started and ended with drinking, clubbing, fornication and all other ‘youthful lusts’ that surrounded me,” she says. “Then, during my first three weeks in Mauritius, I was bowled over by the light, the joy and the freedom that was so evidently oozing out of the people in the church.”

But Melany Wood, 21, who attended a youth camp in Mauritius at the end of 2007, says: “People there are blinded. They are so struck by this church that they cannot see reality.”

Another girl, 22, who wished to remain anonymous left the church in high school after she had questioned the teaching.

“I’ve seen my good friends, girls of 18 and 19, give up their dreams because the church labelled them ‘worldly’ and ‘of the flesh’. They’ve had their lives mapped out for them, and some of them have been married off to men who were chosen for them by the church – guys they hardly know.”

Leaders of the GGC did not wish to respond to the allegations. “CTMI is a non-denominational missionary organisation with thousands of members across 25 different countries. We do not wish to be involved in the dispute between four families and their relationships with their children, all of whom are major citizens.

“We have chosen therefore not to reply to any allegations against us and to leave it to the young adults themselves to address the issue, as they are the ones who are directly concerned,” they said in an official statement to the Saturday Star.”

From http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=139&art_id=vn20091107072434816C446171

Christian Demogogic Party

The Australian reports…

“Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party plans to run an emotive anti-Muslim, anti-carbon trading campaign in the by-election for the northern Sydney seat of Bradfield.

And in a case of “onward Christian soldiers”, the CDP has decided to stand no fewer than 11 candidates in the federal seat.

In what is a blue-ribbon conservative stronghold, the CDP is hoping to capitalise on unease among some Liberals with federal party leader Malcolm Turnbull’s willingness to negotiate an emissions trading scheme with the Rudd Labor government.

The party’s propaganda for the December 5 by-election, which has been provided in advance to The Australian, declares “Enough!” and urges Australians to “Stand your ground in defence of Christian values”.

It uses a selection of alternating slogans, including, “Ten-year moratorium on Muslim immigration”, “No nukes for Iran — we must defend Israel” and “No carbon tax — stop the ETS”.

Mr Nile — who sits alone in the NSW upper house since expelling fellow MP Gordon Moyes from the CDP six months ago — yesterday denied the CDP was dragging the politics of race into the battle for Bradfield.

“The CDP is opposed to racism and we have people of all races on our team,” he said.

“But Muslim is not a race. It’s a religious and political ideology.”

While Mr Nile agreed the anti-Muslim, anti-ETS campaign would alienate the majority of voters in a “trendy” electorate such as Bradfield, he claimed: “There are at least 10 per cent who would agree with those policies, maybe more.”

But the Greens candidate for Bradfield, Susie Gemmell, condemned the CDP strategy and said: “Directing hatred towards people of any religious faith is totally unacceptable.”

Liberal candidate Paul Fletcher, who is expected to win Bradfield easily, declined to comment on the anti-Muslim campaign, but said: “Local residents don’t want a rushed and poorly planned ETS which just turns out to be another tax.”

Mr Nile has been a leading campaigner against a proposed 1200-student Muslim school at Camden, in outer southwest Sydney.

He said the unprecedented strategy of standing 11 candidates against each other in Bradfield was designed to increase the CDP’s overall vote — by allowing the candidates to focus their efforts on different areas within the electorate — and to raise the party’s profile by having its name appear so many times on the ballot paper.

Mr Nile said the federal Opposition Leader’s position on climate change would help the CDP’s cause.

“He’s not a very strong leader and he’s taken this approach as the path of least resistance,” he said.

At the 2007 election, the CDP scored 1.74 per cent of the vote in Bradfield, the Greens 11.26 per cent.

Labor is not contesting the by-election, which was triggered by the resignation last month of former federal Liberal leader Brendan Nelson….”

From http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/fred-nile-raises-crusade-in-by-election/story-e6frg6nf-1225794863587

Gloria Jean’s forced to abandon another Christian venture

The UK National Secular Society writes…

“A new religious initiative has arisen that — if we believe its propaganda — will soon be as big, if not bigger, than the Alpha Course.

It is called “Café Church” and is the brainchild of Baptist Minister Cid Latty of Christchurch Baptist Church, Welwyn Garden City. The concept is simple – people won’t go to church, so why not bring the church to the people via high street coffee chains? “The idea is to encourage those who might feel uncomfortable in a church building to worship in a more neutral environment,” say the organisers.

Costa Coffee has gone along with this idea and is permitting these church groups to operate on its premises. The Gloria Jean’s coffee shop chain is also taking part in the scheme. There are now 50 “cafe churches” operating around the country from Glasgow to Torquay.

The Waterlooville branch of Costa is hosting an Alpha Course starting this week, the first time one has been seen outside a church. Organiser Gary Chapman, from Church of the Good Shepherd, had the idea after attending two separate training sessions about Alpha and Café Church.

“It’s church, but not in a church building,” said Mr Chapman. “It’s taking the idea of church into the wider community. It removes that barrier that people sometimes feel about walking into a church building, and helps those who want to find out more about their spiritual side in a place they already feel comfortable. Most Alpha courses provide food. We’ll be asking people to eat before they come, but we can give them a nice coffee! And the programme for Café Church is quite similar to Alpha – low-key worship, the chance to build relationships and have discussion.”

“I think the model works” said Costa Home Counties Retail Development Manager, Sandy Gourlay. “I want to take it forward through Costa because here is a way for our stores to engage with our communities.”

Kristian Thorpe, CEO of Gloria Jean’s Coffees UK, describes the partnership with Cafechurch Network as “fitting with their ethos; ‘We love innovation and we value people. This whole project is thinking outside the box and believing in people. For that reason we have asked the Cafechurch Network to provide our stores with cafechurches.”

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: “As commercial operators, Costa and Gloria Jean’s can do whatever they want with their own premises. But as a consumer, I have a choice, too. Unlike with my tax contributions, I can decide whether my coffee budget will be used to finance religion. From now on I will be patronising Starbucks, and I will write to Costa to let them know of my decision.”

Mr Sanderson said: “As commercial ventures in a highly competitive market, these businesses should be careful that this concept doesn’t import the failure of the churches into their own establishments. The empty pews in churches can easily translate into empty seats in coffee bars if they become too closely associated with this heavy-handed fundamentalist Christianity.”

From http://www.secularism.org.uk/fancy-a-coffee-look-out-the-evan.html

Update….

“Following our story in last week’s Newsline about the incursion of a Baptist Church into High Street coffee chains, we have been informed by Gloria Jean’s Coffees that, after a change in ownership, it is no longer participating in the scheme. Gloria Jean’s has only three shops — in the British Midlands — although it has branches in forty countries…...”

From http://www.secularism.org.uk/gloria-jeans-says-it-no-longer-s.html

That coffee in the welcome lounge at the local Pente megachurch could be slowly killing you

The Daily Telegraph reports…

“The two best-known coffee chains are selling drinks with more than 100 per cent of the recommended intake of sugar or saturated fat – and 800 times the kilojoules of a long black – but customers have no idea because both are failing in their policies for providing dietary information.

The revelations come as international research that shows daily consumption of any of nearly 100 menu items sold by Gloria Jeans and Starbucks can lead to gaining almost 10kg a year.

Worryingly, the most decadent of the new wave of cold, cream-laden chocolate and coffee concoctions contains four times the energy researchers say may cause such a weight increase.

Nutritionists and dietitians said more had to be done to make information available to the 10 million-plus people who consume drinks from the chains each month.

They were responding to a Daily Telegraph investigation that revealed:

* A REGULAR-SIZE Gloria Jeans Mocha Chiller Coco Loco packs 95.5g of sugar, which is 106 per cent of an adult’s recommended daily intake. A large has 129g of sugar, or 143 per cent of the RDI;

* A LARGE Starbucks Signature hot chocolate with cream contains 24.3g of saturated fat, or 101 per cent of the RDI; and

* A LARGE Gloria Jeans iced chocolate with whipped cream has 3260kJ – the same as 815 long blacks. It would take more than three hours of bike-riding to use up this amount of energy.

Sampling the Gloria Jeans Mocha Chiller Coco Loco yesterday, Newcastle university student Laura Croger was horrified when told about the beverage’s sugar content.

“It tastes all right but not after you told me how much sugar and kilojoules are in it,” she said.

Her friend Nicola Evans tried the Gloria Jeans iced chocolate with whipped cream, which she said left a “fatty, greasy” taste in her mouth.

The Daily Telegraph also found that both chains’ stores were unable to provide nutritional information on request. On request Gloria Jeans staff are supposed to look up dietary information on a special site for franchisees, then advise the customer.

Starbucks outlets are meant to keep brochures behind the counter. None had them. That said, Starbucks provides nutritional information on its website and staff did direct The Daily Telegraph to the website.

Gloria Jeans does not have any information on its public site.

Dietitian Melanie McGrice said chains should have to provide such information in brochures in stores.”

From http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/coffee-hit-to-the-heart/story-e6freuy9-1225789034447

Delusional Danny’s One World Government fantasy

Danny Nalliah blogs…

“Dear friends and family in Christ,

Is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Labor government, who have betrayed the Christian voters after winning the last federal election, now about to betray the nation of Australia once again? In his recent 2GB Radio interview with Lord Mockton, Alan Jones from Sydney stated in his closing comments, “Is the Prime Minister about to betray us all?”

In December at the Global Warming Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, PM Kevin Rudd will relinquish Australia’s democratic rights to make decisions as a sovereign nation, by signing a treaty to a ONE WORLD GOVERMENT led by the United Nations.

Janet Albrechtsen’s article on climate change in the 28 October edition of the Australian refers to the United Nation’s ‘Copenhagen Plot’. The article deals with a draft of the climate change treaty, which she says is ‘aimed at creating a world government that would tax rich countries and give to poor ones’. As members know, the United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark from 7 to 18 December 2009. The conference includes the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

We at Catch the Fire Ministries fought a 5 year battle for freedom of Speech and freedom of Religion in the state of Victoria due to a bad piece of legislation which became law in 2002 under the Labor administration. Thank God we won this battle which helped us regain our freedom of speech. Is our entire nation of Australia about to lose it forever?

As reported in the Australian, ‘the question now is why the Federal Government failed to provide some of the information that is the basis for the treaty to indicate the direction the treaty is going. When 15,000 officials, advisers, diplomats, activists and journalists arrive from 190 countries they will be force-fed the treaty document to sign. We have to know what is in it. If Australia signs it—and I imagine Mr Rudd will enthusiastically commit Australia to it—what effect will it have on Australia? Lord Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to the Thatcher Government, made a statement at Saint Paul Minnesota on 14 October about his interpretation of the document. He has also been interviewed on Alan Jones’ program on 2GB. Lord Monckton claims that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty is to set up a trans-national government on a scale the world has never seen. It talks about a new trans-national treaty and refers to a new body to be set up under treaty as a government.’

Lord Monckton in his speech in the US in Oct quoted, “We are at the 11th hour, 59th minute and 59th second to save our nations from a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT. Your president is about to sign this treaty so are many other leaders. But you can stop it”.

Visit the following link to watch a 4 minute interview from Lord Monckton of the British House of Lords regarding the upcoming Global Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December where nations will cede away sovereignty to a global government body. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMe5dOgbu40
 
Visit the following link to listen to Lord Monckton’s 15 minute radio interview with Allan Jones in Sydney, Australia regarding the ETS, Copenhagen Treaty, and a One World Government. 

http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=4998

The left-wing secularists and most media attack us all the time for standing up for absolute moral values. Will they now cover up and sell their own birthright in order to protect a left-wing secular government. I hope we will wake up to the fact that our children and grandchildren will pay the price if we sign up to this ONE WORLD AGENDA. In particular what worries me is the key players behind it, the Rockerfeller family, Henry Kissinger, Mikhail Gorbachev, Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan [the little fat kid from Hey Dad - I added that one in - Ed ] and others, who are main representatives of the club of Rome. Communists, Muslims, and others are working together for a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT. We all know that they despise Democracy.

Australia we need to stop Rudd from signing this treaty. To email the PM with your voice of protest click on the following link and following the instructions for emailing the PM:

http://pm.gov.au/PM_Connect/Email_your_PM   

Alternatively, you may send a fax to the PM’s office at (02) 6273 4100.

One report recently stated in the last 30 years the ice melt down has been the least in the last year. The month of October saw a massive prayer operation across Australia and in particular on Mount Ainslie in Canberra. We thank God for exposing the above as we believe it is a direct result of prayer to save our nation and the world.

While a large part of the Christian church is in denial, much of the secular media is increasingly confirming what we proclaimed (and many other Christian prophetic ministries) several years ago regarding a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT!  Is this the beginning of the end before the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem, Israel as the reigning King of kings and LORD of lords?

We at Catch the Fire Ministries and millions of Bible-believing God-fearing Christians around the world believe it is so!  (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, Revelation 19:11-21, Daniel 7:13-14, 18)

Your Brother in Christ,

Pastor Daniel Nalliah”

From http://catchthefire.com.au/blog/2009/11/05/prime-minister-kevin-rudd-about-to-betray-australia-by-pastor-daniel/

Who wants to be a hundredaire?

The Chicago Tribune reports…

“At Lighthouse Church of All Nations in Alsip, the congregation can get more than just prayer at the Sunday worship services.

If a lucky — or “blessed and highly favored” — churchgoer is in the right seat, they can also receive a cash prize.

At each of the three Sunday services, the Rev. Dan Willis pulls a number of one seat from a bag and the worshiper in that seat wins a cash prize. Two of the churchgoers win $250 and the third gets $500. The church gives away $1,000 each Sunday, Willis said.

The cash prize is part of Willis’ recent focus on helping his congregation pay bills and begin a debt-free life, he said.

“We’ve had soooo many of our people displaced from jobs, facing foreclosure,” he said. “When people’s faith was high, their debt was down. When their faith was down, their debt was high. I realized the two are connected.”

Willis concedes the cash prize is a gimmick to fill the pews. But he’s unapologetic about the plan, because it’s working. On a typical Sunday, his church draws about 1,600 people to its three Sunday services. But since the money giveaway started, about five weeks ago, the congregation has grown to about 2,500 each week, he said. The money for the giveaway comes from the church offering. Lighthouse is a non-denominational church.

“If I can get someone in here and teach them and give them money, that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.

As part of the lessons, Willis set up a shredder near the pulpit to encourage church members to shred their credit cards and commit to stop spending. He talks about budgeting, tackling past-due bills and saving. He encourages the prize winners to use the money to pay down their bills, rather than splurge on new items. One Sunday, he gave away 15 savings accounts with $25 already in them. And he had bank representatives at the service so church members could set up accounts.

“The Bible says even an ant stores up in the summer so it can live in the winter,” Willis said. “Even an ant can teach us. Even an ant knows how to save. We, with intellect, don’t know how to do it. When people see that in Scripture, it takes on a whole different level.”

From http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-talk-church-cashnov02,0,5901781.story

Haggard starts new church

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports…

“Ted Haggard, who started New Life Church in his Colorado Springs basement and built it into a megachurch with thousands of worshipers, announced today he is starting a church in his living room.

“We wanted to do something in our house to connect with friends,” said Haggard, whose ties to New Life ended with the revelation that he’d been involved with a male prostitute in Denver.

Haggard will hold his first gathering at 7 p.m. Nov. 12 at his house at 1865 Old Ranch Road. He referred to it as a “prayer meeting,” but said it would also be correct to call it a church. The gathering will include music and an offering to New Life Church. Haggard also will give a talk about the power of prayer.

Although Haggard said just recently he had no plans to start a church, he changed his mind two weeks ago after talking to a friend in Florida who was involved in prayer meetings.

Haggard anticipates that 10 to 20 people will show up, and said he has no expectations of building his new enterprise into something on the scale of New Life.

“For this prayer meeting, I have no goals,” he said. “I have no secret hope that more people will come. I am not driven as I was. Before I focused on the Great Commission. Now I focus on helping other people.”

Haggard started New Life Church in 1985 as a gathering of 25 people who met in his unfinished basement. It wasn’t long before he became a rising star in evangelical circles. In 1996, Christianity Today magazine named him one of 50 up-and-coming evangelical leaders younger than 40. He later became head of the National Association of Evangelicals, as his church grew to a membership of 14,000.

But in November 2006, a male prostitute in Denver broke the news that Haggard had been one of his clients, and had asked him to procure meth. Haggard first denied the story, then admitted it. He resigned from New Life with compensation, provided he would move away from Colorado and meet with overseers who would work to rehabilitate him. The agreement also prohibited him from opening a church within a 100-mile radius of Colorado Springs.

Several people who have worked with Haggard said it’s premature for him to be setting out on this path. C. Peter Wagner, who co-founded the World Prayer Center with Haggard, said Haggard should first seek approval  from the overseers before leading people in prayer and worship.

“My reservation is that he has not followed through completely on apostolic protocol,” Wagner said Wednesday.

Gary Black worked with Haggard in the 1990s when Black’s youth missionary organization, Rock the Nation, was affiliated with New Life. He, too, was taken aback.

“I would be shocked to think he’s ready to lead a church,” Black said.

The Rev. Brady Boyd, who took over leadership of New Life Church in 2007 and lifted the restrictions against Haggard, did not address the news directly, but said: “New Life Church will always be grateful for the many years of dedicated leadership from Ted Haggard and we wish him and his family only the best.”

From http://www.gazette.com/articles/haggard-65454-ted-church.html

Destiny church – the Tamaki spin and the real inside story

Part 1

Part 2

3 News reports…

“The “mighty men of God” is how Brian Tamaki refers to the men in Destiny Church. They have a covenant agreement between Tamaki, the “spiritual father”, and the men, the “sons”.
 

The Taranaki branch of the church is run by pastors Lee and Robyn Edmonds. Three months ago it produced a directive in the lead up to destiny’s Labour Weekend covenant oath to prepare the men for their testimonies to Bishop Tamaki.

 

Three Taranaki Destiny men refused to sign that covenant, and say the church is ripping their families apart.

Glen Lovegrove is a former drug addict and alcoholic. For 18 years he has been a born again Christian and drug-free. He was part of Destiny Church for six and a half years.

Bruce Harkness makes no secret of his violent past – he was a debt enforcer with a string of convictions. He has had no criminal convictions for 23 years, been a Christian for nine, and in Destiny for eight.

 

Ben Evans is an electrical engineer with a masters with distinction from Staffordshire University, and emigrated to New Zealand four years ago. He has attended Destiny on-and-off for two years.

 

They spoke to Campbell Live about the problems Destiny has caused them, and their fears for what the church will do next.”

 

Watch 3 News video

Gayside Church

SX reports…

“In what’s believed to be a world first, a pastor from a Pentecostal Christian church has issued a call for acceptance of GLBT people, and unequivocally invited queer people to join his congregation.

Pastor Rob Buckingham of the Christian City Church, also known as the C3 Church, issued the call during his weekly sermon on Sunday.

Buckingham is Senior Pastor of Melbourne’s Bayside C3 Church, which has three locations in Melbourne (Cheltenham, Frankston and South Melbourne) and a combined congregation of several thousand.

In the ground-breaking sermon delivered by Buckingham, the pastor said that real Christianity was accepting, and that people – not God – were anti-gay.

“Often the church is viewed as anti-homosexual,” he said. “Real Christianity is accepting … God is not presenting the attitudes sometimes presented by Christians and by the church.”

Referring to research published in the landmark book unChristian, by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, Buckingham said the church’s stance on homosexuality was its number one problem today.

“Christians’ criticism of gay people doesn’t just drive a wedge between the church and the gay community. Many [heterosexuals] in our community are not anti-gay, so when they hear an anti-gay message coming from the church it actually drives a wedge between Christianity and them as well.”

Buckingham went on to say that Bible stories were being erroneously presented as anti-gay. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah did not concern homosexuals, he said, but rather people who were “overfed, unconcerned, lazy, had lots of resources” and refused to help the poor and needy.

Speaking to SX after his sermon, Buckingham – a married heterosexual with three children – said he had broken with Pentecostal tradition because he firmly believed that GLBT people had a place in his church.

“This is simply something that we feel strongly about,” he told SX. “We believe that God loves everyone and that he sent his son Jesus to bring salvation to all … Bayside Church welcomes GLBT people to find God’s love and grace and to worship him freely within our community.”

Anthony Venn-Brown, convenor of Freedom 2 B[e] – a support group for queer people from Pentecostal, Evangelical and Charismatic Christian backgrounds – said Buckingham’s stance was “very significant because Pentecostalism is traditionally quite conservative”.

But he said it also represented changes that had already occurred within the denomination.

 “More than half of the Pentecostals anonymously polled in the Australian Church Life Survey [in 2004] said ‘yes’ when asked if homosexuals should be accepted as members of the church on the same basis as heterosexuals,” he said.

It remains unclear whether Buckingham’s views are shared by others in the C3 hierarchy.

A spokesperson from the church’s main Australian campus at Oxford Falls, Sydney was unable to provide a statement to SX by press time.

Buckingham told SX he did not “in any way speak for Christian City Church on this issue”.

From http://sxnews.e-p.net.au/news/world-first-as-pentecostals-welcome-gays-6345.html

 

Rob Buckingham video sermon

Rob Buckingham audio only

Focus on the Pharisee

The Canberra Times reports…

“Focus on the Family has been banned from the ACT school system for at least a month while allegations that the Christian group vilified homosexuals are investigated. The fallout has also spread to NSW.

The state’s Education Department has revealed it suspended the Performance in Schools program that included Focus on the Family’s ”No Apologies Impact” seminar.

But Christian lobbyists rallied to the cause, saying the bans are ”political correctness gone mad”.

Focus on the Family has been accused of demonising homosexuality, painting it in the same light as bestiality and giving religious education without parental permission in ACT public schools.

It promotes the ”No Apologies Impact” seminar at the heart of the controversy in Canberra as a program authorised by the NSW Department of Education as part of its Performance in Schools program.

But in a short statement, the NSW department said it did not support or endorse any unlawful discrimination in its schools and would take action in cases where this is shown to have occurred.”

From http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/govt-bans-christian-group-from-schools/1664491.aspx

Further Canberra Times reporting…..

“……….Education Minister Andrew Barr said preliminary advice from his department indicated the ”extreme views of a fringe organisation”, Focus on the Family, had been presented in six ACT schools in the past two years.

A student at Canberra High School who attended one of the seminars alleged it included claims sex was bad, painted homosexuality in a similar light to bestiality and warned students they could become gay by watching gay pornography.

Students were also allegedly warned they could become attracted to animals by watching animal pornography, that if a couple had sex it was the boy’s fault and that girls should not provoke boys by putting their hair up and wearing make-up.

The alleged comments were made during a series of ”No Apologies Impact” seminars held at the school and attended by students from years 7 to 10.

Mr Barr ordered his department conduct an investigation, which is expected to take weeks to complete.

The student’s parent, David Gould, said he was very concerned that Focus on the Family was teaching students to discriminate against homosexuals.

”It’s just wrong, it confuses young people already going through the confusing period that is adolescence and it’s spreading hatred.”

From http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/fears-on-extreme-school-seminars/1663523.aspx

Christian Sh*tty Church loses ABC boss?

The Australian reported, April 2007…

“……[ABC Managing Director Mark Scott's].. a devout Christian who worships at the evangelical Christian City Church in Sydney’s north, where the 5000-strong congregation are sometimes called the “happy clappers” as they wave their arms to rock music and strobe lights…..”

http://www.acl.org.au/sa/browse.stw?article_id=14615

Crikey reports, November 2009…

“The November issue of the SMH’s Sydney magazine features a profile of the ABC’s managing director Mark Scott which contains this curious line on page 36: “Their scant private time is devoted to family; once identified as a prominent evangelical Christian, Scott now says he doesn’t attend any particular Church”

Scott may not ‘attend’ any particular church but he is on the Board of Management and Honorary Treasurer of Wesley Mission. His photo is in the foyer in Pitt Street…..”

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/trevorcook/2009/11/02/mark-scott/

Welcome to Movember

Destiny Church – First Fruitloops

The New Zealand Herald reports…

“Brian Tamaki is given up to $500,000 every year in donations from Destiny Church members on top of his six-figure salary, according to a former employee.

The 7000-strong congregation is encouraged to donate money in an annual “First Fruits” offering in an October service, which is gifted to the self-appointed bishop for his own use, rather than funding church activities.

The practice was first introduced to Destiny Church by a visiting American pastor and is based on Old Testament scripture, in which the people of Israel would give the first produce of the land each year to the priests to eat.

Church-goers would give between $350,000 and $500,000 to Bishop Tamaki in the “First Fruits” offering each year, says a former Destiny Church insider.

Lynda Stewart, a former financial administrator for Bishop Tamaki and his wife Hannah, was a member of Destiny for seven years but left after he was appointed as a bishop in 2005.

She told the Weekend Herald that the “First Fruits” donation was spoken about between American minister Michael Pitts and Bishop Tamaki privately before the idea was discussed with other Destiny pastors at the Tamaki family home.

Soon after, the congregation were encouraged to give personally to Bishop Tamaki which was justified with scripture, which Ms Stewart says was taken out of historical context.

“The Bible was being used to manipulate people to give money for his personal use to fund his flashy lifestyle,” said Ms Stewart. “And the people blindly accept what Brian says.”

Dr James Harding, a lecturer of theology at Otago University and a Christian, said the “First Fruits” offering was given in the Old Testament era because the Levite priests had no land to make a living from.

“[The offering] was to give them a living wage, so to speak, it was in that context. Quite a different context to Auckland in 2009,” said Dr Harding.

“It is somewhat of a strain, quite a stretch I think, to use passages from the Old Testament to justify this. I’d be very interested to hear how they justify it theologically.”

Destiny Church spokeswoman Janine Cardno was unable to send an email response to Weekend Herald questions, as the church computer system crashed.

Instead, she sent a text suggesting to read Bishop Tamaki’s autobiography to answer questions about the church and money.

Mrs Cardno did not reply to subsequent phone messages.

The “First Fruits” offering is donated by churchgoers on top of money given in tithes – 10 per cent of income – and other financial donations to help fund the church.

Bishop Tamaki’s six-figure salary is paid from church revenue, through the Destiny International Trust. He also receives revenue raised by the church’s Proton Bookstore – where his messages can be bought on CD or DVD for between $10 and $20 – and Proton Gym.

Bishop Tamaki and Hannah are the sole shareholders in the Proton Trustee Company Ltd. The couple are also shareholders in Tamaki Productions Ltd and Tamaki Investments Ltd.

They own a $1.2 million clifftop home with views of the Hauraki Gulf, which is now for sale, and a $100,000 boat and expensive cars and motorcycles. The Herald this week revealed that 700 male members of Destiny Church swore a “covenant oath”of loyalty and obedience to Bishop Tamaki at the church’s annual conference in Auckland last weekend.

The oath requires them to stand when Bishop Tamaki and Hannah enter a room; surprise the couple with gifts; and when dining with Bishop Tamaki start eating only after he has started. A church document titled “Protocols and Requirements Between Spiritual Father & His Spiritual Sons” encourages the men to tell others of their love for Bishop Tamaki.”

From http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10606489

Brian Tamaki – The King of Wishful Thinking

The New Zealand Herald reports…

“In requiring its men to swear an oath of loyalty and obedience to Brian Tamaki, the Destiny Church – having glorified the messenger above the message – has begun to transform itself into a cult.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a cult as “a system of religious devotion directed towards a particular figure or object” and “a relatively small religious group regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members”.

This self-glorifying rule-making, in which Mr Tamaki has obviously been aided and abetted by other Destiny leaders, makes, for instance, Catholics’ deference to, and reverence for, their spiritual father, the Pope, look positively casual.

But what bothers me most about all this is that those who prepared and published the document Protocols and Requirements Between Spiritual Father & His Spiritual Sons actually believe what they wrote.

And how 700 Kiwi men could accept this nonsense and swear lifetime fealty to a mere fallible mortal is quite beyond me. It reeks, if not of spiritual blackmail, then of a deep spiritual sickness.

Things like honour, loyalty and obedience have to be earned and freely given, not appropriated and imposed, and when they are imposed, particularly under oath, they are fragile indeed.

Another enigma in this business is that no mention is anywhere made of the women of the church, apart, of course, from Mr Tamaki’s wife, known as Pastor Hannah.

I presume that Mr Tamaki and his church leaders take literally the three-verse passage in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians which says: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church … Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”

And that the wives and children of the “spiritual sons” simply do what their husbands and fathers tell them.

That brief passage of scripture has, of course, been used by churchmen to keep women in their place ever since the apostles were cold in their graves. But, as has been rightly said, a text taken out of context is a pretext.

Such religious totalitarianism is not new. There are many churches in the United States, and quite a few in New Zealand – particularly in Auckland – that are led by pastors who operate in similar dictatorial fashion. But most of them are not nearly so blatant about it.

The American evangelist Paul Mershon puts it much better than I could.

He writes: “The abuse and misuse of pastoral authority in the case of those requiring an oath of loyalty to any degree is wholly without merit, and beyond the scope of any and all scriptural mandate …

“Certainly we all want to, and should, support our pastor, but in no way does this imply that we are to blindly follow any man with unquestioned loyalty when it is Christ, and Christ alone, to whom total fealty belongs …

“[A pastor's] role is that of a humble servant of the Lord, ordained of God to serve his people as a sheep-feeding pastor, not a heavy-handed despot.”

Mr Mershon questions the practice of signing, or giving verbal affirmation to, some sort of “covenant” whereby followers pledge to be loyal to one leader all the days of their lives, and follow him no matter what.

History is littered with evidence of the tragic results that can come to people bound up in religious cultism.

To Destiny Church members I simply say: “Be very afraid.”

From http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10605962

Never let someone else take over your ability to make decisions

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports…

Watch report broadband

Watch report dial-up

“KERRY O’BRIEN, PRESENTER: Cults are a social phenomenon, probably as old as religion itself. The perennial question remains: how do otherwise intelligent people let a charismatic guru control all aspects of their lives, sometimes with catastrophic results?

Now, two Australian brothers have written a rare insight into life on the inside and on the outside of an extreme religious cult where the members worshipped a woman who claimed she was god. Rebecca Baillie reports.

REBECCA BAILLIE, REPORTER: David and Margaret Ayliffe are people of faith. While they’re now parishioners at a mainstream Anglican church on the outskirts of Melbourne, for nearly two decades they were members of an extreme religious cult.

DAVID AYLIFFE, FORMER CULT MEMBER: It was horrible. I can understand, with the doomsday cults where people commit suicide because the leader says to do so.

MARGARET AYLIFFE, FORMER CULT MEMBER: We got into the habit of living a whacky kind of life. I think we were so young and naive, I don’t think the warning bells really rung loud enough for us to sort of really – to get out.

REBECCA BAILLIE: David and Margaret Ayliffe met in the early 1970s when they joined an Anglican church in Sydney’s Surry Hills. This church had been disowned by the Sydney Archdiocese because it regularly performed exorcisms.

MARGARET AYLIFFE: People were lying on the floor and sort of coughing up into little ice cream buckets.

DAVID AYLIFFE: And suddenly, you know, they start shaking or quivering, all kinds of things are happening, and you’re think to yourself, “There’s a power here at work, and that power is God.”

REBECCA BAILLIE: It was at that Surry Hills church that David and Margaret Ayliffe first encountered Violet Prior, who went from casting out demons to leading a group she named Zion Full Salvation Ministry.

DAVID AYLIFFE: She claimed in the latter part of 1976 that she had the stigmata. She had marks in her hands and in her feet.

REBECCA BAILLIE: By 1977, Violet Prior had convinced her followers that she was God.

DAVID AYLIFFE: You know, I should have known better. I should have had my eyes really opened. But by that stage, I’d accepted everything along the way. And, to me, this was just, you know, it was just the next step.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Violet Prior controlled every facet of her devotees’ lives, striking the fear of God into them if they tried to leave.

DAVID AYLIFFE: Violet would say, “If you leave me, I will kill you, and I will kill your wife and children first, and you will see them die agonising deaths before your eyes. And I can do that because I’m God.”

MARGARET AYLIFFE: It was a time when I had the melanoma and she told me to put a banana skin on it. Finally, though, when it was a bit bad, we actually got – we were very fortunate to get into a specialist very quickly, and I was lucky to escape with my life. I really am lucky to be alive.

DAVID MILLIKAN, UNITING CHURCH MINISTER: Oh, she was a fully blown cult leader. There’s no question of that. She had no conscience about basically destroying people.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Violet Prior became increasingly more deluded and reclusive. She fleeced her followers of all their money and set up an impenetrable fortress in Sydney’s exclusive Palm Beach.

DAVID MILLIKAN: A group becomes destructive when it takes on a posture of extreme hostility to the world outside its doors, when it isolates its members from family, friends and from the surrounding culture.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Only her closest disciples were permitted to visit the inner sanctum. David Ayliffe was one, and he visited this house up to three times a week. His wife Margaret only ever came here once, to cook for Violet Prior and to do her washing.

In 1989, Violet Prior was arrested and charged with fraud. When she appeared at Manly Local Court, David Ayliffe was at her side. The charges were dropped because it was impossible to either prove or disprove her outrageous claims. Two years later, David Ayliffe discovered Violet Prior’s body in her Palm Beach fortress.

DAVID AYLIFFE: Yeah, the witch was dead. It’s weird: I lay there at night listening for noise. And she was dead, for Heaven’s sake! You know, so, yeah.

REBECCA BAILLIE: What were you thinking she might do?

DAVID AYLIFFE: Well, I mean, if she was God, then, you know, she might have come back again, you know.

JOHN AYLIFFE, BROTHER: His mind had been taken over. As I said, it doesn’t start out as mind control, you know. Good people aren’t gonna let themselves be taken over just like that. It’s a creeping thing.

REBECCA BAILLIE: John Ayliffe had to wait two decades for his younger brother to come to his senses. They’re now reconciled, but at the time, as David and Margaret Ayliffe got more and more deeply committed to the cult and its leader, they cut off their friends and family on the outside.

JOHN AYLIFFE: I think everybody was pretty devastated. It’s a devastating thing, you know, to be shunned.

DAVID AYLIFFE: It was just so wrong, but the fear was so great, this is what I was called to do. Absurd, isn’t it?

DAVID MILLIKAN: People who join cults are strong, creative, well-educated, middle class people.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Reverend David Millikan has dedicated a quarter of a century to infiltrating, understanding and busting cults.

DAVID MILLIKAN: I see a lot of Christian groups, but I also see a lot of New Agey sort of groups that go off in all sorts of directions. Really, I’ve come to the view that there’s nothing so mad in this life that someone doesn’t believe in it.

ADRIAN NORMAN, FORMER CULT MEMBER: There is pressure to behave in a certain way and there is a leader, then very, very dangerous things can happen.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Adrian Norman joined what he describes as a self-development cult when he was 19 and stayed for seven years. He won’t publicly identify the group for fear of being sued, but insists it’s leaders brainwashed him and took his money.

ADRIAN NORMAN: There are activities that dampen down the ability to think critically, and at that point you enter into a trance. In that altered state of consciousness, new beliefs can be implanted.

REBECCA BAILLIE: Adrian Norman has made a documentary for high school children which warns of the dangers of groups that apparently offer its members the world.

ADRIAN NORMAN: It’s really about what you can do to find out about groups that seem to be offering something too good to be true. ‘Cause usually they are.

REBECCA BAILLIE: The Ayliffe brothers are now catching up on many lost years. They’ve written a book together about surviving life on the inside and the outside of a cult.

JOHN AYLIFFE: If you lose somebody to a destructive cult, there are three things to remember. The first one is: don’t fight them. The second one is: give them love. And the third one is: be patient.

REBECCA BAILLIE: For David and Margaret Ayliffe, theirs is a cautionary tale which has ultimately had a happy ending, but it’s cost them and their family 20 years of their lives.

MARGARET AYLIFFE: When you get a bit lovey dovey and starry-eyed, you don’t see a lot of things that you should really see.

DAVID AYLIFFE: Never, never, no matter where you are let somebody else take over your – your ability to make decisions. It doesn’t matter who it is. Because the moment you do that, you’re on very dangerous territory.”

From http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2009/s2725782.htm

Hill$ong’s Mercy Ministries damage control

Brian Houston writes…

“I want to inform you of issues that have become increasingly clear in recent days, which have left me personally devastated.

Mercy Ministries Inc. have informed us that they are ceasing operations in Australia.

Some of you are aware of Mercy Ministries, an organisation set up to rehabilitate and reach out to young women in need.  It has come to my attention in recent days, that investigations into Mercy Ministries Inc. have been ongoing, over what is essentially unclear or misguided communication in relation to their funding and services.

In the past, Hillsong Church has supported Mercy Ministries through financial donations.  A number of individuals involved with our church have also served on the board and/or staff of this ministry.

Unfortunately, we believe that in the case of Mercy Ministries, concern about the way they delivered their message and services has unfairly affected Hillsong Church by association.

It is not my place to defend or try to explain what Mercy Ministries has or hasn’t done.  Hillsong has done nothing wrong. Hillsong is not under investigation, but a number of key people from Hillsong Church over the years, have been involved in Mercy Ministries.

It is wrong that anything Mercy Ministries may or may not have done could overshadow so much of what we as a church stand for: Loving God and Helping People.

To ensure that this does not happen again it is important that we take immediate action to protect the reputation of our church moving forward.

We will undertake an internal audit of Hillsong staff to identify what organisations or boards they are currently associated with.

From there, we will be strongly recommending that our executive level staff no longer participate on other not-for-profit boards.  

We will also examine some future guidelines and boundaries for Hillsong staff in regards to their involvement in external boards.  

It is so important that we continue to support and work in cooperation with organisations doing great things in our community and around the world.

Despite the numerous positive achievements of Mercy Ministries, Hillsong Church will no longer support, or be associated with this ministry.  

Further, we sever any affiliation with Mercy Ministries internationally, and would not be associated with any attempt by Mercy Ministries Inc or Mercy Ministries Ltd, to recommence within Australia, under that or any other name.

We would encourage those, that any investigation involves, to cooperate fully.

We will continue to keep the church informed as to any new developments with this situation, and would ask you to continue to keep this in your prayers.
- Brian Houston, Senior Pastor, Hillsong Church”

From  http://hillsong.com/statement-regarding-mercy-ministries

Perhaps the ‘internal audit’ could start with this hearty endorsement of Mercy Ministries and its leaders by Brian Houston at Hill$ong about 4 months after the scandal surfaced.

http://hillsong.bigblog.com.au/video.do?id=221657

Without Mercy

The Sydney Morning Herald reports…

“Allegations of widespread abuse at Mercy Ministries group homes appear finally to have caught up with the fundamentalist Christian group, which has announced it will close its Sydney home on October 31, citing ”extreme financial challenges and a steady drop in our support base”.

”We are no longer financially viable,” reads a statement from Margaret Stunt, a former Hillsong Church staff member from London appointed as executive director of Mercy Ministries in April.

The announcement came less than a week after the group said it had completed extensive renovations to its Sydney home, including a new kitchen, carpets, light fittings, staircase and deck, painting and landscaping – all funded with donations totalling more than $100,000.

Given that the organisation will close, it is unclear who will benefit from the renovations. A staff member at Mercy Ministries said she was unable to comment.

Targeting girls and women aged 16 to 28, Mercy Ministries claimed – on its website and in promotional material distributed in Gloria Jeans cafes around the country – that its programs included support from ”psychologists, general practitioners, dietitians, social workers, [and] career counsellors”.

Instead, the program prevented the residents gaining access to psychiatric care, choosing to focus on prayer, Christian counselling and exorcisms to ”expel demons” from the young women, many of whom had serious psychiatric conditions such as bipolar disorder, anxiety and anorexia.

A Herald investigation last year revealed the women who entered the program were required to sign over their Centrelink benefits and were virtually cut off from the outside world, except for a weekly trip to the local Hillsong Church for worship.

At the time, Mercy Ministries’ then chief executive, Peter Irvine, was quick to dismiss their claims, implying that the victims of the group’s unorthodox and dangerous treatments were not telling the truth.

Since then Mr Irvine has sent an apology to the women featured in the Herald’s articles. ”I would like to apologise for the statements that I made to the press in March 2008. I did not accurately reflect the situation and I regret my comments,” he wrote.

News of the closure was greeted with relief by its former victims, who cautioned that the group was still operating in New Zealand, the US and Britain.

”It is amazing that our little voices speaking out could make a dent against organisations as big as … Mercy Ministries,” said Naomi Johnson, one of the women who blew the whistle on the abuse.

”After all the lies they told about us, this is what we hoped – that Mercy Ministries would be closed so that other girls would not get hurt.”

In June last year, Mercy Ministries announced it had closed its Sunshine Coast home ”due to strategic and resourcing issues”.

Hillsong Church was quick to distance itself from the organisation it had supported – both financially and with key staff and executive officers – since its inception in 2001. ”Hillsong Church has cut ties with Mercy Ministries around the world following an [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission] investigation into Mercy Ministries,” said a statement released by the church last night.

A spokeswoman for the ACCC, one of the many investigatory bodies to which the women complained, would not comment or confirm an investigation had taken place.”

From http://www.smh.com.au/national/mercy-ministries-home-to-close-20091027-hj2k.html

——–

“It is with deep regret and sadness we have to inform you that Mercy Ministries in Australia is no longer in operation.  Due to internal circumstances and challenges, Mercy Ministries Incorporated will be dissolved as an entity.  We have encountered extreme financial challenges and a steady drop in our support base to the point where we are no longer financially viable.  Mercy Ministries has been proud to serve the young women of Australia for nine years and to help hundreds of young women find freedom from life controlling issues.  Mercy Ministries is grateful to the many individuals, businesses, and churches who have sacrificed and given over the years to make this program possible.

Margaret Stunt

Executive Director, Mercy Ministries Incorporated

Board Member, Mercy Ministries Incorporated”

 From http://mercyministries.com.au/pages/default.asp?pid=139

Hat tip:Anonymous

Church tsunami aid fraud probe

The Express Buzz reports…

“A major fraud in the handling of overseas aid that came for tsunami relief to the Church of South India (CSI) has been unearthed with the Central Crime Branch (CCB) of the Chennai police arresting two relatives of a former CSI general secretary, who has been accused of misappropriating Rs 7.5 crore funds.

 The charge is that CSI former general secretary, Dr Pauline Sathiamurthy, had siphoned off Rs 7.5 crore aid from the Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD), a US-based NGO, along with her husband Sathiyamurthy, daughter Benatikta and a relative Robert Sunil.

Police arrested Benatikta and Robert Sunil and seized a Ford Endeavour car from the duo, but Pauline Sathiamurthy and her husband Sathiamurthy are absconding. The arrested persons have been remanded and lodged in the Puzhal prison.

CCB started investigations on the basis of a complaint from the present CSI general secretary Rev Moses Jayakumar, and found that Pauline Sathiamurthy had appointed his daughter Dr Benatikta as officer in-charge of medical project and her relative Robert Sunil as liaison officer for Tsunami rehabilitation work carried out with the fund and paid a hefty salary of Rs 65,000 per month for the former and Rs 89,000 for the latter.

Her husband Sathiamurthy was also appointed as in-charge of housing project and he also received a hefty salary, said G Dilli Babu, investigating officer of the case.  ERD allocated a total of Rs 17.63 crore as tsunami relief fund for rehabilitating victims by constructing houses, buying them boats, fishing nets and medical facilities in 2005.

The fund was allocated to 22 dioceses of the CSI in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry and Andhra Pradesh. When Jayakumar took charge as new general secretary of the CSI in 2007, the ERD asked for the account details and the scandal came to light.

Jayakumar formed a one-member enquiry committee under retired High Court Judge Kanagaraj and asked the former general secretary of CSI to submit the accounts. But she failed to submit the account. Moses Jayakumar then lodged a police complaint in December 2008….” 

From http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Two+arrested+for+swindling+tsunami+fund&artid=BSrPsdCL4AI=&SectionID=lifojHIWDUU=&MainSectionID=lifojHIWDUU=&SectionName=rSY%7C6QYp3kQ=&SEO=Church%20of%20South%20India

Canadian church hosts Nitschke

The Vancouver Province reports…

“A Vancouver church is stepping in to host a workshop by an Australian right-to-die doctor after the city’s public library cancelled the event over legal concerns.  

Rev. Steven Epperson of the Unitarian Church of Vancouver said he believes Dr. Philip Nitschke, director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International, has the right to free speech, even if he’s telling people how to kill themselves.

 “Historically, we have provided a forum, a space, for controversial, difficult ideas to be presented,” Epperson told the Vancouver Province.

 Almost 40 years ago, Greenpeace held its inaugural meeting at the church, which is in its centenary year. And the church has a long tradition of allowing women and gays to speak out in their space.

 “It does not mean, in any way, endorsement. We are not endorsing Exit International. We’re not necessarily endorsing their outlook, their philosophy,” he said.

 Up to 100 people are expected for the Nov. 4 meeting and workshop, which will be held in two parts.

 The first is a public discussion on the pro-euthanasia movement, and the second is a private presentation to over-55s outlining methods of committing suicide.

 The event had been set for Sept. 10 at the main downtown library, but head librarian Paul Whitney said lawyers warned it could open up civil and criminal liability.

 It’s a crime in Canada to counsel, aid or abet someone to commit suicide. Anyone who does so can face a 14-year jail sentence.

 “This could well constitute an offence under the Criminal Code,” Whitney told the Province. “The issue is about aiding people to commit suicide.”

 The library could also be sued by the family of a person who killed himself using information from the event.

 Whitney said the library would have no problem hosting a general discussion on euthanasia, or stocking Nitschke’s book, The Peaceful Pill Handbook.

 But for civil-liberties and right-to-die campaigners, that’s not enough.

 “We were disappointed that they weren’t willing to push the envelope,” said David Eby, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which tried unsuccessfully to get the ban lifted.

 “Usually, librarians are our closest allies in this free-speech debate.”

 The Unitarians don’t expect any legal fallout.

 “I’m extremely doubtful the police are going to show up at this workshop and either shut it down or arrest everybody,” said Eby.

 “It’s hard for me to imagine what the risks would be to the library. The risk of liability is so small.”

 Eby also wants the library’s legal opinions released — Whitney says they’re confidential — to get libraries absolved from future liability.

 Ruth von Fuchs, president of the Right To Die Association of Canada, figures the library buckled under the legal pressure.

 “They got a legal opinion that buttressed the fears of whoever asked for the legal opinion,” she said. “Somebody wants to be frightened, so they oblige.”

 It won’t stop people from attending the information workshop, because people want to know how to kill themselves, von Fuchs said.

 “Information gets filed away, and used when the need arises. A lot of people are just trying to get prepared to do it without a doctor. There’s a tradition of learning how to take care of yourself, and this is what this is all about.”

 Nitschke, 62, who carried out the world’s first legal assisted suicides in the 1990s, has held similar workshops in Australia, New Zealand, China and the U.K.

 This year, a library in Cairns, Australia, cancelled his event. In July, a New Zealand church did the same.

 Vancouver is the first date on his North American tour.

 “We’re very disappointed about it,” Nitschke told The Age, an Australian newspaper.

 “It’s a library. We can’t understand why they’re quite happy to have our book in their library, but we’re not allowed to talk about it.”

From http://www.theprovince.com/news/Vancouver+church+hosts+right+doctor+after+library+event+cancelled/2142443/story.html

Homeless shelter apartments – why not?

The Sydney Morning Herald reports…

“Not only has the global financial crisis torn a hole in the finances of Australia’s wealthiest Anglican diocese: it has been burnt by a residential property development next to the home of the Archbishop of Sydney.

Against protests by locals, the church built a six-level, 10-apartment block with basement parking for 25 cars next door to its historic Darling Point estate of Bishopscourt.

The sale of the apartments, originally priced at between $2.5 million and $2.9 million, was an important part of the diocese’s property strategy. Proceeds were to be used by the Endowment of the See, the fund that supports the Archbishop and his five bishops.

Two years later only six apartments have been sold and the church has kept one and leased out the rest until market conditions improve. The land for the Greenoaks apartments was owned by the Anglican Church Property Trust, and the Glebe Administration Board, the diocese’s investment arm responsible for $160 million in sharemarket losses, was the development manager, borrowing to finance the project.

Greenoaks was designed by Architectus, which also worked on the Chifley Tower. The interior design was completed by Collins Vergnaud, which had worked for Hilton International and the Royal Sydney Golf Club.

All apartments boasted views and substantial balconies.

Unable to sell all the apartments, the church sold the four-bedroom home of the Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, and his wife Margaret, at 33 Fairfax Road, Bellevue Hill, for $3 million earlier this year.

In a report to the church synod this week, the church executive has confirmed that it was able to reduce borrowings by selling the house and other units in its property portfolio. Borrowings had fallen from $8 million in December 2008 to $1 million .

”It was a genuine case that these apartments came on line when the froth had gone out of the market,” Bishop Forsyth said. ”When it became clear that the archbishop had reduced income we all got smaller cars and Margaret and I thought, ‘why don’t we move’, since the apartment sales were moving slowly and so we offered to – there was no compulsion – to help reduce the exposure because they’d borrowed for the development and we were very happy to do so.”

Once the property market recovers, proceeds from the rest of the apartments will be allocated to help pay for restoration work in the archbishop’s residence, Bishopscourt.

Lane Brazel, of Ray White Real Estate in Double Bay, said the apartments had come on the market when the ”global financial crisis took hold”.

”We certainly had a lot of interest and offers but not at the level the church could make a profit or even break even.”

She did not expect a rebound in the top end of the market in the next 12 months.”

From http://www.smh.com.au/national/illfated-building-adds-to-churchs-financial-woes-20091026-hgpn.html

Tricks of the ’signs and wonders’ trade

Pastor’s insecurities

The Montreal Gazette reports…

“Rocco Di Stefano, a former Pentecostal Church pastor, will be fined $414,000 on Nov. 2 for having illegally sold debt securities and illegally acted as a broker, the Autorité des marchés financiers said Friday – plus another $441,000 for two other pursuits pending for the same infractions.

Di Stefano pleaded guilty on 46 counts, 23 counts of having sold investments varying between $10,000 and $100,000, and 23 counts of having unlawfully acted a a licenced broker.

Most, if not all, of his victims – including a second cousin – were small investors in Montreal’s Italian community, where he was at one time an evangelical pastor.

On Oct. 5, Quebec Court judge Gilles Garneau fined Di Stefano $414,000 for those 46 counts in connection with three former companies, Zema Finances Inc., Vision Management Services Ltd. and Eurovision Financial Services Ltd.

AMF spokesperson Sylvain Théberge said that the $414,000 ruling against the former insurance broker is three times the minimal amount required by law.

A partial list of losses show that 15 Di Stefano clients lost about $1.5 million, or an average of $100,000 per person.

In 2007, the Bureau de décision et de révision en valeurs mobilières said it was “particularly worried about allegations that Mr. Di Stefano used his notoriety as a former pastor to solicit his investors, made illegal investments and acted illegally as a securities broker.”

He is barred from acting as an investment adviser, and Théberge said that “serious and sustained efforts” will be made to determine whether he has any funds available in any account.

The AMF has already disbursed $110,000 to three defrauded investors from its guaranteed fund for such scams, he said. Any money found in accounts held by Di Stefano would be doled out to investors on a pro rata basis.

Two other cases were filed last March for similar infractions in connection with two companies, Zema Finances Inc. and Sodexin.

The AMF reminded Quebecers to verify the credentials of anyone proposing investments, “even when it’s a relative.”

But Théberge denied the suggestion that the AMF has become more severe and vigilant since the two egregious recent fraud cases involving Vincent Lacroix and Earl Jones.

“This is due to tightening up of Quebec legislation on securities laws in 2007,” he said, including granting a court-appointed collector the power to search a defendant’s accounts – and failing that, of sentencing him to do community service, or go to jail.”

From http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Former+pastor+Stefano+fined/2138754/story.html

‘It’s time for me to tell it all’:Hinn

(Except he doesn’t)

American Broadcasting Company (ABC) News reports…

“Miraculous cures for cancer and AIDS, people in wheelchairs getting up and dancing. It’s business as usual for Benny Hinn, perhaps the world’s most famous, successful and controversial televangelist. Hinn is a faith-healer who almost never grants interviews — until now.

“I’ll try to explain it to you,” said Hinn in a wide-ranging interview with ABC’s “Nightline.” “The anointing, which is God’s power, comes on me. … I can actually feel it. And people start getting healed. ‘From the cancer, the pain is gone. … I was sitting on my wheelchair and I can walk now,’ such things like that.”

Hinn took questions about disillusioned followers and about the U.S. senator who is investigating him. The questions clearly dismayed Hinn’s handlers.

He was born Toukif Benedictus Hinn to a Greek Orthodox Christian family living in Israel. As a child, he moved with his family to Canada, where he became an extremely devout evangelical. In his 20’s, Hinn moved to Florida, where he married a preacher’s daughter — and then went into the family business.

Hinn said he realized early on that something extraordinary was happening.

“In fact, I was shocked, really I was, when people came up to me claiming they were healed back in the 70s,” he said. “And the crowds grew. Uh to, goodness, we would have 2,000 or 3,000 show up on Monday nights. And then the word spread.”

Hinn’s ministry exploded. Within a few years, he was traveling the world, preaching to millions of people. In the early ’90s, he started a television show, which now airs in more than 200 countries. Along the way, he has made a series of truly extraordinary claims.

In one video clip on YouTube, he said he had seen a dead man resurrected.

“Well, Ghana. It was in Akra, Ghana,” Hinn explained to “Nightline.” “I didn’t exactly … I had no proof he was dead. That’s what they told me. They laid him on the platform, and at one point he got up. But that’s not the question, the question is, can God raise the dead? Yes or no? And the answer is yes. He has. It’s in the Bible, so if God did it then, why shouldn’t he do it today?”

Benny Hinn now controls an empire. His ministry collects an estimated $100 million a year in donations from people whom Hinn has convinced that God heals through him.

“Nightline” asked Hinn directly if he isn’t taking advantage of people who are profoundly religious, and vulnerable because they’re in physical pain, for his own personal enrichment.

“I’m glad you’re asking,” Hinn said. “Let me tell you something. I would not do this for money. If people think I would do this for money, after all the misery I’ve had to go through…”

“What misery?” I asked Hinn.

“Oh dear God, what misery? You name it. You’re a human being like me, how would you like to be called all those names. Who wants that? What you’re asking is am I using the so-called lie, that healings really happen so I can make money?

“Of course not. You cannot fool all the people all the time, right? … “I will tell you this. I think that if I was fooling the people over 35 years of it now, I would be caught already fooling them.”

Hinn admits he doesn’t have medical verification of any of the healings. In fact, some of his supposed healings have turned out not to have been real.

At a 2001 Hinn crusade, William Vandenkolk, a 9-year-old with damaged vision, claimed that his eyesight had been restored.

Vandenkolk is now 17 — and he’s still legally blind. His uncle and legal guardian, Randy Melthratter, said that after the crusade no one from the ministry followed up to see how the 9-year-old was doing.

“I said, ‘Will, honey, does it still seem like your eyes are getting better? Is it getting better? Do you notice anything better at all?’ And he just kind of cocked his head to the side and said ‘I think God’s just taking a break,’” Melthratter said. “And that just tore, that just hurt. That hurt a lot … a little boy making excuses for God.”

“I got caught up in the moment,” Vandenkolk says now. “Being as young as I was, thinking this could actually be possible. … I just started feeling sad a little upset that this really didn’t happen.”

Hinn was at a loss.

“These are things that I cannot explain because I am not the healer,” Hinn said. “I am human like you. I make mistakes like anybody else.”

Hinn’s answer is that God heals people in their seats, and that he, Hinn, is not responsible for what people claim once they get onstage.

“Over the years, there’s been some cases where people did come up who said they were healed, but really they were not healed,” Hinn said. “I do believe it’s possible for individuals to mentally convince themselves they are, but that does not deny the real healings. That doesn’t dismiss the fact that a lot of people are really cured.”

Hinn Ministries told “Nightline” that they set up an account in Vandenkolk’s name that now holds more than $15,000, to provide for his “education and health.”

Hinn may be more confident than the team that surrounds him. Over the course of the “Nightline” interview with Hinn, his publicist started to interrupt, angrily.

The atmosphere got charged when talk turned to an ongoing probe of Hinn by U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Two years ago, Grassley launched an investigation into six major televangelists, including Hinn. Grassley is asking whether Hinn and his colleagues are using tax-free donations from believers to fund lavish lifestyles.

Hinn, for example, flies on a private jet and has lived in a beautiful home on the Pacific Ocean.

Hinn had never before granted an interview on the topic of the investigation.

He said he was “absolutely” confident that he is using the money appropriately.

In response to criticism that he leads a lavish lifestyle, Hinn said, “it’s always been that by the way. That criticism is nothing new.”

He flies in a private plane, stays in fancy hotels, wears nice clothes and jewelry. Does he not have any misgivings about that?

“No. Look, you know there’s this idea supposedly that we preachers are supposed to walk about with sandals and ride bicycles. That’s nonsense.”

Jesus Christ may have lived in poverty, but Benny Hinn makes no apologies for living large.

“I mean look, every man of God that I know today has a nice house,” Hinn said. “And they drive cars, and they have BlackBerrys or iPhones or whatever. It’s what we need today to simply exist. … Absolutely I need a private plane. For the ministry it’s a necessity, not a luxury. … It’s a necessity for me to have my own private plane to fly so I can go and do what God called me to do around the world. If I should fly commercial I would wear out. With my schedule? It would be madness.”

What is his salary? I asked.

“I’m not gonna give you the exact amount, but it’s, uh, over a half-million.”

Hinn said he’d like to cut his salary to zero.

“Let me just tell you this, my aim in life is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, that’s all I care about,” said Hinn. “And if somebody comes along, or if there’s a way where I can be completely taken care of financially, I won’t let the ministry pay me a cent. I’ll make you a deal. Right here on camera. Let ‘em all see me do this with you. If somebody comes along and says, ‘OK Benny Hinn, I’m gonna help you financially so you can pay your own bills,’ or if I can do it on my own and get a job and do something on the side like I’m doing now, it would be a pleasure.”

“Nightline” asked Hinn whether he ever had moments, when people are writing out checks to him or filling out cards with their credit card information, that he thinks the people can’t afford it, they’re doing it because they’re desperate and that he shouldn’t take this money.

“If I was fake I would absolutely give them back their money,” said Hinn, “but I believe that God called me to preach the gospel which is very important.”

Grassley’s office said that Hinn has cooperated fully with the investigation into whether Hinn and other televangelist are using the tax-free donations they collect appropriately. The senator has not yet released the results of his investigation.

“The senator himself says we gave them more information than he thought we would,” said Hinn. But when “Nightline” asked for the same information, Hinn said the ministry could not turn it over because “we have an agreement with the senator to keep things confidential.” After the interview, Grassley’s office told ABC News that Hinn is free to release any information he wants. But the ministry said it didn’t have time to edit out personal information from its donors in time for “Nightline”’s broadcast. And therefore the ministry turned over nothing.

But Hinn said he was glad to get the chance to answer his skeptics.

“The questions [you] asked me, I’ve wanted someone to ask me for the last 20 years of my life,” Hinn told me. “I think what this man did is fantastic and thank you for doing it. No, really, I’m very pleased. … because it’s time for me to tell it all. I don’t want people talking for me. I want to talk for myself.”

From http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/benny-hinn-evangelical-leader-senate-investigation-speaks/story?id=8862027

Kermit’s Rainbow Connection

WSAZ News Channel 3 reports…

“A drag show to help raise money to fight cancer is also raising eyebrows in the Mingo County community of Kermit.

Some churches are planning a spiritual protest — trying to stop some real divas from strutting their stuff, even though it’s for a good cause.

On Saturday night, female impersonator Lark Muncy will be in drag to help find a cure. He and his friends plan to hold a drag show — a first for the town of Kermit.

“I’ve had threats,” Muncy said. “People said they would beat me. Why do it? Because I believe in the cause.”

Muncy said he and three friends were asked to perform, and his mother Phyllis Messer supports his decision to entertain in his hometown, although she said she fears for her son’s safety.

Members of a Kermit area church and five others around town have planned a spiritual protest at the Kermit Community Center the night before the drag show.

“In my opinion, it’s dangerous,” said Charles Parseley, pastor of Jesus Name Tabernacle. “They might recruit others.”

Muncy and his family say they hope Saturday night is peaceful as they raise money for a cure.

Parseley said his church members haven’t issued any threats to Muncy or his friends, and he said his spiritual protest the night before the drag show will be peaceful.

There’s word, however, of another unrelated protest outside the Kermit Community Center as the drag show kicks off at 8 p.m. Saturday. All proceeds will go toward cancer research.”

From http://www.wsaz.com/home/headlines/65382412.html

This is a church on fire

The Kansas City Star reports…

“A federal grand jury has indicted a Kansas City man, alleging that he set fire to a Leavenworth church where he worked as music director.

His intent, the indictment said, was to collect insurance money for inflated repair bills.

The grand jury indicted Carva Lee White, 45, on three counts of mail fraud, two counts of using arson to commit a federal felony and one count of making a false statement to a federal investigator, authorities said.

The indictment, unsealed Friday, accused White of setting fires to the Sunflower Missionary Baptist Church while he worked as the church’s music director.

It was unclear whether White remains employed by the church. Officials at the church could not be reached for comment.

White is accused of setting fire to the church twice, on Oct. 30 and Oct. 31 last year. He had planned to persuade the pastor to file an insurance claim, collect the money, help inflate the repair bill and then embezzle the money, according to the indictment.

Later on Oct. 31, the church’s pastor left a phone message at the Church Mutual Insurance Co. in Merrill, Wis., in order to make a claim. The insurance company paid out about $109,000, according to the indictment.

The pastor was not charged in the indictment, and the indictment did not indicate whether White actually pocketed any money.

Federal authorities said White lied when he told them that he was in Fayetteville, Ark., at the time of the arson and told authorities he couldn’t imagine anyone torching the church.”

From http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/1513057.html

Todd Bentley’s hot new root

Charisma Magazine reports…

“The new wife of former Lakeland Revival leader Todd Bentley said she believes it was wrong to begin a relationship with the evangelist before his divorce was final.

In an interview with MorningStar Ministries founder Rick Joyner, who is overseeing Bentley’s restoration process, Jessa Bentley said her relationship with Todd Bentley began after he filed for divorce from his first wife, Shonnah. But she now believes they should have waited six months to a year after the divorce was final before beginning a relationship. 

“Even though Todd was getting a divorce and Todd was already separated, it was still wrong for us to have anything romantic, regardless if anything physical happened or not,” Jessa Bentley said. “Even that emotional line that we crossed, I think is wrong. I think it was a sin. I think it was a mistake. I think we missed it.”

She said she doesn’t regret marrying Bentley, but repented for “being deceived” and “allowing things to happen that shouldn’t have happened.”

“We hurt a lot of people,” she said. “For that, there’s nothing we could say to take that away or to make it right or justify it. It was wrong, and it was sin. … We made a huge mess. I want to apologize, I want to repent for that.” (Watch video.)

Joyner’s interview is the latest in a series of videos he has created to update the public on Todd Bentley’s restoration process, which he has been overseeing since March. After leading popular revival meetings in Lakeland, Fla., for nearly four months, Bentley suddenly stepped down in August 2008 after announcing that he and his wife, Shonnah, were separating.

At the time, leaders of what is now known as Transform International, which is no longer affiliated with Bentley, expressed concern about the evangelist’s relationship with Jessa as well as his alcohol consumption, which a senior board member said had “crossed the line.”

Jessa Bentley, 26, said she met Todd Bentley, 33, two years ago when he visited California to lead a conference. She and other church members struck up a friendship with the evangelist, and a year later she moved to Canada, where Bentley’s Fresh Fire Ministries was based, to participate in their internship program.

After the Lakeland Revival began, she moved to Florida and helped Bentley’s first wife, Shonnah, with the couple’s three children. She later became part of the ministry’s staff.

Jessa said Fresh Fire staff knew Todd and Shonnah Bentley were having marital difficulties. But the problems grew worse after the revival began, and the couple eventually separated.

“When [the marriage] broke, he broke,” Jessa Bentley said. “He crumbled and fell apart.”

She said church and Fresh Fire leaders largely weren’t available when Todd needed someone to talk with, so he began confiding in a small group of ministry staff. Because she was often the only woman in the group, she would comfort him when he cried.

“He was crying a lot and weeping and crying out to God and praying,” she said. “And when there was a group of us, there were a lot of guys, so not a lot of them would be there to comfort him in the way that he needed.”

“I did hold him when he cried [when] there were other people there,” she continued. “No one else knew what to do. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t just going to walk away from that. There was no one there for him, really, except for the few of us.”

She said their relationship was sparked through those times but formally began after the Bentleys separated. Bentley married Jessa earlier this year.

Jessa Bentley said she believes she was deceived part of the time. “I did make up excuses,” she said. “I did try to justify it. I did try to say that this was right. But in hindsight, looking back, I realize, it was wrong-period.”

She said the couple wants to make things right, but they believe they will have to pay a price for their mistakes. “There are consequences we’re walking out, and there are going to be consequences that we’re going to have to live with, a price that we have to pay for the rest of our lives because now we’re married, and because we made mistakes, we created sins,” Jessa Bentley said.

Todd Bentley said Jessa did not break up his first marriage, but that their relationship “shouldn’t have happened the way it happened.”

He said he and Jessa are not trying to justify their actions. “I’m going to have to bear something the rest of my life, Jessa and I together are bearing something,” he said. “And that’s difficult. It’s cost me my family, ministry, reputation. And nobody did that to me. No anybody in Canada, not a leader. Me. My sin cost me. … But God’s grace, goodness and mercy far outweighs.”

Joyner said the Bentleys’ situation has been challenging to him personally, but believes Christians “need to find God’s grace and His purpose now.”

“If we want to receive God’s mercy ourselves we have to learn to sow mercy,” he said. “If we want to receive His grace, we have to learn to sow grace.”

Likening the Bentleys to the biblical King David, Joyner said Israel may have followed Absalom after David committed adultery with Bathsheba because they thought God could no longer be with him after what he did.

“But God was still with David,” Joyner said. “And I think there’s something in the lesson, in the challenges, of this situation. Nobody’s being challenged more than Jessa and Todd in this situation and will be from now on. But they’re overcoming it. And I believe the body of Christ is overcoming too.”

Bentley continues to minister through Fresh Fire USA Ministries based in Pineville, N.C.”

From http://www.charismamag.com/index.php/news/23631-todd-bentleys-new-wife-breaks-silence

If you see a Sydney Anglican begging in Martin Place, spare a coin

The Australian reports…

“The Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church is fighting for survival after a catastrophic loss of $160 million on its once bountiful share portfolio.

The $160m included about $120m lost when the church cashed out of its investments at the bottom of the market.

The diocese at one point had $200m invested in shares, with a ban on shares in tobacco or gambling products. The portfolio is now estimated at $44m.

In his annual address to the Sydney synod yesterday, Archbishop Peter Jensen acknowledged the scale of the problem, saying the church was “up against a large challenge and there is no guarantee whatever that we will survive except as a small but wealthy cult”.

“The cultural mood is not flowing with us,” he said. “Immigrant numbers are not in our favour.”

Dr Jensen said he had been asking himself what God was saying “to us, as a diocese, through these large losses? Are there signs of the times for us here?”

He wondered whether the faithful were being punished for unethical behaviour, including the gearing of their investments, or being rebuked for their arrogance in betting the endowment, or was God punishing their bishops for going to GAFCON (the global Anglican future meetings in Jerusalem, that declared that the Archbishop of Canterbury was wrong on gay priests).

“I have been thinking about these legitimate questions,” Dr Jensen said. “Can we read the mind of God from such events?”

If so, the message is not good: the losses, which total 60 per cent of the church’s endowment, will mean that five bishops will become four; all five archdeacons will be sacked; church programs will get the chop; and renovations to Sydney’s St Andrew’s Cathedral will be put on hold. In addition, the church will have to reorganise itself into a mission-style organisation with local leadership encouraged to more self-sufficiency.

The archbishop said it was not until last November that he “got the inkling of the magnitude of what had happened to our investments as they became exposed to the global financial crisis.

“Each successive month seemed to bring worse news,” he said.

“It has taken a long time to grasp, and begin to see the implications of it.”

He had reacted, he said, with disbelief, because he believed the church had been “careful and professional in our handling of our endowment”.

He felt responsible because it had “occurred on my watch and in part with funds in which I have a special interest”.

He wondered, too, whether the church had engaged in “ethically dubious practices” by gearing the endowment. However, after an “argument with himself” he concluded it had not.

He also felt grief “as the impact of these losses … on the jobs and personal lives of friends and colleagues has become clear”. Dr Jensen said the “move from five bishops and five archdeacons down to four bishops has not been without its anguish”.

On the question of what God had to do with it, he said: “It may be that he is chastising us for our sins. If so, it is only a further evidence of his fatherly love and care.”

Those who follow God cannot expect that “we would never suffer loss”.

In any case, Dr Jensen said he was not sure “that God is directly speaking to us through these large losses. When we ask what God may be teaching us, we can think of a number of reasons, and all of them may be quite wrong.

“It may not be our sins at all. Perhaps he is challenging our faith to rely on him more boldly for our finances.”

But, Dr Jensen said, the financial crisis had forced the church to “invent a good idea” of dividing Sydney into about 20 mission areas to “gather in the harvest”.

From http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26233725-601,00.html

Danny Nalliah, Canberra

Tim Malone blogs…

“…I went up Mt Ainslie to see the result of Danny Nalliah’s call to an “offensive spiritual warfare attack” against the witches who are having an influence over federal parliament.

It was an interesting experience, and a confronting one also, with my emotions being dragged all over the place. I went up the mountain praying for protection, because I didn’t know what was going to happen there. Danny and his team were mounting a spiritual attack against witches’ covens, so to me it was a possibility that that could cause some spiritual retaliation. So I went up being aware of this, but knowing I had to discover more about what Danny is doing and what’s behind it. (As an aside, an interesting situation with Christians mounting the spiritual attack – where are we called to go looking for trouble?).

When I got up there I found a large group of people gathered together at the highest point of the mountain. There were flags waving, horns blowing, drums sounding, and people praising, yelling in tongues and shouting words from the Bible.

There were also many people who were there to spectate (like me) or protest. Protesters were flying gay pride flags and banners, and in some cases trying to speak back in tongues to Danny and his team. Later on there was almost nudity, and they were laughing, watching, wondering and talking, but most of all they were enjoying it – this was their Saturday afternoon entertainment, watching the Christians make a fool of themselves.

At this point I started to get angry. The cause that I have given my life for was being turned into a show – into a ritual, a laughing stock. What was going through the minds of the spectators and protesters? “If this is what God does to people, I don’t want a bar of it, but it’s certainly quite amusing!”

Is this our response to a loving and just God, who put his Son through hell just so he could be with us for eternity? Is he calling us to make Him look like a fool so that those who don’t know Him – those who he created in his image, loves deeply, and desperately wants to be in communion with – decide they don’t want a bar of Him?

As Francis Chan puts it, “it’s crazy if you think about it. The God of the universe – the creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and e-minor – loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss.”

Francis continues, this from the blurb of his book Crazy Love: “Whether we’ve verbalised it yet or not… we all know something’s wrong.”

 

---

 As teachers and leaders we are called to higher account (James 3:1) and that is why I’m not simply going to avoid speaking out about Danny directly. Danny’s supporters have said to me that they don’t like it how so many church leaders are against him. But when misinformation is being spread, and when people like Danny (who should know better) are encouraging Christians (who are leaving their brains at the door and blindly following anyone who is available), there needs to be speaking out against him.

 

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People have said to me “Yeah, I heard about the Mt Ainslie prayer – what do you think about it?”. That is why I write this post. To give a public view on the issue. The people who asked me that were probably looking for an opinion to latch on to. Don’t do that, please. Take what I’ve said, take what others are saying, and use your brain to figure out what the answer is.

 

I spoke to Jason Golden, Danny’s right-hand-man, to find out whether what they were doing up there was considered successful. After hearing him talk, I think his heart is true. He honestly wants to see salvation come to people who don’t realise it’s there for them. He honestly wants to tell the world about the joy he has found since being saved from his own background of drinking, parties, drugs and sex.

But the problem is, although his heart may be in the right place, his head isn’t. And it’s a problem that many Christians have. It’s the “leaving the brain at the door of the church” syndrome. We’re happy to separate the physical from the spiritual, and elevate spiritual things to a whole new level because we believe it will stand up for itself there. Thoughts like “it’s spiritual warfare”, “we’re doing God’s work”, “the Holy Spirit will save them”, etc. etc. make the “head” part of the outpouring of our hearts completely redundant. We leave our brains and expect God to do the work.

Jason yells words from the Bible through a micro-megaphone and prays loudly in tongues for the salvation of the people protesting around him. I think he does deeply love these people and long for them to see the truth he proclaims. What Jason is doing seems ok to him because he knows where his heart is.

But let’s switch the camera angle around to these other people for a moment – the people Jason is praying for. The people holding up signs saying ‘keep religion out of politics’ and ‘I love my gay sister’. Their view of Jason is slightly different to his view of himself. To them, he looks like a crazy religious lunatic, drunk on the power that he gets from being closely associated with Danny and being allowed to use Danny’s micro-megaphone. He yells words from an out-of-date book that simply don’t make sense here and now. He’s talking about Israel, about it being God’s chosen land, yet here we are in Australia – never haven being to Israel and knowing only about the modern day turmoil there through the media.

Jason yells out babble – “la la la, uh la la la, ooh la” – which doesn’t mean a thing to these people. He’s crazy, he’s deluded, he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing and they’re having an entertaining afternoon watching him. At the same time though, they’re saying to each other “what I just don’t get, is how he honestly believes he’s right – it just doesn’t make sense”. They’re still questioning. Not dismissing completely, but certainly not anywhere near thinking that these people are normal.

Unfortunately, there are still Christians who are blindly following Danny, Jason and their team. I saw five Christians who I know personally on top of the mountain yesterday, and they were loyal followers uninterested in considering any other options.

Although I haven’t been able to confirm this on the Internet, a source which I consider credible tells me that Danny Nalliah is no longer a pastor – he has been kicked out of the AOG church and is now simply a self proclaimed pastor and nothing else. There were other things about Danny that this source couldn’t tell me – apart from urging me to be very careful about him. Why are so many following him without asking questions?

I spoke to a pagan, some atheists and an agnostic on top of the mountain. They were especially friendly people – in fact all of them had approached me just to say hi or ask what I was doing with my camera and voice recorder. They weren’t trying to “convert” me, but simply wanted to enjoy a good chat. They said that they feel they know the Bible better than most Christians (and unfortunately, I agree with them). After introducing myself to Dave Garland, president of the Pagan Awareness Network and explaining that although I was a Christian, I don’t follow Danny Nalliah, he said “well, I’m from the other side, but you and I agree about Danny Nalliah!”. I felt more comfortable with the ‘other side’ up there than those who I am supposedly on the same side as!

Now, don’t get me wrong: I am a Christian, I love Jesus, I believe that I am a sinner and having accepted His sacrificial gift of salvation I know I am not going to be eternally punished for everything I have done wrong. I accept God’s grace and want desperately to love and live like Jesus lived. I want to see God’s Kingdom brought to Earth in all ways that it can and see people all over the world – including pagans, atheists and agnostics – explore the claims of Jesus, become aware of the presence of God, understand his story of the world, and ultimately have the courage to put their faith in Christ.

But I know that to achieve that, Christ followers have to actually be a bunch worth being a part of. We have to accept other people, and be willing to be their friend. Not to “convert” them, but because we genuinely want to be in community and friendship with those around us.

I’d encourage Christians to look into this more. Go to the next pagan full moon ritual. It’s on November 3. I’ll be there. These people are friendly and welcoming. They’re people, just like you and me, and I want to know more about them. Not because I want to believe what they believe, but because they’re people made in God’s image who God loves and in who I may well find great friends. Through relationship with them, and deep conversing over our views of the world, if they come to agree with who I say Jesus is – then fantastic.

Remember, don’t let your devotion to Christianity make you too different from the world [edit] unaware of what’s going on in the world around you[/edit]. Don’t let it blind you into being so weird that people don’t want to know you. Love others, and spend your time on things that are worthwhile – that bring change and good to the world, not that divide it.”

From http://www.timmalone.id.au/2009/10/18/my-experience-on-the-mountain/

Hill$ong’s irresponsible promotion of stage-diving

The Seattle Times reported in 2002…

“Scott Stone doesn’t remember the night he fell from the hands of a mosh-pit throng at a Seattle rock concert, but he bears its mark: a crescent-shaped scar that starts at his temple and disappears in his buzz-cut brown hair.

Stone had gone to see an all-ages show by the California band Rage Against the Machine. Leaving his seat to join the fans packed in front of the stage, the then 14-year-old suddenly found himself hoisted up in the arms of strangers, being passed back, over the heads of other concertgoers, until there was no one left to catch him. His fall to Mercer Arena’s cement floor left him with permanent brain damage.

Stone’s parents reached an out-of-court settlement last month with the band, city, concert promoter and security company contracted for the September 1996 event. The city’s share of the settlement, covered under the security company’s insurance policy, was $400,000, according to an assistant city attorney. The Stones, who signed nondisclosure agreements with the other parties, say they are satisfied with the settlement and want to move on with their lives.

But they are angry at what they characterize as an out-of-control concert industry with a propensity for putting profits over people. The Bothell family agreed to be interviewed because they say they want their experience to be a warning to other parents.

“We don’t want this to happen to any other kid,” said Scott’s mother, Cathy Stone.

“But it will — it’s a business,” his father, Randy Stone, said.

Most concerts do not result in injuries and deaths. But the increasing frequency of serious injuries — including broken bones, brain damage and paralysis — is shining a spotlight on what some critics see as fun and freedom pushed to irresponsible limits.

The injuries have prompted a handful of U.S. cities and some bands to ban crowd surfing and stage diving, but there are no national standards for concert safety, and no one has exact numbers on how many people are injured in mosh pits every year. One survey cites at least 10 deaths and more than 1,000 injuries resulting from just 15 U.S. concerts last year.

In the Seattle area, as in most other cities, bands and promoters decide whether to allow crowd surfing and stage diving. At a Marilyn Manson concert at Mercer Arena in March last year, signs were posted throughout the venue, prohibiting crowd surfing and stage diving. At the Tacoma Dome, stage diving is discouraged and signs are often posted warning of the dangers, said the venue’s director, Mike Combs.

However, at the concert where Stone and 30 others were injured, the security company was instructed to “let the crowd take care of themselves,” according to the Stones’ attorney, Ron Webb, referring to a security official’s testimony in a deposition. Webb sees the Stone settlement as a strong message to concert organizers of their responsibility to provide a safe environment.

“The concert industry is now on notice that these kinds of actions are unreasonably dangerous,” Webb said, referring to crowd surfing and stage diving. He said concert organizers “have a duty to warn of danger and take reasonable measures to correct that danger.”

The bands themselves often set the mood; while one may invite concertgoers to leap into the crowd from the stage, another will remind people to be safe and look out for their neighbor, Combs said.

Paul Wertheimer, a nationally recognized concert-safety expert, says the Stones’ settlement is symbolically important because it happened here, in the birthplace of grunge — arguably the most important rock movement since the punk explosion of the late ’70s. It was here that people learned to ride atop surging crowds and swan dive from stages long before MTV videos and TV commercials began marketing grunge’s crowd-surfing, stage-diving cool.

With the case of Scott Stone — who suffered Seattle’s most serious concert injury to date, according to Wertheimer — the debate that has pitted music and hipness against safety concerns and a growing roster of injured “has come home to roost.”

Life transformed

Before his injury, Scott Stone was the kind of kid who’d have his family in tears with his nightly dinner-table antics. Afterward, his personality changed from a gregarious teen into a moody, angry and often-frustrated young man, his parents said.

Now 20, he isn’t able to drive or move out of his parents’ home in Bothell. He graduated from Bothell High School last year and works at a local sandwich shop. He hopes to attend community college but knows he may not be able to handle the courses because his short-term-memory problems make retaining information especially difficult.

“Maybe he won’t be able to do college, and maybe he won’t get a fair shake at a good job,” said Randy Stone, as he sat at the head of the family’s dining-room table recently, flanked by his wife and son. “But I don’t think the medical bills or the doctors will ever totally go away.” It’s likely too that Scott’s depression and sleeping problems, which are common with his kind of brain injury, will continue for the rest of his life, his father said.

Scott, who has been featured in stories for the cable-TV music channel VH1, ABC’s television newsmagazine “20/20″ and in USA Today, Teen People and other publications, says he still goes to concerts. “I like the energy from the crowd and being with a bunch of people who are involved and into the music,” he said.

The 1996 concert was the first one he attended without his father. His parents say they trusted their son would be safe at an all-ages show at a city-run venue. “It just didn’t seem to be something to be concerned with,” said Randy Stone.

No one knows — and Scott does not remember — whether the boy purposefully thrust himself into the arms of the crowd or was forced up by older youths who, according to witnesses, “were throwing smaller kids and girls up onto the crowd, forcing them to crowd surf against their will,” said Webb, the family’s attorney. A couple of older youths who knew Scott from school saw him fall and fought through the crowd to drag him out, Webb said. “If it wasn’t for them, he probably would’ve died.”

But people who crowd surf and stage dive have to assume some of the risk, said assistant city attorney Sean Sheehan, who worked on the Stone case.

“It was the city’s position that Scott Stone attended concerts before, he crowd surfed before, he’d been warned not to do it by his father and he chose to do it repeatedly — so we believe Mr. Stone assumed the risk when he chose to crowd surf,” Sheehan said. “In my judgment, 14-year-olds are perfectly capable of understanding ‘What goes up must come down.’ “

The city, which owns Mercer Arena, “complies with the normal standards within the venue industry,” Sheehan said.

Sheehan declined to say whether new safety procedures are being considered for city-run facilities. Officials with Monqui and Starplex, the concert’s promoter and security company respectively, did not respond to requests for interviews. Attorneys representing Rage Against the Machine could not be reached.

Survey of concert injuries

Wertheimer, who has served as an expert witness in concert-related death and injury lawsuits around the world, compiles an annual survey of injuries and deaths from news and police reports, eyewitness accounts, lawsuits, industry sources and public-information documents.

It’s not a complete list because data are hard to get and there’s no national clearinghouse for information, he said. But last year in a sampling of the most dangerous events, Wertheimer surveyed 31 concerts in 11 countries and counted 55 deaths, more than 11,400 injuries, 418 arrests and more than $33,000 in property damage.

Of those 31 concerts, 14 were held in the United States and accounted for an estimated 10 deaths (which included drug, traffic and crime-related deaths), more than 1,000 injuries and nearly 400 arrests. Wertheimer estimates that at least 20,000 Americans receive first-aid at concerts in the United States every year.

Wertheimer said his figures are conservative and that in the 10 years he’s conducted the survey, no one has proved them false.

His biggest beef: general-admission tickets that allow promoters to pack venues and make people compete for a limited number of spots up front.

“Being in a pit can be a lot of fun with the camaraderie, the music, the touching, the chaos,” said Wertheimer, a music fan who has logged more than 100 hours in mosh pits from Seattle to Copenhagen, Denmark. “Early on, people looked out for each other. But chaos with etiquette turned into an all-out brawl when you had people who came in with the intent to hurt other people or take advantage of women under the cloak of darkness and the anonymity of the pit.”

Wertheimer founded Crowd Management Strategies, a Chicago-based consulting firm, in 1992 “because I didn’t think the concert industry should be allowing the same things to happen, the same missteps, time and time again.”

He believes mosh pits can be safe, citing the opening of Seattle’s Experience Music Project, when organizers limited the number of people allowed into the pit. And he celebrates the little evidence he sees of progress. A few U.S. cities and colleges — including New Orleans, Denver and the University of San Diego — have banned crowd surfing and stage diving. In Europe, many concert organizers have banned such activities since the deaths of nine Pearl Jam fans at the 2000 Roskilde Festival in Denmark.

But Wertheimer is frustrated by the lack of movement here: At a 1994 conference in Seattle for members of the International Association of Assembly Managers (IAAM), he introduced “mosher-friendly” safety guidelines which, he said, have since been adopted by a number of U.S. and European cities. They include restricting access to mosh pits, padding barricades, providing free water and banning crowd surfing, stage diving and steel-toe-boot-wearing fans — all recommendations the organization has since ignored, he said.

Julie Herrick, director of IAAM communications, said each venue has its own policies and IAAM only provides training, seminars and workshops on crowd safety. The bottom line, said Wertheimer, is that there’s no real pressure on the concert industry to change things — and it won’t change until insurance companies tire of paying for lawsuits filed on behalf of those killed or injured at concerts.

Which means there will be more Scott Stones.

“A serious head injury is a horrible thing to happen, especially when you went to a concert to have fun,” said Wertheimer. “It’s just a rock concert — so why should parents have to worry that their kids may be in some kind of mortal danger?”

From http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20020604&slug=moshpit04e

Evil Pentecostal churches compete to murder children

The Los Angeles Times reports…

“The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.

His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.

A month later, he died.

Nwanaokwo Edet was one of an increasing number of children in Africa accused of witchcraft by pastors and then tortured or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of “witch children” reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files.

Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

“It is an outrage what they are allowing to take place in the name of Christianity,” said Gary Foxcroft, head of nonprofit Stepping Stones Nigeria.

For their part, the families are often extremely poor, and sometimes even relieved to have one less mouth to feed. Poverty, conflict and poor education lay the foundation for accusations, which are then triggered by the death of a relative, the loss of a job or the denunciation of a pastor on the make, said Martin Dawes, a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund.

“When communities come under pressure, they look for scapegoats,” he said. “It plays into traditional beliefs that someone is responsible for a negative change … and children are defenseless.”

____

The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria’s 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.

Nigeria is one of the heartlands of abuse, but hardly the only one: the United Nations Children’s Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa.

Church signs sprout around every twist of the road snaking through the jungle between Uyo, the capital of the southern Akwa Ibom state where Nwanaokwo lay, and Eket, home to many more rejected “witch children.” Churches outnumber schools, clinics and banks put together. Many promise to solve parishioner’s material worries as well as spiritual ones — eight out of ten Nigerians struggle by on less than $2 a day.

“Poverty must catch fire,” insists the Born 2 Rule Crusade on one of Uyo’s main streets.

“Where little shots become big shots in a short time,” promises the Winner’s Chapel down the road.

“Pray your way to riches,” advises Embassy of Christ a few blocks away.

It’s hard for churches to carve out a congregation with so much competition. So some pastors establish their credentials by accusing children of witchcraft.

Nwanaokwo said he knew the pastor who accused him only as Pastor King. Mount Zion Lighthouse in Nigeria at first confirmed that a Pastor King worked for them, then denied that they knew any such person.

Bishop A.D. Ayakndue, the head of the church in Nigeria, said pastors were encouraged to pray about witchcraft, but not to abuse children.

“We pray over that problem (of witchcraft) very powerfully,” he said. “But we can never hurt a child.”

The Nigerian church is a branch of a Californian church by the same name. But the California church says it lost touch with its Nigerian offshoots several years ago.

“I had no idea,” said church elder Carrie King by phone from Tracy, Calif. “I knew people believed in witchcraft over there but we believe in the power of prayer, not physically harming people.”

The Mount Zion Lighthouse — also named by three other families as the accuser of their children — is part of the powerful Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. The Fellowship’s president, Ayo Oritsejafor, said the Fellowship was the fastest-growing religious group in Nigeria, with more than 30 million members.

“We have grown so much in the past few years we cannot keep an eye on everybody,” he explained.

But Foxcroft, the head of Stepping Stones, said if the organization was able to collect membership fees, it could also police its members better. He had already written to the organization twice to alert it to the abuse, he said. He suggested the fellowship ask members to sign forms denouncing abuse or hold meetings to educate pastors about the new child rights law in the state of Akwa Ibom, which makes it illegal to denounce children as witches. Similar laws and education were needed in other states, he said.

Sam Itauma of the Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation Network said it is the most vulnerable children — the orphaned, sick, disabled or poor — who are most often denounced. In Nwanaokwo’s case, his poor father and dead mother made him an easy target.

“Even churches who didn’t use to ‘find’ child witches are being forced into it by the competition,” said Itauma. “They are seen as spiritually powerful because they can detect witchcraft and the parents may even pay them money for an exorcism.”

That’s what Margaret Eyekang did when her 8-year-old daughter Abigail was accused by a “prophet” from the Apostolic Church, because the girl liked to sleep outside on hot nights — interpreted as meaning she might be flying off to join a coven. A series of exorcisms cost Eyekang eight months’ wages, or US$270. The payments bankrupted her.

Neighbors also attacked her daughter.

“They beat her with sticks and asked me why I was bringing them a witch child,” she said. A relative offered Eyekang floor space but Abigail was not welcome and had to sleep in the streets.

Members of two other families said pastors from the Apostolic Church had accused their children of witchcraft, but asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

The Nigeria Apostolic Church refused repeated requests made by phone, e-mail and in person for comment.

___

At first glance, there’s nothing unusual about the laughing, grubby kids playing hopscotch or reading from a tattered Dick and Jane book by the graffiti-scrawled cinderblock house. But this is where children like Abigail end up after being labeled witches by churches and abandoned or tortured by their families.

There’s a scar above Jane’s shy smile: her mother tried to saw off the top of her skull after a pastor denounced her and repeated exorcisms costing a total of $60 didn’t cure her of witchcraft. Mary, 15, is just beginning to think about boys and how they will look at the scar tissue on her face caused when her mother doused her in caustic soda. Twelve-year-old Rachel dreamed of being a banker but instead was chained up by her pastor, starved and beaten with sticks repeatedly; her uncle paid him $60 for the exorcism.

Israel’s cousin tried to bury him alive, Nwaekwa’s father drove a nail through her head, and sweet-tempered Jerry — all knees, elbows and toothy grin — was beaten by his pastor, starved, made to eat cement and then set on fire by his father as his pastor’s wife cheered it on.

The children at the home run by Itauma’s organization have been mutilated as casually as the praying mantises they play with. Home officials asked for the children’s last names not to be used to protect them from retaliation.

The home was founded in 2003 with seven children; it now has 120 to 200 at any given time as children are reconciled with their families and new victims arrive.

Helen Ukpabio is one of the few evangelists publicly linked to the denunciation of child witches. She heads the enormous Liberty Gospel church in Calabar, where Nwanaokwo used to live. Ukpabio makes and distributes popular books and DVDs on witchcraft; in one film, a group of child witches pull out a man’s eyeballs. In another book, she advises that 60 percent of the inability to bear children is caused by witchcraft.

In an interview with the AP, Ukpabio is accompanied by her lawyer, church officials and personal film crew.

“Witchcraft is real,” Ukpabio insisted, before denouncing the physical abuse of children. Ukpabio says she performs non-abusive exorcisms for free and was not aware of or responsible for any misinterpretation of her materials.

“I don’t know about that,” she declared.

However, she then acknowledged that she had seen a pastor from the Apostolic Church break a girl’s jaw during an exorcism. Ukpabio said she prayed over her that night and cast out the demon. She did not respond to questions on whether she took the girl to hospital or complained about the injury to church authorities.

After activists publicly identified Liberty Gospel as denouncing “child witches,” armed police arrived at Itauma’s home accompanied by a church lawyer. Three children were injured in the fracas. Itauma asked that other churches identified by children not be named to protect their victims.

“We cannot afford to make enemies of all the churches around here,” he said. “But we know the vast majority of them are involved in the abuse even if their headquarters aren’t aware.”

Just mentioning the name of a church is enough to frighten a group of bubbly children at the home.

“Please stop the pastors who hurt us,” said Jerry quietly, touching the scars on his face. “I believe in God and God knows I am not a witch.”

From http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-af-nigeria-child-witches,0,3012806,full.story

Gloria Jean’s ’severs all ties’ with Mercy Ministries

The Daily Telegraph reports…

“….From magazine maven to coffee queen, but is former Dolly and Elle editor Marina Go getting herself into hot water after signing on as a franchisee of Gloria Jean’s coffee in Bondi Junction?

The frothy chain once supported pro-life group Mercy Ministries, which has direct links to Hillsong. Last year, Mercy Ministries was accused of abusing young women wanting help with mental illness and eating disorders.

The charity denied all claims.

A spokesman for Gloria Jean’s said that the company has since severed all ties with Mercy Ministries.

“There is now the Gloria Jean’s International Foundation which is primarily focused on humanitarian and community programs,” she said. “The Foundation does not support Mercy Ministries.

The last major fundraising promotion with Mercy was in October, 2007.”

Getting right into the swing of things, Go, who is still online publisher for Michael Hannan’s Internet Digital Media company, ran Cappuccino For A Cause on Friday, with 50c from each cup donated to Opportunity International, to help people in Third World countries.

“We took the franchise on last April and I knew then Gloria Jean’s had nothing further to do with Mercy Ministries,”

Go told Hush. “As a franchisee,  we can choose to opt out of charity initiatives but humanitarian aid  is definitely something I agree with……””

From http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sunday-telegraph/has-ruby-risen-above-her-station/story-e6frewt9-1225787826430

Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1611

WNCT reports…

“A church in Canton, North Carolina is marking Halloween this year by burning what it calls satanic books. Many of the books on the list are versions of the Bible.
   
Pastor Marc Grizzard wants to burn any Bible that is not the King James version. Grizzard and the congregation at Amazing Grace Baptist Church consider other interpretations of the Bible to be false.
   
They also plan to burn the books of well known Christian writers who have occasionally used other versions of the Bible.

“We’re burning versions of God’s word such as the NIV, the NASV, the ECV, the living bible,” Grizzard said. “There’s a lot of different authors that we consider heretics such as Billy Graham, Rick Warren, the list goes on and on.“

From http://www2.wnct.com/nct/news/local/article/north_carolina_church_plans_to_burn_bibles_on_halloween/63116/

Are Nickelback of the devil?

Brisbane Christian Radio 96five’s ‘urgent’ email asks…

“Hi Lance,

96Five has been given the opportunity to give away tickets plus meet & greets to Nickelback’s Brisbane concert. Is this something that you think 96Five should be involved in?

Yes or No? Would you like to go to the Nickelback concert?

Please respond today or ASAP. Just reply to this email or alternatively email music@96five.com

Thank you for your time.

96five’s Music Mediator”

Sons take over Unification family business

The Associated Press reports…

“The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, now approaching 90 and still one of the world’s most controversial religious figures, is handing over day-to-day control of his Unification Church to three U.S.-educated sons.

There are some changes afoot in fundraising and boosting membership, the sons say. But Moon — who will preside over another series of his trademark mass weddings on Wednesday — remains in charge as the church’s self-proclaimed “Messiah.”

Still, the sons are quietly assuming more responsibility in managing a church that has steadily expanded its business and charitable activities while trying to avoid the criticism that dogged it during the 1970s and 80s.

The youngest, 30-year-old Rev. Moon Hyung-jin, was tapped last year to take over as the church’s religious leader. Moon Kook-jin, 39, is in charge of business ventures in South Korea, while 40-year-old Moon Hyun-jin oversees international operations. The church said all the brothers have Harvard degrees.

Since founding the church in Seoul in 1954, the elder Moon has built a business empire with hundreds of ventures in more than a half-dozen countries, from hospitals and universities to newspapers and even a professional soccer team and ballet troupe.

These include the Washington Times newspaper and the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan, as well as an ad agency and ski resort in South Korea, and a seafood distribution firm that supplies sushi to Japanese restaurants across the U.S.

There are also ventures in North Korea, where Moon’s ties are strong enough that for his last birthday, the communist country’s leader Kim Jong Il sent roses, lilies and prized wild ginseng. The church’s interests include fledgling automaker Pyeonghwa Motors and the only foreign-owned luxury hotel in Pyongyang.

Among the most controversial of Moon’s legacies are the mass weddings he calls “blessing ceremonies” — arranged marriages often pairing followers from different countries that he says are aimed at building a multicultural religious world.

Critics maintain the weddings, involving people who usually don’t meet until shortly before the ceremony, are evidence the Unification Church brainwashes its followers.

Since the first weddings took place in Seoul in 1960 and 1961, mass weddings have been held at New York’s Madison Square Garden and at Seoul’s Olympic Stadium, where 42,000 people were married in 1999.

On Wednesday, Moon will wed or reaffirm the marriages of more than 40,000 people: 20,000 in South Korea and the rest in countries around the world, including the U.S., where church officials say ceremonies are planned in nearly every state, including at the church-owned New Yorker Hotel.

Moon Hyung-jin, the Rev. Moon’s hand-picked successor as religious director, was just 17 when he took a bride chosen by his father; the couple now have five children. In addition, three of the Rev. Moon’s grandchildren were set up with followers from Japan, the colonial ruler of Korea.

The younger Moon says he sees the unions as an opportunity for diplomacy.

“If people from Korea and Japan marry with this broad mindset, their children won’t see their parents’ countries as enemies and instead will come to love both countries,” he told The Associated Press in an interview at his Seoul office.

Baby-faced and soft-spoken, Moon Hyung-jin was born and raised in New York, where he was known as Sean. He admits he’s still growing into his new job.

“When my father asked me to take on this role, I told him this responsibility was a bit much for me,” he said. “He told me not to worry, that many people would help me.”

Since then, the younger Moon says he has carved out some areas of change, including making the church’s fundraising activities more transparent. The church has been accused of duping followers into handing over their life savings.

Membership is also a key concern. Though the church claims millions of members worldwide, experts say the figure is far lower — no more than 100,000. In South Korea, Unification Church members are far outnumbered by Catholics, Presbyterians and Buddhists.

“We’ve been weak on membership and on figuring out the church’s direction. We’ve been trying to resolve those issues,” Moon Hyung-jin said. “But the church is getting stronger, and church members are happier.”

Asked if his membership drive would include any 120-city world tours like the one his father undertook at age 85, Moon laughed and said he shouldn’t be seen as a successor to his father. “I can’t be compared to my father,” he said. “If people put so much importance in their titles, they become arrogant.”

The younger Moon’s anointment came despite a lapse of faith during his Harvard years, when he said he turned to Buddhism after a brother, Young-jin, died in Reno, Nevada, in 1999, in what authorities called a suicide.

He said his father ordered church members not to criticize him for donning Buddhist robes and shaving his head on campus. “I was hugely moved,” he said. “I had thought my father would kick me out of the church, but he protected me.”

While Moon Hyung-jin preaches in both Korean and fluent English, his style is distinctly American. At a service last month in Seoul broadcast on his Web site, there was more rock than gospel.

“Give it up! Let’s give it up for True Parents!” he proclaimed, using the church terms for the elder Rev. Moon and his wife.

Moon Kook-jin, who has headed the church’s South Korean business operations since 2005, praised his youngest brother. “I think he’s doing a good job,” he told the AP.

A Seoul businessman and owner of the New York-based gun manufacturer Kahr Arms, Moon Kook-jin says he sees no contradiction in owning a weapons factory. “To build a peaceful country, we need the police and an army,” he said, a black Kahr Arms baseball cap perched on his head.

Critics maintain the Rev. Moon is little more than a charismatic cult leader who brainwashes followers.

“What Rev. Moon says is the law,” said Lee Young-sun, a follower who left the church in 2001 after 31 years. Her family so revered Moon, she said, they hung his portrait on the wall and thanked him in their mealtime prayers. “The church’s brainwashing is exactly what North Korea does,” she said.

Still, some analysts say that by anointing a new generation, Moon may ensure the church endures after his death

“Some people say the Unification Church may perish after Moon’s death but I don’t think so,” said Tark Ji-il, a religion professor at Busan Presbyterian University. “It’s more accurate to view them now as a corporate organization uniting people with similar religious beliefs.”

From http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hf5Q0C3CMGcg21HY_wiuoR4I2KWQD9B9PVRO0

Creflo’s A.ussie Dollar

Paradise Church pastor Ashley Evans twitters…

“…creflo dollar is coming to influencers 2010 perth and adelaide….”

From http://twitter.com/ashleymarkevans/status/3731004919

Dates…

18-20 January 2010 – Paradise Church Adelaide

20-22 January 2010 - Burswood Casino Perth.

http://www.influencersconference.com/

Hill$ong London – the Colour Conference Crap Rap

Me trying to explain to you what’s going on in Danny Nalliah’s head is like trying to teach a cricketer how to play soccer

The Herald-Sun reports…

“A former political running mate of Family First senator Steve Fielding says dark forces are casting spells on Federal Parliament.

Catch the Fire Ministries pastor Daniel Nalliah has organised a “prayer offensive” to combat evil forces including witchcraft, homosexuality and abortion.

The discovery of a “black mass altar” at Mount Ainslie in Canberra by a group of school students had inspired him to organise a prayer gathering at the area on Saturday.

“The type of altar discovered on Mount Ainslie pointed to a black mass and the work of dark forces wanting to cast spells on Australia and federal Parliament,” Mr Nalliah said.

“These days people don’t think the Devil is real but we have seen the bad effects of the spiritual being known as Satan and we believe there is a spiritual fight over the nation of Australia being fought in the heavens.”

Asked what evidence of Satan there was in Parliament, Mr Nalliah said: “The number of politicians who have serious marriage problems.”

Legislation supporting homosexuality, abortion and a push for a Bill of rights were other areas where Mr Nalliah said the devil was having influence.

“Me trying to explain it to you is like trying to teach a cricketer how to play soccer,” Mr Nalliah said.

He said 100 Christians from across Australia would be at Mount Ainslie this weekend.

“Our main reason for going to Mount Ainslie is to pull down the strongholds of the Devil to repent and pray against any evil done in our land including the adverse effects of witchcraft, homosexuality and, of course, the devastation of abortion, so that God will save our land.”

Senator Fielding and Mr Nalliah occupied the first and second spots on Family First’s Victorian Senate ticket in 2004.

But Senator Fielding, who was elected to the Senate with Labor preferences, said Mr Nalliah had been asked to leave the party in late 2004.

“Family First has had no connection with Danny Nalliah since he was asked to leave the party five years ago after he made demeaning comments about a minority group,” Senator Fielding said.

“He has no voice in Family First.”

Asked about Senator Fielding, Mr Nalliah said his former running mate did not have a long-term political career because of his failure to defend the nuclear family.

“He won’t get re-elected because the Christian vote won’t be there for him,” he said.

“Steve has not been standing up for the Christian cause.””

From http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/evil-spells-are-being-cast-on-parliament/story-e6frf7l6-1225785775088

Some good old-fashioned homophobia and child-popping theology at Paradise Church Adelaide

The Hinn interview

Fox News reports…

“Pastor Benny Hinn is being investigated by the Senate Finance Committee and was recently denied entry into the United Kingdom. The press has been bad, he says, because the media doesn’t understand him.

But the Texas-based faith healer, whose “Holy Spirit Miracle Crusades” pack sports arenas across the United States, is fielding questions about his controversies nonetheless. He says he needs to voice his concerns over the land of his birth, Israel, and the threat to it posed by a nuclear Iran — which he talks about in his new book “Blood in the Sand.”

“[The media] are never going to paint me as I want to be painted,” Hinn said in an exclusive interview. “But, really, it doesn’t matter as long as people give me the chance to talk.”

And talking he is … about the finance probe, his lavish lifestyle and accusations that his faith healings are fake because he offers no documentation or verification that he has, in fact, helped the blind see and the crippled walk.

“They question me on why I don’t verify,” Hinn says. “I answer, ‘God never called me to verify. I’m not a doctor.’

He says that after a tabloid news show aired an exposé on his worldwide Benny Hinn Ministries, he tried to make changes. The exposé reported that though thousands of people attending Hinn’s religious gatherings said they were healed, the ministry couldn’t prove they suffered from any infirmities in the first place, or that they actually had been miraculously healed.

So, Hinn says, his ministry created a department to handle verifications and follow up on the “miracles.”

“It was chaotic. It was a mess,” he says. “The staff would call and people would be mad and say, ‘Why are you questioning that I was lying up there?’”

“Then we would call the doctors. They wouldn’t talk to us most of the time … so it didn’t work.”

Last week Hinn was denied entry into the U.K. for a three-day rally at which, according to his Web site, thousands of evangelical Christians planned to hear him. New immigration rules that crack down on religious extremism required him to present a special certificate of sponsorship, which he didn’t have.

Hinn claims several Christian ministers before him also were denied entry, but his expulsion made headlines because he’s a well-known, charismatic pastor who preaches a prosperity gospel. Give generously to God, he preaches, and God will give even more generously in return.

Hinn has reaped great benefits from that philosophy.

Benny Hinn Ministries doesn’t publish its finances, but one report estimated it takes in $100 million a year. Hinn says only that the ministry pays him more than half a million dollars a year — but that income doesn’t include money from the sales of his books and his other private business ventures.

He says he plans to cut his salary in half, and eventually to receive no pay.

That decision comes amid an ongoing probe of six evangelical ministers and their megachurches by the Senate Finance Committee, headed by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Benny Hinn Ministries is one of the six.

The committee is investigating whether the ministries are using their tax-exempt status to further God’s work — or to fund luxuries like mansions, expensive cars and private jets.

“We’ve answered every question … over 5,000 pages … and of course it’s not over yet,” Hinn says. “It’s still open. We’re still talking, still cooperating.”

Grassley’s office confirms this, saying Benny Hinn Ministries is one of only two that have cooperated completely with the Finance Committee’s requests.

But questions still loom about Hinn’s lavish lifestyle and his private plane, which he says his ministry owns.

The pastor defends both, saying that “in today’s world, there’s this idea that preachers are supposed to be poor, wearing sandals and riding bicycles, I guess … which is really nonsense.

“The Lord wants us to follow His righteous life, but yet we have to exist in the 21st century. You can’t be going about riding a bicycle and to travel the world … that is not smart.”

Hinn says “the plane is a necessity, not a luxury” because of his extensive travel.

Another necessity, according to Hinn, is to get evangelicals to understand the biblical importance of Israel, where he was born. Hinn was born to Christian parents in Jaffa, Israel, in 1952. So, for him, it’s personal.

“I am forced to view the Middle East as if I am looking in a mirror that has been shattered,” he writes in his book. “There’s a great threat against Israel from Iran, a threat from radical Islam from within and without.”

He says he’s concerned that President Obama doesn’t understand that the struggle for peace in the Middle East is a biblical struggle that politicians cannot solve by themselves.

Peace between Jews and Arabs can never be about a simple dividing of borders, according to Hinn. “Spiritually, it’s not about land, it’s about the promises of God. That’s the difference.”

“On one hand, you’ve got the Jewish people saying, ‘God gave us this land.’ You’ve got on the other hand Arabs saying, ‘God gave us this land,’ what they believe the Koran says.

“So it’s a very deep spiritual problem … and only God can solve it.”

Lofty theologians may scoff at Hinn’s style, but on this issue everyone agrees: Peace in the Middle East would indeed be a miracle.”

From http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,563103,00.html

Sunday trading – updated*

Pastor Sunday Adelaja (on 19/11/2004) noted…

“….My trip to Australia was … very good. I thank God for the people who invited me, Pastor Ashley Evans and the Paradise Community Church in Adelaide. They put forth a lot of effort. They paid for my ticket and brought me first class, that was very good of them because it afforded me the opportunity to relax and bear the 20 plus hour flight with ease…..”

http://www.godembassy.org/en/news/news_fr.php?showdetail=534

(Return first class airfare Kiev-Adelaide-Kiev = from $17,508 @ 2008 prices)

*And now the latest.

“A prominent Ukraine pastor alleged to be part of a $100 million fraud case is maintaining his innocence as a new investigation against him is initiated.

Pastor Sunday Adelaja, founder of The Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations in Kiev, one of the largest churches in Eastern Europe, said Ukraine authorities are looking for ways to charge him with treason for preaching that he wanted to see Ukraine become a Christian nation.

The Interior Ministry claims Adelaja preached that the main task of his church was to create a “Christian state” in Ukraine, which “ignores the obvious fact of the Ukrainian statehood,” the Ukrainian news site PolitInform.org reported.

Adelaja said the new accusation proves that the fraud charges linking him to the King’s Capital financial group are simply an attempt to attack his ministry.

The Nigeria-born pastor, whose congregation was one of several to protest government corruption and alleged election fraud during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, said the treason accusation could be placed on any church that seeks to influence its nation’s government.

“Everything that has happened is not because of King’s Capital, but it’s because of the influence of our church that is seen as a threat,” Adelaja said. “It’s about political repression.”

Adelaja openly teaches that churches should influence government, business and society, and made it the theme of his book Church Shift.

No additional charges have been filed, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs, led by Yuriy Lutsenko, has held closed-door meetings with Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers and President Viktor Yushchenko, asking them to launch an investigation into the alleged treason, PolitInform.org reported.

Adelaja has repeatedly denied involvement in King’s Capital, an investment company co-founded by a member of his church. The organization promised returns as high as 60 percent, but last November stopped paying dividends to investors.

Investors, most of whom were church members, went to authorities last fall, claiming they had lost as much as $100 million.

Adelaja says the financial group was not a Ponzi scheme, as some alleged, but a legitimate business that failed as a result of the global economic crisis. In late August, King’s Capital was declared bankrupt.

Despite Adelaja’s claims, several Ukrainian church leaders, including a group of nine bishops representing thousands of congregations, denounced the pastor in a statement last December, saying he repeatedly endorsed King’s Capital. Some also alleged that he was involved in its leadership.

In March, Adelaja was charged with embezzling funds “in very large amounts via fraud,” which carries a maximum sentence of 12 years in prison.

Adelaja said his ministry is suing the Interior Ministry and the police for “unlawful accusation and libel.”

“After five court hearings they have still not presented any evidence to the judge who asked for it in the first court hearing,” Adelaja said. “We see that we will win, and because of this they are trying something new with this new accusation.”

Christian attorney Joel Thornton, general counsel of the International Human Rights Group, believes Adelaja’s legal battles are rooted in racism and religious oppression.

“This really is about his success,” said Thornton, who consults Adelaja and has been involved in religious liberty cases throughout Europe for more than a decade. “If he weren’t a Nigerian immigrant pastor having one of the largest most active groups of congregations in Europe, which are made up largely of non-Nigerian members, he wouldn’t have these problems.”

Thornton may get involved in Adelaja’s case in January if there is no resolution before then. He said the controversy over King’s Capital complicates what would otherwise be a clear case of religious persecution.

He believes Adelaja’s claims that King’s Capital was a legitimate organization that failed because most of its investments were in real estate. But he said it remains unclear whether Adelaja endorsed the business, one of dozens launched by church members, from the pulpit.

“He told me he talked about it some, but he said he never [told members to] make an investment,” Thornton said. “I don’t believe he’s profited from it from what I know from him.”

He said Christians should be concerned about the Interior Ministry’s attempt to charge Adelaja with treason. In Europe, he said government officials try to control the spread of evangelical groups by lumping Christians in with dangerous sects or forcing churches to meet rigid criteria to register with the government.

Although he thinks it is unlikely to happen, Thornton said if Ukraine were successful in charging Adelaja with treason, other nations may follow its lead.

“Attacking a pastor who says we want to make this a Christian nation, that kind of approach, if Ukraine has some success with it, it could spread in those Eastern European countries,” Thornton said.”

From http://www.charismamag.com/index.php/news/23555-prominent-ukraine-pastor-faces-new-investigation

And finally,  a bonus happy-snap.

 

Sunday Adelaja (rear, 3rd from left), Ted Haggard (front, 2nd from left), Brian and Bobbie Houston (front, 2nd and 1st from right), with Israeli Prime Minister and other church leaders, May 10, 2005

Is this the way in Camarillo?

The Camarillo Acorn reports…

“A Camarillo couple arrested last month in connection with a scheme that allegedly cost an elderly man his home pleaded not guilty to multiple felony charges in Ventura County Superior Court Sept. 21.

Alonzo Gene McCowan, 49, and his 45 year old wife, Kimberly Ann Oglesby McCowan, were arrested Sept. 17 on theft and money laundering charges brought against them by the Ventura County District Attorney’s office.

Alonzo Gene McCowan, more commonly known as Rev. Lonnie McCowan, is the pastor of Solid Rock Christian Center in Ventura.

According to court records, Lonnie McCowan convinced Leo Gilmond, a now-86-year-old Ventura resident, to sign over the deed of his $460,000 home to the church in October 2004 so it could be used by church visitors and students.

Lonnie McCowan apparently paid Gilmond only about $10,000 for the home, court records show. The house went into foreclosure early last year shortly before Gilmond tried to collect the remaining $450,000 owed him by McCowan.

Court records show the McCowans borrowed a home loan worth $420,000 by refinancing the house in his wife’s name.

McCowan admitted he took the loan and that he’d lost the money in the stock market, according to court documents. Investigators said they could not find records of the lost money.

Frank Huber, an investigator with the district attorney’s office, said in the affidavit he filed that Lonnie McCowan “used his position of trust as a religious representative to prey upon elderly victims in the county of Ventura.”

The two sides reportedly reached an agreement in civil court last year. Specific details on the settlement were not available.

“I’ve read through the discovery that I’ve been provided by the DA’s office, and I frankly don’t see where the crime is,” said Ron Bamieh, the attorney representing the McCowans. “There is literally no evidence against Kimberly McCowan. . . . These charges don’t reflect what actually happened.”

Investigators said that shortly after Lonnie McCowan reportedly withdrew the $420,000 home loan, he put a down payment on another home in Camarillo. He then took a $336,000 loan on the second home using another name, court records show.

In both instances, the McCowans reported false information on their loan applications., according to court records.

Court records indicate that the McCowans pocketed $756,000 between the two real estate transactions.

Investigators with the district attorney’s office said the second loan was discovered earlier this year during an investigation of a complicated Ponzi scheme that lasted from 2004 to 2008 in Palm Desert and resulted in the arrests of Terry Tucker and Cheri Tucker, who pleaded guilty to two counts of bank fraud in March 2009.

According to court records, McCowan borrowed money for the second down payment from the Tuckers, who owned a Thousand Oaks-based company.

To read about the Tuckers’ crimes, see the Oct. 1 article “T.O. man says his childhood is to blame for his financial crimes” at www.toacorn.com.

Lonnie McCowan was charged with two counts of theft from an elderly person and two counts of money laundering.

He faces enhancement charges because the money allegedly taken was more than $500,000.

Kimberly McCowan was charged with single counts each of grand theft and money laundering. She also faces enhancement charges.

During a press conference at the Ventura church last week, Lonnie McCowan said the case against him is racially motivated.

“We are saying that we are uncomfortable with investigators assuming facts to be true based on our race and not on the facts,” McCowan said. “We are uncomfortable with people making statements about ‘How does a man like that afford a nice car or a nice house?’ We are uncomfortable with the tone and attitude expressed, as if to say, if my race has nice things, they must be doing something wrong.”

“That allegation is outrageous and completely baseless,” said James Ellison, chief assistant district attorney.

Lonnie McCowan faces a maximum of 15 years and four months in prison and will be required to pay $1.74 million in fines and restitution if convicted of all charges.

His wife faces a maximum sentence of six years and four months and would have to pay $250,000 in fines and restitution………”

From http://www.thecamarilloacorn.com/news/2009-10-02/Front_Page/Pastor_wife_plead_not_guilty_to_theft_charges.html

The Florsheim fugitive pastor

The Sowetan reports…

“An unemployed Limpopo man was allegedly assaulted by Pretoria detectives looking for Total Surrender Church pastor John Mthunzini, who is wanted for 17 cases of fraud.

Alpheus Matlwa of Bela Bela said on September 15 he was mistaken for the fugitive pastor .

“They kept on calling me ‘Mthunzini’ and would not listen when I told them that I was not Mthuzini,” he said.

“They said the Florsheim shoes I was wearing were similar to those of Mthunzini and started assaulting me.”

Matlwa said the cops “started arguing before letting me go”.

He opened a case of assault at the Bela Bela police station and also reported the matter to the Independent Complaints Directorate .

Police spokesperson Superintendent Abel Phetla confirmed that they were investigating a case of assault “

From http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1076514

Further background…

“A Limpopo pastor who doubles as a senior soccer official is being sought in connection with several cases of fraud.

The Modimolle police said yesterday they were looking for John Mathalela Mthunzini, who they believe could help them solve about 17 cases of fraud.

Police spokesperson Superintendent Malesela Ledwaba said Mthunzini disappeared two months ago when he heard that police were looking for him.

Mthunzini is the secretary of Safa in the Waterberg region. He allegedly defrauded the association of more than R50000 between October last year and April this year. He is a pastor at the Total Surrender Church.

A source claimed Mthunzini used Safa cheques to withdraw money by forging other officials’ signatures as he was not the only signatory to the association’s funds.”

From http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1066934

Where have all the church cowgirls gone? They’re on the Gold Coast

Anti-life church

KATU reports…

“Mothers and their newborns in an Oregon City church that practices faith healing routinely died during or shortly after birth because medical help was not sought, one former member said Wednesday.

These revelations came to light after an infant boy died over the weekend. The mother, who is a member of the Followers of Christ church, allegedly had complications before giving birth. Church members prayed over her Friday night, and the baby was born Saturday afternoon. But it died early Sunday morning.

Myrna Cunningham, who was born without the aid of a doctor 68 years ago into the church, said that this was a common occurrence.

She also said her cousin’s daughter never went to a doctor even after her baby died inside her.

“Three days it took her to get toxic enough to die,” she said. “Can you imagine that? Gosh, that’s why I don’t see any of them.”

Dr. Larry Lewman, from the state medical examiner’s office, told of similar cases last year after 15-month-old Ava Worthington died. Her parents were arrested and her father Carl Worthington served 60 days in jail. Her mother, Raylene, was acquitted of a mistreatment charge.

Lewman studied the church in the late 1990s when three children died in a short amount of time.

“There were also during that period – it wasn’t publicized much – four perfectly healthy mothers, pregnant, who died during child birth from puerperal sepsis. That’s an infection that doesn’t even occur today,” Lewman said. “You read about it in the textbooks from the 1910s – the pre-antibiotic era. None of these women should have died – three of their children died. It was all perfectly treatable, and they literally suffered for days.”

Cunningham said there is hope. She said some members now go to doctors and educated midwives help with some births. But she said she still worries more children will needlessly die because their parents choose to only pray and not call doctors even when their children are gravely ill.

“Anybody who could just let their baby just die, don’t you just think that’s the worst thing?” she said.

As far as the most recent case, Clackamas County detectives are still trying to determine if Oregon’s spiritual-healing law was broken.

The baby in the current case was premature and multiple sources close to the family said the mother had complications several days before she gave birth.”

From http://www.katu.com/news/local/63020522.html

Wig retrieval ministry

Pastor’s Thought For The Day. Wo Ni Twa ase seven hundred

Peace FM Ghana reports…

“The Good Book says “Touch not my anointed; and do my prophets no harm”. Owing to the foregoing injunction, many people have either tried to shy away from a raging feud between two of the country’s Men of God, who have lately been trading insults, invectives and plain vituperation at each other.

Would you believe that because of the seeming estrangement between these two men of God? They are not on talking terms? The beleaguered pastor/prophets are Rev. Ebenezer Adarkwa Yiadom a.k.a Prophet One or Kumasi Moses of the Ebenezer Miracle Worship Centre, Ahenema Kokoben, Kumasi and Bishop Daniel Obinim, General Overseer of the International Godsway Church, also based in Kumasi.

Ebenezer is aged just a little over 40, while Obinim is 32. Bishop Obinim as if delivering a benediction, has said that he has heard of plots to kill him by Ebenezer Adarkwah Yiadom and prayed that no one should arrest Adarkwa Yiadom, after, he Obinim has been shot dead. This is because he, Obinim, knows he would go to Heaven adding “as for Rev. Ebenezer Adarkwa Yiadom, I don’t know where his soul would go to”.

Hot FM, an Accra-based radio station also has a recording of Rev. Ebenezer Adarkwa Yiadom and his pastors cursing Obinim. On the tape, Ebenezer himself, is heard asking whether Bishop Obinim has got what it takes to challenge him spiritually. He does that in a din-dong exchange with Obinim who also stands his ground saying, he’s not afraid of Ebenezer and believes that what Ebenezer Adarkwa Yiadom does is not of God. Those exchanges believable took place on New Mercury FM, which Rev. Adarkwa Yiadom owns.

In a fit of exasperation, one of Adarkwa Yiadom’s pastors retorts by saying, ‘Wo Ni Twa ase seven hundred” – a vulgar Asante expression which means “the ashes of your mother’s vagina sticks seven hundred times”. As the exchanges between the two most celebrated pastors from Kumasi as of now rages, many people have been wondering what must be eating the two prophets up? as each appears to stand their grounds.

What Rev. Ebenezer Adarkwa Yiadom holds against Bishop Obinim is that Obinim had claimed that God has let him take dominion over the souls of the people of the Tema area. Obinim said this when he set camp in Tema recently.

Currently, Ebenezer also has set camp at the Spintex Road at Flower pot near the Lister hospital in Accra. The two are miracle pastors. Both of them have preaching slots on Metro TV on Saturdays. One thing they have in common is that in recent times, each one of them has been able to raise a man from the dead. Adarkwa goes further to claim that at the time when a fetish priest, Kweku Bonsam, rose against pastors in the country, he was the only man of God who called the bluff of Nana Kwaku Bonsah.

One Naana, a resident of Kumasi, who claimed to have befriended the two pastors at the same time was said to be the cause of the fight between the two pastors, but close allies of the men of God including their junior pastors have repudiated that. The Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) was said to be utterly shocked at the exchanges between the two prophets, with Dr. Fred Deegbe describing it as a shame to the name of God. Dr Fred Deegbe is the General Secretary of the CCG.”

From http://news.peacefmonline.com/social/200910/28393.php

Hill$ong exploits Muscovites

(FAQ) “….Are there any employment opportunities at Hillsong Church Moscow?

As this is a brand new church plant, Hillsong Church Moscow will not be employing any staff. We will however be relying on passionate and committed volunteers to help get things established. We value raising up people from within our local church and should opportunities become available, we would look to employ those who are already serving in the church.”

From http://www.hillsongchurch.ru/en/FAQ

Bonus Moscow video

Hinn refused entry to UK

The Times reports…

“An American Christian preacher has been turned away from Britain, leaving thousands of people stranded at an evangelical rally in London this weekend.

Benny Hinn, from Texas, who draws large crowds to his Pentecostal revival rallies, was turned back at Stansted airport under new rules on visiting ministers of religion.

Many thousands of Pentecostal Christians travelled from across Britain and Europe and booked long weekend breaks in the capital’s hotels for his mission at the ExCeL exhibition centre in Docklands, East London, which had been due to begin on Thursday night.

They were left disappointed after Border Agency officials turned him back when he landed with his private jet because he had failed to obtain a “letter of sponsorship” from a church.

Instead, Mr Hinn flew on to Paris and tried to enter Britain at Luton airport but was again turned back. He was on his way back to France last night.

Jill Masefield, who lives in Bristol, said that she and thousands of other followers had been left waiting for Mr Hinn to appear at the free preaching event, not knowing why he had not appeared.Instead, another pastor preached and requested donations of up to £1,000.

“He’s been coming here for years and years,” she said. “I think it is very unfair that they have blocked him now. It has cost me a fortune in hotel bills and I feel we have been led up the garden path. It is extremely unfair.”

The Benny Hinn “fire conference and miracle service” was scheduled to last three days. Among the “miracles” the Texan preacher performs are those in which he instructs participants to “let the bodies hit the floor”. The routine is featured on YouTube videos that show the devout falling down backwards, “slain in the spirit”.

A spokeswoman for ExCeL said that Mr Hinn had been turned back at immigration and would not be coming. Staff at the exhibition centre were meeting last night to decide whether to provide another evangelical preacher in his place.

Mr Hinn has visited before without any problem but the Home Office has changed the rules for ministers of religion. He fell foul of tier five of the new points-based system for all visitors to Britain, which came into effect last November. One of the aims of the new rules was to combat extremism and prevent teachers of religious hate entering the country.

A Border Agency spokesman said: “Under the UK’s tough new points-based system, religious workers must obtain a valid certificate of sponsorship prior to arriving in the UK. These rules are designed to make sure that a legitimate sponsor is linked to each application to enter the UK for work purposes.

“These rules are applied objectively and clearly set out for travellers. People who arrive without the required documentation can be refused entry to the UK.”

// <![CDATA[From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6859240.ece]]>

Westside Story

Associated Press reports…

“The Rev. Lawrence Adams teaches his flock at the Westside Bible Church to turn the other cheek. Just in case, though, the 54-year-old retired police lieutenant also wears a handgun under his robe.

Adams is one of several Detroit clergymen who have taken to packing heat in the pulpit. They have committed their lives to a man who preached nonviolence and told followers to love their enemies. But they also say it’s up to them to protect their parishioners in church.

“As a pastor, I’m referred to as a shepherd,” Adams said. “Shepherds have the responsibility of watching over their flock. Do I want to hurt somebody? Absolutely not!”

Responding to a break-in at his church Sunday evening, Adams surprised a burglar carrying out a bag of loot and shot the man in the abdomen after the man swung the bag at him.

The burglar survived — for which Adams is grateful — but the reverend said he could have been hurt or killed if he had not been armed.

Detroit had the nation’s highest homicide rate last year among cities of at least 500,000 residents. The city has been losing manufacturing jobs for decades, and these days about one in four working-age residents is without a job.

The northwest Detroit neighborhood surrounding Adams’ church isn’t one of the city’s most dangerous. But there have been many recent reports of crimes in the area, including four burglaries, three auto thefts, one armed robbery and four assaults, including one with intent to murder.

“It’s getting worse because of the economy,” Adams said. “People are out of work and feel they have to provide for their families.”

Prior to 2000, anyone who wanted to carry a concealed weapon in Michigan had to show a need to do so. Now, gun owners simply have to pass a stringent background check and complete eight hours of handgun training.

“I get people from all walks of life, including pastors,” said Rick Ector, owner of Rick’s Firearm Academy in Detroit. “But it’s not anything specific to pastors. Detroit is not a very safe place.”

Michigan allows pastors to decide if someone registered to carry a handgun can do so for protection inside churches.

The clergy in Detroit who arm themselves say they do so because of the high overall crime rate. But churchgoers elsewhere have been the target of violent attacks several times in recent years:

_ Last year in a New Jersey church, a man fatally shot his estranged wife and a man who intervened in the attack.

_ A pastor was found stabbed to death in August in an Oklahoma church.

_ A Maryville, Ill., preacher was gunned down during his Sunday sermon in March.

_ In December 2007, a gunman killed two people at a Christian youth mission center near Denver and two others at a megachurch in Colorado Springs.

_ Near Detroit, a man was shot to death in 2003 while worshipping in a Catholic church. And an attacker fatally shot a woman and wounded a child inside another Detroit church three years ago because of a domestic dispute.

“I don’t know what kind of issues people are bringing with them. You could be running from estranged husband, boyfriend,” said Bishop Charles Ellis III, pastor of the 6,500-member Greater Grace Temple in Detroit.

Ellis said he sometimes carries a gun, but never in the pulpit. His church has a “ministry of defense” for Sunday services made up of about 18 armed congregants who are off-duty law enforcement officers.

Clergy are adjusting to society, said the Rev. Kenneth J. Flowers, pastor of Greater New Mt. Moriah Baptist Church in Detroit.

“In addition to their faith, they are carrying weapons,” said Flowers, who does not carry a gun. “There used to be a time when everybody respected a pastor. Even a drunk would straighten up if a preacher came by.”

Many people are uncomfortable with the idea of an armed clergy, because Christ preached against violence and taught people they should love their enemies.

“But the scriptures also are clear that civil authority is part of God’s plan,” said Claude Wiggins, a former pastor and current assistant at the Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary.

“In our country, it says in due process that you may bear arms to protect yourself. While we should be committed to trusting God, that doesn’t prevent us or command us to be totally passive,” Wiggins said.

Al Meredith, pastor of the Wedgwood church in Fort Worth, said some off-duty police officers who are deacons at his church carry guns, but he’s uncomfortable with the idea of an armed congregation.

“It discourages the crazies from acts of violence if they see uniforms around, but I don’t want everybody bringing guns,” Meredith said. “My ultimate conviction is what does the word of God say and what would Jesus do? Can you in your wildest imagination ever see Jesus packing a .38? I can’t imagine Peter and Paul carrying .45s.”

The Rev. William Revely, who sometimes wears his .357-caliber handgun while preaching at the Holy Hope Heritage Church in Detroit, does not worry whether it might be wrong for a man of God to carry a firearm in church.

“I’ve always felt that the only way to handle a bear in a bear meeting is to have something you can handle a bear with,” said the 68-year-old pastor, who practices at a gun range with another pastor. “We have to be realistic. I know too many people who’ve been shot, carjacked.”

Adams said most — if not all — of Westside’s 50 members have supported his actions after encountering the burglar.

“People want to look at Christians and the church as believers in God and ask ‘Why doesn’t God protect you?” Adams said. “The reality is God has given man free will. We have to use our God-given talents and protect ourselves.”

From http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hmhf3HFNtbJdQq0ddx0sK5POu_pwD9B2HVLO0

Over-communioned pastor

AFP reports…

“Swedish family has asked for damages of nearly 30,000 euros after a Protestant pastor performed a funeral service apparently “drunk”, the influential Church of Sweden said Friday.

The pastor also raised eyebrows when he kissed the hand of the deceased’s daughter and gave an exaggerated hug to the 20-year-old granddaughter, the family said in a letter to the former state church which AFP saw.

“Everything seemed to go perfectly well until this pastor came in mumbling for 30 minutes,” the family said, complaining that he had alcohol on his breath. “Nobody, among his servers or in the audience, understood what he was saying.”

“The first thing we will now remember thinking about our loved one is the drunk pastor,” they added.

Apart from the 300,000 kronor (29,250 euros, 42,700 dollars) the family also asked for a refund of the funeral expenses.

The Church of Sweden which ceased to be a state church in 2000 confirmed to AFP that it had received the complaint, saying the issue was being investigated.”

From http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gaBkXWPzEEhr7jwdvEbdbx9_ylrQ

Nalliah wins ‘Gold Ernie’

Australian Associated Press reports…

“An evangelical church pastor who blamed the Victorian bushfire tragedy on the state’s abortion laws has taken out the annual top gong for sexist comments.

Now in its 17th year, the Ernie Awards are bestowed on those whose public utterings are regarded as the most sexistThe winner is determined by how loud the crowd boos and hissesAbout 250 women who attended the gala event at NSW Parliament House on Wednesday decided that comments by Pastor Danny Nalliah, head of the Catch the Fire Ministries, were worthy of the top prize, the Gold ErnieShortly after the deadly February bushfires, the pastor said: “God’s conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb 

………”

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Why Hill$ong works in gullible Sydney and Brisbane but not Melbourne – updated*

*Lance (Group Sects) writes…

I have mixed feelings about this Andrew Denton-crafted media hoax (assuming that the exposure of the hoax is not a hoax in itself)

There is an argument that this kind of prank needs to be played on the media.

I’m personally uncomfortable when radio announcers pretend to be someone else and broadcast prank calls to an unsuspecting person. Hamish and Andy – love ‘em to bits – do this all the time when technically it’s against the law to record a phone call without someone’s knowledge.

The person called who had their conversation broadcast without their knowledge or consent is generally left to grin and bear it.

So if the media is going to turn a blind eye to technically-illegal pranks, then there has to be an acceptance that the media will be the target of pranks.

In fact, prank calls to the media are very common. Often they’re in the form of false reports of traffic crashes. Every one is checked out with Police and a remarkably high number of crash reports are found to be false.

But the work that went into the ‘gullibility survey’ hoax has raised the bar on pranks to a whole new level.

Public relations firms that represent banks, lobby groups, charity organisations know that the Sunday evening/Monday morning slot for news is extremely quiet and that media outlets are hungry for content.

So it’s standard that from about 4 o’clock on Sunday afternoon, newsroom inboxes and fax machines start filling up with surveys, launch announcements and previews of illness-of-the-week (arthritis week, kidney health week, Alzheimer’s week etc)

The stories are usually provided on an ‘embargoed’ basis, that is, they can’t be broadcast before 1AM or 5AM or 6AM Monday.

The arrangement is so that media outlets aren’t ringing public relations people at 4AM for comment on stories.

The stories are usually, at best, accompanied by a one-page summary of information or research/survey findings etc.

Clearly, whoever sent the ‘Levitt Institute’ survey out knew the inside workings of the media very well.

The fake research was accompanied by 10 pages of summary findings, which on the day I downloaded and browsed through, but obviously missed the one sentence acknowledgement that the research was fiction.

I rang and spoke to the  ’researcher Lauren Kennedy’ whoever it was, who played the role brilliantly, and as Media Watch reported, the story was widely run by media outlets.

The new Denton show will rightly probably make the point that it’s too easy to hoodwink the media, and that media consumers should be sceptical of what they see and hear, but I’m not sure what I as a journalist am meant to do to overcome that.

When the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry puts up its chief executive James Pearson on a Sunday night to comment on the Chamber’s latest economic conditions survey, am I now meant to ask him, ‘are you really James Pearson?’ Is the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry really an organisation representing West Australian businesses, or maybe some Al Qaeda terror sleeper cell, or worse, a bunch of producers from some lame new Chaser-style TV show who aren’t allowed to pick-on kids with life-threatening illnesses anymore?’

The media is sometimes accused of relying on the same media talent to comment on stories. Need a comment on youth issues? Call Les Twentyman. Need a comment on paedophiles? Call Hetty Johnston. Need a comment on Collingwood? Call Eddie.

What this prank will probably do is make it nearly impossible for any new organisational voice to be heard because their credentials are going to be suspect from the outset.

Just who is the ‘Australian Christian Lobby’, or ‘Get Up’ or ‘Planet Ark’ or ‘Bravehearts’ or ’Kidney Health Australia’ anyway?

If the idea of the stunt is that the media suspects everything and everybody, then the new Denton show must, by its own standard, be considered suspicious and not to be trusted.

It can’t be deceptive and want to be trusted at the same time.

So don’t trust anything you see or hear on the new Denton show, until you’ve personally called their program’s office and verified their information for yourself. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the call from you and all the other viewers.

The original hoax story as distributed by the wire service appears below.

——-

“PSSST! Have you heard the one about Captain Cook and his three wives? What about cricket legend Richie Benaud’s Senate career?

Many Australians have apparently heard of both, according to a report by social research company The Levitt Institute.

They blame the internet and its plethora of unsourced and unverified information for such gullibility.

More than 5000 people aged 25 to 35 were tested across Australia for the report, Deception Detection Across Australian Populations.

Participants were shown a selection of articles without any source for the information they contained.

The articles, based on Australian history, variously claimed that Captain Cook kept three wives, King George III intended for Australia to be named New Cornwall and that cricketer Richie Benaud served in the Senate between 1958 and 1963.

Surprisingly, it was sophisticated Sydney which proved to have the most naive citizens.

The Levitt Institute executive director Dr Carl Varnsen said the disparity between different Australian populations’ ability to detect falsehoods was stark.

Sydney outstripped other cities in Australia with just over five in 10 people saying they trusted false information contained in the sample articles.

Brisbane-ites were the second most susceptible to falsehoods, with Adelaide third.

Overall, Melbourne was the least naive city in Australia with just under a third of participants believing the articles were informative, while seven in 10 were certain the information was bogus.

“The study’s findings also suggest the internet has led to increased gullibility among younger Australians as they become used to trusting unsourced information from websites like Wikipedia and Digg,” said Lauren Kennedy, co-ordinator of research with The Levitt Institute.

“Overseas research has in the past indicated people accept information based on whether or not it is interesting, rather than whether it is supported by evidence.

“Younger adults are particularly at risk.

“There is something to be said for wisdom and experience,” Ms Kennedy said.

“People under 35 may be technologically and culturally savvy, but commonsense is still built on life experience.”

The missing middle

Linnie Leavines blogs…

“Some people can’t stand the hellfire-and-brimstone types in Free Speech Alley. That’s understandable. But personally, I find a little dose of hellfire now and again is almost refreshing compared to the happy-go-lucky suavity of modern Christian televangelists.

But the truth is neither side accurately represents Christianity. In fact, the polarization of the two sides is undermining Christianity’s credibility as a religion.

On one side, the loud street preachers screech about damnation, and on the other side are the Joel Osteens, who present the scripture through the rose-colored lens of the “prosperity gospel.”

Neither approach is ideal. But of the two, those who espouse the prosperity gospel — which is, essentially, the idea faith in God equals that new Ferrari you’ve always wanted — are more threatening to Christianity because they are the ones rewarded undue credibility.

The poster child for this sugarcoated, lazy theology is Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church and the most prominent televangelist today. According to his book promotion, millions — which make up one of the largest audiences in the U.S. and throughout the world — tune in to his sermon every week to “hear his words of inspiration and wisdom.”

This makes him one of the most influential and popular televangelists in the modern world. It has also made him one of the most controversial figureheads in the evangelical community.

Not everyone agrees Osteen’s message is a completely accurate representation of Christianity. Rev. Michael Horton, a professor of  theology at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, Calif.,  said in a 2008 CBS story about Osteen that the preacher “uses the Bible like a fortune cookie” when sharing his “cotton candy gospel.”

Horton further criticized Osteen by claiming he “tells only half the story of the Bible, focusing on the good news without talking about sin, suffering and redemption.”

Osteen’s book “Become a Better You” gives credit to Horton’s criticism. The seven bulleted points the book gives to improve your life do not make one mention of God; the focus is more on the individual.

This would be entirely appropriate if it were a garden-variety self-help book, but the implementation of the Christian doctrine has drawn criticism and ire, even as it draws in more followers. Regardless, it was easy for some to give Osteen a pass because the overarching theme of the book was positive and uplifting.

But during Osteen’s telling 2005 interview with Larry King, he gave half-answers to King’s questions about the specifics of his faith, which did more to draw criticism than to his publications. Granted, Osteen later clarified his opinions — but his initial hesitancy was enough to sour him and reinforce the criticism that Osteen’s message lacks substance.

Whether you agree with the Christian doctrine or not, the conclusion is inescapable — if Osteen is not secure enough in his faith to defend it adequately, then what business does he, and others like him, have being such a prominent televangelist?

Moreover, if his presentation of the gospel has been criticized by prominent theologians as an inaccurate representation of Christianity, is it permissible to allow said presentation to become one of the most prominent symbols for the Christian faith?

The solution does not lie in a continual watering down of the gospel. This isn’t to say the truth lies in the caricaturized extremism associated with fire-and-brimstone naysayers. Rather, a happy middle ground must be found and cultivated.

Until the two sides are reconciled peacefully, Christianity will remain sorely diluted and largely ineffective.”

From http://www.lsureveille.com/opinion/juxtaposed-notions-televangelist-osteen-highlights-divide-in-religion-1.1906952

Church couple jailed for daughter’s death

The Sydney Morning Herald reports…

“Their infant daughter had been seriously ill for days before Thomas and Manju Sam took her to hospital. Chronic eczema had left baby Gloria’s skin raw and bleeding but her parents were jetlagged after a trip to India and too tired to seek medical help.

It was only after the nine-month-old developed an eye infection that her parents changed their minds. Even then, Thomas Sam went to a morning church service before they took Gloria to hospital. But as a court heard yesterday, they were already a week too late – by that stage, Gloria was too sick to be saved. Weak and malnourished, she died from infection in May 2002.

Gloria developed eczema at four months but her parents did not seek specialist medical treatment. Her father – who practised and taught homeopathy – preferred to treat her himself.

The Sams were sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court yesterday after a jury found them guilty of manslaughter by criminal negligence. Jailing Thomas Sam for at least six years and Manju Sam for a minimum of four, Justice Peter Johnson said the baby’s distress and the need for medical treatment would have been obvious.

The parents’ failure to seek proper medical care, subjecting Gloria to significant pain over an extended period, could be characterised as cruelty, he said.

Gloria was finally taken to the Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick on May 5, three days before her death. Staff had never seen a baby in such an extreme condition. Her skin had been eroded by eczema, she was in severe pain and her hair had turned white. The court heard expert medical evidence that had she been given medical attention a week earlier, she probably could have survived.

The judge said that unlike others convicted of this crime, the Sams were intelligent and well-educated with a supportive family network. It weighed against them in sentencing. ”Gloria suffered helplessly and unnecessarily … from a condition that was treatable,” he said.

A psychologist gave evidence that Sam had boasted of his homeopathic credentials and emphasised his ‘’spiritual maturity as a Christian”.

Justice Johnson said he continued to display ”an arrogant approach to what he perceived to be the superior benefits of homeopathy compared with conventional medicine”.

He said Manju Sam, who deferred to her husband, had ”failed the child in her most important duty, with fatal results”.

The couple wept in the dock on learning they would be jailed, separating them from their second child – born since Gloria’s death – who also suffered from eczema. Finding Thomas Sam culpable both as Gloria’s father and her treating homeopath, the judge jailed him for a maximum eight years. Manju Sam was jailed for a maximum five years and four months.

They will be eligible for parole in 2015 and 2013 respectively.”

From http://www.smh.com.au/national/parents-failed-gloria-jailed-for-cruelty-20090928-g992.html

Adelaide cops get the preachers by the balls

No Hope

Easy Reader reports…

“Seven parishioners have filed a lawsuit claiming that former pastor Michael Maffe of the huge Hope Chapel church in Hermosa defrauded them of $115,000, and claiming the church was negligent in supervising the pastor. The parishioners also claim that church officials unsuccessfully urged them not to sue, saying that would not be a Christian act.

Pastor Dale Turner, who oversees church finances, said Hope Chapel is innocent in the matter, and Maffe perpetrated the alleged fraud on his own, without the knowledge or involvement of the church. Turner said the parishioners initially agreed to settle the matter within the church, by biblical principles, and Maffe agreed to work to pay back the money.

Attempts to reach Maffe were unsuccessful.

The lawsuit claims that Maffe, who served as pastor of one of the church’s four districts from 1992 to 2008, convinced the parishioners to give him money to invest in a Texas real estate venture, then later admitted he had lied to them about the venture and lost their money.

The lawsuit claims that the church presented Maffe as a financial expert “and encouraged parishioners to seek out his advice.”

Turner said the church makes available basic financial counseling, such as how to budget money and get out of debt using biblical principles, but denies that Maffe was presented as a financial expert.

The lawsuit claims that church officials “knew that Maffe had filed at least one bankruptcy petition after gambling away his family’s life savings,” and did not inform parishioners about those affairs.
Turner denied this also, saying church officials found out only through the lawsuit that Maffe apparently had filed for bankruptcy.

In November 2007, the lawsuit claims, Maffe told the parishioners that he had lost their money “by buying high-risk stock options online, including buying stocks ‘on margin’ that lost all value.”

At that time Maffe also admitted that he made up the real estate venture that the parishioners believed they were investing in, “fabricated” quarterly reports about the investment, and “lied in order to get [their] money and avert their suspicion,” according to the lawsuit.

“Maffe asked for [the parishioners’] forgiveness,” the lawsuit states.

Turner also said Maffe admitted his wrongdoing to the parishioners and to church officials.

Turner said the revelations came as a shock to him. He also said neither Maffe nor the parishioners – longtime church members, some of whom held leadership positions – told church officials they were investing with Maffe. Such an arrangement would have waved “a red flag” for possible conflict of interest, he said.

Turner said Maffe “obviously was not forthright in his life. He lied to all of us.”

In December 2007, according to the lawsuit, the parishioners went to Hope Chapel leadership for help, and Senior Pastor Zac Nazarian tried to persuade them to “sign a forbearance agreement prepared by Hope Chapel’s lawyers, whereby [the parishioners] would have agreed not to sue Maffe.”

“Hope Chapel’s head pastor urged [the parishioners] not to file a lawsuit because it was ‘not Christian,’” the lawsuit claims.

Turner said the parishioners agreed to be guided by 1 Corinthians 6:1-7, which calls upon Christians to avoid secular courts in disputes with other believers.

He said Hope Chapel officials were informed of the matter along with officials of the church’s denomination, and Nazarian asked for and received Maffe’s resignation. Nazarian also informed the Hope Chapel congregation that Maffe was no longer with the church because of an unspecified transgression he committed, Turner said.

In the lawsuit, the parishioners are seeking a return of their money and further damages to be determined at trial.

The lawsuit claims Robert and Marianne Mason gave Maffe $30,000 to invest, Douglas and Sunny Bray gave him $30,000, Christine Pott gave $30,000 and John and Marlo Blandford gave $25,000.

The parishioners allege fraud and breach of contract by Maffe, and negligent hiring and supervision by the church.

Turner said another parishioner, who also is a church employee, lost $47,000 but agreed to settle the matter within the church, and to await repayment by Maffe. A request to interview the employee was awaiting clearance from church lawyers.

Hope Chapel is a Foursquare church featuring updated music and fewer traditional trappings, with numerous ministries including prison outreach and feeding those in need.

From http://www.easyreadernews.com/story.php?StoryID=20035436

Sorry God? What was that? I couldn’t hear you over all the friggin’ noise

Jesus has the answer to sunburn? I mean, what is this?

Jarryd Hayne doesn’t really know what Hill$ong’s about. That’s OK. Neither do we – Hill$ong bad boy update*

*The Sydney Morning Herald reports…

“Bryson Goodwin has gone into bat for Parramatta superstar Jarryd Hayne, with the Bulldogs winger vowing to help Hayne beat a potential dangerous contact charge that threatens to wipe him out of next week’s NRL grand final.

Hayne jeopardised his appearance in the premiership decider by being placed on report by referee Tony Archer for kneeing Goodwin in the head as the `Dogs flyer scored the opening try of the match.

Anything more than a grade one dangerous contact charge from the match review committee – who will meet at 11am (AEST) on Sunday rather than in their usual Monday timeslot – would see Hayne need to front the NRL judiciary to fight for his right to play in the grand final.

But Goodwin said he would give the Dally M medallist all the support he needed to clear his name.

Goodwin’s stance was in stark contrast to that of teammate Ben Hannant, who claimed the Eels should not have finished the game with their full quota on the field after he had his shoulder wrenched back by hooker Matthew Keating.

Like Hayne, Keating too faces a nervous night as he awaits the match review committee’s findings, with any potential judiciary hearing to be held on Tuesday night instead of Wednesday night in a bid to ease the disruption to the grand finalist’s preparations.

But it is the potential loss of Hayne which would be catastrophic for the Eels premiership hopes – with the game’s hottest player having carried Parramatta to within 80 minutes of their first premiership on 23 years.

“I’ll see the replays and what happens, if it looks like he didn’t mean anything then I’d help him out (at the judiciary),” said Goodwin, who was still feeling the effects of the head knock after the game.

“You don’t want to miss out on a grand final with a team that you’ve played with all year, he carried the team you could say to where they are now so it would be bad to miss out for him.

“A few of the boys have seen it, he just came in with his legs but I’m not too sure what happened.”

Hannant was in no doubt however as he questioned why referees Archer and Ben Cummins did not take sterner action over the two incidents, with Hannant left requiring painkilling injections to get back on the field after suffering a partially dislocated shoulder and hyper-extended elbow.

“The refs didn’t make the decision to send him off so, what warrants getting someone sent off?” Hannant said.

“Just because you’re the best player in the world, does that mean that you never get sent off, these are the questions you’ve got to ask the NRL, not us.

“We just did our best, we fought hard, we were busted but we kept hanging in there.”

Eels coach Daniel Anderson seemed surprisingly confident neither of his players would have a case to answer, with Anderson more concerned about the availability of skipper Nathan Cayless due to a hamstring complaint.

“A little clumsy, but not malicious at all,” was how Anderson described the Hayne report.

“There’s no use jumping up and down. I’ll let people do their job. They’re not going to listen to me.”

From http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-sport/goodwin-vows-to-help-clear-hayne-20090926-g6zl.html

The Parramatta Advertiser reports…

“Jarryd Hayne has cemented his reputation as a silent assassin of rugby league by revealing he will spend some quiet time with God in the lead-up to the Bulldogs match.

The quietly spoken 21-year-old told media one of the ways he escaped the hype of the finals was by continuing his church life.

“That’s probably the most important thing: to get away from football and take your focus somewhere else,” he said.

“Because you don’t want to think about it 24/7.”

Hayne attends the Hillsong Church in Baulkham Hills and continues reading the word during the week.

“Church has been awesome,” he said.

“I study the Bible a little bit so it takes my mind off (football).

“I read the Bible and get to know a bit more about church.

“I’m still taking baby steps and don’t really know what it’s fully about.

“But I’m very curious and always asking questions.”

The other bedrock of the Dally M medallist’s success has been his mother, Jodie – although it’s fair to say his size, footwork and take-no-prisoners fend has a bit to do with it, too.

He was quick to thank her (“my rock”) as he won the league’s highest individual honour, after she raised him as a single mum.

Hayne has tried to lead his mother to the church, too. His interest was first sparked by his Fiji teammates during the World Cup last year.

While in Fiji, Hayne saw how they lived their lives by answering to a higher power.

His reading of the Bible is not for want of something to do then. For Hayne, it’s all about life.

“I’ve been doing it for a while and find it relaxing,” he said.

“It’s nothing to do with football but about being a better person.

“That’s what it’s about: being a better person.”

From http://parramatta-advertiser.whereilive.com.au/sport/story/jarryd-hayne-s-simple-formula-for-success-on-the-field/

[Editor's note - Group Sects does not endorse the yawn-inducing sport of rugby league. NB. Geelong - Premiers '09}

A church apology to gays?

Same Same reports…

“The results are in from the Gay Census. So far we’ve looked at gay marriage, sex and drugs, and gay parenting. This week we’re taking a long, hard look at religion. It’s not surprising, given religion’s history of gay persecution, that we’re a little wary of the whole thing. They always told us it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, but is the Bible about to change?

If you thought religion an unlikely pastime for gays and lesbians, you would be correct. The majority of respondents (59% of gay men and 61% of gay women) to the Australian Gay and Lesbian Census indicated they are not a member of any organised religion.

Of those who responded that they were members of a religion, the Census found that 28% of gay men and 22% of lesbians are Christian, a figure much lower than that of the general population. The 2006 Australian Census found that 58% of the general population aged 15 to 44 are Christian.

Anthony Venn-Brown, author of A Life of Unlearning and convenor of Freedom 2 b[e] (a network of gay Christians from Pentecostal and Evangelical backgrounds) who attends the Hillsong church at Waterloo says, “Having a majority of non-religious gays and lesbians is reflective of our secular society in Australia.” His statement is supported by findings that show the vast majority of those who indicated that they are religious are lapsed or non-practicing, with 52% indicating they never attend service or prayer.

One explanation for the lower percentage of Christians amongst the gay community, when compared to the general population, is that many Christians who come out as gay often repudiate their spirituality because of a conflict between their spirituality and their sexuality.

Former High Court Justice Michael Kirby, a practicing Christian, explains this general sentiment by saying, “It is hardly surprising that so many gay people give religion away. With few exceptions, religion, and religious people, are hostile to gays. Even the Dalai Lama has made unfriendly statements. When I tackled him on them, he said: ‘I know. In America many of my supporters are gay. But the problem is the old scriptures’.”

However, Kirby notes the change happening within Christian churches. “In the Christian context, the languages are Greek or Hebrew and the further we study these histories and scriptures the further we learn about the historical and cultural context or particular phrases,” says Kirby. “Just as Christians, Jews and Muslims have to read afresh the Genesis passages that say the world was created in seven days, in the light of Darwin’s discoveries about evolution, so religions have to re-read passages antagonistic to gays in the light of the knowledge we now have from Alfred Kinsey, Evelyn Hooker and modern science. People do not deliberately choose their sexual orientation to be difficult or defiant. It is just part of the variety of nature. If it exists, it has a purpose in nature and evolution. Eventually all the religions will come around to this, but a lot of violence, stigma and cruelty will be done in the meantime,” Kirby says.

Venn-Brown agrees with Justice Kirby’s on the interpretation of scriptures. Venn-Brown says, “There are only six passages that can be assumed to speak about same-sex behaviour, but when they are looked at in their historical and cultural context and in their original languages, then one discovers that they are actually talking about temple prostitution, idolatry, exploitative relationships (pederasty) and rape. They are not talking about same-sex orientation as we know it today.”

Venn-Brown also notes, “The word ‘homosexual’ did not appear in any English translation of the bible until 1946 at 1 Corinthians 6:9” (Revised standard version).

David Barrow, a 23-year-old queer activist who is also Christian and is currently the President of the National Union of Students believes that generational change is also a contributing factor. “There is a progressive shift in theology in line with generational change that coincides with attitudes towards climate change, women, gays and international poverty,” says Barrow.

This change in the understanding of theology seems to be happening even in the most unlikely of churches – the Pentecostal church, to which Mr Venn-Brown is a member.

In responding to my shock at the acceptance by the Hillsong Church of homosexual members, Venn-Brown says, “We often focus on the Christian extremists. For example, the Westboro Baptist Church in the south of the US. (Westboro Baptist Church own the website Godhatesfags.com.) We should focus on the changes happening in the Christian movement. The Westboro Baptist church is an incestuous cult of about 100 members. They are not representative of Christianity.”

While he recognises the damage done by religion, Justice Kirby is optimistic about a future where it’s a little more gay friendly. “My partner, Johan, rejects religion. I stick with my Christian beliefs because the fundamental message of Jesus is love and reconciliation. Eventually, Christian leaders will remember this. The churches will give a great big apology to gay people. I hope I live to see it,” says Kirby.

Mr Venn-Brown believes that, “the debate within Christianity is done and dusted. It is only a matter of time before [homosexuality] is not going to be a problem.”

Interestingly, Census data reveals that 12% of respondents experienced conflict between their sexuality and their religion, which is less than those who chose Christianity as their religion. Most respondents indicated that they don’t have conflict between their sexuality and their religion, or if a conflict does exist, they don’t care about it.

Venn-Brown acknowledged the assumptions in the gay community about the conflict between Christianity and homosexuality, but says that this scepticism and antagonism towards Christianity is changing. “What is happening now [within the gay community] is similar to what happened in the early 70s. The gay rights movement was birthed and people began coming out. Now, three decades later, with the shift in understanding about Christianity, many are coming out about their faith and spirituality also.” Venn-Brown calls this ‘the second coming out.’

Venn-Brown goes on to say that there is actually an increasing number of gay members of the church. “Gay people of faith and religion are an emerging group within the gay community. Walk into any gay bookstore and you can see how much impact they are having,” says Venn-Brown. An author himself, Venn-Brown recalls, “It’s not long ago that you would never find a single book on being gay and Christian, only books about how poorly the church has treated homosexual people over the centuries. Now in all gay bookstores there are entire sections of gay Christian books. Including stories, such as mine, theology and observations of the gay Christian movement. An even further development, is the recent appearance of several books on being gay and Moslem.”

David Barrow would be an example of emerging members of the gay community who are also proudly Christian. He says he didn’t feel any pressure to be one or the other, but says, “Many of my friends responded to my Christianity with suspicion, derision, concern and condescension. However, they have learned to accept my sexuality and my Christian identity, which are both important to me.”

Looking at its popularity amongst the generations, it seems that spirituality is mainly practiced by older generations. The Australian Gay and Lesbian Census found that older gay men and women are more likely to be religious.

The Australian Gay and Lesbian Census also found that more gay men and women belong to alternative or eastern religions (Hindu, Buddhism, Wicca/Paganism) than the general population.

So maybe the future of homosexuality and religion is as Michael Kirby said, less about blame and sin and more about love and respect.

From http://www.samesame.com.au/features/4566/Gay-Census-Religion.htm

The miraculous snotty hanky

Father Bob sends ‘funny hat’ guy packing – updated*

Father Bob Maguire Pic:Father Bob's Foundation

*The Herald-Sun reports…

“Father Bob Maguire is expected to keep his beloved job after overwhelming support from Victorians for the knockabout priest.

 The deadlock between Father Maguire and Melbourne’s Catholic archdiocese over a request for his retirement is close to being resolved, sources said.

The Herald Sun believes the archdiocese, which invited Father Maguire’s resignation on his recent 75th birthday, will allow him to stay parish priest in South Melbourne.

Talks were held yesterday between Father Maguire and his advisers and representatives of Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart.

Father Maguire would not confirm details of the meeting, but said discussions were continuing. He said he was confident of a result that would please both parties.

The Herald Sun believes an agreement could be revealed this week.

Canon law states that a priest must offer to retire on his 75th birthday. The archbishop can accept or defer the retirement.

But in a letter to the archbishop last week, a defiant Father Maguire, a champion of the poor and homeless and long-standing parish priest at Saints Peter and Paul Church, politely declined to retire.

Father Maguire said he was concerned that his parishioners and the disadvantaged he helped around South Melbourne were fretting about his fate. “We are holding discussions to try to resolve the matter and we are close to agreement,” he said.

“I don’t want people to worry about me.”

He said he hoped for a swift decision on his future to put his supporters “out of their misery”.  Archbishop Hart has previously revealed his concerns about poor financial management of the parish.”

From http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/fr-bob-maguire-expected-to-keep-his-job/story-e6frf7jo-1225778910759

Love your nude neighbour, as you love yourself

KOMO reports…

“An Issaquah pastor wants the road less traveled, but he’s the only one.

He says he owns the private road that connects Issaquah Hobart Road with the Fraternity Snoqualmie, a nudist camp.

The camp has been there for 63 years, and they have always paid to maintain the gravel road.

Pastor Eddy Fowler-Lindner moved in five years ago, and has fought the easement rights of the camp and other homeowners ever since.

But on Tuesday, the camp started road maintenance with heavy jack hammers and other equipment. King county says they are only doing what is allowed by their easement, and there is nothing Fowler-Lindner can do to stop it.

Still, the pastor fears road maintenance will lead to a bigger, wider road. He’s convinced a big developer is behind the fight with his neighbors, and doesn’t want to lose the seclusion he has set aside for a camp for homeless families.

The nudist camp says there is no developer involved. They’re not going to sell. The last thing they want are more neighbors, and the pastor is the first person to have a problem with annual road maintenance.”

From http://www.komonews.com/news/local/60459912.html

The Pisshead Pastor & The Wine Barrel Church

“What is The Wine Barrel?

Psalm 64: We shall be filled with the good things of thy house. And what is more, They shall be inebriated, insofar as they will be filled above all measure of merit with what they desire; for drunkenness is a sort of excess.

Isaiah 64: The eye hath not seen; Song of Songs 5: And be inebriated, my dearly beloved. And those who are drunk are not in full control of their faculties, but out of their own control. So, those who have been filled by spiritual charisms, their entire intention is borne towards God.

There are so many great and different flavours and styles of “church” in the world today. There are many wells to go and drink from, depending on your thirst and hunger.  What we have seen God birth here in Redcliffe is a “Cellar” of Holy Ghost Love and Power. A place where those that hunger and cry out for the supernatural in their every day lives can come and hang out. A community of believers who have been separated from the confines and restraints of the world, to embrace a God who is more than able to fellowship with us every day.  Living righteous lives, because Jesus is living in us and we are living in Him.

This is a church for those who the church classes as “crazy, extreme, fanatical…”. This is a church for those that have Pastors force you into a mental ward to “get an evaluation” because your joy unspeakable is messing up their order of service. 

We are a drunk bunch of Jesus junkies that embraces fully the wine of Holy Spirit and all aspects of the character and personality of Jesus Christ.  We are so madly in love with Jesus, and He is pretty keen on us too! The more we drink of His intoxicating love the more of Heaven we see released on the earth.

We are seeing Holy Spirit create a new “movement” for the use of a better term,  in Australia and throughout the world, a movement of people who don’t give a rip what people think of their “style” of worship or the way in which Holy Spirit “manifests: through them.  A people who MUST have the glory presence of Jesus every hour of every day… no matter what it takes! A people who will literally lay down their own lives for the Gospel.  Gone are the days of polished religious performance based worship. God isn’t impressed by how expensive our PA is or how expensive our cologne is, He is after our hearts, the hearts that worship Him, not for what He can put into our banks or hands but what He is putting into our hearts.. JESUS.

We are a people bucking against the whole Babylonian system and structure that we know as “church”.  A people who no longer go chasing devils, but let the Jesus light in us blow away the darkness in our cities. A people who no longer believe the lie of having to sit through 20 years of inner healing, pealing away some invisible onion, but rather they fall into the arms of their Mighty God. Swapping dead religious works for Jesus. Swapping 10, 20 years of inner healing and deliverance for the Finished Work of the Cross.  It can’t get any more finished than what it already is Time for a Hallelujah!

We start at 4pm Sundays and there is no set finish time, no separate room for the kiddies to play with their toys. We want the kids in the meeting with us, worshiping with us and experiencing the Glory of Heaven with us.  Kids have the same sized Holy Spirit we do, and as such should be in the meeting learning and experiencing Jesus with the rest of us. Not in a back room playing play station and eating play dough.  “Come unto me the little children”…

For a list of our weekly meetings and outreach events click here.

We so enjoy Jesus and His bliss and we know you will to!

 Barrel Pastors.”

http://winebarrelmystics.com/index.php/about-the-barrel

It only takes one person to stop church fraudsters

The Star-Tribune reports…

“The promises of 50 percent to 300 percent fast returns on investments were ridiculous enough.

Even more bizarre were the promises of huge profits from fees generated by the imminent closure on a deal to move 20,000 metric tons of gold — twice all U.S. gold reserves — from Israel to the United Arab Emirates.

But Kim Flanigan decided to fight the $50 million California-based Ponzi scheme when her mother began recruiting potential investors, she said.

“What spurred me to action was she was approaching people in church, such as a woman with nine children whose husband had died,” Flanigan said.

“I was on a mission to bring this thing down,” she said.

Armed with little more than a passion for justice and a tape recorder, she helped stop the scam of primarily three men and companies they controlled: Arthur Simburg, a former Puma shoe marketer; Robert Jennings, associate pastor of New Life Fellowship Church in Perris, Calif.; and Henry Uliomereyon Jones, mastermind of the gold deal.

Simburg pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of wire fraud in April 2008 and later was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment.

Jennings and Jones were convicted in federal court after a jury trial in July 2008, and later were sentenced to 12 years and 20 years’ imprisonment, respectively.

In April 2009, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission obtained a $51 million final judgment against them and their companies.

Kim and David Flanigan, owners of Flanigan’s Furniture Outlet in the Sunrise Mall in Casper, unwittingly started their mission earlier in the decade when they moved from Casper to Kalispell, Mont. Her mother moved in with them after her husband’s death and as she was recovering from surgery.

Her mother had received some life insurance money and went to Washington to visit her sister who had attended “Millionaire Minds” seminars conducted by Peak Potentials Training Inc., she said.

Through the networking portion of those seminars — Peak Potentials Training was not an object of the federal investigation — her mother and aunt became involved with investing in Tri Energy Inc., which represented itself as the owner for four coal mines in Kentucky. (Only two of those mines existed, and they were never profitable.)

The scam’s leaders would intensify the interest through nightly conference calls, often with more than 100 participants.

“Mom was on the phone every night for an hour,” Kim Flanigan said.

Her mother couldn’t clearly explain the investment program, but she wanted Kim and David to participate, she said. “‘It’s a really exciting thing; I can’t explain it to you, but you can listen in to these three guys.’”

The three guys were Simburg, Jennings and Jones.

“Mom said she’d already invested about $50,000,” Kim said.

Her mother expected fantastic returns, according to a letter in August 2004 from her mother: “I just wanted you to know that you will be receiving a gift far greater than anything you could of imagined. The gift is that you will receive 50% of what you put in to the original transaction, on going monthly! The 50% will eventually become much greater as we continue to do more and your share will become greater and greater.”

Kim and David saw through it.

“We knew about a week later it was a joke, a scam,” she said.

“It was a financial soap opera,” Kim said. “They always needed another $100,000, $200,000.”

The conference calls blended pep talks; daily updates on Tri Energy; the progress of the gold transaction that was just around the corner; reasons closures didn’t occur; incessant pleading for more money to store the gold, pay attorneys, and facilitate transfers; the huge profits to come.

The calls often ended with prayer.

The Flanigans are Mormons, but the scheme’s ringleaders appealed to a variety of devout people with claims that the gold transaction was “divinely inspired,” Kim said.

Which meant that questioning the defendants and their companies was tantamount to apostasy.

“If you turn against the group, you’re a nonbeliever,” she said.

The guilt became more intense as those who recruited investors had to push aside doubts about the scheme’s legitimacy because they felt responsible for others’ money, Kim said.

These kinds of schemes are known as “affinity frauds” because the leaders enable people to bond based on their religion, like Bernard Madoff who solicited fellow Jews, their families, their ethnic backgrounds, their charity work, and other common interests.

The strong bond of family members who were investors ran into Kim’s bond with her brother, Sean Pearson, a certified public accountant in Seattle who told her to talk to Montana securities authorities.

So she started an Excel spreadsheet with investors’ names, phone numbers and e-mails.

And she began recording the conference calls.

One of the transcripts of a November 2004 conversation recorded David Flanigan’s and Pearson’s discussion with Simburg and Jennings about the validity of the companies.

Pearson and David Flanigan asked Simburg if those involved with the companies soliciting investments were registered securities dealers, if any of the companies had filed for bankruptcy, if any of the companies’ board members had been accused of or convicted of securities fraud, and where they could find the paperwork on the companies.

Simburg couldn’t answer the questions to their satisfaction, so Pearson and Flanigan asked him to return their money.

Meanwhile, the Montana commissioner of securities in October 2004 issued a cease-and-desist order against Flanigan and her mother about recruiting investors, Kim said. “The strategy was to scare Mom.”

In February 2005, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions made similar requests.

The Washington cease-and-desist order singled out Kim’s aunt for soliciting investor funds even after learning of the state’s investigation.

In May 2005, the SEC’s Los Angeles office filed a formal complaint against the defendants.

All of which got a big chuckle from Simburg, Jennings and Jones during one conference call, Kim said.

“They laughed at the law,” she said.

David Flanigan added, “Simburg said, ‘The most they can do is slap us on the wrist and we’ll move on.’”

Instead, federal authorities in September 2007 slapped cuffs on Simburg and the other defendants, who were convicted and sentenced the next year in part because of the Flanigans’ tape recordings and Kim’s testimony at trial.

Other people recorded the telephone conferences, too, she said.

The investigation and trial revealed most of the money was gone: $3.4 million to the Kentucky coal mines, $18 million to Jones for his music and video business, and personal expenses including high-dollar cars and homes, and unknown amounts to unknown places.

Some of the early investors did receive payments from funds deposited by later investors, according to federal court records.

Many lost it all, such as an investor identified as Anna-Lena G. who tapped $519,000 from her home line of credit after Jones urged her to invest to complete the gold transaction, according to federal court records.

One Utah investor killed himself after he realized his six-figure investment had vaporized.

Kim’s aunt drained her retirement savings and now struggles with breast cancer, and her mother barely talks to her now, she said. “It caused huge family turmoil.”

Yet some investors continue to believe the coal mines will be profitable and they will reap millions from the gold transaction despite the cease-and-desist orders, the successful criminal prosecutions, and their own and others’ personal and financial wreckage, Kim said.

They’ve learned some powerful and personal lessons.

“David and I are average people,” she said.

“My mom is an average person, as was the guy who committed suicide,” Kim said. “They’re normal people who didn’t ask the right questions.”

People who are approached to invest their money should be skeptical, she said, and ask those right questions — especially if the bonds of family and faith are strong.

Kim and David learned to ask the questions about incredible returns on investment, paperwork, securities and other licensing, business backgrounds, the pressure to wire their money somewhere, and the need for secrecy.

They also learned the power of taking the right action regardless of difficult personal consequences.

“People still believe it’s real,” Kim said. “If it hadn’t been for us, it would still go on.”

From http://www.trib.com/news/local/article_02ce7592-ab02-57ed-8f41-b99681209f2b.html

Changing the locks ministry

WPTV reports…

“Members of Palm City Christian Church changed the name, the locks and the pastor..”

The church elders entered the sanctuary for the first time in months Monday.

Pastor Anthony Galbicka and a Martin County Sheriff’s Deputy met them with trespass warnings the last time they tried to attend church.

The feud started when the elders made cuts to save money, scrapping the music director position and slashing Galbicka’s salary by about 15%.

The elders filed a lawsuit after being kicked out.

On Sunday night, members voted to remove Galbicka as pastor and reinstate the excommunicated members.

They also changed the locks and adopted a new name, Blessed Assurance Christian Church.

“This Sunday, I’ve told the congregation we do not use the words, ‘We won,’” says Ed Taudien, president of the church elders.  “This Sunday, we say prayers and we thank God for bringing us back to the church.”

Galbicka could not be reached for comment Monday

From http://www.wptv.com/content/news/martin/story/Elders-retake-church-after-feud-with-pastor/9B65nyS8OUKqKhfddIK14w.cspx

Those lip-smackin’ lurrrrve offerings

Calvary Today blogs…

“When Dr Lum shared the story of what happened to Pastor Phil Stevenson when he came to minister at one of our Calvary youth camps several years ago, many Calvarites were shocked at the victimization dished out by our Church on Pastor Phil. As you may recall the story, at the end of the youth camp, a love offering was collected from the youth for Pastor Phil. Many young people gave sacrificially because they were very blessed by his ministry at the camp. However, the love offering collected was never given to him, instead, it was kept by the Church. One of our associate Pastors apparently explained to Pastor Phil that the money would be used to offset his airfare here, which was “expensive”.

This ill-treatment of an invited speaker is despicable, no matter how hard, our pastors and deacons may try to explain their actions. But it is consistent with how our Church treats those they can take advantage of, whether they are visiting pastors, Calvary staff or mission workers. On the other hand, our Church is generous to those who can benefit them. How else can one explain why our Senior Pastor and Deacons gave US$10,000 to Dr Guynes for coming to chair our EGM last year and why our Senior Pastor gave S$10,000 to Rev Robert Lim for preaching in our Church for one Sunday?

As you all know, that EGM was held to “clear” all the allegations against Senior Pastor and Dr Guynes chaired and guided the EGM accordingly. As for Rev Robert, his Church was subsequently purported to have given Senior Pastor a brand new Volvo costing more than RM300,000 and Senior Pastor’s wife a brand new Honda Civic. It may be something our MACC may want to look at, if they come across our blog.

Back to Pastor Phil. Several months ago, a few core TTG brothers & sisters felt that what happened to Pastor Phil ought to be put right and so, collectively they sent a love gift to him. He responded through the email as follows:

“I am writing this email to express my thanks and heart felt love to all those who put together to give the financial gift I received when — and— came to Perth recently, I was humbled to see such an act of generosity and honor for the preaching of the Word of God amongst the youth of Calvary, and it appears to me that there are many sincere and wonderful people at Calvary church to whom I would love you to pass on my thanks and love.

Let me take a few moments to let you know how I have dealt with what happened at the camp. When I was told that I would not be receiving the love offering I was shocked as you can imagine. Mostly because they had told the kids that it would be given to me and I know many would have given sacrificially towards this financial gift. But God used this to help me check my motives. Why did I go and speak places? Was the gospel free as far as I was concerned? I decided that my motives were to be to bless the kids at Calvary or anywhere in fact and I should expect no financial reward for this, So a lot of good came from a bad situation as you can see.

Then a few weeks ago — and — arrive with your card and the financial gift that was taken up by yourself and some of the church members. I was deeply touched by this selfless act, I felt honored for the small part I played in the camp those few years ago and I was reminded that there are God’s people everywhere who just want to act with integrity and righteousness. I will be telling our church community of how you have blessed me. The money by the way came at just the right time and with the exchange rate I know this is not a small amount in malaysian terms…………”

From http://calvarytoday.blogspot.com/2009/09/pastor-phils-story.html

Is that a gun in your pocket or are you pleased to see me, Brother?

The Dallas Morning News reports…

“Wedgwood Baptist Church isn’t a fortress.

The congregation that was ground zero for modern church safety after seven people were shot to death there 10 years ago Tuesday relies on God, not guns, for protection.

“We refuse to live in terror,” says Pastor Al Meredith, who led the church before, during and after the Sept. 15, 1999, rampage by Larry Gene Ashbrook that also left seven people injured. “If the worst happens, what happens? We go on to glory.”

But the recent shooting of an abortion doctor inside a Wichita, Kan., church and last month’s slaying of an Oklahoma preacher offer proof to many churchgoers that faith alone is not enough. More congregations are taking measures to improve safety by adopting professional security standards.

“I don’t think we have the luxury any longer to rely on faith,” said Bob Cirtin, owner of Safe at Church, a church security consulting firm, and director of the criminal justice program at Evangel University in Springfield, Mo.

“I am a born-again Christian,” he said, “So I understand faith in God and I understand that God can take care of us. But I also understand that God doesn’t always take care of us and God gives us common sense so that we can take care of ourselves.”

Measures adopted by many larger congregations include:

•Arming trained security guards or hiring off-duty police officers.

•Extensive use of surveillance cameras.

•Plainclothes security personnel who are sprinkled throughout congregations during services.

•Training staff to engage anyone acting unusual so that a potential source of trouble can be more easily monitored.

“Prior to the Wedgwood shooting, we did not have armed personnel on our grounds,” said the Rev. J. Don George, the longtime pastor of Irving’s Calvary Church and one of the few North Texas pastors willing to openly talk about his church’s security measures.

George acknowledges that members of his safety team are “ever present with me, but you wouldn’t know it.” And now, “we wouldn’t have a regular meeting without uniformed, armed Irving police officers on the grounds.”

The same goes for the Potter’s House in Dallas. In an e-mail, senior pastor Bishop T.D. Jakes said he employs both plainclothes and uniform security personnel, and some of them are armed.

“There is a fine line that we seek to make sure that the average attendee doesn’t experience anything less than a warm and wonderful reception while being ever watchful for those who would threaten that harmonious atmosphere,” Jakes said. “Because we stress both safety and courtesy, I believe our members are comforted by that protection.”

There is evidence that the need for protection at church – for both pastors and worshippers – may be growing. According to www.churchsecuritymember.com, there were six church shootings in 2007. That figure tripled to 18 last year, and there have been at least that many already this year.

“We are very much aware of the increase in church-related violence,” Prestonwood Baptist Church executive pastor Mike Buster said in an e-mail. “Certainly, after Wedgwood, I think church leaders throughout the country realized that you have to be proactive, be prepared for any situation. God willing, you never have to execute your plan.”

Vaughn Baker, co-founder of Strategos Inc., a Missouri-based church security firm, said that the need for companies like his has increased in recent years.

“Unfortunately, it is a growing industry,” Baker said. “It used to be unthinkable that someone would attack a church. One of the things we have to overcome [with church leaders] is the Big D – denial – not believing it can happen here.”

Baker and other security officials say most churches avoid the use of metal detectors or obvious security measures because they want to remain warm and accommodating.

Awareness on the part of church workers is stressed above all else, Baker said.

Baker said that when Strategos consultants do security training, they tell church personnel to be on the lookout for the unusual and not overlook hunches. They also teach security workers to pay attention to body language, including “the art of the handshake” as a way to discern whether someone might be a potential threat, Baker said.

Rick Anderson, co-founder and chief executive of Church Security Solutions in Portland, Ore., said his company takes church personnel through “threat assessment training” to teach them what to look for.

For example, if someone comes to a church acting strangely or tries to avoid interacting with others, “we don’t want to get away from that person,” Anderson said. “We get closer, because the person who is thinking about a creating some sort of crisis, he wants to fly under the radar. He’s not there to meet you and greet you, to have coffee with you.”

Some churches don’t hesitate to arm their security staff.

“The only way you can deal with an armed assailant is to be armed,” George, of Calvary Church, said. “I believe that the only way to ward off evil is to present a strong defense against evil. If it makes sense [to carry a weapon] at a ball game, it certainly makes sense at a church service.”

But at the church that unwittingly launched the modern-day safety measures, one would be hard-pressed to see any. Wedgwood has no formal security detail, and although he allows police officers who are members to bring their weapons to services, Meredith prefers that even those be kept concealed.

He maintains that the only real comfort and protection is faith.

“Either God is sovereign and in control and loves us … or we’re all a bunch of hypocrites and liars,” he said.”

From http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/091209dnmetchurchsecurity.3e9dec6.html

Gays vs Christians at Melbourne church

The Sunday Herald-Sun reports…

“Gay rights protestors and Christians clashed in a bitter war of words outside a Mitcham Baptist church this afternoon.

A dozen protestors accused people in the Simla St church of homophobia, while church meeting organisers said it was “wrong to be gay”.

Church goers said the congregation included about 25 “sexually confused” parishioners who were once homosexual, but changed their sexual preference.

Meeting organiser Shirley Baskett said she used to be a lesbian and wanted to help others to choose the right path.

“It can be very confusing to have these feelings. We are giving troubled church members a place to speak about what they are going through,” she said.

“It’s about choosing Jesus and combating same sex attraction.”

Protestor Tim Wright said he was angry and sad that young gay men and lesbians were being told to overcome their “unwanted sexuality” .

“They need to know it’s ok to be gay and should not feel guilty about who they are,” he said.”

From http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/gay-church-protest-turns-ugly/story-e6frf7jo-1225776934710

The trouble with Tribbles

Religion Dispatches reports…

“If an animal could describe the Pentecostal movement, it would be the tribble, a cute furry fictional animal, well-known to Star Trek fans. Tribbles, the story had it, were born pregnant, reproduced at a staggering rate, and ate everything in sight: if the ravenous creatures hadn’t eaten a store of poisoned grain, they would have destroyed the Enterprise. To follow the analogy, Pentecostalism and certain segments of the movement (namely, the “Prosperity Gospel” and the “New Apostolic Movements”) have mutated like tribbles, choking off their Pentecostal origins, multiplying to such a degree that it is difficult to distinguish the broader Pentecostal movement and historic churches from the mutants.

Perhaps it is odd to equate a movement with a sci-fi creature, but the multiplication of the Pentecostal movement and its “mutations” have reached a point where some clarification and reevaluation of the broader movement is needed; especially in light of the shifting belief systems that each offshoot has engendered. From the calls to investigate Prosperity ministers Creflo Dollar and Paula White, to Sarah Palin’s New Apostolic Reformation movement connections, Pentecostalism and its progeny (Charismatic, Third Wave, Full Gospel and non-denominational churches) have multiplied so rapidly that it is difficult to discern what the original movement is and where the offshoots are.

The Trouble with Pentecostalism

Consider, for example, the fact that most people do not know that Joel Osteen’s father, John Osteen, was originally a Southern Baptist-turned-Charismatic-turned-Word of Faith (the old name for Prosperity Gospel). There is a reason why Joel Osteen can teach “Your best Life now”—he’s a word of Faith/Prosperity guy, with toned-down rhetoric to appeal to a broader audience.

Genealogy is important. So, in order to help you understand which tribble you might encounter, let me offer a brief primer on Pentecostalism and its two primary mutations: Prosperity Gospel and the New Apostolic Movement.

The Pentecostal movement has been defined in historical, theological, and sociological terms; but to understand its mutations, focusing on Pentecostal practices is key. Pentecostal emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which can also function as a religious practice, are outlined in various New Testament Texts (including I Corinthians 12:8-10, I Corinthians 12:28, and Romans 12:3-8). These gifts/practices include healings, exorcism, speaking and interpretation of tongues, words of wisdom, and prophetic utterances. Speaking in tongues, or glossolialia, has been considered the primary practice of Pentecostals.

Today, despite the occasional outbursts of televangelists, a substantial number of Pentecostals do not engage in the practice, as evidenced by the Pew survey on Pentecostalism in 2007. Instead, practices of healing, faith, and exorcism have gained primacy among the “spiritual gifts.” As a result, the long-term emergence and strength of Prosperity Gospel and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) rests on the elevation and promotion of these practices above all others. The deviations then, are important to understand how Pentecostalism is being reshaped and redefined.

Prosperity Gospel

The Prosperity Gospel has had several names throughout its history, including the “Health and Wealth Gospel” and the “Word of Faith”. The movement’s Pentecostal antecedents arise out of the healing movements of the 19th century. Early Pentecostals, believing in healing through their use of the foundational scriptures and the imminent return of Christ, laid on hands and prayed for healing.

These original teachings on healing were appropriated by many Pentecostal churches and evangelists; but for some, the teachings of E. W. Kenyon on the Word of Faith, and an emphasis on “faith,” became more important emphases in ministries and churches. This emphasis on the power of faith asserted that Christ’s atonement for sins on the cross included healing: if faith was applied appropriately, whatever a believer prayed for that was in God’s will would occur.

In the late 1940s , Kenneth Hagin (sometimes called the father of the Word of Faith Movement) focused in on principles of ”faith,” and the right of believers to be healed. Hagin, alongside evangelists like Oral Roberts, A. A. Allen, and others, began to teach either about healing or “health and wealth,” and how to appropriate these through the proper application of “The Word of Faith.”

The focus was an almost fanatical belief in speaking and living the word of faith in line with scripture. These teachings became foundational for many in the movement, including Hagin’s protégés Kenneth Copeland, Frederick K. C. Price, and John Osteen. Many mainline Pentecostals embraced these teachings and attended Copeland and Hagin meetings, which also attracted Charismatics in mainline denominations. These movements, now named “Prosperity Gospel,” garnered more participants and visibility in the 1990s, with the advent of larger non-denominational churches linked to these ministries and the explosion of full gospel churches led by leaders like Paul Morton (who linked with other leaders with Pentecostal backgrounds like T. D. Jakes).

The new generation of prosperity preachers, Creflo Dollar, Paula White, Joel Osteen, and a host of other ‘luminaries’ took the humble Health and Wealth Gospel to another level. Rather than focus on audience healings and testimonies, the leaders themselves became advertisements for the movement; highlighting their expensive cars, airplanes, homes, and perfectly-toned bodies as a way to show their parishioners and followers across the world that prosperity was the way.

Any association with established denominational oversight or organizational affiliation was broken in order to keep issues of accountability out of the hands of outsiders, and within the ministry only. Even with the scrutiny of Senator Grassley (whose attention to the financial misdealings of a group of televangelists brought them notoriety as the “Grassley Six”), these leaders have managed—in the depths of a worldwide recession—to hold on to followers in their home churches and satellite churches around the country and the world.

New Apostolic Reformation

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), on the other hand, has been able to operate somewhat out of the general public’s purview, save for the work of writers at Talk To Action, who have chronicled the changes and escalations in the movement. The NAR roots are also firmly within the boundaries of the historic Pentecostal movement. Foundational to NAR beliefs are spiritual warfare and dominion over social ills. These beliefs were influenced in part by two English authors, Smith Wigglesworth and Jessie Penn Lewis, who wrote extensively on spiritual warfare, and were read avidly by some early Pentecostals.

Their books, still in print today, focused on demonic possession, deliverance, and powerful spiritual encounters. In the 1940s the movement that would give these beliefs further impetus was the Latter Rain Movement, which arose out of revivals in Canada. Focusing on extraordinary outpourings of the Holy Spirit, with spectacular spiritual manifestations, believers and leaders in the movement like William Branham believed these manifestations would usher in the second coming of Christ. The movement also caused splits within several Pentecostal denominations, most notably the Assemblies of God. Unlike the Word of Faith movement, the Latter Rain Movement and its subsequent iterations relied on “extra” revelation outside of the Bible, given to a special group of leaders that God had appointed.

The focus on “apostolic” leadership would reappear in the Shepherding moment of the 1970s, a movement that quickly died after several scandals in leadership. Not long after, in the early 1980s, the star of C. Peter Wagner began to ascend in what was then called the School of World Mission at Fuller Seminary. Wagner, who for a time taught at Fuller Seminary alongside other “power encounter” teachers John Wimber (founder of the Vineyard denomination) and Charles Kraft, began there to hone his ideas about spiritual mapping, spiritual warfare, and power encounters. Leaving the seminary in the early 1990s to establish a ministry in Colorado Springs, Wagner began to build his empire, founding the NAR in 2001.

The 21st century, for Wagner, is the beginning of the “Second Apostolic Age.” Those in the NAR believe that in order to bring about the coming of Christ, Apostles must be recognized, and the government should be run by Christians in order to cleanse the world for Christ’s coming. Power encounters such as exorcisms must be done to cleanse not only people, but cities and communities; and those who participate in this will also lead in the new Reformation.

Pentecostalism: What Is It Now?

All of this activity points to one conclusion: whatever Pentecostalism started out to be is not what it is now.

True, many denominations and faith traditions change over time, but what is interesting about Pentecostalism is the movement’s ability to morph from its basic antecedents into a plethora of new movements; all with the basics of Pentecostal teachings at their core.

The diversity of the movement begs the question, what really is “Pentecostal” and what isn’t? Are these manifestations of Prosperity Gospel and New Apostolic Reformation heresy, bad taste, or simply capitalist adventures for those in leadership?

For a movement that started out with a millennial orientation, it has certainly become enamored with the world, and remaining powerful within it in every way. Whatever these new tribbles of Prosperity and Apostolic leadership are, it is time to pay them even closer attention, before they overrun the ship entirely.”

From http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religionandtheology/1461/heresy,_bad_taste,_or_capitalist_adventure:_is_it_still_pentecostalism?page=entire

When I was Mary’s Prayer (from the grave)

The Southern Cross reports…

“The ongoing recovery of a South Australian priest from cancer could be considered as the second miracle Blessed Mary MacKillop needs to become a saint, says the postulator for the cause for her canonisation.

A wealth of prayers to Blessed Mary MacKillop, including a novena, was said in the Diocese of Port Pirie, and across the state, for Whyalla priest Father Tony Redden.

Fr Redden (pictured) also owns a relic from a sheet on which Mary MacKillop’s coffin was laid.

“If I’m to be the second miracle [of Mary MacKillop] then so be it,” he said. “If that’s God’s will, then that’s God’s will.”

Fr Redden, 60, was first diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour in 2007. He has since undergone extensive radiotherapy and chemotherapy in Adelaide. Three scans in July, October and January showed the growth was shrinking. He is due for another scan next month.

Fr Redden, who has continued light duties while undergoing treatment, said his improved health was attributable to his treatment and due also to the support and prayers of friends and family.

“I’m certain of that,” he said. “There’s always been within myself a great sense that this can be overcome and so I’ve had a very positive attitude.”

The Vatican has already formally accepted and attributed one miracle to Mary MacKillop, which was critical to her beatification in 1995. Since then, those working towards her canonisation have been searching for a second, and although a number of cases are being considered, miracles are difficult to prove as doctors must agree there is no other explanation for the recovery.

When contacted by The Southern Cross, Father Paul Gardiner SJ, postulator for the cause of Blessed Mary MacKillop, said Fr Redden’s case appeared worthy of further investigation.

Fr Gardiner said the next step would involve obtaining documentary evidence from doctors, including the diagnosis, expected outcomes, treatment and his present medical condition.

“It’s a long process,” said Penola-based Fr Gardiner. “The difficulty is not to find the miracle, it’s to get the doctors to say they can’t explain the course of this disease. They know you are after a miracle and they shy away.”

Fr Gardiner said there were “signs of hope” that a second miracle would soon be proved, perhaps in time for her canonisation in 2009, the 100th anniversary of her death. “That would be a fitting time,” he said.

“I think we’ve had a lot of favours granted by God as a consequence of prayers through Mary MacKillop. I’m quite confident we’ll get one that satisfies the Church’s conditions.”

From http://www.adelaide.catholic.org.au/sites/SouthernCross/top-stories?more=5214

The basket case that is the West African church

Daily Trust reports…

“Residents of Nyanya Gwandara, a suburb close to Abuja are wondering what must have caused the quarrel between Pastor Sunday Balogun of Garden of Love & Deliverance Ministry (A.K.A Redemption City) and Pastor Nwachi Elekwachi (Alias De Commander) of Nwachi World Power Outreach International Faith Healing Chapel after both men planned to hold a crusade together.

Both pastors, who appeared friendly during a church service at Garden of Love & Deliverance Ministry, jointly announced their decision to hold a crusade for August 24-28 last month at Nyanya Gwandara Public Field but on the D-Day of the event, problems started that made Pastor Balogun go on air to distance his church from the event.

While Pastor Elekwachi accuses the other pastor of been envious of his spiritual powers to heal and disrupting the crusade with cultists as well as damaging his property to the tune of over N2 million, Pastor Balogun on the other hand denied the allegation and accused the other pastor of sleeping with female members of his church that went to the pastor’s church before the crusade to solve their problems.

Both pastors spoke to our reporter on Sunday and Monday explaining what caused the problem.

According to Pastor Balogun, ‘I thought he was a man of God, hence I gave him my pulpit to preach and I must warn the public to be wary of false prophets’.

 

Recalling how he came in contact with Pastor Elekwachi, the pastor of Garden of Love & Deliverance Ministry said one of his Church members called Gabriel allegedly took away his church document and N30,000, which made other church members ….embark on a search for him.

“The search party discovered the erring church member inside Kingdom Hall, where Pastor Elekwachi presides and our church members reported the matter to the divisional police officer of Masaka, who gave us policemen to arrest Gabriel and he was detained,” the pastor of Garden of Love stated.

He said he received a phone call from Pastor Elekwachi appealing to him to release Gabriel, adding that he told the pastor that such release could only be effected if his church document and money were returned.

“Pastor Elekwachi later came with the church document and begged further and we asked the police to release Gabriel to the pastor with a promise that the erring member be brought to our church so that members can pray for him,” Pastor Balogun stated.

He said instead of the erring member [coming], Pastor Elekwachi visited his church and was given the microphone to speak.

“Pastor Elekwachi alias De Commander talked for over one hour, making alter calls for people to drop money and they responded.

 

He also asked people who wanted to travel abroad to bring N50,000, while our church raised N720,000 on that day for the building of our new site in which we gave him over a hundred thousand naira as gratification,” Pastor Balogun disclosed.

He explained further that after the church service, he noticed that De Commander was busy distributing his complimentary cards to female members of his church and collecting their phone numbers, adding that he travelled after the church service and returned to hear tales of woes from ladies from his church.

“I cannot mention names because some of this ladies are married women and their husbands will drive them away but in tears, they confessed to me that De Commander collected money from them and also slept with them on the pretence that the anointing was inside his body and could only be transferred through that process,” he alleged.

The leader of Garden of Love and Deliverance Ministry said after hearing the confession, he went along with 30 members of his ministry to De Commander’s place and met that he busied himself attending to his church members instead of granting them audience.

 

Pastor Balogun said his church members sent an invitation to De Commander to come to their church to defend the allegations against him but he tried to play smart.

He said he now decided to distance his church from the crusade and told the chief and police about the development.

“During the crusade, De Commander was accusing me of theft and calling me a criminal instead of preaching.

On the third day, he asked the congregation with him to call me a bastard and we reported to the police, while officials of the State Security Services have taken down the statements of the abused female members of our church, which led to [the] stoppage of the crusade.

Pastor Nwachi however denied the allegation of sleeping with some female members of Garden of Love and Deliverance Ministry.

He said when he preached at Garden of Love Ministry for the first time, members of the church were marvelled and over 50 ladies in the church switched to his church to get their problems solved.

According to him, most of the ladies had problems that included illnesses, demonic spirits and wanting to get husbands.

“One of them came because she wanted to marry an Army Colonel and all the ladies passed through three chambers in my church to offer prayers and communicate with God, without disturbance,” he added.

Pastor Nwachi challenged Pastor Balogun to bring to the public light all the ladies that accused him of sleeping with them.

At the Masaka Police Station, a policeman acknowledge that they were aware of the problem between the two pastors and advised them to maintain peace, while an official of the State Security Service at New Karu said the matter is under investigation as statements were taken from all those involved in the case including the ladies that accused Pastor Nwachi.

He said the pastor has been instructed to bring his certificate of incorporation for verification.”

From http://allafrica.com/stories/200909160460.html

C4 – Christian Sh*tty Church Church

C3 Trev comments…

“We just went through a global branding process. The journey was from Christian City Church to CCC to C3 and finally now to C3 Church. The branding firm (a secular firm in Australia) did a bunch of research and found out that people really didn’t know C3 was a church and they wanted to be upfront about that to avoid the feeling of being tricked. We are now C3 Church.”

From http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/archives/2009/08/another_word_fo.html

We’re goin’ to Surf City ’cause it’s two to one

Australian Christian Churches minister Mark Sceriha blogs…

“I am one very proud Principal.  We have just returned for another year at SURFCiTY College.  Student numbers are the highest they have been in many, many years, possibly ever.  This week was our first week of Chapel. I love chapel – a short, impacting one hour service run entirely by our students.  Everyone did an amazing job – the College Band, the MC and the Preacher.  I was thrilled to be there and could not have been prouder.

David Bright, one of our students, shared a great message on tithing and giving.  I have included an extract from his message below.  Now you must remember, this is a brand new student and our first chapel service, so he’s not had a lot of practice.  In fact, he’s overcome a pretty rough past to get to where he is today.  If, like me, you were impressed, leave a comment and I will pass it on to him.

—–

I want to speak to you on Tithing and Gods heart.

What we give over, God will take over.  Malachi 3:10… Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse. It doesn’t say lets have a debate over this. It simply states ….Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse.
Why? … Because it demonstrates that our trust is in God

Many think when it comes to a tithe message we are just trying to get the church’s hand into your pocket.  Well…NO!! I am actually trying to put your hand into God’s pocket, where you are able to prosper, not in the accumulation of things, but in the expansion of God in all things within your life.

What you withhold from God, you isolate from His ability to inhabit and multiply.

But you may say, “I don’t make enough to tithe; I’m going to run out of money.”

Well if you think you’re going to run out anyway… run out… into God’s arms, run out trusting Him, because He promises to open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing until it overflows.

God says He will rebuke the devourer for you.  Many are suffering from a spiritual devourer – an enemy that drains away energy, time and resources so that you never seem to have enough.

The Lord is saying, “Now turn your finances over to Me and I will turn over my resources to you and destroy that very thing which is destroying your prosperity.”

Whatever we get from God we need to sow back as Gods gift is a gift that keeps on giving.  Let me recall a story in 1 kings 17 that exemplifies this principle.

During a time of terrible famine the Lord told Elijah to go to Zaraphath, as He had commanded a widow there to provide for Elijah. Notice the Lord did not command a wealthy businessman to provide for him, but a destitute widow – a woman facing starvation who was about to prepare her last meal for herself and her son and then die.

God’s way to activate her faith and to bring her into a supernatural provision was to require her to give over the little she had to fulfill the purpose of God.

What seemed like an insensitive, even cruel command, Elijah ordered her to feed him first and then take food for herself. Although she didn’t know the plan and provision of God, Elijah knew and he urged her into both faith and surrender. As a result, God provided for her miraculously: “The bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty” until the famine broke (v16).

Remember Jesus fed 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 Fish from a little boy

When I hear people say, “I can’t afford to give,” I immediately think, “You can’t afford not to give.”

When faith is activated and surrender perfected, God steps into our lives.  We need to have a testimony of God’s supply, where each of us can say, “God came through for me.”

God multiplied the widow’s provisions during a drought. Maybe it’s in the times of need that we need ‘surrender’ the most.  Our faithfulness with money shows Jesus that we can be trusted with greater things such as miracles.

Why live in the pitiful little realm of unbelief when we can have the provisions of the Most High?  Ask yourself, “How is it Jesus always had what He always needed”?

John 17:10 reveals, “Praying to the Father, Jesus said …. “All things that are Mine are Yours…””

Jesus surrendered all. As a result, He could continue with confidence in His prayer, “And what is Yours God is Mine.””  So also with us – make this same act of surrender.

Whatever we have was God’s in the first place anyway.  To those who give all to Him, He says, “What’s Mine is yours.” We exchange our little for God’s much. Whether it is with our finances, our families, our future or our past.

The key to unlocking the destiny of God is faith and surrender.  What we give over, He will take over.”

From http://thebestlife.com.au/2009/02/what-you-give-over-god-wil-take-over/

Every pastor needs his PA (Pastor Arselicker)

Provender blogs…

“Signs you may be covering for a pastor who abuses the flock spiritually:

1. You’ve noticed a pattern of people leaving the fellowship, but don’t ask your pastor about it and don’t delve into the reasons behind the exits.
2. You’ve seen your pastor act in retribution for slights or criticism by removing people from ministries, publicly or privately shaming them or refusing to listen to them.
3. You excuse your pastor’s wrong behavior: he’s young, he doesn’t understand the people who are unhappy, he has a little trouble relating to people, he’ll grow out of it, I’m probably not seeing the whole picture, God will show him his weaknesses and he’ll handle things better soon.
4. You find yourself blaming victims. You justify harsh behavior by your pastor by focusing on the sins of those who are shamed or shunned or criticized or punished.
5. You feel that to protect the name of Christ in your community you need to keep secret the alarming behavior by your pastor or leaders in the church.
6. You feel it’s your duty to think the best of your pastor, no matter what charges are brought against him, but you don’t extend the same courtesy to those who feel they’ve been abused or harmed.
7. You feel it’s okay for your pastor to build up your church by cutting down other churches with “inferior” doctrines or practices, but it’s not okay for anyone to question decisions by church leaders if it looks like criticism.
8. You enjoy being flattered by your pastor and seek to please him often. You spend a lot of time in church flattering and being flattered.
9. You fear being criticized by your pastor or having your special ministry taken away.
10. You’ve seen your pastor flatter those he can use and then later turn on them.
11. You would feel uncomfortable asking to see financial records of the church, and you just assume that they are being used in a godly manner.
12. You feel constantly pressured to help more in church or to give more, or both.
13. Going to church often seems like a burden, but you don’t want anyone to know you feel that way.
14. You have criticized other churches or individuals with your pastor.
15. You like the feeling of being in the “inner circle,” and you feel you have the pastor’s confidence.
16. You feel superior to Christians who don’t witness as much as you, or who don’t practice their faith as well as you, or who don’t emphasize certain doctrines like you do.
17. You feel that no one quite understands the scriptures, delivers sermons or reaches out to the weak and poor like your pastor does.
18. You spend much time defending your pastor, either in your own mind or to others
19. You don’t like to admit it, but you often spend more time thinking (whether positively, negatively or both) about your pastor or leaders than you do about God.
20. You are exhausted.

If many of these items speak to you, it might be a good idea to evaluate what your role in your church really is. Are you a source of narcissistic supply for your pastor? Is your main role to make him look good? Do you equate making him look good with powerful ministry in your community? You can serve many years, believing you are doing good in your church by covering spiritual abuse for your leader, while really doing great harm. Check out the signs of spiritual abuse. If they look familiar, and you feel you may have had a hand in perpetuating it, all is not lost.

You can recognize the harm and turn from it, just like with any other sin……”

From http://pureprovender.blogspot.com/2009/07/are-you-covering-for-spiritually.html

Shirley Phelps-Roper’s descent into madness

Bent Benz

Pic:Times of Swaziland

The Times of Swaziland reports…

“Troubled Apostle Jeremiah Dlamini on Thursday survived a nasty accident which nearly claimed his life, but left his car, a Mercedes Benz Kompressor, a complete write-off.

The accident happened at around 9pm on Thursday when the apostle was driving from the Maguga Dam direction. He had failed to negotiate the turn on the Mbabane/Pigg’s Peak road.

Having miraculously survived it, the apostle has come out with all guns blazing, blaming the accident on his enemies whom he believes are out to kill him—but he has a message for those people; they will not triumph!
“Many people have tried and failed. I am a hard nut to crack in fact nginguphunyuka bamphetse,” he said.

The apostle claimed that the devil was using these people to try and destabilise him and his ministry. He alleged that the accident which was a very close shave with death was the work of the devil who is working with his enemies.

 

He blamed other pastors for his misfortunes whom he feels are jealous of his growth in the work of the Lord and his accomplishment in commanding a lot of people to his ministry. He also said  there were people who are not happy that he is successful in life generally.

 

Apostle Jeremiah owns a nine-bedroom mansion in Bethany where he stays with his wife and children. He also owns a BMW X5, the Mercedes kompressor and several smaller sedans.

Speaking more about the accident he said: “I owe my survival to God. I am a man of God, and He is using me to save his people and until I accomplish this mission, I am not going to die,” he said.
 

When narrating how the accident happened he said: “while I was driving to Schoeman where I was preaching, I was in an area around Maguga when the devil visited me. I fell in a trance and the devil told me that I was going to die in a car accident that day.”

The pastor said he prayed hard and defied the devil, telling him that such was not going to happen.

“After the trance I comfortably drove to Schoeman where I preached until it was time for me to leave for home. On my way back, while at Mnyokane area I got another attack and my eyes were blurred and when I woke up my car was rolling down the hill,” he said.

According to the pastor the car landed with its top on a rock where he believes he could have died because the impact was massive.

Upon reaching the bottom of the hill, the pastor said he opened the door of the vehicle, moved out and called for assistance.

The apostle said: “I have been through a lot of challenges these days and all of them I believe are a making of a few people who are all out to see me dead. They have dragged my good name through the mud and now they are making an attempt on my life,” he said.

“The more problems you go through, it is the more you become successful and the lesser the problems, the lesser the success,” he said.

From http://www.times.co.sz/index.php?news=10565

The Swazi Observer reported July 11…

“Manzini pastor, Apostle Jeremiah Dlamini was recently summoned by a powerful group of pastors in Manzini to probe him on press reports concerning an adulterous pastor.

The pastors called Dlamini to a meeting after an exposé by the Weekend Observer about an adulterous pastor in Manzini two weekends ago. The name of the pastor was, however, withheld.

The pastors who cornered Dlamini were from the Swaziland Conference of Churches (SCC).

The men of the cloth wanted him to explain the press reports and give ‘his side of the story’.

Despite that the name of the pastor involved was not mentioned, somehow the SCC had reason to question Apostle Dlamini.

Apostle Jeremiah confirmed the meeting in an interview earlier in the week.
“I was called to the meeting after the press reports to explain a few things which the pastors wanted to know,” he said.

Asked why he was summoned when the Weekend Observer did not reveal the identity of the said “adulterous pastor”, Dlamini said he did not know.

“They just called me to the meeting and I explained to them what they needed to know.”

President of the SCC, Dr. Stephen Masilela also confirmed the meeting with Apostle Dlamini.

“Actually, Dlamini is the one who called us after the Weekend Observer article. This was after he heard that we would call a press conference to address the issue. He told us that the pastor referred to in the article was him. During the meeting, we asked him kutsi wentani vele (what’s he doing). Simekhutile (we warned him) and told him to bring his house to order,” said Masilela. 

Apostle Jeremiah further disclosed that the Council of Elders in his church, the Faith Christian Fellowship, has warned him to desist talking to the media.

“A lot of bad things have been said about me in the media and church elders have since advised me to stop talking to you newspaper people.  “I also wanted to take legal action against the newspapers that have been writing bad things about me but the elders have advised me against such,” he said….”

From http://www.observer.org.sz/index.php?news=5683

The wacky world of biblical numerology

Associated Press reports…

“Prosecutors have charged a Bolivian pastor with sabotage, illegal retention of people and attack on a means of transport in this week’s hijacking of a plane from the resort city of Cancun, the attorney general’s office said Friday.

The charges carry total maximum sentences of up to 43 years in prison. The illegal retention charge is used to describe a lesser form of kidnapping.

Jose Flores, who was taken to a Mexico City prison to await a judge’s decision on whether he should stand trial, has said he doesn’t regret threatening to detonate a fake bomb aboard an Aeromexico commercial jetliner Wednesday.

Flores’ demand to speak with President Felipe Calderon sparked an hourlong runway standoff that ended peacefully when armed police raided the airplane, freeing the 103 passengers and seven crew members aboard unharmed.

Flores, 44, has said he was acting on a divine revelation and wanted to warn Calderon of an earthquake that would occur in 2012. That year has been widely mentioned on the Internet as the date for potentially catastrophic events, based on astronomical alignments and purported ancient prophesies.

“I am never going to regret it,” Flores told Milenio Television Friday. “My intention was to do good, to announce, without regard to my life or liberty, that we should join together and pray for the earthquake not to occur.”

“I am happy because I know this is God’s” work, he said as he was transferred to prison.

He added that he’s had divine revelations before and predicted President Barack Obama’s election and Michael Jackson’s death.”

From http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hurKrE3xb7Gfc6iwUeTYJy5slHOgD9ALFKM00

Hide the sausage

The Toowoomba Chronicle reports…

“There has been a groundswell of opposition to tomorrow’s planned “open day” at Toowoomba’s new brothel at Harlaxton.

City church leaders have described the event, which will include a sausage sizzle, as “offensive” and “absurd” and feel helpless about being unable to stop Deviations opening.

Pastor Tim Bunch from Garden City Baptist Church, which is located just 450 metres from the brothel, said it was as if Deviations management was rubbing the opening in protestors’ faces.

“I don’t think (the brothel) is appropriate, full stop, let alone having an open day,” he said.

“They’re trying to sugar coat an industry that reduces women to a lower standard.”

Citilife Church Senior Pastor Jonathan Oastler agreed, saying the open day was “glorifying” the sex trade.

“To have a sausage sizzle is absurd. Who would want a sausage sizzle there?

“What sort of example are we setting for our kids?”

Both pastors were angry that State Government legislation prevented the Toowoomba Regional Council from rejecting the brothel application.

“The local community and concerned groups like ours basically have no voice,” Pastor Bunch said.

Letitia Shelton from Toowoomba City Women was instrumental in organising public protests after an application for the Civil Court brothel was lodged.

But Miss Shelton said the group had no plans to protest tomorrow.

“Obviously we’re concerned and disappointed with it all,” she said. “But we’ve done our protest and we’re looking at other avenues now.”

Miss Shelton would not reveal what the “other avenues” were, but did issue a warning.

“We’re not giving up on the fight,” she said.

Deviations owner Jim Welch said everyone was entitled to their opinion.

“The open day gives everyone a chance to come in and see this is a safe and secure premises for sex workers.”

Football Toowoomba president Greg Stuckey yesterday said no junior soccer team would be benefiting from the sausage sizzle fund-raiser.”

From http://www.thechronicle.com.au/story/2009/09/11/groups-plan-to-fight-on/

The 7PM Project on the botched Jesus ‘All About Life’ NSW campaign

Another pastor prays for cancer

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports…

“A defiant Rodney McGill prayed for affliction upon his adversaries prior to his sentencing in Martin County Circuit Court, and turned his back on Judge Sherwood Bauer, Jr., as he was handed a 20-year prison term for his part in fraudulently obtaining some $1 million in real estate loans.cancer in their lives, lupus, brain tumor, pancreatic cancer,” McGill intoned at his counsel table prior to the start of the hearing Tuesday.Jensen Beach, and his wife, Shalonda were convicted in July on nine counts each of obtaining mortgages by false representation, first-degree grand theft and racketeering.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, for every witness called against me I pray

McGill, the self-proclaimed pastor of New Hope Outreach Center in

The state alleged the McGills, individually, and through several of their organizations, selected three women of modest income to purchase properties owned by the McGills on a promised return of $50,000 in 90 days with no money down.

During the trial, prosecutors introduced loan applications on the transactions that contained incorrect job descriptions, inflated monthly salaries, nonexistent bank accounts and forged lease agreements on behalf of the buyers.

During a rambling statement to the court, McGill vigorously maintained his innocence, challenging the fairness of his trial.

“I’m not guilty of anything,” McGill said. “This courtroom has been deceived. I shouldn’t have been charged. What law did I break? I’m out of the box; I’m smarter than them.”

As Bauer began explaining the basis of his sentence, McGill interrupted, “Whatever sentence you gonna give to me just give it to me.” He then turned his back as Bauer announced the penalty.

McGill received 20 years on the grand theft and racketeering counts and five years on the mortgage fraud convictions. The sentences to run concurrently. He will face 10 years of probation following his release.

Earlier in the day, McGill’s wife, Shalonda, received a sentence of 10 years and five years for the grand theft and racketeering and fraud convictions, respectively. She will also serve a 10-year probation upon release.

Shalonda McGill also was required to surrender her mortgage broker license, and they are prohibited from any further activity in real estate.

The two face repayment of nearly $100,000 in court and investigative costs and restitution of approximately $1 million to lenders who loaned money on four residential properties.

Arguing for a reduced sentence, Shalonda, who did not testify during her trial, broke her silence and told Bauer she acted under duress, was a “victim of being Rodney McGill’s wife,” and that she was unaware that what she did was illegal.

“Whatever I did was on direct instructions from my husband,” she said.

In handing down the minimum mandatory 10-year sentence, however, Bauer said he found no basis to depart from the state’s sentencing guidelines.

McGill filed a notice of appeal immediately after his sentencing. “

From http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-pastor-sentenced-fraud-bn090909,0,7984024.story

That’s Gross

Danny Nalliah’s coming to Canberra – ring the bells and lock the doors

Danny Nalliah blogs…

“Dear family & friends in Christ,
 
A few weeks ago a Pastor friend of mine who works as a chaplain for a state school in Victoria took his Year 6 class on an excursion to Canberra. There they went up to Mount Ainsley which overlooks the Federal Parliament building. Right on top of this mountain is some sort of a communication tower.
 
One of the students, who was not a Christian, came up to my Pastor friend and said, “there is blood all over the concrete slab under the tower”. This got the attention of many students and when they looked further, it was indeed fresh blood splattered all over the slab. The students were absolutely shocked as was my friend, who explained that it was some sort of sacrifice.
 
My friend who was very disturbed by what he had seen started praying but did not let the students know.  As they left for another place, my friend found out that the tour guide was a born-again Christian and he told her what they had seen on the mountain. She responded, “oh, we know about it as the witchcraft covens offer sacrifices all the time on that mountain”. My friend could not believe what he was hearing and he brought this to my attention as soon as he returned from Canberra.
 
A month ago I was with my wife and two other ladies in the car, including one who was formerly a witch but now a full on born-again Christian. In fact I have personally cast out many demonic spirits out of her. She told us that one of her friend’s (who also was a witch) father was a high priest in the coven. When she was a small girl, he told her that he had a surprise for her birthday. He blind folded her and told her to cut the cake. After cutting, her blind fold was removed and she was horrified to see that she had cut through the neck of a baby.
 
Could this be happening in Australia?? Yes, it is. Unfortunately the church has turned a blind eye towads this wickedness through ignorance, unbelief, or fear of repercussion. Well, it’s time to confront the devil head on. Someone needs to do it and we at Catch The Fire with your help and God’s grace are totally committed to seeing Australia turn back to worshipping the Lord Jesus Christ in Spirit and Truth.

Even just this week in my office, I had a lady who was formerly a high priestess in the coven and now a born-again Christian.  She was delivered from many demonic spirits at the Holy Spirit meetings in Hallam and recently shared some shocking information on how the witch covens operate in the satanic realm of darkness.
 
Another Pastor friend of mine spent 4-6 months counselling and casting demonic spirits out of a women who had offered her child as a sacrifice to satan. This happened in Melbourne, Australia, not overseas.
 
I believe God has given us a strategic spiritual warfare assignment to take back the high places in our nation. As I have been prayerfully seeking the Lord, the Spirit of God has been revealing to me that the whole nation is under a curse because the witchcraft covens from Mount Ainsley in Canberra are cursing the Federal Parliament, which is the heartbeat of Australia where decisions are being made that effect the whole nation.
 
On Saturday 17th October 2009 we are calling on all Christians to mount an offensive spiritual warfare attack on the demonic strongholds over the nation. Christians from all over the nation will gather on top of Mount Ainsley in Canberra from 2pm to 5pm.  We are calling a special afternoon of United Spiritual Warfare Prayer, Repentance, and Prophetic Worship.
 
I wish to challenge you to get to Canberra, our nation’s capital and hold up the hands of the body of Christ, Pastors and Christians leaders living there who seem very tired of fighting this battle alone, as I have spoken to some of them. If the Muslims can go all the way to Mecca, are we willing to sacrifice a bit to save our nation?
 
Alternatively, if you cannot get to Canberra, please rally a group of Christians together and go up to any high place the Lord leads you to and spend the afternoon of the 17th Oct 2009 from 2pm to 5pm in United Spiritual Warfare Prayer, Repentance and Prophetic Worship. Please make sure that you do not do this alone.

We will give you more details closer to the date, but please make the 17th October a very high priority day in your calendar. I am not giving all the details of the operation out right now due to obvious reasons, but stay tuned to our website and future emails. Make sure to start preparing for this assignment in fasting and prayer from now.
 
The Weather Bureau has declared that this coming bushfire season is going to be worse than the last one (Black Saturday), but I believe that we as the Church can turn this around through united prayer and repentance. May there be no deaths at all during this upcoming bushfire season.

“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people,  if My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:13-14
 
Sorry for this long email, but I believe that this strategy could be the turn around in our nation to see a mighty harvest of souls saved and the nation bow down to worship Jesus as King of kings and LORD of lords!  I believe with all my heart that we the body of Christ will posses the land!
 
Many blessings and keep up the good fight of faith in the Lord!
 
Your brother in Christ,
 
Pastor Danny Nalliah”

From http://catchthefire.com.au/blog/2009/08/28/top-urgent-from-ps-danny-please-take-time-to-read-fresh-blood-found-from-sacrifice/

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Thank you Jesus I’m in WA and won’t see these embarrassing ads in NSW

The Australian reports…

“Several months after Australia’s major Christian churches decided to pool their marketing activities, the wraps have come off a campaign that aims to sell Jesus to the masses.

A television, outdoor and social networking campaign will launch in NSW today aiming to stimulate debate about faith using the line “Jesus. All About Life”.

But it is the quirky creative idea behind the campaign, created by advertising agency 303, the churches hope will turn heads.

Billboards across the state, often located outside churches, will use colourful photos with captions thanking Jesus for everyday elements of life.

An image of someone feeding seagulls says “Thanks for hot chips. Amen”, while another shows a little girl on a beach with the caption “Hey, thanks for the beach, Jesus”.

Another shows a parrot with the caption: “Thank you, Jesus, for birds that look like they’re wearing pants.”

The campaign, which will point to a website (allaboutlife.com.au), involves 15 Christian denominations. It will culminate on September 27 in television advertising.

Daniel Willis, chief executive of the Bible Society and co-founder of the campaign, said the advertising was designed to persuade people to consider faith and look at Jesus as an option. “The question for us was what can churches do in media if money was not a limiting factor,” Mr Willis said.

He said they then worked back to the point where quirky creative and engaging new media content would spark debate about Jesus and the church.

“We looked at something that had the power to change,” he said. “The name of Jesus has a lot of credibility in the wider community.

“This is what we believe in and Jesus is all about life, not religion.”

More than 1600 churches will help promote the message, which, while trying to be upbeat, also looks at some of the more troubling aspects of life.

One ad features a gravestone marked “R.I.P. MUM” accompanied by the caption “Thank you, Jesus, for looking after my mum now that I can’t”.

Sharon Williams, chief executive of Taurus Marketing, which also worked on the campaign, said it was a huge task getting so many churches on board.

“Like all products, people have a right to know of Jesus and the right to turn him down, but (marketing Jesus) is a challenge and not easy,” Ms Williams said.

“Christian or not, it’s a passionate topic. It’s a huge campaign in its own right and hard to ignore.”

From http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,26035190-7582,00.html

I thought church was supposed to benefit family life

Jillian Staggs blogs…

“We have announced this morning [30/08/09]  to the great people at Westlife Church [Brisbane] that we have resigned.

Our last Sunday will be Sunday 11 October 2009.

Pastor Steve Dixon from Hillsong Brisbane Campus this morning addressed the church and outlined the launch, growth and health of the church. That was very honouring.

Andrew & I have been overwhelmed by the love and gratitude that people have expressed. Thanks xo

Here is a bit of what we said this morning:

This has been a very tough decision – probably the toughest decision we have made so far in our lives. Yet it is also a relatively simple one.

When your values are clear, decisions become clearer.

We value our family, marriage and health – we value our children. So these important things always come first.

We have sought wisdom, prayed and read God’s Word – we have spent much time with wise counsel – we have spoken to key people – we have looked at a lot of options – we have searched our hearts – and we have come to this very difficult decision.

Parts of this decision are very sad … extremely sad.

This decision will be very sad, even hurtful to some of you – and we are very sorry for that.

Our family, marriage and health have been under relentless pressure – and there is a deep weariness. We believe that resigning as Founding and Lead Pastors is the best choice for our family and for the church.

We are confident of a strong God – who is head of this Church. This strong God knew this decision was coming – and He is not surprised.

We are confident of the God at work in you – some of you will be shaken for a season, but that will turn into kingdom resolve that will fuel the next level of health and growth at Westlife.

We love you all dearly – we have prayed for you in advance – we have some good people around us and our church – we have set some things in motion that will position you for a great new leaders.

We are thankful for this opportunity and privilege to lead you – it is coming up 4 years for some of you. These have truly been the Wonder Years for us – the establishment of a vibrant local church in a growth corridor.

Thank you for the privilege of leading you and being your pastors.”

From http://jillianstaggs.blogspot.com/2009/08/important-news-we-have-resigned.html

“Westlife Church is a vibrant, regional church that started in March 2006. The church focuses on helping the community, and has positive, practical messages with great music, creative children’s programs and quality coffee.

Our mascot, Jet the Wonderdog, also helps look after the children and youth. The church is an initiative of Garden City Christian Church (Mt Gravatt)…..”

From http://www.westlifechurch.org.au/intro.htm

Meet Pasturd Steven Anderson

abc15 reports…

“A controversial Tempe pastor who admits he prays for the [US] President’s death got into a heated exchange with a reporter for the Phoenix New Times newspaper Sunday.

Pastor Steven Anderson and Reporter Stephen Lemons got into the argument following Sunday night services outside Anderson’s Faithful Word Baptist Church near 48th Street and Southern.

Lemons and Anderson argued after the New Times’ reporter began questioning the pastor about his other job, installing commercial fire alarms.

“Are you running a church and business at the same place,” asked Lemons.

“I’m not running a church and business at the same place,” responded Anderson.  “You are trying to make up a story.  You’re a liar.”

“I don’t operate a business here,” continued Anderson.  “I store equipment here.”

“Don’t touch me,” replied Lemons. 

“I’m not the Border Patrol so don’t touch me,” added Lemons, referring to an incident earlier this year in which Border Patrol agents deployed a stun gun on Anderson.

The back and forth between Lemons and Anderson continued with Anderson eventually shutting the front door on Anderson.

“Idiot,” said Lemons.

“Jerk,” replied Anderson.

————————————-

“Nearly 100 demonstrators lined the streets outside a Tempe church Sunday to protest what they consider hate speech.

Last month Pastor Steven Anderson delivered a sermon at the Faithful Word Baptist Church, near 48th Street and Southern Avenue, entitled “Why I hate Barack Obama.”

In response to that sermon and several subsequent controversial comments by Anderson, the People Against Clergy Who Preach Hate held a Love Rally Sunday outside Anderson’s church.

“It’s hard to believe we could have someone of a religious nature wishing our president was dead,” said protester William Crumb.

“I’m just disgusted with this man who claims to be a minister of the Lord preaching hate toward the president,” added protester Larry Crane.

Unlike in previous weeks, Anderson declined to comment following Sunday’s services.

“I’m sure you have plenty of footage from previous interviews you did with me,” said Anderson.  “I’m just a little tired right now.”

Several of Anderson’s parishioners, who declined to identify themselves, defended their pastor’s sermons.

“I hate people that hate God,” said one Faithful Word parishioner.

“As far as I know we live in America, we have freedom of religion, freedom to assemble and the freedom of speech,” added another Faithful Word parishioner.

Protesters say they’ll continue to picket Faithful Word Baptist Church so long as Anderson continues to preach what they consider hate.

“I just think it’s sad,” said Crane.  “We can have discourse without preaching hate.  That’s what this minister is doing.”

From http://www.abc15.com/content/news/southeastvalley/tempe/story/Pastor-who-prays-for-Obamas-death-calls-reporter/UCQlrCPY3UySB5KrZlgy6g.cspx

Further blog coverage…

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2009/09/pastor_steven_anderson_leonard.php

New Life’s new life after Ted Haggard

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports…

“Nearly three years after its founder resigned amid a sex scandal and thousands of its members left, New Life Church has rebuilt its membership to the point where it has to add a new service.

Beginning Sept. 13, the Colorado Springs megachurch will add an evening service to accommodate the increase in weekly attendance — up from 6,500 two years ago to 8,600 today, according to senior pastor Brady Boyd. It’s still below the 12,000 people who attended when founder Ted Haggard was at the height of his popularity, but it represents a turnaround that started when Boyd took the top job in August 2007.

Recently the church was added to the “100 Fastest Growing Churches in America” list compiled by the Christian magazine Outreach, and Boyd said families from as far away as Pueblo and Denver are attending. On Sunday, 50 families filled out cards during services saying they were visiting New Life for the first time.

Boyd attributes the growth to the church’s local community efforts and an increase in the local military population.

Because of budget constraints, New Life stopped advertising last fall. But in recent months, hundreds of members have been involved in church projects that benefit the community, such as cleaning up parks, repairing seniors’ homes and helping the poor. That has given the church positive exposure and pulled in new members, Boyd said.

Haggard started the church in 1985 and built it into a nationally recognized megachurch. But news of his relationship with a male prostitute forced him to resign in 2006.

Three religion scholars interviewed Monday said it is rare for a ministry to survive a scandal on that scale, which was followed 13 months later by a shooting on the campus that took the lives of two teenage parishioners. They credited Boyd’s leadership as a big part of New Life’s revitalization.

“Boyd seems very skilled at being a calming presence and influence,” said Paul Harvey, a history professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and author of several books on religion. “You need someone like that to clean up the mess.”

From http://www.gazette.com/news/church-61143-new-growth.html

Did drug agents murder Pastor Jonathan?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports…

“Before he died Wednesday, with bullet wounds to his liver, pastor Jonathan Ayers asked paramedics who shot him.

The rest of the small town of Toccoa and anyone who saw the dramatic convenience store video now knows Ayers was killed by undercover officers in a sting operation.

Ayers’ brother-in-law Matt Carpenter believes these words mean one thing — that the Lavonia minister did not know he was being approached by law enforcement and that he inadvertently stepped into the middle of their drug investigation.

“I think it scared him,” when the black Cadillac Escalade pulled next to Ayers’ car and two men got out with guns drawn, said Carpenter.

Carpenter said that’s why he tried to speed away.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation is examining the fatal shooting. The two plain-clothes officers — both members of a northeast Georgia tri-county drug task force — are on administrative leave.

“I’ve rerun it in my mind,” Carpenter said. “He had used an ATM inside, got into his car and then a black Escalade pulled up and [they] jumped out … If they ID’d themselves, he couldn’t hear them because his windows were up.”

GBI spokesman John Bankhead said witnesses heard the two men identify themselves as law enforcement officers.

The sheriff also told reporters the agents “yelled, ‘Police. Stop.’ ”

Stephens County Sheriff Randy Shirley said the shooting came after Ayers hit one of the agents with his car as he backed up. The second one shot Ayers because the 29-year-old minister had maneuvered his car toward him in a “threatening manner,” Shirley said.

Ayers was able to drive away from the Shell station but crashed into a utility pole a short distance away. It was there that Ayers, according to Carpenter, asked paramedics “Who shot me?”

Ayers died later, soon after surgery.

The sheriff said Ayers was not a target of the drug investigation.

The store owner, Joe Joseph, said he didn’t know the agents were law enforcement officers and it looked like they were firing at each other.

While the agents were shooting, a man was pumping gas just a few feet away and there were other people in the parking lot, Joseph said. Another five or six people were inside the store.

“I’m surprised nobody got hurt,” Joseph said.

The agents were assigned to a task force that investigates drug cases in Stephens, Habersham and Rabun Counties. Ayers caught their attention because he was with a woman who twice sold drugs to the officers, said Bankhead.

“What they saw was indicative of drug transaction,” Bankhead said. “They didn’t know the guy. They followed him to the convenience store and tried to arrest him.”

The woman’s name has not been released because she is still being questioned about the shooting. She is being held in the Stephens County Jail on drug charges.

Ayers family believes he was not involved in drugs and they don’t know his connection to the woman.

Carpenter said people often called the Shoal Creek Baptist Church for help.

“She was asking for cash and he brought her some cash to help her out,” Carpenter said. “Jonathan sought to do exactly what God wanted him to do.”

Before going into surgery, Carpenter said Ayers reassured his wife, 16-weeks pregnant with their first child, that he had done nothing wrong.

“He told Abby ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. I love you. Take care of yourself,’” Carpenter said. “I think he knew he was going to die. But I think he knows where he was going.”

From http://www.ajc.com/news/family-130662.html

City Homicide – proudly presented by Carlton Natural Blonde – what’s that taste in my mouth? And Jesus – all about life

The ABC reports…

“A new advertising campaign is unlikely to convert the non-believer, writes Dr Paul Harrison, a senior lecturer in consumer behaviour and advertising at the Deakin Business School.

News that Christian churches in Australia are about to start an advertising blitz to persuade people to bring Jesus into their lives, once again shows how naive and uninformed businesses, government, and people are generally when they believe that advertising has some magical power to persuade people to behave the way they want them to.

It seems that thousands of churches across 15 Christian denominations in NSW are behind a project that aims to promote the message that the teachings of Jesus are still relevant. The campaign, based around the slogan, “Jesus. All About Life” begins in three weeks. Unfortunately, those with faith have probably placed too much of it in the ability of an advertising campaign to convert non-believers, and even lapsed Christians.

Yes, advertising does have some influence over attitudes and behaviour, but the reality is that it can only really work as a “nudging” tool. In other words, an advertisement will incrementally move you toward a decision, but there are a whole bunch of other variables that will determine your final behaviour or decision. In reality, one-way advertising is a relatively weak motivator when it comes to consumer behaviour (although the ad agencies wouldn’t tell you that when you are about to give them $1 million).

It’s quite a romantic notion to think that advertising is powerful. It is a myth partly propagated by the advertising industry, and partly supported by our experience as consumers. We see a lot of ads, we know that businesses spend millions on it, so it must work… mustn’t it? We see hundreds, even thousands of advertisements every day, but when you think about it, what do we do? Mostly nothing in response.

Advertising works best amongst people who are predisposed to notice your ads. In other words, it is your loyal customers and current users who are most likely to notice your advertising, followed by people who have been primed to notice them.

For example, when are you most likely to notice advertisements for companies that sell car tyres?

When you have a flat tyre or need to replace your tyres, of course. You are primed to notice these advertisements, because you are cognitively predisposed to seek out information about that particular attitude object.

Who is most likely to notice, and be persuaded by a Christian advertisement, then?

The people who commissioned the advertising campaign; current, faithful, committed Christians, and maybe people who were already willing to be persuaded. It’s a simple proposition, but one that is often not stated – advertising works best amongst current users. It makes current users (who are satisfied with the product) feel good about themselves, and it has the potential to increase loyalty toward the product, but only amongst current users. So an expensive ad campaign is not going to do the trick.

Advertising is most affective when combined with a complete and thorough marketing mix, i.e., a product people “want”, a product that is easy to access, and something that requires little cost (including factors such as effort, and social and psychological risk).

If you ask me, I think the thousands of churches spending so much money on an advertising campaign like this are not really getting good value. They would be better off spending the money understanding why people are turning away from them, and then examining whether the church is able to respond to this.

But maybe I don’t have enough faith.

Dr Paul Harrison is senior lecturer in consumer behaviour and advertising at the Deakin Business School.”

From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/02/2674056.htm

 

Hill$ong’s Scipione shines – Part 2

The Sydney Star Observer reports…

“A year after this community came together in Harmony Park to demand action on homophobic violence in NSW, another gay couple has been savagely beaten and our state police force found lacking again.

The ambush-style attack on Aaron Wernecke and Greg Harland in Blacktown fits among the worst categories of crime. A metal pole is a potentially deadly weapon. A beer bottle can maim someone for life.
It’s only the attackers’ dumb luck that they didn’t kill Aaron. They showed no concern for his survival. They should be charged with attempted murder and this treated as a hate crime.

The very least citizens should be able to expect is, if they can identify the perpetrator of a crime, police will seek that person post haste.

The attacker whose identity was made known to police should’ve been cooling his heels in a cell the very night of the attack and the names of his accomplices demanded. Instead they’ve had three months to get their stories straight, and evidence left uncollected. It’s just not good enough.

Between them, Blacktown and Quakers Hill LACs span 25 postcodes, three police stations, and an area home to 100,000 people. Yet NSW Police have just one Gay aand Lesbian Liaison Officer to serve the thousands of GLBT residents and workers who live in the area or pass through it each day.
Despite hard work by Surry Hills LAC in restoring community confidence since last year, if police have a problem attracting gay recruits, they only have themselves to blame.

Just days before we broke this story, Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione touted the release of an official police Bible — with Old and New Testaments bound in cop blue and the NSW Police crest stamped on the cover.

In 2004 this same man as Deputy Commissioner attended a memorial service for the self-confessed pedophile and disgraced Assemblies of God pastor, Frank Houston, father of Hillsong’s Brian Houston.

Under Scipione, every police officer who graduates from the Goulburn Academy is offered a Bible.

Said Scipione, “I believe the police Bible will impact on generations of police officers to come… I would like to think an officer who receives one of these special police Bibles will one day sit in my seat.”

What message does that send to potential recruits from the GLBT community and other faiths about what the ‘right stuff’ for career advancement under this Commissioner might be?

We can be forgiven for feeling we’ve been failed yet again.”

From http://www.starobserver.com.au/soap-box/2009/09/01/enough-is-enough/15611

Brian Houston acknowledges ‘flaws’

Brian Houston twitters…

“It’s impt to realize you’re good, but not as good as ego suggests, & u have flaws, but not as bad as critics accuse!”

From http://twitter.com/BrianCHouston

Not all nutters drawn to Hill$ong are on staff

The Herald Sun reports…

“The double life of wannabe war hero Charles Gibbons continued to unravel yesterday after it was learned he had posed as a church chaplain.

Gibbons pretended to be on the staff of Sydney’s high-profile Hillsong Church until he was officially warned off by its elders.

He’d gone as far as using fake Hillsong letterheads, a church spokeswoman told the Herald Sun.

“Gibbons has never been on staff at Hillsong Church,” she said. “However, back in 2003 it was brought to the attention of the leadership that he was posing as a Hillside chaplain.

“We wrote a formal letter asking him to desist of these actions and the use of the Hillsong name for his own benefit.”

Doubts have also been raised about his account late last year of how he manually pulled a stranded car clear of a speeding train with just seconds to spare.

Gibbons, 60, claimed the vehicle was in front of him when it “stopped dead” on the railway line at the intersection of Carinish and Clayton roads, Clayton, on November 25.

He told the local newspaper the next thing he saw was the barriers descending.

Gibbons then ran to the car yelling at the driver to reverse but claimed the driver and his wife were Africans and could not understand English.

“In the end I opened his door, turned off the ignition and managed to pull the vehicle backwards,” said Gibbons, who has just one lung.

“The back of the car touched the boom gate just as the train went through – that’s how close it was.

“It wasn’t until after I actually left him that I started to shake and I realised how close to death this man was.”

But checks with the train service’s operator, Connex, reveal there is no report of such an incident.

Connex said the only reported incident in Clayton on that day was a pedestrian (officially described as a trespasser) trying to duck under the gates.

Connex said that was at 4.41pm. Gibbons claims his act of heroism was at 1pm. He also gave his age as 56.

Gibbons, who calls himself Colin, also claimed to work associates that his hero status was officially confirmed by the City of Monash – where he had worked for several months as a parking inspector – with a citation for bravery.

This was denied by the council yesterday.

Last week, the former parking inspector admitted to the Herald Sun that his claims over the past 20 years of being a Vietnam war veteran were bogus. He regularly marched in parades wearing the red beret of the Royal Australian Army Provost Corps and war service medals.

Gibbons yesterday declined to comment when contacted by the Herald Sun.”

From http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,26019160-662,00.html

Cop charged over church camp ‘exorcism’ – updated*

*The Adelaide Advertiser reports…

“A South Australian police officer who allegedly performed an exorcism on a teenager at a church camp faced court for the first time today.

Roger Kenneth Hugh Sketchley, who was suspended from duties as a senior constable when he was arrested, stood silent in the dock as his matter was called on.

The 28-year-old has been charged with false imprisonment and aggravated assault over the alleged incident which occurred on April 18 at a Lutheran youth camp at Tanunda.

Police will allege he tried to perform the ritual after a 15-year-old boy complained of stomach pains.

The alleged incident took place over 12 hours and police say the teenager was restrained by other adults.

Sketchley’s matter was called on in the Adelaide Magistrates Court without a prosecutor, who the court heard was expected to be from the SA Police professional conduct section.

Prosecutor James Slocombe, who represented the DPP for the three other men charged over the same alleged incident, told the packed court he would advise police of the date.

“The professional conduct section of SA Police are prosecuting this matter but they are not in attendance today,” Mr Slocombe said.

Vocal supporters from the rear of the court said someone was outside to prosecute but had “lost the file”.

Magistrate Grantley Harris asked the gallery be quiet “to allow the gentleman at the bar table to speak rather than a chorus in the background”.

Three other men arrested over the same incident also appeared in court for the first time today charged with false imprisonment and aggravated assault.

Kym Thomas Bisset, 24, of Bower and Stuart David Reimann, 22, of Hillcrest stood silently in the dock together as they were remanded off to the same date as Sketchley.

Another man, Michael John Schultz, 46, of Scott Creek, appeared separately on the same charges.

None of the men would comment outside court and all four were remanded to appear in court again next week for committal.”

From http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26016659-2682,00.html

Comments are disabled for now for legal reasons.

Love-offering circuit worker Alejandro Arias and the gold dust hoax at Curtin Uni

(visiting) Pastor Alejandro Arias

Zion Praise Church

Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia

(From 4:12 in video) “…..Well, we have had a wonderful time, so far, so good.

And it’s been awesome. Yesterday, we have gold dust. And I think what we have had ..is a sign of revival. This is indicating us that God …God is ready to bring revival upon the land.

In many of the revivals of history, in many revivals like the Toronto Revival, the Pensacola Revival, this sign of gold dust is being seen all over the world, and is the sign that God brings revival…that God is already, that God is ready to bring revival to the land. That God is ready to bring His glory to the land. That God is ready to inhabitate, Oh Hallelujah, I like this, God is ready to abide within us…God is ready to bring his (inaudible) to Earth…and I believe God is ready to bring His glory and His kingdom upon Perth…”

———-

“Alejandro Arias International Ministries (AAIM)

Air/Ground Transportation/Hotel/Meals/Meeting Tapes Policy & Agreement

Rev. 02/07/09 Page 1 of 2

Air Transportation:

AAIM Ministries requires one airline ticket for Pastor Alejandro for domestic trips within the USA or Australia. However, this policy might change for international trips. Please talk to an AAIM representative to see if Pastor Alejandro will be travelling with someone else of his team.

AAIM Ministry would like to ask you to make the reservation with any of the following airlines: American Airlines, Delta Airlines or United. The reason is because Pastor Arias accumulates miles with any of these companies. If you find an inexpensive itinerary with another airline carrier please call us or let us know, and we will work it out. Please do remember that this policy applies only for trips within the USA. If you’re in Australia or any other country overseas, please arrange details with our local coordinator in the area, or call us 305-742-4009, and we will do our best to find an affordable airline fare.

We will send you the flight intinerary(s) and invoice(s) as soon as the ticket(s) are booked, or if you feel comfortable booking the tickets just contact AAIM representative to see if the flight  itinerary it’s suitable for the day and time Alejandro will be going to your church.

Hotel accommodations:

We do require that hotel room accommodations be covered (excluding any personal room charges). Pastor Alejandro and a male travel companion share a non-smoking room with two beds. Please do not book a room with a single bed unless you know that he is travelling alone. Please ask the AAIM Office if there will be a companion travelling with him.

On international intineraries, we do require that Pastor Arias  and a companion be accommodated in a hotel room with either two double beds or two queen beds and that those expenses (aside from personal)  be covered.

Since you are familiar with the geographical area, please make hotel accommodations accordingly.

It is necessary for the accommodations to provide a peaceful atmosphere conducive to study and with internet connection.

If you have another hosting option please don’t hesitate on contacting us, and we will do our best to work it out, because it’s our best intention to bless the Body of Christ. 

When these arrangements have been made please contact our office with the following information:

Hotel name

Address of the hotel

Phone number of the hotel

Website of the hotel

 

Meals

We require that the host provide all meals for Alejandro and his travel companion (if applicable)

At times, Alejandro may be fasting and may not require a meal or meals.

 

Honorarium

AAIM does not require a set honorarium for Alejandro to speak, however we do request that you take a Special love offering to be given specifically to AAIM in order to meet the ministry expenses.

Please make all checks payable in U.S. funds to Alpha and Omega Ministries.

Alejandro Arias International Ministries is currently not set up as a tax-exempt corporation; therefore please issue a 1099 at the end of the year if your ministry resides in the United States.

Meeting Tapes:

We maintain an audio-video library of all Alejandro’s messages. Therefore we ask that immediately following the completion of a speaking engagement, a master copy of all tapes/videos/CDs/& DVD’s be provided to Alejandro Arias or mailed to: 173 North Trigg Ave, Gallatin TN, 37066.

We thank you for having the interest of inviting Pastor Alejandro to come and speak at your church, we know it’s going to be a great blessing for your ministry and specially for the youth, and people of all ages.

If you would like to read some endorsements that other Pastors have written about Pastor Arias, please click here .. Recommendations link/

If you have any other question please don’t hesitate on contacting us, or if you like you can email your questions to invitations@pastoralejandro.org

May the Lord bless you and your ministry, we hope to hear from you soon, thanks and blessings.”

From http://www.pastoralejandro.org/English/Ministry_Policy_Agreement.pdf

He who pays the Piper calls the tune

The Christian Post reports…

(Question to John Piper) …”I believe my husband loves the Lord, but he has accepted the prosperity gospel. Can a true believer be fooled into believing these doctrines?

(Piper) …Well I think that answer is clearly yes. A true believer can be fooled into believing unbelievable-unbelievable-mistakes, doctrinally and ethically.

If that weren’t true we would all be perfect, wouldn’t we? It just seems like, yes, we’re all mistaken on numerous things.

So I guess the question is, “Is it serious enough so that if you embrace it you couldn’t be a believer?” And I think the answer to that is no.

There are so many people that are being badly taught on these things. And a verse here or a verse there is brought in to say, “Clearly from 3 John he prays toward our prosperity! He wants us to prosper!”

People hear that and then the preacher takes it way beyond, saying that prosperity means you’re going to have a job. “It’ll be a six-figure job and you’ll wear a big gold watch like mine and drive a big, fancy, expensive car like mine. And you’ll live on the beach like I do and maybe someday have your own jet like I do.”

People are taken there. They just see the steps going there and not everybody has a critical mind to say, “That’s a non sequitur. That doesn’t follow.” They just go from the biblical verse that looked pretty clear-God likes us to have our diseases healed and have a job and keep food on our table-and go from there to jet set.

And so, since we can be taken astray like that, I think a genuine believer is just blind at that point.

And we need to teach. Because it’s amazing how many people, when they hear solid teaching, wake up! They don’t say, “I just got saved!” They say, “I knew deep down something was wrong. I just couldn’t articulate it. It just didn’t feel right.” I was just reading an online exposé-type thing of a woman who narrated her life in and out of that kind of thing.

So, yes, I think God is so merciful to us in our bad ideas about him. And I think, rather than deciding who is a Christian and who is not in regard to the prosperity gospel, we should just be teaching as much truth as we can.”

From http://www.christianpost.com/article/20090826/can-a-true-believer-be-fooled-into-believing-the-prosperity-gospel/index.html

Hill$ong’s Scipione shines

The Sydney Morning Herald reports…

“Given the chequered history of the NSW Police Force, some might argue it is a move that is long overdue: for the first time NSW police are to get their own custom-designed Bible.

The new Bibles are coloured ”police blue” and bear the police crest on the cover. Inside, apart from the Old and New Testaments, they contain the police prayer and images of police on the beat.

They also feature ‘’situational” chapters with specific readings on grief, ethics, integrity, leadership, sin and, perhaps less practically for police, forgiveness.

The Bible Society of NSW has provided 2400 of the good books, which are being distributed among the force’s 107 chaplains for use in the course of their duties including pastoral care of officers.

The NSW Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, who is a committed Christian, accepted the Bibles at a ceremony at police headquarters two weeks ago.

Mr Scipione was unavailable for comment yesterday, but recently told a Christian website: ”Every officer who graduates from the academy in Goulburn is offered a Bible and I would like to think an officer who receives one of these special police Bibles will one day sit in my seat. The police Bibles are sure to outlive the current administration.”

A spokesman for Mr Scipione said the Bibles were provided by the Bible Society of NSW at no cost to the taxpayer.

The NSW police Bible is the initiative of senior state police chaplain the Reverend Russel Avery, who has a background in the defence forces, which also have their own Bible.

”Our officers have a great deal of respect for our chaplains, and what better way to build on that relationship than to share the gospel?” Mr Scipione told the website.”

From http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-force-gets-its-own-good-book-to-reckon-with-20090831-f5cs.html

Oh darling, oh sweetie, hurry up or mummykins will be late for church

The Virginian-Pilot reports…

“My hair had been falling out and my spirit was down as I dealt with a wrenching, life-changing event. Still, I was faithfully attending worship services. One evening, an elder came to me to discuss his disdain of my newly braided upsweep. The style was not embellished in any way. It was just my modest attempt to give my tresses a break and remain looking like I still had it together.

He asked me to read 1 Peter 3:3-4:

And do not let your adornment be that of the external braiding of the hair and of the putting on of gold ornaments or the wearing of outer garments, but let it be the secret person of the heart in the incorruptible apparel of the quiet and mild spirit, which is of great value in the eyes of God.

He then reread the passage about braiding. I wanted to snatch the Bible out of his hand because of the misapplication for his personal taste. Instead, I told him that if he took that scripture so literally, he should also take off his gold watch.

I was livid and in a spiritual tailspin. That was 14 years ago.

Now comes Peggy Scott of Franklin.

A person would have every reason not to suspect she’s a minister and conversely, every reason to accept that she is one.

Scott, on a Friday a couple of weeks ago, was immaculately primped in a goldenrod three-piece linen pantsuit with cutout detail on the jacket. Her jewelry – gold hoop earrings, a gold chain-link necklace and a birthstone band worn on the ring finger of her left hand – was sparse but striking. Her golden brown metallic lipstick radiated from a face framed by close-cropped honey brown locks in an asymmetrical cut, spiced with a fall skimming her right eye. Coral-colored polish adorned her fingernails, and a neat French manicure peeked from her dainty, medium-heel slides.

She was fierce, authentic and classy.

“I’m somewhat of a maverick. I want to maintain my personal style but maintain my identity with Christ,” Scott said.

“God is a god of beauty,” she said, “and we can look at the beauty within creation and then we can appreciate the uniqueness that each individual has.”

Such wisdom comes from a woman who’s blazed a path of inspiration for decades.

Scott is the founding senior pastor of Fellowship Around the Word Church in Franklin and the president of Peggy Scott Ministries. She was the subject of the June cover story for Coverings, a magazine that melds faith and fashion, and she does not cloak her femininity.

“I wear robes… but I’m female and I’m not trying to preach as a man,” she said.

It’s about balance, the Norfolk State and Temple University graduate said. “I love the Lord first, and my family. I love to shop, and I love sports.”

Paulette Black, the magazine’s founder and editor, said Scott is Coverings personified.

“I chose Peggy because she has a very distinctive style,” Black said. “She’s mastered ‘retro’ and ‘contemporary’ and found the perfect balance to make her own signature style, which I like to call ‘retro-temporary.’ Her look is her own and no one else’s, and she carries that into her ministry…. Her outfit makes a complete statement from head to toe, and that’s what real fashion is.”

Coverings hit the market in February and is based out of St. Louis, San Antonio and Los Angeles. The magazine is published monthly and is distributed free through churches and select women’s conferences. Subscriptions are available.

“I came up with the name Coverings because it covers everything from hair to pedicures to the heart,” said Black, who spoke to me by phone.

The multicultural magazine spotlights Christian women trailblazers from various backgrounds. The print version largely reflects baby-boomer women. “They’re settled, but no one has ever asked them about fashion,” Black said.

The mag is packed with style and beauty trends. The online version is decidedly hip, practical and inspirational, with blogs on everything from the pitfalls of being a wannabe to nailing the Christian rocker look to being a fashionable mom. “We’re all given a God-given style,” Black said.

Black has a background in fashion illustration and fashion advertising. She wanted her work in fashion to be more uplifting, and she toyed with the idea of a faith-focused fashion publication for more than two decades.

“This is not something I just jumped up and did. I am the prime person for this magazine,” she said. “Church and fashion – I love both.”

Black’s style is edgy. She loves her hair wild and always has to have lipstick. An outreach of her company involves advising women and pastors on acceptance of individuality.

But she’s careful not to step on others’ beliefs, especially when attending houses of worship that have more conservative views.

“I don’t flaunt it if I know it’s something extremely offensive” to that faith, Black said. “I am not a slave to being free. Salvation is the

No. 1 thing.

“I want women to relax. Fashion is supposed to be fun.”

The latter assertion made me reflect yet again on those women at the Yearn for Zion polygamist ranch in Texas where more than 400 kids had been removed last year following allegations of underage marriage.

It’s baffling and saddening every time I see images of those women and girls uniformly dressed in puffy long dresses and their hair styled in that waved puff on the top and long ponytail. Where’s the individual expression, the celebration of uniqueness?

When the women were allowed to speak to Oprah Winfrey earlier this year, the talk-show hostess asked them about those dresses and the hairstyle. The women said they took great pains to be different, whether it was in the colors of the dresses (all in a chaste, pastel palette) or small differences in the dresses’ detailing.

In some small way, they’d found a way to assert some creativity, they felt.

Ditto for the burqa-covered woman my husband and I observed at a mall. Her feet were exposed in strappy sandals and her toes were polished.

Black classified the aforementioned expressions as “the feminine factor.” “No matter what we’ve been given to work with, we find something.”

Scott agreed.

“We’re beautiful and we’re wonderfully made,” she said. “If we see ourselves the way God sees us, then we can love God, ourselves and others. And I don’t think that’s misplaced affection but an extension of how God made us and the aesthetic.

“I refuse to let the slanting of the opinions of a few cause us to diminish or to play down who we are.”

Amen. And it’s time for me to get my braids back, too.”

From http://hamptonroads.com/2009/08/fashion-and-faith-can-go-hand-hand

I am man, but I am woman

The Portland Tribune reports…

“The Rev. David Weekley grows uncomfortable in his chair.

As soon as he raises the topic of gay rights to his conservative clergyman friend one day at lunch, he knows it’s a mistake.

He knows that the United Methodist Church long ago retained the right to turn away openly gay clergy members.

So Weekley listens to his friend espouse the opinion of the church, and buries his secret deeper. No one can ever find out that Weekley, a married father of five in Southeast Portland and a Methodist clergyman of 27 years, was born female.

Until now, there has been just one openly transgender Methodist clergyman in the U.S. to retain his ordination (That man, Drew Phoenix, 50, had his ordination challenged by members of the church after coming out publicly in 2007 to his congregation in St. John’s of Baltimore United Methodist Church in Maryland.)

Today, Sunday, Aug. 30, Weekley – who leads the congregation at the Epworth United Methodist Church in the Sunnyside neighborhood in inner Southeast Portland – became the second.

Just months after telling his own children that he was not their biological father, Weekley, who is in his late-50s, came out to his congregation of 221 members.

Standing behind his pulpit, Weekley began his usual worship service. About halfway through, he paused to share a personal message he called “My Book Report.”

He told them that in 1984, just nine years after undergoing extensive sex-reassignment surgeries, he was ordained by the Methodist Church without telling anyone of his original gender at birth.

Following his story, the congregation, who had remained silent throughout his talk, broke into thunderous applause. Church members then proclaimed their support for their pastor.

“It doesn’t change him; he’s still Reverend David, and that’s what counts,” says congregation member Robbie Tsuboi, who has been attending Epworth since 1964.

“I think it was a really, really positive reaction. From what I understand, it was 100 percent support within the church.”

Given the church’s stance on gay rights and its previous reaction to Phoenix’s revelation, Weekley hadn’t known what to expect. According to the Methodist “Book of Discipline,” performing a same-sex wedding, even in a state where it is legal, is an offense that could lead to discipline from Methodist church leaders.

Besides opposing the ordination of gay clergy, the Methodist church also will withhold church membership from anyone who is openly gay.

That’s why Weekley’s action is gaining national attention, including support from the one person who preceded him down this road.

“I’m very happy that he’s going through with this” Phoenix says. “It takes a lot of courage to do what David’s doing.”

Inspired by the past

Weekley’s original plan was to keep quiet throughout his career, waiting until retirement to finally come out. But a trip he took with church members in June 2008 changed his mind.

Weekley joined members of his congregation, which is 95 percent Japanese-American, on a pilgrimage to the remnants of a World War II internment camp for Japanese-Americans in Minidoka, Idaho, just outside of Twin Falls.

The experience touched him deeply. He had faith that a congregation like his own, many of them having experienced prejudice and alienation would be a safe place to come out, he says.

He was right.

“We at Epworth support him,” says congregation member Kazuko Hara, who has been attending Epworth’s services for more than 50 years. “I am supportive of him and will stand by him.”

“I think that they’re looking at his heart,” adds Kaau Ahina, who has been attending Epworth for three years. “They love him for who he is, and (his wife) Deborah.”

Following Sunday morning’s service, Weekley answered questions from the congregation about his decision and his life. One member asked: Was he relieved to have revealed the truth about his life? Weekley exhaled. “Extremely,” he answered.

“Twenty-seven years is a long time,” he says. “I have a lot to say and now I can finally say it.”

Despite anticipating that some of his congregation would leave the church, Weekley actually heard that some members plan to become more involved following his disclosure on Sunday.

“I don’t think I anticipated that so much,” he says smiling.

Weekley is accustomed to being a minority. In fact, he is a minority of a minority, serving as the second-ever Caucasian pastor at Epworth, a church first established in Portland’s old Japantown (today’s Old Town/Chinatown) in 1893, which later moved to Southeast Portland.

Although Weekley himself is not Japanese-American, many of his congregation members speak Japanese and offered mottos as themes for the pilgrimage to the internment camp.

They were: “Gambate,” meaning “Go for it;” “Shigatanai,” meaning “It cannot be helped;” and “Gaman,” meaning “Bearing the unbearable with dignity and grace, creating beauty from hardship.”

This motivation, along with the newfound knowledge that he wasn’t the only transgender clergyman in the world, inspired him to share the truth.

“I knew there were a few transgender people on the planet, but I didn’t think it was a large population,” he says. “It’s not something that you share. You don’t say, ‘by the way, were you born that way?’ It just doesn’t come up.”

In June, Weekley attended a health conference in Philadelphia for transgender people, where he met with more than 40 other religious leaders like himself.

“Jewish, Shinto, Pagan – every faith had at least one transgender leader there and (we) started a trans-religious network,” he says.

He and Deborah returned home ready to come out with the truth, they say.

“He’s not (been) happy,” says Deborah, 60, who works as a massage therapist. The two have been married for 13 years. “He’s becoming more agitated as the years are passing in hiding. He’s not thriving. I want him to thrive.”

Childhood as a girl

Born in Cleveland as a girl, Weekley always knew he was different.

“I always saw myself as a little boy,” he recalls. “My best friend was Gary. I liked sports. At a very young age, it didn’t seem like it was any problem.”

Going to school was more troublesome, he says.

“The teachers didn’t like me – each year that got worse,” he says.

From being blamed by teachers for things she didn’t do, to being slapped across the face by her fourth-grade teacher, Weekley says he didn’t feel he received any adult support until 10th grade, after being referred to a school psychologist.

“I really wanted to drop out of school,” he says. “It was a horrible time. I didn’t fit in, I didn’t look like a girl, I was different.”

As a young teenager, Weekly as a girl joined the marching band because she was comfortable in the unisex uniforms. At home, her parents just thought she dressed like a hippie.

His mother was a Catholic homemaker and his father worked in management and didn’t attend church. The two parents, political opposites, had one other son.

Things changed when Weekley was about 14, he remembers. While at a friend’s house, she overheard her friend’s mom talking on the phone to a neighbor about Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known transgender woman to undergo reassignment surgery in Sweden.

“I started listening and I got really excited,” he says. “After that day I knew what I would do: I would start saving my money and go to Sweden. That was the plan.”

Transitioning to a new life

When a family friend referred her to a doctor, she learned that she wouldn’t have to go as far as Sweden.

At that time, only two clinics existed in the U.S. that were capable of performing sex-reassignment surgery. One happened to be in Cleveland.

“It was a miracle,” he remembers thinking.

Before she could go under the knife, however, she had to endure a six-month process required by the clinic, which included thorough medical and psychological tests and interviews.

She eventually began hormone therapy.

“I went home and popped one and stood in front of the mirror and waited,” he says.

After three months and not much progress, she began non-reversible injections.

Before the surgeries, Weekley had to hire an attorney and go through the lengthy process of changing all of his legal documents.

The courts, he says, were “horribly prejudicial,” and “didn’t easily change the documents.”

The first surgery took place in August 1974, when he stayed in the hospital for three weeks after receiving a phalloplasty – cosmetic surgery of the penis. The second surgery took place the following December for chest surgery, and Weekley went back once more for additional treatment in June 1975.

While he says his family visited him in the hospital for just one of the surgeries, he kept a strong relationship with his grandfather. “(He) taught me how to tie a tie,” he says.

His insurance paid for all of the surgeries, but today most insurance plans wouldn’t cover them because gender reassignment is not considered a “life threatening” condition, Weekley says. “They have no idea how wrong they are,” he says.

For his new name, Weekley chose David, meaning “Beloved of God.”

Adulthood as a man

After his sex-change operations, Weekley studied psychology at Boston University and, while in graduate school at Miami University of Ohio, began to feel drawn to the church.

Weekley had previously stayed away from church due to the hateful things he had heard regarding homosexuals and other minorities. However, after feeling a connection to the United Methodist Church, he joined.

That connection, among other reasons, led him to attend seminary school at Boston University School of Theology. He earned a Master of Divinity Degree in philosophy, theology, and ethics.

This was something he never thought he would do, despite being passionate for preaching at a young age.

“I used to preach to my stuffed animals and I don’t know why,” he says. “My growing up was so horrific that I couldn’t speak in public.”

However, once he entered the Methodist church, he reentered the closet.

“One of the greatest ironies and pains is that the church is the place I’ve had to go back in the closet,” he says. “I’ve stood with colleagues who have said horrific things to me, and they don’t even know it.”

Weekley moved to Portland in 1993 to serve a local church, eventually ending up at Epworth United Methodist.

Gay rights within the Methodist church are undoubtedly political, he says. While the church has its own official stand, progressive members are tolerant toward gay rights, which clashes with the conservatives’ beliefs.

The majority of Methodists in the U.S. reside in the Bible Belt and are conservative, which enabled delegates at the 2008 general conference to pass a new rule stating that no United Methodist funds could be used to educate people on gay and lesbian issues.

At the last general conference, there was talk of the church formally splitting.

“Over the years it’s gotten less vociferous, but there is still no resolution,” Weekley says.

Some progress has been made at the smaller, localized annual conferences.

Weekley’s progressive Oregon-Idaho conference recently had the highest percentage of votes for an “All means all” declaration, which would amend the church’s bylaws to include everyone in the church.

The declaration was narrowly defeated nationally, however, showing that, “the conservatives have enough people and power to always defeat the rest of the denomination,” he says.

Weekley has advocated for inclusivity, not just to national audiences but also to much smaller ones, serving as dean of a summer church camp this year at Epworth.

Though the camp focused mainly on the civil rights movement, a portion focused on breaking traditional sex roles and accepting different kinds of families.

One parent withdrew children from the camp after learning of its liberal content.

“Can girls play baseball? Can boys play with dolls? Of course you can,” Weekley says. “And that was apparently enough for this person to decide not to bring their kids.”

Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best

Despite keeping his secret for the past 27 years, Weekley has led a “blessed” life, he says. “God got me through.”

He has been married twice, and his children and current wife Deborah provide a steady stream of support. The couple have five children (two from a previous marriage) ranging in age from 21 to 39, as well as six grandchildren.

Weekley is up for a national award at this year’s Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation, (a movement to increase the awareness of issues in the gay community and promote inclusivity in the church) and is writing a book about his coming-out experience.

The book’s working title is “In From the Wilderness: The Practice of Gaman.”

He shared his first manuscript with his congregation on Sunday as well. It features his experience at Minidoka and an annotated bibliography of resources for others out there in similar situations.

However, now that he has come out publicly, Weekley and his wife are preparing for any potential backlash. In fact, that’s why he’s asked that his birth name not be published – for fear that hate groups would use it as negative propaganda.

They have taken some necessary precautions in case of any trouble that could arise from aggressive prejudice.

“Trust God, but tie your camel,” Weekley says, quoting a Middle Eastern proverb.

Phoenix, the only other openly transgender clergy person in the U.S., had charges filed against him from clergy in his conference and was brought before the Judicial Council (the United Methodist Church’s equivalent of the Supreme Court).

The charges to have him removed from the church proved to be unfounded and Phoenix was able to retain his ordination. He is working in Anchorage, Alaska, in environmental health and justice and calling on Congress to pass legislation ending the discrimination he endured.

While the Book of Discipline forbids gays from joining the church, nothing explicitly turns away transgender people, which protects Phoenix and Weekley.

However, conservative Methodists have been battling the “All Means All” declaration, working to exclude transgender people.

Both Phoenix and Weekley could potentially face having their credentials taken away if legislation is passed at the next general conference (which takes place every four years) in 2012 banning transgender people.

“There’s always that possibility – just like there was in 2008,” Phoenix says.

Although Greg Nelson, director of communications for the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference, thinks that it’s likely similar legislation will be brought up again soon, he believes that, “it’s important that this came out before the conference in 2012.

While Weekley and his wife are preparing for the worst, they are optimistic about the future of the church.

Weekley says that he has, for the past 27 years, thought about switching to a church that is more accepting of his choices, but ultimately decided to stay loyal.

“There have been many times I’ve thought about walking away and considering a different denomination,” he says, “but my heart has always caused me to remain in the hope of effecting change.”

He remains hopeful that the Methodist church can one day retain the same acceptance toward gay rights and perhaps pass legislation similar to the Episcopal Church, which recently adopted protections for gays and transgender people.

“This really puts it all on the line,” Weekley says of his decision to share his news with his congregation and the world. “I’m not leaving, I’m just coming out. I’m not walking away, but I’m not staying quiet and hidden anymore.”

From http://www.beavertonvalleytimes.com/news/story.php?story_id=125167426609679800

Faith healers and the real world

The St. Petersburg Times reports…

“The 78-year-old faith healer prays every day for his wife’s recovery from Alzheimer’s. Still, he and Patricia, 81, have living wills. If she stops breathing — if that’s how God wants it — he won’t try to interfere.

He’d want her to do the same for him.

“Keep me alive long enough for my friends to pray for me,” he says, smiling.

“And if that don’t work, I’m out of here.”

Faith healers believe God can be induced by prayer to make the lame walk and the blind see. But they have parents and spouses and children who die, just like everyone, and they have to deal with the gritty practicalities. They accept that prayer has never interrupted life’s ceaseless cycle.

• • •

Bruce Watters looks more ramrod Presbyterian than faith healer. In fact, he once ran a Presbyterian church part-time. His day job is diamonds and platinum. Bruce Watters Jewelers on Beach Drive NE goes back in the family 104 years. Watters has those old-money, patrician looks. He lunches at the Yacht Club. He is a pillar of the community who takes credit for ridding the town of the infamous green benches that made St. Petersburg look old.

He also is worldly and reflective. He repents past acquaintances with Chivas Regal and “wild women.” He has sailed across the Gulf of Mexico 34 times, and when he tells sailing stories he allows himself a 20 percent B.S. factor because of his age.

Since Watters was saved, he has hosted years of prayer meetings and Suppers with the Holy Spirit in his living room, in little restaurants and at the Yacht Club. During a terrible drought in 2000, he organized a home prayer meeting for rain, and made headlines when it poured buckets.

He dislikes the term faith healer, and believes only God can heal. But he has invested every ounce of spiritual passion he has in the Bible and in Mark 16:17-18: “. . . They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”

Some of those he laid his hands on have stood up and proclaimed themselves cured. Others have died.

For three years, Watters has prayed over Patricia, his wife of 36 years, not so many years ago a model, now an invalid.

She has lost the memory of her children.

• • •

Ulysses Burden Jr. pastors at the Power for Living Ministry on Fifth Avenue N. It’s a humble chapel where the sick often come to be healed by prayer. Burden keeps a framed photograph of Watters in the church vestibule.

He remembers coming to Watters’ house the first time in 2003 for a prayer meeting. Watters was with a sick man, seated in the kitchen. He heard Watters command the ailing man, “Stand up in the name of Jesus!”

Burden was impressed. “I thought, ‘Man, I like this. That’s a man of faith.’ “

Burden learned that Bruce and Patricia Watters had traveled for almost 10 years on weekends with televangelist/faith healer Benny Hinn. Watters had been in charge of the wheelchair section. His job was to cull from the vast clutter of wheelchairs a few to come on stage with Hinn. It wasn’t easy. People often jumped out of their wheelchairs even before the service started.

When the Watterses gave up the weekend travel marathons, they started the prayer meetings in St. Petersburg. Burden began coming, partly hoping the prayer could help his wife, Annette, with her lupus.

Burden hasn’t been over to the house since Patricia got sick and the prayer meetings dwindled. Watters’ struggles at home affect him personally. Burden knows firsthand what they’re about.

At his chapel, Burden brought out a photograph of a young woman, only just displayed at a funeral service. “My sister,” he says. “Her name was Desiree Ann Graham. She would have been 49 tomorrow.” She died on July 21. She had been sick a long time and had refused dialysis for kidney failure. She died despite all the prayers that came out of the Power for Living chapel.

“We believe in divine healing,” Burden says, “but we know God has to have his way.”

• • •

Ed Morehead knew Bruce Watters from when he used to work on cars. He’s had six heart attacks, and doesn’t do mechanic work anymore.

He met Watters when he’d had four heart attacks and a stroke. He got invited over and could feel prayer in his bones, he could “feel it going down.”

Morehead often testifies to a near-death experience he had when he was young. He was presumed drowned in a barge accident in Fort Lauderdale. After three hours, he was found floating near the barge. The stunned superintendent cried out, “Here’s Eddie!”

Morehead tells the story often. He says he saw a bright light down below and swam toward it, two fish on either side. The light led him to the surface.

He also tells a story with a very different outcome. His elderly father was attached to a ventilator in his last days. Doctors asked the three Morehead brothers what they wanted for their father.

Ed Morehead asked, “Is there any chance he’ll survive?”

The doctor said no. His father was vegetative. The brothers asked the doctor to disconnect the ventilator. After 15 minutes, their father passed away.

“People asked us, ‘Who made you God?’

“I said, ‘God had already spoken.’ “

• • •

The Watters home is quiet on a Sunday afternoon. Patricia is sleeping. Bruce Watters sits among the ceramic angels that populate his living room. Angels repose everywhere. There are also Christmas decorations, a reminder of what an Alzheimer’s home is like. Watters simply hasn’t had the energy to put them away.

The angels still have meaning. Nothing in the past three years has shaken that. “I have seen too many miracles,” he says.

Watters has stood over hospital beds and watched people die. But he talks again and again about those people leaping up in Benny Hinn’s wheelchair section. He once saw a young man ride in on a hospital gurney. The man had what looked like cerebral palsy, but Watters saw him throw his feet on the floor, stand up and cry out, “I want to ride a bicycle.” Watters got a bike brought over from Kmart.

It’s just not happening for Patricia.

He and Patricia were offered a trial drug that might have arrested the progress of her Alzheimer’s.

They asked if it would reverse the dementia.

No, it would not.

They refused the drug.

“We don’t want to leave her as she is.”

Once every two months, he flies out to San Diego to participate in a symposium of Alzheimer’s caregivers. He’s one of 50, caregivers of all ages, who share their experiences and their desperation.

“I’m at work most of the day, but there are caregivers who stay home 24/7. They come pretty close to doing terrible things. The worst I’ve heard is putting a pillow over someone’s head.”

At the end of two years, the caregivers in the symposium hope to publish a survival manual for other caregivers.

That is now Bruce Watters’ healing ministry.”

From http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/jeweler-bruce-watters-does-gods-work-as-a-faith-healer-even-if-not-all-are/1031929

Phillip Garrido ‘Voices Revealed’

The Guardian reports…

“The convicted sex offender accused of kidnapping an 11-year-old girl and keeping her locked up in an elaborate hidden prison in his backyard in California for 18 years was convinced he could communicate telepathically and wanted to set up his own ministry of God, it has emerged following the victim’s dramatic release this week.

The extent of Phillip Garrido’s messianic beliefs emerged as his kidnap victim, Jaycee Lee Dugard, was being reunited in a motel with her mother Terry Probyn. She had not been seen since she was snatched on her way to school on 10 June 1991.

Police believe that she was taken by Garrido and his wife Nancy from her home in South Lake Tahoe directly to their house in Antioch, about 170 miles away, where she was kept captive, raped and forced to have two children by him, now aged 11 and 15.

Dugard’s mother Terry Probyn rushed from her home in southern California after she was told that her missing child had finally been found. According to Dugard’s stepfather, Carl Probyn, she was struck by how little her daughter, now aged 29, had changed. “She looks very young, she looks very healthy. She told me that [she] feels really guilty for bonding with this guy. She has a real guilt trip,” Probyn said.

For Probyn, the discovery has a particular poignancy as he was initially considered a suspect for the disappearance. He recalled today how he had watched his stepdaughter walk to the bus stop on the morning of the kidnap.

“A car came down and circled real slow and went back up the hill. Once it got next to her it cut her off and as soon as I saw the door fly open I jumped on my mountain bike. I realised I couldn’t get to her in time. I went down to my neighbour and yelled ‘91′ but they got away.”

Garrido, 58, who has been charged with a range of kidnapping and sex offences and is being held on $1m bail, has given telling insights into his extreme religious beliefs. In an interview with a local radio station, KCRA-TV, from his prison cell he admitted “it’s a disgusting thing what took place with me in the beginning”.

But he then goes on to insist that “I completely turned my life around. Wait ’til you hear the story of what took place at this house, you are going to be absolutely impressed.”

Though Garrido refused to discuss the kidnapping, saying he wanted to talk to a lawyer first, he did refer to Dugard’s two children “that we had together”, and implied that he is convinced that shares his views. “You are going to hear the most powerful story from the victim.”

He also insisted he had not abused his two daughters, whom he kept captive along with their mother their entire lives, never permitting them to see a doctor or to go to school. “They slept in my arms every single night from birth. I never touched them,” he said, crying.

Garrido’s radio testimony suggests that he dates his own religious conversion to the birth of the children. From then on, he said, “everything turned around”.

That dovetails with a blogpost written by Garrido in which he says “I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows.”

The first of his two children was born 15 years ago, having been conceived when Dugard was just 13.

Garrido has a company registered to his home address called Gods Desire, and kept a blog called Voices Revealed. He uses the web name of “The man who spoke with his mind” – an apparent reference to his conviction that he could speak telepathically through God-given powers.

Ralph Hernandez, a private investigator from Antioch, was employed last year by Garrido to help him market a new device that Garrido claimed to have invented. The device was a telepathy machine – Garrido claimed that anyone who wore the headphones-like contraption could hear him speak even when he remained silent.

Hernandez said that he visited the Garrido home where, unbeknownst to him, the two girls were imprisoned. “I sat in his living room. It seemed a typical ranch-style house, nothing unusual for that neighbourhood. I’m a retired police officer so if there had been something glaring I would have picked it up.”

While he was there, Garrido’s wife Nancy came into the room, as did a blonde aged 15 to 20 who Garrido said was his daughter or daughter’s friend.

Garrido himself came across as an intelligent man with deep religious convictions. “He wanted to start a church or ministry and to distribute his telepathy device to the public. He was very enthusiastic about it.”

It was Garrido’s religious commitments that eventually trapped him. He was handing out evangelical leaflets on Tuesday on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, accompanied by his two daughters, when college police grew suspicious.

A background check revealed that he had a record as a sex offender – he spent 11 years in jail and was on life parole for the 1976 kidnapping and rape of a woman who came, like Dugard, from Lake Tahoe. Garrido was called in for questioning the next day, and brought with him his wife, Dugard (whom he gave the name Allissa), and the two girls.

Under probing, both Garrido and Dugard are reported to have separately confirmed the kidnapping, providing details which only they could know. A DNA test is being carried out to confirm Dugard’s identity.

Questions are now being asked about how the parole service could have missed the signs for so long. The kidnapper was forced to wear a GPS tag and was liable to regular parole visits, but it appears the compound at the back of his property was never searched.

Fred Kollar, the police chief in charge of the investigation, said that the parole agent attached to Garrido had never seen nor the children. “Unusual as that may sound, having been there it’s very conceivable the way the house is set up.”

Kollar described a sophisticated series of tents and cabins in the backyard that were screened from view all around and only accessible through a small tarp.

But neighbours expressed their anger. Diane Doty who lives next door told a local TV station that she often heard children playing in the backyard. “I asked my husband, ‘Why is he living in tents?”‘ she said. “And he said, ‘Maybe that is how they like to live.”‘

Another neighbour claimed to have informed the authorities about sightings of children a couple of years ago, but that even then no thorough search had followed.

Dugard and her two daughters are said to be physically fine. Kollar said that she “was in good health, but living in a backyard for the past 18 years does take its toll.”

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/28/jaycee-dugard-kidnap-garrido

Weighty theology

The Salt Lake Tribune reports…

“Smack in the center of the Genesis story about Adam and Eve and their decision to go against God is a piece of fruit.

So it isn’t a big leap for Ron Williams, a much-decorated bodybuilder, personal trainer and Christian church founder, to conclude that food is a tool used by Satan to separate God’s children from their creator.

While food is a gift from God and necessary for life, Satan from the beginning has recognized the power it holds to enslave people, says Williams, a Draper resident who promotes his “Faith & Fat Loss” program nationwide.

Gluttony is one way. “Your belly becomes your God,” Williams says.

Stripping food of its nutrients and pumping it full of toxic additives is another method used by “the adversary,” as Williams describes the devil. “We see this as an attack.”

Not only do unhealthy foods make people sick, but they also lead to too much weight and obesity. And when people suffer such problems, he says, they often are too depressed about their health and appearance to spend time with God or serving others.

The prescription Williams spells out in his 2008 self-published book, Faith & Fat Loss , is a lifestyle transformation centered on God. The four-part plan involves reading scripture, prayer, exercise and eating balanced, nutritious meals.

“There is no transformation without God,” he says.

Williams’ formula is not the only faith-based approach to weight loss on the market.

From Weight Loss God’s Way to The Maker’s Diet to Body by God , diets and eating plans centered on the Christian faith abound.

Yet there is little research that faith actually can help one lose weight or overcome obesity, says David York, director of the Center for Advanced Nutrition at Utah State University.

“There is no magic way faith can melt fat away,” York says.

If faith causes a person to change habits, to reduce stress and become more engaged with friends and family, he says, it may be part of the permanent change needed to lose weight.

“There has to be a complete change in lifestyle,” York says.

While there are many root causes of obesity, Williams argues many overweight or obese people suffer “soul wounds” inflicted by abuse, neglect or trauma. Left unaddressed, those wounds impede growth.

Identifying and, with the help of God, overcoming his own “soul wounds” helped Williams, 47, turn around his life.

Born in Indianapolis, Williams says he was abandoned by his teenage mother when he was 3. He was left at the baby sitter’s and she and her husband reared him. Occasionally, his father would visit. He suffered verbal and sexual abuse, he says.

Williams excelled at sports, but by the time he was 13, he was depressed and suicidal.

“I didn’t care about my life and I didn’t care about anyone else,” he says. “I believed there was a God, but he didn’t love me.”

While a near-death experience — he was trapped under ice in a frozen pond — assured him he wanted to live, he remained reckless.

He had fathered two children before he dropped out of high school to join the Army. There, he almost was dishonorably discharged for fighting.

When a sergeant sent him to the boxing team to be whipped into shape, he found his athleticism — and a killer instinct — to be a gift. Eventually, Williams competed internationally for the Army in boxing, weightlifting, platform diving and track. He still uses diving and sprints as part of his fitness regimen.

Once out of the Army, Williams ran the fitness-training facility at Fort Harrison near Indianapolis and made “natural” bodybuilding his life. Natural bodybuilders are tested to ensure they do not use illegal substances to enhance their bodies.

In 1988, Williams won the title Mr. Universe Natural Bodybuilder competition, the first of dozens of international titles.

And, yet, he felt unsatisfied and alone. He often would pick up women just to be held.

When a voice two times told him, “I’m going to take your life,” and he had a brush with a woman deliberately spreading the HIV infection, Williams asked a God he had never known to save him from Satan.

From then on, his life changed.

Williams began reading the Bible, the first book he ever had read, and attending church.

Competing once in Utah, he found it to be home of “some of the nicest people on the planet.”

He felt God wanted him here, so he moved to the Beehive State in 1992 and began working as a personal trainer while rising in competitive bodybuilding.

In the late 1990s, Williams conducted a Bible study at the Redwood Road Recreation Center. Success there led him and his Utah-born wife, Tonja Williams, to found Back to the Foundation Church, a small congregation that has had a number of homes.

Recently, the couple bought a building in Midvale’s old downtown and plan a grand reopening of the church, which Ron Williams pastors, in early November.

In the meantime, he and Tonja are on the road so much that their church often conducts services on Wednesday instead of Sunday.

Williams has taught exercise physiology and nutrition classes at Utah Career College and last year won the Natural World title and was inducted into the International Natural Bodybuilding Association’s Hall of Fame.

Faith & Fat Loss is a culmination of everything he has learned about God and nutrition.

“My whole life was a preparation for this,” Williams says. “It had to be written. It is truly a answer. It’s not just another book.”

The ‘Faith and Fat Loss’ formula

Ron Williams’ “Faith & Fat Loss” program begins with a 21-day “jump start” that he says detoxifies the body and prepares it for permanent weight loss.

During that time, the list of proteins, carbohydrates and essential fatty acids allowed is short. Food must be eaten in the right combinations.

For permanent weight loss, Williams prescribes:

» Eating five or six small meals a day, and stopping within two hours of bedtime.

» Allowing starchy carbohydrates only in the day’s early meals.

» Consuming carbs only when eaten with a protein and an essential fatty acid.

» Doing circuit training that combines a cardiovascular workout with resistance bands, three times a week, with 15 minutes of cardiovascular work on off days.

» Reading scripture at least 15 minutes a day, and memorizing specific verses that Williams’ points out. Consistency is essential.

» Praying on the knees at least 15 minutes a day for success in the weight-loss attempt, for family, friends and associates, and for forgiveness for anyone who has ever caused you a “soul wound.”

From http://www.sltrib.com/features/ci_13215975

Cool dude! Fake snow! I’m gonna enrol to become a fundie

Inside Higher Ed reports…

“A ski park and lodge are the latest recreational amenities at Liberty, the Lynchburg, Va.-based institution founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr. The Liberty Mountain Snowflex Centre, which opened on the campus Aug. 1, is one of a series of additions made in recent years to attract students to the evangelical Christian campus. Indeed, Liberty is taking on the feel of something between a summer camp and a theme park, complete with ice skating, paintball fields, motocross tracks, indoor soccer, bow hunting and shooting ranges.

Lynchburg gets a little snow each year, but it’s hardly a ski bum’s paradise. Given that limitation, Liberty has covered its slopes with a synthetic material called Snowflex, allowing visitors to ski on the surface all year around. Lee Beaumont, director of auxiliary services at Liberty, said the ski center is part of the university’s effort to create recreational alternatives for students who don’t engage in the booze-infused partying synonymous with much of college life.

“We don’t really have Greek life here. We don’t have co-ed dorms. We don’t have these wild beer parties,” he said. “So you need to give kids a productive and clean way to enjoy themselves.”

While the goal of good, clean fun sounds noble, universities frequently take criticism for spending money on amenities that have little obvious educational value. Liberty is unlikely to be exempted from such criticism, and Beaumont says he expects it.

“Of course you’re going to get those criticisms,” he said. “But college is not just about sitting in a classroom and listening to a professor.”

“It’s about your physical, mental and spiritual well being,” he added. “If one of them is out of whack, then all of them are out of whack.”

Jerry Falwell Jr., the university’s chancellor, began investigating the idea of a ski center after he returned from a ski trip in Utah several years ago. After conducting some research on fake snow, Falwell decided to try out Snowflex for himself, taking his family to a park in Scotland. While there are about 30 Snowflex facilities in Europe, Liberty’s three slopes are the first in the United States, according to university officials.

“We were watching the local kids [in Scotland] who were skiing, and it was really our target demographic,” Beaumont said.

Bringing an 11-acre ski center to Liberty proved a significant undertaking. In addition to importing synthetic snow, the university built a ski lift and a two-story “chalet” that spans 10,000 square feet. The wood-floored chalet is appointed with rustic décor and, thanks to donations from a longtime supporter of the university, plenty of taxidermy. Bear, moose and deer line the walls and hang from a stone fireplace, giving the chalet the look of a big game hunter’s cabin.

The project has cost the university about $4 million, according to Beaumont. Liberty can expect to make some of that money back, however. During the peak hours of Thursday through Sunday, the university will charge visitors from the general public $7 an hour, and students will pay the lower rate of $4. Additionally, Liberty expects a recruitment advantage.

“You’d be shocked at the number of hardcore snowboarders that want to come here,” Beaumont said.

A Falwell-Style ‘Gimmick’

Adding a ski slope to Liberty is a move straight out of the Falwell playbook, according to Kevin Roose, a Brown University student who went “undercover” at Liberty to a write an expose on the university. While writing his book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, Roose interviewed the late Falwell Sr., who discussed the ski project with excitement.

During his discussion with Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority, Roose said Falwell was unapologetic about doing whatever he could to attract students.

“I don’t think he would have objected to the word gimmick [in describing the ski slope],” Roose said. “Jerry Falwell belonged to the ‘By any means necessary’ school of evangelism. He gave away cars to the first people who registered; he had a video game contest. I think if he could have gotten away with it, he would have given [new students] pieces of Noah’s Ark.”

During his semester at Liberty, Roose said there seemed no limit to the programs officials developed to attract and retain students.

“It always sort of felt like you were at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory,” he said. “They were always trying new things and things other schools maybe wouldn’t try. It sort of dovetails with the sort of Southern Baptist [philosophy of] ‘Get ‘em in, get ‘em baptized, get ‘em registered.’ I can’t see Yeshiva University building a zipline for Yahweh, but I’ve learned to not count the Falwells out when it comes to doing things on the cutting edge.”

Tyler Lee, a senior at Liberty, said few of the attractions like skiing and motocross were in place when he decided to attend. Nonetheless, he’s come to enjoy the accouterments of the campus. Lee, who had no previous snowboarding experience, has spent the last month trying to master the sport. One black eye later, he says he’s gotten pretty confident on the slopes.

For Lee, Liberty’s commitment to recreational programming helps to prove a point. Students at Liberty are often in the awkward position of answering skeptics who question their college choice, he said. When students from other colleges raise that question, Lee says the ski slope provides one more answer.

“We want to show them we can have just as much fun or more fun and not have a hangover,” he said. “You can’t get this anywhere else. Nobody else in North America has what we have now, so it’s exclusive.”

From http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/25/liberty

PK – The Movie

[insert anything that doesn't fit your narrow mindset] ….is of the devil

Al Arabiya reports…

“A handful of school students in the American state of Florida were sent home this week for wearing t-shirts with the words “Islam is of the Devil” printed on the back in red and refusing to change out of them or cover the message.

The controversy started after members of a local church, the Dove World Outreach Center, which printed the shirts, showed up for the first day of school wearing the controversial t-shirts, which officials said violated a ban on clothing that may offend or distract other students and “disrupt the learning process.”

“Students have a right of free speech, and we have allowed students to come to school wearing clothes with messages,” school district staff attorney Tom Wittmer told Florida’s the Gainesville Sun newspaper, adding “but this message is a divisive message that is likely to offend students.”

“The next kid might show up with a shirt saying ‘Christianity is of the Devil,’” Wittmer said, which Dove church members said they would not like but said every student has the right to do as they please.

Dove’s Senior pastor, Terry Jones, said he believed spreading the church’s message was more important than education and told the paper no local company “had the guts” to print the shirts, forcing him to go online to have them made.

Gainesville High student, 15-year-old Emily Sapp, was sent home after she refused to change her clothes.

Sapp said she wore the shirt to promote her Christian beliefs, when asked about the offensive statement Sapp said it was aimed at the religion and not its members.

“The people are fine,” the paper quoted her as saying. “The people are people. They can be saved like anyone else.”

The front of the controversial shirts are emblazoned with “Jesus answered I am the way and the truth and the life; no one goes to the Father except through me,” coupled with “I stand in trust with Dove Outreach Center.”

The anti-Islam message “Islam is of the Devil” is written on the back in bold red letters.

For the president of the Muslim Association of North Central Florida, Saeed R. Khan, the offensive shirts should not be accepted “particularly in a school setting where you are trying to create an atmosphere where people are supposed to respect each other and live with each other, where we have people of every ethnicity and every religion.”

From http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/08/26/82974.html

They claim 80% success

Christchurch faith healer - Picture:One News

One News video

TVNZ One News reports…

“Conventional medical experts are stressing caution after faith healers opened a clinic in Christchurch which operates like a regular doctor’s practice.

The faith healers will take on cancer, broken bones and mental illness among other things.

“Our intention is to see those people healed and set free,” says Pastor Dee Rea from the New Zealand Healing Room.

The healers have been using prayer techniques based on the teachings of Canadian evangelist John G Lake for 11 years and claim an 80% success rate.

“The Bible says those who believe in my name will go out and heal the sick and we’re basically doing what Jesus did,” Rea says.

He says the sick don’t have to be Christian and the prayer treatment is free.

“We don’t charge ’cause we’re not the healers…Jesus Christ is the healer…he also says freely we give, freely we shall receive.”

The clinic is set up like a normal doctor’s surgery with a waiting room leading to treatment rooms where two pastors and divine healing technicians pray for the patient.

The group say they are careful not to discourage people from conventional medicine.

“We don’t say don’t go to a doctor… it’s not our place… it’s not our position to do that,” says Rea.

But medical experts are still stressing caution.

“I think they need to be more honest with their potential patients and clear that they can provide spiritual pastoral care. But to suggest they can cure these serious and real illnesses is something patients must not be persuaded to believe,” says Pete Foley, chairman of the New Zealand Medical Association.”

From http://tvnz.co.nz/health-news/curing-illness-power-prayer-2914391

Hungry Hungry Hippodome

The Guardian reports…

“I got to the show an hour early and the queue was already three or four hundred people long, neatly arranged within crash barriers outside the Golders Green Hippodome, an arena that seats 700. The crowd was 80-90% black; about 30% male, largely silent, cheerful and polite. Many held notebooks as well as Bibles. They had come to hear the preachers who tell them that giving to God, or to his anointed prophets, will make them rich and healthy, as if by magic. The star attraction, Kenneth Copeland, raises $100m a year by doing this; this evening’s preacher, Creflo Dollar, is being sued by a former associate who claims that his inspirational text messages alone bring in $50m a year. So don’t scoff and say it never works.

Both men are under investigation by a Senate committee in the US.

This was the fourth show of the day, and they had been running at least three shows, every day, all week. At the door, we were not handed hymnbooks or bibles, but envelopes for our offering: naturally cash, cheques and credit cards were accepted, along with gift aid, and we could give not only an “offering”, but also a “tithe”, something for “Get Understanding Television”, and the “Building Fund” – as well as “Others”. Alongside came a merchandising catalogue with an offer of a box set of this week’s shows for £22 on CD or £52 on DVD and 39 audio CDs by various preachers – useful titles here included “Overcoming a critical spirit”.

Audience recording was forbidden.

By the time I reached the front of the queue the ground floor was full and so was the first balcony; I have problems with heights, and problems with mass hysteria, too, so I elected to watch the whole thing in the parish hall across the road where an overspill of about another hundred people watched it all projected live onto a big screen. Here, too, the audience was very largely black but next to me a thin white woman in late middle age spread open a Bible on her knees, the pages marked up in pencil and green and yellow highlighter as well. In the row in front a woman rubbed a golden credit card against the donation envelope while she waited for the preaching to begin.

“How long does this go on for?” I asked my neighbour – “Oooh, I think it’s Creflo tonight. He can speak for two hours sometimes!” she replied. I scribbled in my notebook “Marks of weakness, marks of woe.”

First there was music, to get us all in the mood: elephantine exhortation to the Holy Spirit in 4/4 time and a warm-up act, a short white preacher in a natty jacket and expensive-looking jeans bouncing on the balls of his feet as he talked about the blessings to come: it seems that not even Jesus can make white boys dance. He broke into a sort of sung liturgy, parts of it in tongues; the music acquired a whooshing, and unearthly overtone; all through the room spread hands were rising in the pentecostal gesture; the warm-up, who had spoken with a Bradford accent was now singing in American :”Lord, you’re awesome”.

And then it was time for the support act, Ramsom Mumba, whose El-Shaddai ministries were hosting the stars. “I really believe there is no way to quantify what has happened in the world of the spirit this week”, he said; “I’m telling you tonight that there’s going to be a gusher in the Holy Ghost – amen, amen, amen, amen.”

All around the enthusiasm grew more hysterical. It was worse than an Apple keynote. But it was much closer to Apple than to Christianity. The central teaching of the “Prosperity Gospel” is that the world of want, and of suffering, where we actually live, is less real and less powerful than the world of make-believe, or what they call the spirit world. Positive thinking can overcome everything: this happens first in the spirit world, and then appears in the believers’ lives.

Of course, put like that, it sounds ridiculous. But I think the outrageousness of the nonsense is part of its appeal. Copeland, for example, proclaimed with the utmost gravity that God had told him that very afternoon that “It will grow now with great expediency, and that is the compacting.”

Dollar listened to this with a monumental stillness, and at the end leaped into the air with his arms spread like a jackinthebox. His timing is wonderful. He could have a great career in standup, if he ever needed the money; and after 45 minutes or an hour’s preaching, he had the audience exactly where he wanted. “The doctor’s got no cure for what he says I have, but I’m blessed! I’m empowered to prosper!”

“I want you to say with me, ‘I am prosperous. I am healthy, I am rich!’” And they all did.

“Somebody shout out ‘Undisputed Calm’!” and the hall roared “undisputed calm”.

Poverty, he said, is an evil spirit. “There’s a reason why people hold tight to their money – it’s the demon of poverty. We’re going to break that demon’s back tonight.”

The way to do so, of course, was to give him more money.

So how to explain that many people gave him money and never ended up rich at all, or even healthy? “There are many people who give”, he said “but who don’t enjoy the blessings of Gahd. They’re giving, but they have not made Gahd their only source … Cursed be the man that trusteth in man.”

Then he got to Jesus’s teachings on wealth. Jesus, after all, said – at least in Matthew’s gospel, in the King James Version, “That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

Providentially, there is another version of the story available, in Mark, where Jesus also says “How hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!”; and this was the version that Pastor Dollar quoted, because of course trusting riches is entirely different to having them. Who could doubt that Pastor Dollar was close to heaven? His sincerity filled the arena.

I looked at my neighbour’s Bible, now open to Jeremiah 17. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

I made my excuses and left; as I walked down the road, one of the ushers approached me, full of solicitude. “Did you”, he asked, “receive a blessing?”

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/21/prosperity-gospel-religion-christianity

Church conman’s stiff sentence

The Liverpool Echo reports…

“A pensioner jailed for using “prayer sessions” to help defraud a church minister and another worshipper out of tens of thousands of pounds has died.

Richard Abeson, 69, was taken to hospital from Wandsworth Prison in south-west London on Thursday and died yesterday.

An investigation has been launched into his death, which is thought to have been of natural causes.”

From http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2009/08/24/prayer-fraud-oap-dies-100252-24514061/

The Daily Mail reported in December 2008…

“A pensioner who used ‘prayer sessions’ to help defraud a church minister and a worshipper out of tens of thousands of pounds, has been jailed for 18 months.

Serial fraudster Richard Abeson, currently wanted by Belgian police for a similar con, claimed he was a wealthy Nigerian oil trader  with a fortune tied up in his home country.

He told his victims their money would not only help him move the funds to Britain but would win them ’substantial’ pay-offs.

One victim, Kerel Stirrup, 36, who was beguiled by a cocktail of shared prayers and poorly forged documents, ended up handing over £35,000 in so-called bank clearance and legal fees.

She also ran up £1,800 in further expenses, leaving her and her husband penniless and their marriage under severe strain.

Another loser, 30-year-old Hafis Raji, a minister at the Glory House Church in East Ham, east London, was left £10,000 the poorer.

Neither got their money back.

Money transfer request slips recovered by the police suggested hundreds of thousands more may have been swindled from other, as yet unidentified, victims in Britain.

Officers also discovered Abeson, 70, not only had a string of deception convictions stretching back to the seventies, but had been found guilty in his absence of a ‘carbon copy’ advance fee fraud in Belgium.

It involved 27 losers, lasted a decade and left him 1.6 million euros (now about £1.4 million) richer. This money has also disappeared.

He was jailed for 18 months and ordered to pay compensation and various fines. A warrant for his arrest is still outstanding.

London’s Southwark Crown Court heard his latest crimes centred on two counts of conspiracy to defraud ‘with others unknown’ between August 31, 2004, and April 30, 2006, both of which the pensioner, of Edmonton, north London, had admitted.

Co-defendant Onyinye Duru, 29, also of Edmonton, was given a nine month suspended jail sentence at an earlier hearing and ordered to complete 150 hours unpaid work.

She pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice by offering to repay Mrs Stirrup some of her money provided she withdraw her complaint.

Passing sentence Judge John Price told Abeson it was a clear he was an ‘intelligent, resourceful and determined’ criminal at the heart of ‘a highly sophisticated advance fee fraud, a classic of its type’.

‘You targeted totally innocent people. Unfortunately they were taken in, taken in because they viewed you as a kind man, dressed, as you are today, immaculately.

‘You were totally and utterly manipulative, and one of the worst things about this is you preyed on their faith.’

The judge said his ’sustained dishonesty’ had plunged Mrs Stirrup and her husband into the depths of misery and left had ‘wiped them out’ financially.

‘This has ruined them. They have got nothing now. They lost everything because of you.

‘Even when she eventually complained about you, she was, unbelievably, told by the police at one stage it was not a criminal offence.’

The way he deceived his second victim was just as reprehensible, the judge said.

‘You knew he was a minister and you latched on to that, repeatedly talking about Christ and God. It was just so low, so underhand, so dishonest, so immoral to ride on somebody’s faith to get their sympathy and trust and get it you did.’

The judge said his previous convictions, particularly the one in Belgium, demonstrated his capacity to lie.

‘You even tried to fool the experienced probation officer who said you were extremely clever at manipulating others, and described you becoming tearful … and claiming you were a vulnerable old man who should not be imprisoned.

‘But I say you are a deceitful old man who should be imprisoned.’

Abeson, who wrung his hands and repeatedly shook his head at the judge’s comments, was then led to the cells.

Although he arrived in Britain from Nigeria 46 years ago and has indefinite leave to remain, he faces automatic deportation on his release.

Outside court, case officer Detective Constable Ben Lovatt said: ‘Abeson is a consummate conman who is fortunately now in his right place, behind bars. He showed not a shred of mercy to his victims and even today is denying moral responsibility to those who suffered from his dishonesty.’

From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1092919/Jailed-The-prayer-group-fraudster-swindled-worshipers-tens-thousands-pounds.html

For the Dad who has everything – a $25 Hill$ong ‘Resource Centre’ voucher

Where’d my comment go?

Lance (Group Sects) writes…

As a rule, all comments here (if you are reading on Facebook, I’m referring to the blog www.groupsects.wordpress.com ) are published immediately.

Sometimes though, WordPress, which hosts this blog, will intercept a comment, suspecting it might be spam, and put it in a moderation queue. I have no control over this. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why it does this and often it does it to people who comment here regularly.

I try and check the moderation queue at least daily and usually a couple of times a day.

That means if I’m taking time off from the blog then your comment might not  make it on to the site for 24 hours.

The only person who is banned from the site is a deceptive Pente pastor who goes by various aliases including Facelift, Major Tom, Dicky, Vuelto…etc

But for everyone else, if your comment has gone to moderation, it’s not because of its content, but because of random WordPressness.

Occasionally comments about individuals/organisations may need to be edited for legal reasons, but I always do this to the minimum extent necessary.

If your comment ends up being moderated on this thread about comments moderation, then you are probably cursed and you would need to take that up with God.

(umm..for Pente’s who take that kind of crap literally, you can’t actually be cursed for not ‘tithing’ or anything else because Jesus took our curse upon Himself on the cross)

Any thread on this blog may degenerate into a discussion about tithing.

Now hush sweetie, Daddy wants his little girl believing God for an airline, not just a plane

Rebekah Pringle twitters…

“wishes God would hurry up and buy our family a plane Dang it

11:53 PM Aug 20th”

From http://twitter.com/RebekahFaith

Hat tip:Teddy

No wonder there are so many churches in the US

The Democrat and Chronicle reports…

“At 5,400 square feet with meticulously manicured grounds, a three-car garage and four soaring white pillars gracing its porch, the house on D’Angelo Drive is remarkable even by the standards of its affluent Penfield neighborhood.

But it also stands out because it is exempt from property taxes as the parsonage for a church nearly 12 miles away in an impoverished section of northeast Rochester.

Owned by New Born Fellowship Church, the parsonage is valued at $595,000 and is the residence of the church’s husband-and-wife founders and pastors, the Rev. Warren and Perdita Meeks, who bought it in 2006 for $542,550 and deeded it to the church for $1 nine months later.

“That’s a business move that I’ve seen a lot of pastors do to save money,” Warren Meeks said in an interview. “It’s an option available to clergy.”

Last year, the town of Penfield granted a full exemption to the property on religious grounds after the town was sued for denying the church’s plea for a tax break.

The property transfer saved the Meekses, who records show still hold the mortgage on the house, $19,670 in taxes annually, and the legal settlement between the church and town made the parsonage by far the most expensive in the county.

By contrast, the church building, at North Clinton Avenue and Norton Street, is assessed by the city of Rochester at $230,000, although many improvements have been made to the 32,000-square-foot building since it was bought in 2005.

In Monroe County, the value of properties exempted from taxes for religious purposes totaled nearly $756 million in 2008, the last year for which complete data is available.

While most are traditional houses of worship, the tax-free properties included vacant land held for years by churches miles away and houses considered parsonages for churches that hold no other property, a Democrat and Chronicle examination of tax rolls found.

The reason is a state real property tax law that provides wide latitude for religious groups to claim tax breaks and does not define “religious purposes.”

The nonprofit test

At Joshua’s Paintball Jungle in Grace&Truth SportsPark in Greece, you can pay $20 to rent a Piranha model semiautomatic paintball gun, facemask and 100 paintballs and fire away at opponents over eight acres of woodlands. Private youth and adult soccer clubs can rent athletic fields in the park. Yet the 56-acre expanse of paintball arenas, soccer fields and baseball diamonds, valued at $190,000, is tax exempt because it is owned by, and considered a ministry of, First Bible Baptist Church. In addition to renting out the park to private interests, the church runs its own athletic leagues for adults and children.

Even if the church turns a profit, explained Greece Assessor Leo Carroll, the land remains tax-free as long as the revenue it generates is invested in furthering the church and its ministries.

“What the nonprofit test of the Real Property Tax Law says is they may accrue revenues in excess of expenditures in the course of carrying out exempt activities,” Carroll said.

How much revenue church ministries generate is difficult to discern because, unlike most secular nonprofits, religious groups are not required to file public financial statements with the Internal Revenue Service.

But the Rev. George Grace, the longtime pastor of First Bible, summarized its latest annual financial report for the Democrat and Chronicle. He said the church lost almost $43,000 on the park last year, spending about $216,200, including capital improvements, and generating nearly $173,200 in income.

“Everything we get and more ends up going back into the park,” Grace said. “Its number one purpose is church ministry. Every time the kids come (through the church programs) they are taught some kind of Bible lesson or Bible truth intermingled with their athletics.”

‘In good faith’

Under the law, churches receive full exemptions on property used for religious purposes. But they can also get a tax break on vacant real estate if they “in good faith contemplated” using the property for religious purposes.

For example, a vacant 70-acre parcel at Winton and Westfall roads in Brighton valued at $2.9 million and owned by Faith Temple Church has been exempt for the last few years because the church has standing plans to build a church, school and housing on the land.

How long a religious organization can contemplate the future of vacant land before its tax-free status is questioned or revoked is open to interpretation.

“The statute doesn’t establish a time frame,” said Joseph Hesch, spokesman for the state Office of Real Property Services, which supports fairness in local taxes but has no regulatory authority. “It’s kind of horses for courses. It’s entirely within the local assessors’ discretion as to whether a property is exempt and for how long.”

St. Vincent DePaul Roman Catholic Church in Churchville has owned 43 acres of untouched woodland in Riga tax-free since 1986.

Riga Assessor Joan Brundage last year valued the “abandoned agricultural” land on Bridgeman Road at $68,500 and deemed it tax exempt on religious grounds. Yet she acknowledged having no record of why the property deserved the tax break of about $2,250 a year.

“It’s been exempt forever,” said Brundage, who has been the assessor since 1989. “When we do updates we do review these properties, but it was exempt before I got here.”

Charlotte Bruney, a pastoral administrator at St. Vincent DePaul, said the site was willed to the church and that it is a Native American burial ground. She said determining whether the site could be developed would require an archaeological inspection at a cost of $2,000 an acre.

“We have not been able to do anything with that property,” Bruney said. “It’s considered holy ground.”

George McIntosh, director of collections at the Rochester Museum & Science Center, verified that human remains had been found on the parcel in 1938 and 1961, but he said that they were excavated and that it was unclear whether the land was still a burial ground.

Philip Perazio, an archaeologist at the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, said burial grounds can be developed by private owners with no consideration to their historical value, and that such sites are subject to property taxes.

“There is no automatic exemption for archaeological sites of any type,” Perazio said.

While the law does not provide a deadline for churches to use idle property or lose an exemption, Ogden Assessor Robert Criddle interprets the time frame to be “the reasonable foreseeable future.”

That standard is being applied to 22 acres of tax-exempt vacant land on Lyell Road owned by the Church of the Risen Savior, a nondenominational church in Chili. The church avoids paying the $3,630 in taxes on the land, valued at $91,500, because it plans to build a church there.

“In a couple of years, if they haven’t done anything, I would have to take a serious look at the exemption,” Criddle said.

According to its application for an exemption filed in February 2008, the church “will be building a church on the land within the next year.”

Risen Savior Co-Pastor Judith Garcia said the church was raising money from its roughly 35 congregants and struggling to secure financing for construction.

“It has to sit vacant right now because you can’t get a loan to build a church,” Garcia said. “If you had to pay tax on the land it would probably hurt the small churches.”

2 percent of tax base

Religious exemptions equaled just 2 percent of Monroe County’s total property tax base last year and represented about $6.8 million in potential county tax revenue.

Tax rolls show there were 105 tax-exempt parsonages valued at about $15 million in Monroe in 2008. Nearly all of them were owned by area churches or religious orders.

But there were exceptions.

A two-story house on Fulton Avenue in Rochester was granted a parsonage exemption last year after it was acquired by Gaudiya Mission, a Hindu religious organization based in Kolkata, India, and became the home of two of its priests.

“Absent a place of worship or organized congregation, could this be considered a parsonage?” read an e-mail from Rochester Deputy Assessor Thomas Fess to a department lawyer kept in the property’s assessment file.

“This is a difficult call,” read an unsigned note in the file. “We could go with no exemption, part, conditional part or conditional full.”

A full exemption was ultimately granted on the house, valued at $44,000, on the conditions that the group obtain a certificate of occupancy and register as a charity in the United States. Both conditions have been met.

Diliv Basak, one of the priests, said in a brief interview that the house is his residence and used for worship by followers.

Elsewhere in Rochester, on Seward Street, a $43,000 house owned by Rock of Ages Spiritual Church is considered a parsonage even though it has not been used as a clergy residence for years.

Florence Cuthrell, the church’s co-pastor, said no one has lived in the house since the church’s founder, Ophelia Holmes Bernard, died in 2002. But when the church applied to renew its exemption in 2004, it stated that the building was used solely as the clergy residence, assessment records show. In subsequent applications, the church reported no changes.

Cuthrell said the house is primarily a gathering place for members, who sometimes hold Bible studies there on Saturdays.

“It’s kind of like our headquarters,” Cuthrell said. “If one of our members were homeless, or something, we could let them stay there until they find a home.”

Culling the exemptions

Although religious exemptions must be renewed annually, assessors do not inspect every exempt property each year. To renew most exemptions, assessors rely on information provided by the property owner on state Board of Real Property Services forms.

The forms ask whether there have been any changes in the function of the organization. Most property owners report no change and their exempt status continues.

The cursory nature of the forms and the potential for fraud prompted the city of Rochester last fall to begin scrutinizing the 1,095 tax-exempt properties owned by nonprofits, including churches.

Appraisers have examined 306 of the properties to date and revoked 14 exemptions worth nearly $3 million in assessed value. Only $1.3 million of that is taxable today because the Board of Assessment Review reinstated some exemptions or property owners sold to other nonprofits.

“They say ‘No change,’ but seeing is believing for us,” said Rochester Assessor Thomas Huonker, noting that the vast majority of exemptions were legitimate.

The revocations included a $249,000 building owned by the defunct Offspring Spiritual Church, a parking lot and house owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a vacant lot owned by Glad Tidings Church, and a $154,600 residential building that housed the Teoronto Lodge of the International Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal order.

Ann Kemper, associate pastor of Covenant United Methodist Church, said the church maintained its tax-exempt status on a $39,000 house on Culver Road for years after it closed a day care center there by using it for periodic church meetings and temporary housing for a homeless woman and her daughter. The exemption was pulled when the church listed the house for sale.

“Once we made the decision to put it on the market, we stopped trying to find short-term uses for it,” Kemper said.

Dispute resolved

New Born Fellowship Church applied for a full property-tax exemption on its D’Angelo Drive parsonage two weeks after the Meekses deeded the house to the church in February 2007.

Penfield Assessor Ann Buck denied the exemption that May, saying the church “failed to satisfy the requirement(s)” and that the “property does not qualify” for a tax break under the law, according to court documents contesting the denial.

In a recent e-mail exchange, Buck called the 12-mile distance between the church and house “unusual” for a parsonage but said she rejected the application because “not enough information was given.”

The Penfield Board of Assessment Review, which took up the denial, asked the church for a list of church-related events that were scheduled to be held at the house between February and December 2007. The church complied, but the review board upheld the assessor’s decision, stating, “your request for an exemption was denied because you do not qualify for that exemption.”

Warren Meeks, the senior pastor and founder of New Born Fellowship Church, disputed the town’s account of the church’s exemption application.

“We gave them everything they needed,” Meeks said. “They didn’t believe we were a real church.”

J. Phillip Martin, deputy chief executive of the Texas-based National Association of Church Business Administration, a Christian organization that promotes sound governance of churches, said such property transfers between pastor and church are uncommon and raise ethical concerns.

“This certainly raises the question, ‘What is the motive?’” Martin said. “If the intent is to shelter the pastor from property tax on personal property, then it raises a significant ethical question. The law is not intended for that purpose.”

From http://rocnow.com/article/local-news/2009908230329

When the boss of your Christian ministry organisation is a wanker – The Salvation Bell

You know you want to hear it…

I see people running down Queen St. Auckland to get away from Phil Pringle

Phil Pringle ‘prophecy’ for 2005

(Phil Pringle)…..”I believe New Zealand is about to have in 2005 a revival that will eclipse any kind of revival it has ever had in the history of that nation. I believe by the power of the Holy Spirit New Zealand is about to have a touch from Heaven, a touch from Heaven. The finger of God is poised in the Heavens.

I see it. I see lightning bolts coming out of a long, white cloud.

I see feet running through the streets to get to meetings.  I see things happening that have never happened before; people running to church in New Zealand.

I see them running through the streets of Wellington. I see them running down and the wind is blowing; they’re pushing against the wind; they’re trying to get to churches.

There are people running in Auckland down Queen St to get to church. There are people running. They’re desperate. Some are full of fear, some are full of faith but they’re running…..”

 

Hat tip:Wiggy

Do The Hustle

Former bishop critiques the church in public – and critiques those who critique the church in public

ABC Online reports…

“A former Australian Defence Force Anglican bishop says religious belief is waning in Australia because the Christianity most Australians have encountered is weak, insipid, and in some cases unintelligible.

Director of St Mark’s National Theological Centre and head of the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University, Professor Tom Frame, says churches must take some of the blame for the decline.

“The Christianity that most Australians have encountered is weak and insipid and in more than a few instances uninspiring and unintelligible, and the majority have no idea of what the Christian religion is offering,” he writes in his book Losing My Religion: Unbelief In Australia.

Professor Frame points to what he believes are three reasons for this.

“To some degree some churches are caught in a time warp, they’ve got the social and cultural forms of the 1950s and 1960s and have been unable to embrace the 1990s and the new millennium, so they do seem to be locked in time and their message with it,” he told ABC Online.

“The second thing that I would say is that many of the churches are totally overcome by internal bickering about minor points of doctrine about which the world could not care less, because they don’t bear upon everyday life.

“And I think the third thing is that the churches themselves have conducted some of the internal debates in public and given the impression that not even the churches are sure about what they believe.

“Now I don’t think that’s true, but in conducting, if you like, household conversations in the full glare of the media spotlight, [they have] led some people to focus on the division rather than the unity; the separateness rather than the oneness of the message that’s being proclaimed.

“There are some churches who in my view have a totally hybrid religion, one which is nearer to therapy than spirituality. And if you are an external observer seeing all of this it’s not surprising that you think the churches themselves don’t know what they’re on about.

“And if they can’t articulate a clear message then why should anyone bother listening?”

At Federation Australia was considered a Christian nation, but Professor Frame points to census figures showing that today a quarter of the population does not have a declared religion.

“If we take the census figures as any reliable measure of what’s happening in the community then we would have to say that those who have formalised religious beliefs – that express themselves through the major religions that people are offered in the census form – then certainly there’s a big change going on,” he said.

“In 100 years we’ve gone from a country with nearly 97 per cent of the population belonging to one of the four big Christian denominations to 63 per cent; 5 per cent having a religion other than Christianity. It’s a lot of change in a very short space of time and that’s going to have consequences for the whole community.”

And he says even though people may refer to themselves as being of Catholic, Anglican or Uniting Church faith, they do not necessarily have beliefs that correspond with the formal ones of those religions.

“They probably believe all sorts of things and certainly what we’re seeing in terms of surveys and other things is that belief in God still seems to be high – say 75-80 per cent – but formal religious affiliation, that’s where the bottom is dropping out of the market.”

He warns that as belief continues to decline, it places in jeopardy the estimated $40 billion worth of public money channelled through religious organisations to deliver social services in Australia.

“That being the case it seems to me that if these religious communities were wiped out there wouldn’t be the agencies that actually provide a whole lot of important services to our community,” he said.

“In addition to that, to some degree, our moral and ethical conversation in this country has been informed largely by Christianity as the majority religion. If you take away that big story and the things that it has contributed to our public life, and our public conversation, there will be a void.”

From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/20/2661547.htm?section=justin

Our worst trade deal with China

The Catholic Leader reports…

“Catholics need to look carefully at the origins of religious items they buy to ensure they are not the products of child slave labour, a Brisbane religious sister has warned.

The seriousness of the issue has led the National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA) to pledge its support for a Christian Goods Standard to end worker exploitation in the production of Christian merchandise which also includes T-shirts and Bible covers.

The Just Holy Hardware campaign has also been launched and includes a website to list fairly traded Christian items.

Several retailers and suppliers of religious goods spoken to in Brisbane – St Paul’s Book Centre, Christian Supplies and Di Marco International – have also indicated they support these initiatives.

Good Samaritan Sister Pauline Coll said the catalyst for these actions had been the discovery that crucifixes sold at St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, in 2007 had come from a factory employing teenagers working in “dreadful sweat shop” conditions in China.

Sr Coll said the huge USA-based Association for Christian Retail “was found to lack basic codes of conduct and a factory-monitoring program”.

“There was little to reassure American Christians that the religious products they buy to celebrate their faith were not made under inhumane conditions,” she said.

“It seems that this issue needs more attention in Australia – so Christian retailers and wholesalers here are being invited to ensure that similar abuses are not happening in the production of the religious goods they sell.”

Sr Coll, a representative on the national executive of Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans (ACRATH), has spoken on the issue at a number of meetings this year including the Mitchelton Probus Club last week.

She also recently addressed the associates of the Presentation Sisters, the Redlands Christian Reformed Church and social justice groups in Tamborine and Coorparoo.

“Unwittingly Christians may be enjoying the results of exploitation of trafficked or enslaved people – we just don’t know,” she said.

“It is our privilege to search out and check whether the articles/goods/services we enjoy have any element of this sort of labour about them.

“It would be a particularly terrible irony if the religious items we used in our devotions were to have been manufactured in this way.

“We need to be sure that none of this material is being sold by Church organisations.”

In the 2007 case of New York’s St Patrick’s Cathedral, the crucifixes were traced back to a factory in China where girls as young as 15 were forced to work up to 19-hour days seven days a week to manufacture the religious items for a couple of dollars a day.

The crucifix workers were reported to have no paid sick days, maternity leave, holidays or health insurance which are all mandated under China’s laws.

Proprietor of Christian Supplies, Greg Shakhovskoy, said he welcomed the new standard and initiative of the website and “looked forward to working actively with those concerned about or championing action on this front”.

Mr Shakhovskoy said Christian Supplies and its wholesale distributors had been aware of the issue for some time.

“We have tried to monitor the situation actively,” he said.

“Our main supplier of religious goods personally visits the factories in Asia from where they source religious items to ensure as best they can that employers are not abusing their workers through poor pay or conditions.”

St Paul’s Book Centre director Society of St Paul Father Bruno Colombari said he was certain that all crucifixes stocked at the shop came from Italy.

He said he had also visited the factories where the religious items were made.

“The Italian-made items are of high quality,” he said.

“I would immediately know if they were from other countries. Their quality would not be as good.”

However, Fr Colombari said that when he visited international fairs to source items it was not always possible to be sure of the country of origin of certain products.

Di Marco International manager Margaret McDonald said the company fully supported the initiatives announced in relation to ensuring the ethical manufacture of religious items.

“Specifically in response to the issue of crucifix sold at St Patrick’s, New York, Di Marco sources all its crucifixes from Italy,” Ms McDonald said.

Social justice officer for the Justice and International Mission for the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania Uniting Church in Australia Antony McMullen helped draft the Christian Goods Standard resolution adopted by the NCCA in June this year.

“The rationale is that the Christian gospel calls us to work for justice and equity in society, particularly as we care for those who live in poverty and are most vulnerable in the world,” he said.

Mr McMullen said the NCCA campaign would start with a request to Australia’s Christian retailers to stock items made under Fairtrade, No Sweat Shop label and World Fair Trade Organisation schemes.

“These three schemes ensure basic human rights standards are adhered to in the production of Christian related goods like T-shirts, Bible covers and crosses,” he said.

“Christian consumers can order online and retailers can stock all of the items listed.

“In addition, Church-related organisations, such as schools, can explore buying things like Fairtrade footballs that are effective as an anti-child labour initiative in Pakistan.”

The catalogue of fair traded Christian and related items can be found on the website www.justholyhardware.org.au “

From http://www.catholicleader.com.au/news.php/features/religious-items-produced-by-child-slaves_52527

We’re in trouble all the time, you read about it all in the papers

 

Examiner reports…

“Alice Cooper, of “School’s Out for Summer” and “I’m 18” fame, was told that his show can’t go on in Finland.
Cooper and his band were booked to perform at Tampere Areena Oy, an arena in Tampere, Finland Dec. 11.
However, the owners of the arena cancelled the event when the supposedly dark nature of Cooper’s “Theatre of Death” show came to light.
Harri Wiherkoski, managing director of the arena said that “artists who express suspicious values from Christianity’s point of view cannot be allowed to perform at the venue.”
He also told reporters that his venue doesn’t “arrange concerts where Satanism or non-god-worshipping occurs.”
Concert promoter Kalle Keskinen, said “We never imagined that a rock veteran who has performed in Finland in four separate decades without any problems and who has spoken in public of his own religious convictions would not be allowed to perform at Tampere Areena in 2009.”

Keskinen said the concert will probably be moved to nearby Espoo, however this is contingent on Alice Cooper’s approval, he said.
Cooper, who is a practicing Christian, told Cross Rhythms magazine last year that he reconciles his stage persona with his personal faith without problem.
“As a Christian, I don’t declare myself as a ‘Christian rock star.’ I’m a rock performer who’s a Christian. Alice Cooper is the guy who wants to entertain the audience – it happens that he’s a Christian. Alice (the character I play on stage) began life as a villain and he remains one. There’s a villain and a hero in every Shakespeare play,” he said. 

“ Alice is no more dangerous than a villain in a cartoon or a Disney film. We have fun with him. He snarls and wears make up. He’s punished for his crime and he comes back on the stage in white top and tails. We put on a good show. I’ve always put limits on Alice because I believe there’s a certain amount of Alice that’s a gentleman. He’d slit your throat, but he’d never swear at you. And there’s always a punchline; he may kill you, but he’ll slip on a banana peel. I get right-wing Christians down on me and I always ask them the question: ‘If I was doing Macbeth, would it be OK?’ And they always say that’s Shakespeare so of course. I say that’s about four times more violent than anything I do on stage.”

From http://www.examiner.com/x-16496-Christian-Pop-Culture-Examiner~y2009m8d18-Alice-Cooper-banned-from-Finland-gig-for-antiChristian

The ‘First Lady of Worship’ – We adore thee Darlene

Pastor Steve Penny twitters…

“….preparing for an awesome kings One tonight with the first lady of worship. looking forward to Dalene (sic) sharing from her heart SJP”

From http://twitter.com/stevepenny

The Church Pants and Clothes line Police

The Fiji Times reports…

“The strict observance of Sunday worship has resulted in men on a Bua island not being allowed to wear pants on Sunday.

The Sunday ban also forbids travel and the hanging of clothes on lines.

Galoa Village headman Josefa Baleinasiga said the ban was enforced so that the islanders could learn to respect the significance of Sunday as a holy day.

Mr Baleinasiga said the Methodist Church and the vanua also decided to impose the ban as a means of bringing good fortune to the people.

“The ban is meant to bring good luck to the island as we respect the day of the Lord,” he said.

“You can see that often misfortune befalls us because we don’t respect His commandments that there be no work performed on Sunday except worship.

“Before our islanders used to go diving on Sunday, and there was a lot of travelling and it was difficult to separate the days all the days were the same.

“Now on Saturdays the clothes line in the village is full as the villagers know they can’t hang anything out on Sunday.”

As a mark of respect, men can only wear a sulu or sulu vakataga on the day; travelling by outboard from the island is forbidden.

“But we make exceptions during emergencies for the sick so it’s not a ban that hasn’t been well thought out.”

A villager who requested anonymity said the ban was too restrictive because it limited movement.

“We can’t understand how wearing a sulu vakataga on Sunday will help us forge closer relations with the divine,” he said. “At times too for the school children who come home for the weekend, the best time to return to their hostel in Labasa or Savusavu is on Sunday – so that is getting in the way.”

Mr Baleinasiga said anybody who breached the ban would be chastised by the vanua.”

From http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=127577

Mr Rudd, can you stop giving this ‘cult’ millions of dollars?

Lateline reports…

“Prime Minister Kevin Rudd famously labelled the Exclusive Brethren (EB) a cult while in Opposition. But it seems in Government he is more generous to the Christian sect.

Figures obtained by The Greens in Senate Estimates reveal that funding to schools run by the controversial Christian sect have increased by 50 per cent under the Rudd Government.

In 2007, EB schools were receiving just over $9 million in funding from the Howard government.

But NSW Greens MP John Kaye says funding for EB schools around Australia has risen to $13.9 million this year.

“[It is] scheduled to go to about 17.2 million by 2012,” he said.

“The Rudd Government did not change the Howard government’s formula that had an in-built escalation in it.

“This is funding going to the schools that Kevin Rudd referred to as being operated by a cult.”

Education Minister Julia Gillard was unavailable to comment tonight, but a statement from her office said Recurrent Grants funding for EB schools grew by 14 per cent between 2007 and 2008, reflecting increased enrolments at those schools.

It said final 2009 entitlements will not be known until October.

The statement also said the Government has implemented its election commitment to maintain the current funding arrangements for non-government schools and that a Government review of funding arrangements will get underway next year.

Peter Flinn, a former member of the Exclusive Brethren, says he is disturbed by the increase in funding, but not surprised.

He wrote a letter on behalf of 30 ex-members of the EB asking Mr Rudd to establish an inquiry into the brethren.

“They have been the recipients of great generosity from various governments over the years and we’re quite concerned about that,” he said.

“It’s out of all proportion to the number of students.

“But they are very good at negotiating and lobbying governments.”

That lobbying goes back to the days of the Keating and Howard governments.

In the 1990s, two of the main Brethren schools were granted special status known as category 12.

Michael Bachelard, author of Behind the Exclusive Brethren, says under the old funding model, category 12 was reserved for Aboriginal schools for children with particular needs.

“Somehow the EB managed to get category 12 funding for their schools in NSW and SA and to keep it under the new system,” he said.

New schools built by the brethren are designated as campuses of an already established school.

Under the “funding maintained” principle, set up by the Howard government, these new schools are entitled to the generous funding levels of the schools that already exist.

Mr Flinn says an example within NSW is the main school at Meadowbank in Sydney.

He says they have campuses as far away as Albury, 600 kilometres to the south.

“When the new campuses were established they did not have to go through the whole establishment process under the SES model,” he said.

“They were able to retain the … special position they had been able to obtain under that system and that applied to all other campuses.”

An internal Department of Education review of SES funding in 2006 acknowledged that some schools were gaining an advantage in funding by setting up campuses.

The examples highlighted were Brethren schools in NSW. 

The Brethren’s campus system has also allowed them to benefit from the Rudd Government’s Building The Education Revolution funding.

The Brisbane campus of the Brethren’s Agnew school has been granted $1.65 million to build a library.

To qualify for this level of funding, the school must have between 151 to 300 primary students on site, but the school has only 57 primary students on site.

No-one from the Agnew school was available for comment, but in a written statement the school said:

The central library will, through the use of cutting-edge information and communication technologies, provide all students and teachers across all campuses daily access to services. Materials will be forwarded and returned by either a courier service or post.

One condition of the federal funding for school libraries is that they be open to all members of the local community.

In the written statement to Lateline, a representative from the Agnew school said:

The school has accepted this commitment and the commitment will be met.

While the Agnew school has not acted illegally in tallying up student numbers from across the state, one former Brethren school principal, who did not wish to be identified, told Lateline “it was immoral”.

From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/19/2659938.htm?section=australia

A previous story on the Exclusive Brethren…

Exclusive Brethren ’sorry’

The Sydney Star Observer reports…

“A Tasmanian transgender activist has won an apology from Exclusive Brethren members after the 2006 publication of state election advertisements attacking transgender and intersex people.

The apology will appear in three Tasmanian newspapers tomorrow, The Examiner, The Advocate and The Mercury and is the result of a settlement of an anti-discrimination case, running for three years.

Martine Delaney took members of the Exclusive Brethren religious group to the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Tribunal in 2006 over and a series of advertisements she says caused hurt and offence to the community.

“It’s hard enough being a transgender or intersex person in this society without your basic human rights being hatefully attacked,” she said.

“My wish has always been to ensure election debates are conducted without vulnerable minorities being unfairly targeted.”

The advertisement claimed that Greens policy support for transgender people would “ruin families and society.”

The apology was issued by Exclusive Brethren members, Roger Unwin and Graham Lewis, on behalf of the company that paid for the advertisements, TradTas.

Delaney told Sydney Star Observer she was pleased the Exclusive Brethren members agreed to apologise for distress caused although would liked to have seen the pair involved in an education campaign.

“It’s not a perfect result but I think it’s quite and achievement to acknowledge they caused offence and I think that’s a first in Australia for them to apologise for something like that.”

Delaney has another case with the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal on Monday to inquire into the Liberal Party’s role in the advertisements.

In a similar case also involving Delaney earlier this year, the tribunal found a 2006 Liberal Party election pamphlet did not contravene the state’s incitement to hatred laws when it called same-sex marriage socially destructive.”

From http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/2009/08/18/exclusive-bretheren-told-to-apologise/15279

Use ‘em and abuse ‘em

‘LJ’ comments…

“Hi, I’m LJ. I’m 20 and spent my teenage years in an AOG church (now called Australian Christian Churches) I got out close to two years ago. I studied at bible college and held an internship at my church for a year – the day my contract expired I locked up and left my key in the letter box never to return…….

……..30 hours of unpaid work a week (submitting to my leadership!) a casual job to keep my car running and full time college! They had it coming!”

From http://expentecostalforums.yuku.com/topic/8276

Rise and build yourself

Spiritual pickpockets

The New York Times reports…

“On stage before thousands of believers weighed down by debt and economic insecurity, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted the crowd with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by following the Word of God.

Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds.

“God knows where the money is, and he knows how to get the money to you,” preached Mrs. Copeland, dressed in a crisp pants ensemble like those worn by C.E.O.’s.

Even in an economic downturn, preachers in the “prosperity gospel” movement are drawing sizable, adoring audiences. Their message — that if you have sufficient faith in God and the Bible and donate generously, God will multiply your offerings a hundredfold — is reassuring to many in hard times.

The preachers barely acknowledged the recession, though they did say it was no excuse to curtail giving. “Fear will make you stingy,” Mr. Copeland said.

But the offering buckets came up emptier than in some previous years, said those who have attended before.

Many in this flock do not trust banks, the news media or Washington, where the Senate Finance Committee is investigating whether the Copelands and other prosperity evangelists used donations to enrich themselves and abused their tax-exempt status. But they trust the Copelands, the movement’s current patriarch and matriarch, who seem to embody prosperity with their robust health and abundance of children and grandchildren who have followed them into the ministry.

“If God did it for them, he will do it for us,” said Edwige Ndoudi, who traveled with her husband and three children from Canada for the Southwest Believers’ Convention this month, where the Copelands and three of their friends took turns preaching for five days, 10 hours a day at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

The crowd of more than 9,000 was multiracial, from 48 states and 27 countries. There was no fee to attend. There were bikers in leather vests, pastors, blue-collar workers, professionals and plenty of families with children.

A large contingent came in wheelchairs, hoping for miraculous healings. The audience sat with Bibles open, flipping to passages cited by the preachers, taking notes on pads and laptop computers.

“The folks who are coming aren’t poor,” said Jonathan L. Walton, a professor of religion at the University of California, Riverside, who has written about the movement and was there doing research. “They reside in that nebulous category between the working and the middle class.”

Sitting in Section 316, eight rows up, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a Bible at lunch time, was a family who could explain the enduring loyalty the prosperity preachers inspire.

Stephen Biellier, a long-distance trucker from Mount Vernon, Mo., said he and his wife, Millie, came to the convention praying that this would be “the overcoming year.” They are $102,000 in debt, and the bank has cut off their credit line, Mrs. Biellier said.

They say the Copelands rescued them from financial failure 23 years ago, when they bought their first truck at 22 percent interest and had to rebuild the engine twice in a year.

Around that time, Mrs. Biellier first saw Mr. Copeland on television and began sending him 50 cents a week.

Others who bought trucks from the same dealer in Joplin that year went under, the Bielliers said, but they did not.

“We would have failed if Copeland hadn’t been praying for us every day,” Mrs. Biellier said.

The Bielliers are now among 386,000 people worldwide whom the Copelands call their “partners,” most of whom send regular contributions and merit special prayers from the Copelands.

A call centre at the ministry’s 481-employee headquarters in Newark, Tex., takes in 60,000 prayer requests a month, a publicist said.

The Copelands’ broadcast reaches 134 countries, and the ministry’s income is about $100 million annually.

The Bielliers were at the convention a few years ago when a supporter made a pitch for people to join an “Elite CX Team” to raise money to buy the ministry a Citation X airplane. (Mr. Copeland is an airplane aficionado who got his start in ministry as a pilot for Oral Roberts.) At that moment, Mrs. Biellier said she heard the voice of the Holy Spirit telling her, “You were born to support this man.”

She gave $2,000 for the plane, and recently sent $1,800 for the team’s latest project: buying high-definition television equipment to upgrade the ministry’s international broadcasts.

Mrs. Biellier said some friends and relatives would say the preacher just wanted their money. She explained that the Copelands did not need the money for themselves; it is for their ministry. And besides, even “trashy people like Hugh Hefner” have private airplanes.

“I remember Copeland had to once fly halfway around the world to talk to one person,” she said. “Because we’re partners with Kenneth Copeland, for every soul that gets saved, we get credit for that in heaven.”

But while a band primed the crowd, Professor Walton called the prosperity preachers “spiritual pickpockets.”

“To dismiss and ignore the harsh realities of this economic crisis,” he said. “is beyond irresponsible, to the point of reprehensible.”

The Copelands refused an interview request, but one of their daughters, Kellie Copeland Swisher, and her husband, Steve Swisher, who both work in the ministry, spoke for them.

Mrs. Swisher said the ministry gave away “a minimum of 10 percent of what comes in” to other charities. Her father’s current favorite, she said, is a Roman Catholic orphanage in Mexico.

The ministry has resisted providing the Senate investigation with all the documents requested, she said, because the Copelands did not want to publicly reveal the names of the “partners.” The investigation, which could result in new laws, is continuing, a committee spokeswoman said. Among those being investigated is Creflo Dollar, one of the ministers at the Copelands’ convention.

Mr. Swisher said that even in the economic downturn, the ministry’s income going into the convention was up 3 percent over last year. Asked if they had adjusted the message for the economy, Mrs. Swisher patted the worn Bible in her lap and said: “The message they preach is the Word of God. The Word doesn’t change.”

At the convention, the preachers — who also included Jesse Duplantis and Jerry Savelle — sprinkled their sermons with put-downs of the government, an overhaul of health care, public schools, the news media and other churches, many of which condemn prosperity preaching.

But mostly the preachers were working mightily to remind the crowd that they are God’s elect. “While everybody else is having a famine,” said Mr. Savelle, a Texas televangelist, “his covenant people will be having the best of times.”

“Any time a worried thought about money pops up in your mind,” Mr. Savelle continued, “the next thing you do is sow”: drop money, like seeds, in “good ground” like the preachers’ ministries. “Stop worrying, start sowing,” he added, his voice rising. “That’s God’s stimulus package for you.”

At that, hundreds streamed down the aisles to the stage, laying envelopes, cash and coins on the carpeted steps.”

From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16gospel.html

Contemporary church, without the hype and wank

“Maroubra Surfers Church 

 

We’re a gathering of Maroubra surfers who are finding out more about living for Jesus. From as far away as Brazil, England, Bali, Japan & California, visitors from other areas also meet with us.

Steve’s Family

Rev Steve Bligh is the full time Minister of Maroubra Surfers Church. He has been married to Fiona since 1981. He has two married sons who surf, and a daughter who teaches locally.

Our family is local. Steve was born in England, living there until his family sailed here when he was 7. He then lived in a migrant hostel, then north west Sydney, before arriving in Maroubra in 1975. Fiona & the kids are all Maroubra born & bred. Once Steve became an ordained Anglican Minister in 1993, the Bligh’s have bounced in & out of da Bra depending on where church ministry took them. Since 2007, Steve & Fiona are back for good.

Leadership, Management & Finances

Steve leads a small volunteer team of locals. This is the crew that does our day to day regular activities. These include Bible & prayer times, hospitality, one on ones, community service, & surf coaching. Recruiting, training, & deploying locals is a constant feature of Steve’s leadership.

Church Army Australia are our administrators. They help us look after financial management & insurance. Church Army also provides encouragement, coaching, training, professional development, & substantial funding.

Christian Surfers Australia are our surf mission partners. They also provide encouragement, along with accountability, strategizing, training, the Safety Policy, & surfing insurance.

The South Sydney Regional Council of the Anglican Church provides funding, professional development, training opportunities… & encouragement!

Additionally, Steve has an Advisory Board. These are experienced people, from a range of churches & professional backgrounds, who help Steve to strategise, & to advise on implementing important actions.

Financially, 2009 is the final year of seed funding. This funding has been graciously given by Church Army Australia & the South Sydney Regional Council. Additionally, we have several supporter churches that provide finances, prayer & encouragement. Importantly, Steve raises finances through a range of supporters- from outside & within the Christian community- supporters who believe that Maroubra Surfers Church is benefiting the men, women, & children of the Maroubra surfing community & beyond.

History:

During the 1970’s, a crew of local surfers did surf mission, made some surf movies, & were a great bunch of guys n girls. These were the crew that Steve had as good Christian friends, together with surfers from the Northside.  

As a young university student, Steve was involved as a newcomer to Maroubra in the mid 70s. In addition to the uni surf contests, he competed in the short-lived Bay Surfers Association, then Maroubra Boardriders. He made many friends through competing, most of whom were happy to beat him. For a few years, Steve lived with surfing mates up at Bronte. Competing & travelling with the Bronte crew furthered his network of surfing mates beyond Maroubra.  

Boosted by the 1979 Billy Graham Crusade, a strong network of Christian surfers emerged. At first, these were the Southside & Cronulla groups. Soon afterwards, Christian Surfers Australia formed, involving surfing communities from all around our nation. Steve led Maroubra Christian Surfers during those early years.  

Still involved with Christian Surfers, Steve taught at Randwick Boy’s High for 8 years, then worked as the Youth Minister at Maroubra Anglican Church. After 4 years at Moore Theological College, Steve worked in the churches of Kiama, Bondi Beach, Uni NSW, then North Ryde.  

During this period, local surf mission continued through Maroubra Christian Surfers, led by surfers such as John Cleary, Wayne Hilliar, Evan Burns, Denis Smith, Daland Proudfoot, & Dannie Boyd.

In 1999, Steve decided to take a risk & plant a self-funded surfers church called “City Beaches Surfers Church”. In the end, it wasn’t financially viable, & became a huge stress on the Bligh family. Yet, a small house church continued, led by a former Christian Surfers leader. There, at Dannie & Daans’, the gathering grew, then really became seriously crowded. This was when Jai was in prison & subsequently released. During this time, Steve would travel from North Ryde Anglican Church, back to Maroubra- helping to teach the Bible at the house church, do pastoral care, & continue with Maroubra Surfers Association.  

By 2007, Church Army Australia enabled Steve to move back to Maroubra full time. This was to have another go at focusing his efforts on getting Surfers Church viable again, following through on the surf mission that God was moving & motivating.   Now in our third year, Maroubra Surfers Church is still developing. It may seem glamorous, but it’s not been easy. There’s still much ahead of us. If you’d like to connect up, then come along to one of our gatherings………”

From http://www.maroubrasurferschurch.org.au/about/about.htm

Restoring the Bentley

The Ledger reports…

“Last summer, hundreds, thousands of sick people came to Lakeland hoping to get well again.

They came not to see doctors but a balding, Canadian biker-dude evangelist named Todd Bentley, who was in the midst of leading a long Pentecostal revival at which many people said they were miraculously healed.

Among the sick were Robbie Susan Moore and Linda Chen. Both were told they were in the end stages of cancer. Both received prayers to be healed. Within months, one inexplicably was free of cancer. The other was dead.

Such were the contradictions of the Lakeland Outpouring revival. For 188 days, it was – depending on who you talked to – loud, frustrating, joyous and an event where sick people were miraculously healed or false and dangerous doctrines were presented. It drew as many as 300,000 people from around the world and polarized opinions in the Pentecostal world.

BENTLEY LEAVES

A year ago, on Aug. 9, 2008, Bentley left the revival just as news got out that he and his wife, Shonnah, were separating.

The revival continued for awhile, but the crowds who flocked to see Bentley, hoping for miraculous cures, melted away.

Within months, Bentley married a woman who had been a volunteer at the revival, further scandalizing opponents and followers alike. His reputation was in tatters.

According to a scholar who has studied recent Pentecostal movements, the Outpouring occupies a memorable, if not historic, place among religious revivals for its size and worldwide reach – and for its controversy over extravagant miracle claims and Bentley’s conduct.

“This revival was unique in that it was quickly covered virtually every night through God TV and the Internet.

Also, the Florida Outpouring became quite quickly one of the most divisive moments in modern Pentecostalism because of all the controversies about Todd,” James A. Beverley, professor of Christian thought and ethics at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto and associate director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., wrote in an e-mail interview.

INTERNET AUDIENCE

The revival’s leaders say they had no idea it would grow to such proportions.

The Lakeland Outpouring began on April 2, 2008, at Ignited Church, an Assemblies of God congregation on Lakeland’s north side. Ignited’s pastor, the Rev. Stephen Strader, had invited the flamboyant Bentley to lead a week of services.

At the time, he was an independent evangelist who headed Fresh Fire Ministries, based in Abbotsford, British Columbia.

A former drug and alcohol abuser who spent a short stint in jail as a teenager on a molestation charge, Bentley is covered in tattoos and favors biker-style attire.

A favorite technique while leading services was to shout “Bam!” as he touched (or in some cases, shoved or kneed) people to “impart” the healing power of the Holy Spirit.

From the beginning, the revival devoted a lot of attention to the miraculous.

After the first week, attendance swelled, fed by an international audience watching live streamed services on the Internet and, later, on a religious satellite channel, God TV.

People watching from remote locations claimed they, too, had been healed.

The stories of Chen and Moore were among the many “testimonies” gathered by revival staff, even though, as in Moore’s case, not all healings were valid, a point Bentley himself concedes….

…Two weeks of services stretched to four and beyond. People flew to Lakeland from as far as South Africa and Australia.

The revival changed venues several times in search of a place to accommodate the thousands who were arriving daily, some desperate for healing from physical and mental ailments, some eager to participate in the rapturous services, some simply curious. Others were dragged along by friends and relatives.

In a phone interview from Morningstar Ministries in Fort Mill, S.C., just outside Charlotte, N.C., where he has been undergoing a “restoration” process, Bentley, 33, said he noticed something different right away.

“I had never experienced such a tangible weight of God or the ease with which people would testify they’d been healed. So many testimonies were coming in over the Internet,” he said.

MIRACLES AND CRITICS

By late July, as the services met in enormous tents on the grounds of Sun ‘n Fun, as many 10,000 people attended nightly. The miraculous claims multiplied.

But there were plenty of critics. For years, Bentley had claimed he had supernatural visions, such as spiritual visits to heaven that included encounters with figures like the apostle Paul, and visions of angels, including one named Emma.

Bentley says now he did not emphasize those visions in Lakeland, but traditional Pentecostals were alarmed that they smacked of heresy.

The Assemblies of God published a document as the revival was going on that did not mention the Florida Outpouring by name, but warned pastors and church members to beware of teachings that could not be upheld by the Bible.

Others said Bentley and revival leaders made too many claims for miracles that could not be verified or strained belief.

Bentley routinely read testimonies that came in over the Internet claiming that someone who had died had been resurrected because of prayers offered at the Outpouring. News organizations from around the world descended on Lakeland. ABC News and the Associated Press reported they investigated claims of healings but could not verify them.

After a couple of hoaxes, Bentley and Strader say they began issuing disclaimers on unverified miracles.

“There were a few stories that turned out to be false. I don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. I can’t say I or anybody else claimed too much,” Bentley said.

But Beverley said Bentley should have been more careful.

“Whatever Todd thinks now, he talked too much about angels and made so many unsubstantiated claims about miracles that he brought his credibility into question,” he said.

SOMETHING WRONG

And all was not well behind the scenes as Bentley began dealing with marital problems. Strader said he sensed something was wrong in June when Bentley became less accessible.

“I never dreamed it was with Todd. I thought it was his organization,” he said.

Bentley said his marriage had been shaky for years.

“I can’t say I would have done things differently with Shonnah. It was already falling apart,” he said. “It was a personal problem I brought with me into Lakeland. The hope in the back of my mind was that we were going to work it out. I didn’t want it to hurt the kingdom of God or the revival.”

Shonnah Bentley and the Bentleys’ three children came to Lakeland for a while, but in July, they returned to Canada.

“We couldn’t get back that friendship and intimacy. She did her best to support me. There was just too much fighting and bickering,” he said.

Bentley confided his problems to a revival volunteer, Jessa Hasbrook, who occasionally helped keep the Bentleys’ children.

The Fresh Fire board later described the relationship as “unhealthy,” but Bentley denied having an affair with Hasbrook, as was rumored later by bloggers.

“There was no sexual affair going on in Lakeland. It was wrong to get emotionally involved so quickly. It made things look more scandalous,” he said.

There were also rumors that Bentley was drinking, a problem since Pentecostals generally forbid the use of alcohol.

He says now that after his wife left, he turned to alcohol on “a few occasions,” including once in public, but “I did not become an alcoholic.”

FAREWELL APPEARANCE

Before word got out that he and his wife were separating, Bentley left the revival.

He met with Strader and turned the revival over to him and made a farewell appearance on Aug. 9. He told his staff about the separation with his wife and flew to California, where he stayed with friends, he said. Strader said it was a few days later before he learned the true situation.

Bentley said he “went into a cave,” made no public appearances and dealt with divorce proceedings.

Bentley resigned from the board of Fresh Fire but didn’t formally separate from the organization until this year. Strader returned the revival to Ignited and continued the nightly services, but crowds dwindled to a couple of hundred.

The revival’s final service was on Oct. 12, barely noticed at the time. Bentley and Hasbrook married in March, shortly after Bentley’s divorce was final.

Beverley said the revival provoked intense differences that still linger.

“The Lakeland Revival brought out two dangerous traits in analysts, both pro and con. First, people often adopted an ‘all or nothing’ approach as if the revival was either pure gold or from the pit of hell. Second, it was also amazing how both revival fans and critics would pronounce judgments on the inner motives of the other side. A complex, messy revival – with complex personalities in the mix – demands nuance, especially since both good and bad things happened,” he said.

Bentley has been undergoing “restoration” counseling from fellow Pentecostal evangelist Rick Joyner at Morningstar Ministries.

He said he has clarified his doctrines and repented of behavior that caused pain and disillusionment and is preparing to return to the ministry.

In an agreement with Bentley’s former organization, Fresh Fire Ministries renamed itself Transform International, and Bentley started a new organization, Fresh Fire USA, and a Web site (freshfireusa.com).

RETURN TO MINISTRY?

His supporters say his divorce and remarriage should not stand in the way of his ministry.

Colleen Fader, of Ellenton, who visited the revival in April and says her kidneys were healed, said Bentley’s problems are between him and God.

“God uses imperfect people. Todd can’t heal anybody. It’s God,” she said.

Critics say that while some good things may have happened, Bentley’s leadership was too deeply flawed, both doctrinally and morally.

The Rev. George O. Wood, the Assemblies’ general superintendent, or highest official, said recently Bentley’s failings disqualify him from leading services in Assemblies churches.

“I don’t understand why anyone in their right mind would ever give Todd Bentley a platform again. I believe in redemption, but for some things you forever forfeit your public ministry. This man has proven by his lifestyle to be who he is, and our churches shouldn’t be using him, period,” he said.

Others are more circumspect. Strader said he could not invite Bentley back to Ignited Church because Assemblies of God policy forbids divorced people from leading services. But he said he would be willing to visit services elsewhere led by Bentley.

“Divorce, adultery and fornication are not unpardonable sins. … Do I feel like Todd has done everything he needs to do to be restored? No. He has a long way to go,” Strader said.

Bentley said he hopes to preach within the next year.

“Don’t count me out. I’m getting my personal life, my character and my doctrine in order.

“I’m going to take responsibility, humble myself and not be afraid to say I sinned, I’m sorry. … I’m emotionally and physically ready. The fire and the passion is there,” he said.”

From http://www.theledger.com/article/20090815/NEWS/908155033/1338?Title=Ecstasy-Agony

The life of a Hill$ong pop princess pastor

The Daily Mail reports…

“Sinitta has just returned from Sardinia, where she spent two weeks on a yacht with former boyfriend Simon Cowell as a guest of billionaire Sir Philip Green and his wife, Tina. The 40-year-old says the boat was an easy, companionable place to be. ‘I want to still be on the boat with Simon away from everything – just be really peaceful,’ she says. Sinitta, you see, is emotionally wiped out, exhausted.

Her adopted children, Magdalena, three, and Zac, two, are with her estranged husband, Andy Willner, 49, half a world away in Hong Kong, and she’s missing them dreadfully. She misses their father too. They have been separated for nearly two years and the divorce is almost finalised.

”I think about Andy a lot,’ she says. ‘When I was first on the boat, I couldn’t. I was so angry and so upset. Now I’ve come through that, what he did becomes smaller and smaller. Every day I remember more and more great things about my husband. As you heal, you think, “What did we break up about? Why did I leave you in the first place?” I still love him. He still loves me. He wasn’t the wrong person – it’s just our lives are going in different directions now. I regret not being with him,’ she adds, weeping.

Sinitta cries throughout much of our interview. The tears are, I suspect, a catharsis of sorts. She came to terms with her future as a single mother in Sardinia. ‘It’s so surreal being in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of nowhere,’ she says.

‘With Simon, I could sit on a boat for two weeks and just relax. We escape together. That’s probably what it is with us. I’m his escape, I would say, and he’s mine. On the boat, I was able to think, “Okay, when my babies come back, we start a new life.”

Sinitta and Simon, who were together, on and off, for 20 years, met when she was just 14. She was his first ever signing and became a huge star. Now she works with him on his phenomenally successful TV talent show The X Factor, helping him pick the contestants and acting as mentor.

‘I love him with all my heart,’ she says. ‘When we are together, he’s a very primary person in my life. But he wants to be a single guy. He wants to see who he wants to see when he wants to see them. I’m a very monogamous woman. I need someone who will put me first the whole time.’

Sinitta has been recording a television show for MTV to celebrate Simon’s upcoming 50th birthday in October when we meet. She’s wearing false eyelashes and thick foundation, plastered on by the TV make-up artist, but in her present emotionally raw state, I glimpse the vulnerability that I know endears her to those that know her.

She tells me her relationship with Simon is an ‘incredible, undefinable friendship’. ‘I like the familiarity, the security, and I really trust him,’ she says. ‘So many people would love us to get back together, and I can see why. I’ve even said to him, “Why don’t we?” But I think our lives have become so complicated now. I have the children, and he has this crazy career.

‘You know, I kind of think if you’re going to live life properly, you’re going to get hurt. So many people play it safe. They don’t want to risk getting hurt. But I’m a bit of a fool, in that I risk myself over and over. Now I have to be a bit more careful because of my babies, and that’s good, because I like men.

‘It’s not that I’m wild, but I like being in a relationship.I did not intend, expect or want to be a single mother. So I waited until I was quite old. I thought I’d found the right man and I tried to do everything properly. It just goes to show.’

Sinitta is silent for a moment as she reflects upon this. Andy had been a friend for five years before they married. She tells me she trusted him, loved him. ‘I knew he didn’t just want to “s**g Sinitta”,’ she says. ‘I’d understood from an early age that there were men who wanted me just because I was famous, but Andy was a nice Jewish boy who loved me to pieces.’

I wonder what went wrong. Sinitta is determined to be honest, to be open, to exorcise the past, but she has two stepchildren – Rudi, 18, and Tamara, 14 – from her husband’s first marriage who she’s wary of upsetting, so she chooses her words carefully. ‘I think I’d been kind of living my life according to his ex-wife since the beginning of the marriage,’ she says. 

‘Her children are grown-up now, and we’ve been married for seven years, so I helped raise those children. Then, when my children came along, I kind of felt I was at the bottom of the food chain. I just didn’t feel that Andy and his ex-wife gave me the same consideration for my children, and it kind of disgusted me.

‘Everything was still being dictated according to what she wanted to happen. It’s like, “You don’t work. Your children are grown up. I have babies. My children are vulnerable because they’ve had a difficult start, anyway, and I work, and Andy’s away all the time.” It wasn’t really fair.

‘I thought about how I’d been for seven years towards the first family, and I found it quite shocking. I don’t know – maybe it was because there wasn’t a blood tie – but I didn’t feel my children were being cared for in the same way that I’d cared for the first two children. Therefore, I didn’t think I should bother with it any more.’

Sinitta loves Magdalena and Zac, the children she adopted more than two years ago, with a passion. After spending the first six years of her life in a foster home, until her teenage mother – singer Miquel Brown – was able to cope with a child, Sinitta was desperate to create the traditional family set-up she had missed out on. It’s the reason she separated from Simon: she wanted children.

‘There was a time, I’ll come out and put my hand up, when I thought I would grow up, marry Simon and live happily ever after,’ she says. ‘Then, I realised he wanted to do something different with his life and I knew I definitely wanted that storyline for myself.

‘We could have drifted along for many years because we’re very close, very companionable, very compatible. We find it very easy to be together. I’ve known him since I was 14. I didn’t have a brother or a father when I was younger, so he’s the male figure I’ve had in my life the longest. He’s covered everything, from boyfriend and friend to father figure and boss. He’s just so many things to me.

‘It was hard for him, and me, because I had to be the one who had to go and do it – get married and change things. But you have to be honest. You can’t expect people to sacrifice their life, to live the life you want them to live. Likewise, I had to make sure I could have the things I wanted, even if it meant I couldn’t have other things I wanted.’ Sinitta is quite distraught now. ‘I’ve had my babies and that was always a big thing for me.’

Sinitta went to hell and back to have her children, suffering four miscarriages before trying IVF. After three failed attempts, they turned in desperation to a surrogate mother, Kerry West, and were ecstatic when she became pregnant using Andy’s sperm and her eggs. But Kerry miscarried twice.The second time she had been carrying twins. Sinitta beat herself up, blaming what she now refers to as her ‘wild’ past.

This is the first time she has spoken about it with such candour, and only now in the belief that her honesty might help other young women. ‘Not being able to carry my baby full-term was very hard,’ she says. ‘You just assume you’ll have children. But I had surgery when I was younger, so my uterus is unable to take a pregnancy to full-term. I also terminated a pregnancy.

‘The person I was with thought I was too young, and didn’t think I was ready to start a family or that it would be good for me or my career.’ Sinitta will not reveal who the father was. It’s the emotional fall-out that still preoccupies her now. ‘I’m very spiritual,’ she says. ‘But I did get religious at one point when I kept losing children, thinking, “Maybe this is a divine punishment because I terminated a teenage pregnancy.”

‘At the time I did it, there was no counselling, nothing. I can remember thinking, “Actually, that wasn’t too bad.” I was surprised I could wake up the next day and carry on with my life, and nothing terrible had happened to me. You think you’ve got away with it, and it comes back to get you 20 or so years later, and you’re like, “Wow, so that’s the price I’m paying for what I did.”

‘I realised, of course, that God isn’t like that – that I wasn’t being punished,’ continues Sinitta, who has, since 1993, been a minister at the so-called rock ‘n’ roll church, Hillsong, in London, where she guides young people. ‘Now, I don’t even let my head go there, because you regret, regret, regret.

‘You have to think, “I made a decision. Keep going. You have to be strong.” Maybe my whole life would have been different if I hadn’t had the termination. But there’s no point going there. There were two paths and my life went down one.’

Sinitta eventually made the difficult decision to stop trying for a baby of her own. ‘I was the one who called an end to it,’ she says. ‘I realised my marriage was going to be under a huge strain if I tried again. Every time the surrogate miscarried, it was kind of destroying me. I had to draw a line under things because, if I didn’t, it was going to get me, the grief. I could feel it was going to suck me in, put me in a depression I didn’t want to go to.’

Sinitta and Andy decided to adopt. The vetting procedure was rigorous, particularly given that a flurry of celebrity adoptions had met with criticism at the time. ‘They wanted to know everything about you – personality, health, my past, the termination. I worried that they might think I didn’t like children because I’d done that, but I thought, “I’m just going to be honest, tell them everything.

If they turn round and say, ‘I’m very sorry, you were a wild child pop star when you were a kid who terminated a pregnancy and danced on tables. We think you’re too crazy to adopt children,’ then fine.” I had that reputation and knew they’d find out anyway. But, basically, the more I told them, the more they thought I was suitable to be a parent and that I’d be able to cope if the children went through similar things.’

Today, Sinitta can’t imagine a life without her children. ‘I laugh properly – big-bellied laughs every single day because they’re hilarious. They’re gorgeous. At the moment I’m pining for them because they’re in Hong Kong. We speak on the phone, and then you realise how young they are. They’ll say, “When are you going to come and cuddle me, Mama.” I just want them to come home and get on with my life.’

Sinitta says she began to make the sad decision to end her marriage shortly after the adoption was finalised. Her husband had decided to relocate to Hong Kong, where his head-hunting company has one of its main offices.

‘Having the children changed me in as much as it’s one thing if you’re disappointed in someone for yourself, but when you’re disappointed for your children, there’s a different kind of fierceness to it. You feel, “How dare you?” on behalf of them rather than yourself.

‘The final incident happened pretty much once the adoption papers were signed. Once we’d reached that point, we should have been able to be happy, but then this other thing happened, and I thought, “I just can’t cope with this any more. I haven’t got enough fight left in me. I have to rest and enjoy my babies.

‘If I don’t, I’m going to have a breakdown because it’s been two years of all this really emotional stuff that I’ve had to be brave about and keep going.” I didn’t take them out of care to be with an upset, emotionally fraught woman. I knew I had to be happy for their sakes, and remove the things that were making me unhappy.’

Coming to terms with the divorce, though, was a slow process, involving a lot of soul-searching, much of it done last Christmas, which Sinitta and her children spent in Barbados with Simon. ‘It’s a huge thing ending your marriage – pretty terrifying,’ she says.

‘It was nice to be away from the whole thing in Barbados – free with the kids running naked on the beach. I realised, this is what they deserve. They’ll go to school soon and I’ve got to make the years that they’re home with me all day count, because I’ve already lost so much of their early time. That has got to be all about them.

‘In the beginning, I told myself to think of it as if Andy was away on a long business trip. I thought, “Do what you do when he’s away for a week or two weeks.” Then that became a year and a half and I learned to cope.’

Would she marry again? ‘I don’t want to be on my own with the children,’ she says. ‘I want them to have a man in their lives.’ Simon? She laughs. ‘Simon was very tolerant in Barbados, because they dominated the beach and pool area. I think he kind of liked it and thought, “This is the way holidays are supposed to be.

” But he wouldn’t want it like that permanently. That’s just the way it is.’ She says this with a calm acceptance. Sinitta is now anxious to get home, to start preparing the house for her children’s return. As she stands to leave, she says, ‘Life is funny. You think it’s going to go one way, and then it goes another.

I’m almost 41 now and a mother of two children. You don’t get to here without making mistakes, I’ve begun to realise that, with every interview I give, I’m writing my children’s history. I don’t want to create more mess by not being clear about what’s going on. I feel comfortable enough in my skin now to be completely honest.’ And she’s right, life is funny, but, just like Sinitta, it can be honest and kind, and eventually happy, once the crying stops.”

From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1206254/The-abortion-ruined-life-Sinitta-reveals-tragic-secret-left-emotional-wreck.html

The Manchester Evening News reported in 2005…

“…..After becoming a born-again Christian in 1994, and eventually a pastor of her local gospel church – Hillsong in London’s Regent’s Park – Sinitta’s rock-solid faith should serve as a source of help and comfort during the testing times to come.

Her return to religion came as much of a surprise to her, she admits. “I wasn’t planning it. I went into this church after seeing a picture of a dying child – I know we’ve all seen them before but this particular one really impacted me.

“I wandered in to Hillsong Church and ended up joining this small group of maybe 20 people – that was 11 years ago and now there are about 4,500 as members,” she smiles warmly, adding that the Bedingfield siblings, Natasha and Daniel, have sung with her at Hillsong every Sunday for around six years.

They’re not the only talent she surrounds herself with these days. Her main focus, she explains, is spotting new singers.

“That’s what I’ve been doing for the last few years – working behind the scenes, finding and developing new talent.”

And yes, she smiles, she’s had a hand from Mr Nasty [Cowell], who’s passed on some of his wisdom – although not, fortunately, his people skills.”

From http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/entertainment/film_and_tv/s/154/154447_hit_me_baby_one_more_time_sinitta_used_to_slap_simon_cowell.html

The church at war

The Guardian reports…

“The leader of one of Brazil’s largest evangelical churches declared his church was “at war” this week, following allegations that his organisation had siphoned off billions of dollars of donations intended for charity.

The charges of fraud and money laundering are contained in a report by Sao Paulo’s public prosecutor that was formally submitted to a Brazilian judge on Monday. The report claims 10 leading members of the church – including its founder and leader, Bishop Edir Macedo – used donations from followers to buy jewellery, property and cars.

Following an investigation into 10 years of the church’s financial activities, prosecutors accused church leaders of illegally channelling donations from their largely impoverished flock into overseas accounts and businesses before returning the money to Brazil where it was allegedly used to invest in media outlets and property.

“There is evidence that the donation money was used to attend to the personal interests of those being accused,” the public prosecutor said in a statement.

Bishop Macedo hit back in a pamphlet distributed at the church’s 11,000-capacity temple in Rio de Janeiro, a towering building that owes more to Wembley stadium than St Paul’s cathedral. In the text, entitled “Persecution gives us experience”, Macedo claimed his church was “fighting in a war” but that “we already know how it will end”.

The allegations have dominated Brazil’s front pages this week, with one Rio newspaper stamping the headline “stealing is a sin” across its front-page. A $45m (£27m) executive jet, reportedly owned by Bishop Macedo, has become the most visible symbol of the scandal.

The charges also triggered a vicious clash between two of Brazil’s biggest television networks, Rede Globo and Rede Record, which is linked to the church.

Following a 10-minute report on Globo on Tuesday detailing the allegations against the Universal Church, Record responded with 14-minute story in which the newsreader accused Globo of a “direct and desperate attack” on the church’s media outlet in order to damage its rising audience share. Rather than focusing on the accusations, the report highlighted the church’s “enormous” social projects in South Africa, Colombia and the Ivory Coast as well as a school helping children suffering from Down’s syndrome. Local followers of the church, who normally refuse to talk to the press, were quoted describing the allegations as an “injustice”.

The tithe is an important part of life at the Universal Church, which was founded in 1977 by Bishop Macedo and says it follows the “prosperity theology” by which faith and commitment to a church are rewarded with material prosperity.

Since then the church has grown quickly both in Brazil and across the globe, becoming one of the most polarising forces in Brazilian society. During last year’s Rio carnival, one well-known samba group carried a banner reading: “Jesus is the path and Bishop Macdeo is the toll-road.”

The church, which has 20 branches in the UK, claims to have 8 million followers around the world. According to Sao Paulo’s prosecutor, it raises around $800m a year from donations in 4,500 temples scattered across Brazil, from inner-city slums to dusty Amazonian frontier towns. Authorities in Brazil believe Macedo is worth around $2bn.

Speaking in Brazil’s upper house, the senator Marcelo Crivella – a former Universal Church leader who is also Macdeo’s nephew – said the allegations were “slanderous” and that the church would not “turn the other cheek”.

“The idea that pastors took the offerings and sent them overseas in order to get rich is not new,” he said.”

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/13/brazil-evangelical-leader-charged-fraud

No funds for fundies

Associated Press reports…

“A “serious budget shortfall” at Focus on the Family has prompted the conservative Christian group to issue a special fundraising plea, and contributed to a decision to cede control of its contentious “Love Won Out” conferences about homosexuality to another religious organization, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Focus on the Family, founded by child psychologist James Dobson, is on pace to fall $6 million short of a $138 million budget for the fiscal year that began last October, spokesman Gary Schneeberger said.

Jim Daly, president and CEO of the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based evangelical ministry, explained the challenges in a letter to approximately 800,000 donors.

“Right now we’re facing a serious budget shortfall that threatens our ability to reach out to parents, families and married couples who count on our help,” Daly wrote. “Income is down nearly $6 million from what we expected and planned for this year. I want to assure you that we’re committed to good stewardship AND living within our means, just as so many families are today.”

Focus on the Family also announced Tuesday it would no longer stage “Love Won Out” conferences across the country. The events drew both participants and picketers for their promise to “help men and women dissatisfied with living homosexually understand that same-sex attractions can be overcome.”

The events will go on, instead staged by Orlando, Fla.-based Exodus International, a network of ministries whose core message is “Freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.”

Schneeberger said it made strategic sense for Exodus, which is expanding its work with churches, to take over the conferences starting in November.

“Financial realities played a role in the decision,” he said. “That said, Exodus is really the one who should be running ‘Love Won Out’ anyway. It makes sense independent of economic realities,” he said.

Gay rights groups have long criticized such initiatives as harmful. The American Psychological Association last week said mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments. The group also endorsed approaches “that integrate concepts from the psychology of religion and the modern psychology of sexual orientation.”

Schneeberger said that one staff position will be eliminated and that other financial steps are under discussion. Last fall, budget problems prompted Focus on the Family to eliminate more than 200 positions.”

From http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i4k0mTUWPjfJZMC8kUlLXY6evZLAD9A11HC02

Does this mean I can smack the fleshy part of Phil Pringle’s thigh for his naughty bible heresies?

The Rotorua Daily Post reports…

“Three Christian pastors from Rotorua want the legal right to smack their children for the purposes of correction – a viewpoint which clashes with other mainstream churches.

Pastor Phil Wiseman of Rotorua’s C3 Church (formerly Christian City Church), Victory Church pastor David Abrahams and Rotorua Elim Church senior pastor Jaz Robbins will be voting “no” in the Citizens’ Initiated Referendum which asks whether a smack, as part of good parental correction, should be a criminal offence.

The trio’s views are at odds with Anglican and Methodist church leaders, who feel the removal of the defence of reasonable force from the crimes act, a legal loophole used to justify the use of force against children, is working and should not be changed.

Pastor Abrahams, who leads a congregation of about 60, said making parents criminals for smacking their children went against the teachings of the Bible. “My perspective is, generally, the leadership of the mainstream churches seems to have gone away from a biblical perspective,” Pastor Abrahams said. “If they were to make the Bible their guideline, the Bible makes it very clear that smacking is okay.”

The Pentecostal church leader cited a verse from the Book of Proverbs, which says that “he who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him, disciplines him”.

According to Pastor Wiseman, smacking has been used as a parenting tool for centuries and he felt “light smacking should not be a criminal offence.

 ”I don’t think criminalising smacking is, in any way, going to stop the plague of child abuse.”

Pastor Wiseman admitted he used smacking on the bottom or fleshy part of the thigh as a form of correction, but was frugal in its use. “We don’t smack very often, but smacking deals with it instantly. It’s like a wake-up call. I think everybody has the right to make that decision,” he said.

Pastor Jaz Robbins said there were situations where smacking was “appropriate”. “I voted no in the referendum, because I believe that in appropriate contexts, a smack can be appropriate and it shouldn’t be a criminal offence,” she said.

 ”There are parents that know how to use the occasional smack in a wise manner and that should be their choice.”

St Faiths’ Anglican vicar Tom Poata was unavailable for comment, as was St Michael’s Catholic Church priest Aidan Mullholland.

However, Catholic Church aid agency Caritas recommended a “Yes” vote on the basis the law was close to the compromise which the Catholic Bishops Conference sought in 2007, between a complete ban on physical restraint and allowing “violent” discipline.”

From http://www.rotoruadailypost.co.nz/local/news/pastors-clash-with-churches-on-smacking/3902751/

Funeral fallout

The Herald reports…

“A Newcastle woman has complained to the Catholic Church’s professional standards unit about feeling “threatened and intimidated” by a letter from Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Michael Malone following an incident at her father’s funeral.

The woman, who received a personal apology from the bishop early this year after alleging she had been sexually abused by a priest as a child, wrote to the bishop in June after a Newcastle priest turned off a microphone and blocked her from completing her father’s eulogy.

The priest told the woman her comments about the late Monsignor Patrick Cotter were “totally inappropriate”.

The woman, who did not want to be identified, said she repeated several lines from a Herald report in 2007 that revealed police recommended Monsignor Cotter be charged with concealing a crime after “deciding to say nothing” when told about child sex allegations involving priest Vince Ryan.

The woman said she thought it appropriate to raise it at her father’s funeral because of his long-standing concerns about Monsignor Cotter.

An investigation by the diocese found the incident at the funeral had occurred but the priest had no case to answer.

The woman contacted The Herald after she received a letter from Bishop Malone on July 22 about “your eulogy at your father’s funeral, which caused this trouble in the first place”.

He took exception to the description of Monsignor Cotter “covering up the crimes of one of Australia’s worst pedophile priests”, calling it “a very slanderous statement”.

“If you have any proof that what you publicly stated is true, then I urge you to come forward and present that proof,” Bishop Malone wrote.

“I know that The Newcastle Herald (sic) expressed as much, but that is not ‘proof’ I assure you.”

Bishop Malone confirmed he had sent the letter by email.

He said he did not understand the woman feeling threatened and intimidated, and she had “hung, drawn and quartered” the monsignor.

He stood by his statement there was no proof against Monsignor Cotter, but said he had not seen the police interview in 1996 that was the basis of The Herald’s 2007 report, which ran several months after the monsignor’s death.”

From http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/general/newcastle-womans-eulogy-for-dad-offends-catholic-church/1593196.aspx

Those annoying Christians

Billy – The Grandkid

The Miami Herald reports…

“Six members of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church — including the daughter of founding pastor D. James Kennedy — have been banned from the premises and all functions of the Fort Lauderdale church.

The action, announced in a letter mailed to Coral Ridge members over the weekend, is the latest round in a brewing dispute between recently appointed Pastor W. Tullian Tchividjian, who is a grandson of evangelist Billy Graham, and a group of members spearheading an effort to fire him.

Besides Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy, Kennedy’s daughter, the people banned are Lorna Bryan, Kaye Carlson, Romeo DeMarco, and Jim and Jeanne Filosa. They have been ordered to stay off church property and out of church programs, and “to stop writing accusatory letters to the congregation.”

The events have rocked the church, which under Kennedy was a nationally recognized stronghold of Christian conservative activism.

In recent weeks, the dissidents have circulated two letters and a petition to call a congregational meeting with the goal of putting an end to Tchividjian’s fledgling pastorate.

Tchividjian fired back in his letter to the congregation: “No church government can tolerate such an insurrection from those who will not listen to admonition, refuse all counsel, and will stop at nothing until they have overthrown legitimate authority and replaced it with their own.”

Tchividjian, one of Graham’s seven grandsons, is former pastor of New City Church in Margate, which has merged with Coral Ridge. The congregation officially selected him to lead Coral Ridge on March 15, succeeding Kennedy, who died in September 2007.

Among the accusations of the dissidents are that Tchividjian has replaced some longtime Coral Ridge staff members with his own people. The dissidents have also accused Tchividjian of watering down Coral Ridge’s worship style, de-emphasizing the Evangelism Explosion method developed by Kennedy, selling land at the church’s west campus “to make up for budget shortfalls,” and appointing an executive commission with equal power to the standard church government.

More than 1,600 copies of the petition, along with accusatory letters, were mailed to church members on July 24. A follow-up letter was mailed Aug. 1.

At a town hall meeting on July 31, attended by several hundred people, Tchividjian and his staff countered the charges. They said there was no budget shortfall and that only 15 of more than 70 church staff members are from the former New City Church. They said Coral Ridge is actually adding Evangelism Explosion classes and that rather than loosening the traditional service, Tchividjian plans to make the contemporary service more traditional.

Cassidy, Kennedy’s daughter, declined to comment Monday beyond saying, “This is something that will be handled at the church.” However, Jim Filosa said the ban was no surprise because he was told Aug. 4 that he would not be allowed to attend choir rehearsal the next night.

“Quite honestly, we expected this,” said Filosa, a Coral Ridge member since 1991. “Tullian won’t leave without a fight, and neither will we.

“Changes are inevitable in mergers,” Filosa continued. “If [Tchividjian] had come in humbly, and done changes gradually, I think he would have been more accepted. Instead, it’s been an attitude more like, `Here I am — if you don’t like me, there’s the door.’ ”

According to Tchividjian’s letter, the church is forming a judicial commission to deal with the six main dissidents, who “will be given a hearing so that they can give an account for the controversy their actions have created.”

From http://www.miamiherald.com/news/southflorida/story/1180482.html

Hill$ong’s final Rosebery defeat

Sydney Central reports…

“A battle between the Hillsong Church and a South Sydney resident group over a controversial $78 million mega church appears to be over, with the Evangelical group putting the site of the proposed church on the market this week.

Hillsong has listed the Rosthschild Avenue, Rosebery site, which it paid $28 million for in 2006, with property agents CB Richard Ellis and is seeking Expressions of Interest for the site.

Both Hillsong and CB Richard Ellis refused to comment on the proposed sale.

The decision to sell follows ongoing controversy surrounding the proposal which involved building a 2700 seat stadium, underground parking for more than 600 cars and a seven storey office block at the site.

Locals had vehemently opposed the construction of the mega church, on the grounds that the area would be overwhelmed by Hillsong members and traffic on weekends and weeknights. Hillsong currently attracts about 20,000 worshippers to its Baulkham Hills and Waterloo churches on weekends.

Following an independent report which recommended the proposal be rejected, the church withdrew its development application from the Central Sydney Planning Committee last year, one day before the body was to meet and decide on the mega church’s future.

The move to sell the site is a complete reversal by Hillsong, which had been adamant it would build a mega church in Rosebery.

The proposal has been dogged with controversy, with locals accusing Hillsong of dirty tricks including fraudulent petitions, secret meetings with politicians, and flawed traffic assessments in a bid to gain approval for its proposal.

A public meeting about the proposed church held early last year attracted almost 1000 people to the Wesley Centre in Sydney. Residents opposed to the church proposal later claimed many of these people were bussed in by Hillsong from the Hills district and its Waterloo church.

Hillsong has denied these claims.

Rosebery residents Action Group spokesman Graeme Grace said residents were pleased to see Hillsong was looking to sell the site.

“They have obviously thought deeply and realised it’s just not the right place for it,” he said.

“Yes it’s a relief, but we are not going to count chickens before they hatch. We are going to wait till it’s sold then relax.”

Mr Grace said he hoped a suitable residential or commercial development would instead be built at the site.”

From http://sydney-central.whereilive.com.au/news/story/hillsong-gives-up-on-sydney-mega-church-site/

It’s not really my home, I just own it

The Daily Telegraph reports…

“A Bishop and his wife who campaign for the homeless are being called before a tribunal for allegedly making their own tenants live in housing the tenants describe as a “slum”.

The Anglican Bishop of South Sydney Robert Forsyth and his wife Margaret are to go before the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal.

Conciliation with their tenants – who argue they had to live in squalor for six months – failed yesterday.

The tenants gave permission for six weeks of renovations that lasted six months.

“It was like living on the set of Slumdog Millionaire,” tenant Rebecca Whittington, 24, said. “We trusted that it would only be three to six weeks. It’s been six months of trauma. “The property was left in a dangerous state. We were good tenants, they came in and had total disregard for us.”

Bishop Forsyth called the case a “small problem” but said he cared for his tenants.

We are bewildered, it’s a tribunal, it’s meant to solve small problems,” he said. “It’s still before the tribunal and that is where it should be dealt with.”

He distanced himself from the house, which he and his wife co-own with another couple, Adelaide-based Paul and Susan Harrington.

“I have nothing to do with the house, and my position has nothing to do with it.”

From http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/anglican-bishop-of-south-sydney-a-slum-lord/story-e6freuy9-1225760002012

Repayment plan

The Age reports…

“All non-Aboriginal Australians should be prepared to leave the country if the indigenous people want that, making restitution for the vile sin of genocide, an Anglican leader suggested last night.

If they stayed, they would have to provide whatever recompense indigenous peoples thought appropriate, the Reverend Peter Adam told a Sydney audience.

”It would in fact be possible, even if very difficult and complicated, for Europeans and others to leave Australia. I am not sure where we would go, but that would be our problem,” he said.

Dr Adam, principal of Ridley College – the main Anglican theological college in Victoria – was giving the NSW Baptist Union’s annual John Saunders Lecture.

Dr Adam said Christian teaching required either restitution – returning what was stolen, the land – or recompense. If those who arrived after 1788 did not leave, they would need to ask each of the indigenous peoples what kind of recompense would be appropriate. This would be complicated and extensive but must be done or the genocide would be trivialised.

”No recompense could ever be satisfactory because what was done was so vile, so immense, so universal, so pervasive, so destructive, so devastating and so irreparable.”

Dr Adam acknowledged that some people had done their best to remedy wrongs, including some government actions, but something ”more drastic” was required.

Dr Adam said churches shared responsibility because the land and wealth of churches came from land stolen from indigenous people. ”The prosperity of our churches has come from the proceeds of crime. Our houses, our churches, our colleges, our shops, our sport grounds, our parks, our courts, our parliaments, our prisons, our hospitals, our roads, our reservoirs are stolen property.”

He called for a co-ordinated recompense by churches that included supporting indigenous Christian ministry and training.

”We European Australians often claim that one of the strengths of the Australian character is ‘caring for the underdog’. That claim is hypocrisy – we do not act with justice, let alone care.”

He said his proposal would be difficult, complicated and costly. ”The alternative is to fail in our moral duty, to admit that for Australia, in Martin Luther King jnr’s words, ‘the bank of justice is bankrupt’.”

From http://www.theage.com.au/national/get-out-or-pay-up-says-reverend-20090810-efks.html

 

Danny Nalliah lighting more fires

The Sydney Morning Herald reports…

“An Evangelical church leader who blamed bushfires in February on Victoria’s abortion laws will address an anti-Muslim Christian conference alongside the Reverend Fred Nile and state Liberal MLC David Clarke this year.

Mr Nile invited the leader of the Catch the Fire ministries, Pastor Danny Nalliah, to address the National Conference for all Concerned Christians on November 21 on the theme ”Australia’s Future and Global Jihad”, an event Mr Nile said was about ‘’strengthening Australia’s Christian heritage”

”We are concerned with the conflict between Islam and Christianity that is happening around the world,” Mr Nile said.

Mr Nalliah was widely criticised for issuing a press release in the week after the Victorian disaster claiming the fires which claimed 173 lives were punishment for the relaxation of Victoria’s abortion laws.

He had previously made headlines when he and a fellow minister were prosecuted under Victoria’s racial vilification laws in 2002 for comments about Islam, triggered by a complaint from the Islamic Council of Victoria. A judge upheld the complaint but it was later overturned on appeal.

Mr Nile said he was not worried by the racial vilification accusation.

”I was very concerned that he was persecuted by the Muslims,” he said. ”It was an ambush.”

Mr Nalliah told the Herald the alleged terrorist plot on Holsworthy barracks by men with links to the Somali terrorism group al-Shabab showed why Christianity should be protected ”as the core value of the nation”

”At some point we have to draw the line and say enough is enough,” he said. ”The nation has to stand for its Christian values, irrespective of whether all people practise Christianity or not.”

Mr Nalliah will deliver a speech on the topic ”Is the West being de-Christianised?”

From http://www.smh.com.au/national/christian-leaders-plan-antiislam-conference-20090809-ee8z.html

The crappy world of AOG internal politics

Heaven – the basic no-frills benefits package for mass murderer believers

The Valley News-Dispatch reports…

“George Sodini rests in heaven now because he professed a faith in Jesus years before his shooting rampage, a Tetelestai Christian Church leader said.

Jack Rickard, a deacon at the Plum church Sodini attended for years, said the Bible makes it clear that “professing a faith in Jesus as savior means you will have complete eternal salvation.”

Rickard, 80, of Indiana, Pa., said Tetelestai members “are firm believers in ‘once-saved, always-saved.’”

He said the church, which is in process of moving to New Kensington, focuses on the intense study of Scripture.

Rickard conveyed his belief that Sodini attained eternal life.

“George is going to heaven, but he’s not going to get his rewards,” Rickard said. He said that Sodini won’t be offered all of heaven’s benefits because of his sin.

“George was a professing believer,” Rickard said.

Shortly after 8 p.m. Tuesday, Sodini walked into the LA Fitness Center in Great Southern Shopping Center in Collier and opened fire in an aerobics room filled with women. In addition to killing three, he wounded nine others before killing himself.

Sodini wrote in his online diary that the pastor at Tetelestai convinced him it was possible to commit mass murder and still be welcomed into heaven.

In his blog, Sodini alleged that the Rev. Alan “Rick” Knapp taught Tetelestai members that committing such a crime could be forgiven.

“Holy [expletive], religion is a waste. But this guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven. Ask him,” Sodini wrote.

After the shootings, Knapp went to the Oakmont police station where he told Chief David DiSanti Sr. that the church condones no such actions.

Deacon Rickard said he knew Sodini fairly well and never thought Sodini would commit such an act.

“I saw no traits like that in him except that he was a little quiet,” Rickard said.

Rickard said he socialized with Sodini on several occasions. The two had beers together and Sodini ate dinner at Rickard’s home at least once, Rickard said.

But, Rickard indicated that Sodini caused some trouble at Tetelestai, but declined specifics.

“The guy left the church over four years ago,” Rickard said. “He was asked to leave the church once and he did. But because of certain circumstances, he was allowed to come back.”

Sodini wrote in his blog that he attended Tetelestai for 13 years and left in November 2006.

Rickard said Tetelestai, an unaffiliated, independent Christian congregation, has about 400 members. The name is a Greek word that translates to “It is finished” and is purportedly the last word spoken by Jesus.

The congregation is renovating the former Westmoreland County Community College branch along East Hills Drive in New Kensington. Rickard said services should begin there in October.

Rickard acknowledged that public perception of the church has suffered because of Sodini. But he defended his congregation as a group of Christians whose sole interest is in studying Scripture and serving God.

“We are not a cult,” Rickard said. “We are solely involved in an in-depth study of what the Scriptures say.”

From http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/s_637429.html

Tributes don’t pour in for Rev. Ike

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports…

“Even in death, Rev. Ike tried to keep the hustle going that made him a millionaire many times over. “In lieu of flowers,” Ike Ministries announced before its scheming patriarch was cold to the touch, “Rev. Ike would ask that tributes and/or Offerings be sent to: Rev. Ike Ministries …”

The Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II — that’s “Rev. Ike” to us rubes — died last week in Los Angeles from complications of a stroke he suffered two years ago. He was 74. We were so consumed with the White House beer summit, the health care debate and the president’s slipping poll numbers that the passing of one of the nation’s most remarkable scoundrels almost slipped by without notice.

Rev. Ike was a staple of AM radio when I was teenager in the 1970s. His sermons from the pulpit of the United Church Science of Living Institute in New York could be heard on 1,770 radio and television stations across the country. An estimated 2.5 million people tuned in every week to hear why enlightened greed and self-interest was closer to godliness than what our parents and Sunday school teachers taught us. He was our generation’s Father Divine — a media-savvy African-American huckster who made up the rules of the prosperity gospel as he went along.

It helps to think of the prosperity gospel movement in terms of the early history of rock ‘n’ roll:

Norman Vincent Peale would be the movement’s Hank Williams. Rev. Ike is its Little Richard. Benny Hinn is its Bo Diddley. Robert Schuller is Chuck Berry. Ernest Angley is Chubby Checker. Jim Bakker is Buddy Holly. Jimmy Swaggart is Jerry Lee Lewis and Joel Osteen is Elvis. Creflo Dollar, Rev. Ike’s most slavish imitator, is either Jackie Wilson or James Brown.

Unlike many of his contemporaries and rivals, Rev. Ike never claimed he was a “Christian minister,” though he could fill Madison Square Garden with money-grubbing acolytes as fast as any preacher. “This is the do-it-yourself church,” he would say tossing aside the Apostle Paul and channeling Ayn Rand. “The only savior in this philosophy is God in you.”

When it came to the worship of Mammon, Rev. Ike was as transparent as they come. “It is the lack of money that is the root of all evil,” he used to say. “The best thing you can do for the poor is not to be one of them.” Decades ahead of Oprah and the author of “The Secret” in the mainstreaming of greed as a middle-class virtue, Rev. Ike’s theology was indistinguishable from the fever dream of the most unrepentant capitalist: “Forget about the pie-in-the-sky; get yours here and now.”

Thanks to an inverted gospel that despises the poor and exalts the rich, those of us who bothered to watch him on the blurry UHF channels for laughs learned that President Grover Cleveland’s face graces every $1,000 bill. Rev. Ike used to preach in front of wall-sized blow-ups of those bills, wiping the sweat from his brow with handkerchiefs that cost more than what most of his parishioners made in a day. Clearly, money was the only denomination he truly respected.

There was never any doubt about which side Rev. Ike was on when it came to the dispute between Jesus and the money changers in the Temple of Jerusalem. Rev. Ike was always the one yelling that Jesus had no right to shut down his business. He would have argued that God personally told him that turning the Temple into a den of thieves didn’t violate any zoning laws. After that incident, he would have gone out of his way to attend Jesus’ early morning trial weeks later to make sure his feelings about the anarchist were well known. He would have been the first to shout: “Guilty, guilty!”

In the end, Rev. Ike shuffled from this mortal coil without his fleet of 16 Rolls Royces, mansions or the millions he extorted from his gullible flock over the decades. In parodying Jesus, he used to joke that if it was difficult for a rich man to get into heaven, it would be impossible for a poor man. “He doesn’t even have a bribe for a gatekeeper,” Rev. Ike would say, generating laughter among his pigeons.

There is an old biblical verse that comes to mind whenever I hear folks like Rev. Ike or fearmongers on right-wing talk radio hawking gold or other financial investment schemes to save them: “You say ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

Rev. Ike is dead, but, alas, the spirit that made his lies so compelling lives on.”

From http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09216/988400-153.stm

Google and ye shall find

Lance (Group Sects) writes…

One of the features of WordPress is it allows blog administrators to see what people Googled, immediately prior to arriving at the blog.

Here are some of my favourite recent Group Sects visitor search terms.

christianity tight pants

one disloyal bondi pastor

what weighs more than a duck

hillsong martyrdom

“phil pringle” dickhead

sunset coast clc cult

women’s halfnaked boxing fight’s

sunset coast clc dodgy

illustrations about camouflaged churches

planetshakers lesbian

putting cocaine up your bum

God is a growth business:Osteen

The Presbyterian version of going apesh*t

The Age reports…

“The Presbyterian Church in Victoria will defy the law and take the consequences if Parliament removes religious exemptions to the Equal Opportunity Act, a spokesman said yesterday.

The Reverend David Palmer, head of the church’s ethics committee, warned a parliamentary inquiry into the exemptions that changes would create significant conflict between church and state. ‘‘The committee should not interpret this as a threat — it is simply an honest warning of what will come to pass, and it reflects the depth of Christian feeling on these issues.’’

Mr Palmer said the church would use all means at its disposal to challenge changes, including the courts and civil disobedience. Outside the hearing, he said: ‘‘We will not be employing people whose publicly expressed beliefs and lifestyle amounts to a rejection of Christian teachings and practice.

‘‘Our emphasis is, of course, opposition to any changes by legal means, but in the end we will stand on our conscience.’’

Mr Palmer told the committee there was no need for the changes. ‘‘It is about an intolerant secular agenda to erode Christian belief and practice by reducing the protections that the law gives religious freedom,’’ he said.

Peter Faris, QC, told the inquiry that the suggestion religious groups could get permission for exemptions on a case-by-case basis had been tried ‘‘in Communist Russia, where everyone was equal’’.

Catholic Bishop Christopher Prowse said that weakening religious exemptions would force secularisation of services by religious agencies, which would have a profoundly negative effect.

It would go to the heart of many people’s religious motivation, and lead many, Catholic or not, to prefer the services of Catholic providers of education and welfare.

‘‘The popularity of Catholic providers is largely attributed to the mission and witness those providers demonstrate in what they do, how they do it and why they do it,’’ he said.

Melbourne Anglican Archbishop Philip Freier said it was a mistake to separate core and non-core religious activity because to Christians, public and private aspects of religion were equally important.

He said the church did not see a social ill needing to be remedied that justified changes to the law. There was a high level of public satisfaction with Anglican schools, welfare agencies and other ministries.

The Islamic Council of Victoria also opposed reducing exemptions. Spokesman Hyder Gulam said Muslims saw the exemptions as a shield allowing them to practise their faith, not as a sword to propagate Islam.

On Tuesday, the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission told the inquiry the only exemptions should be those that positively promoted equality.

The commissioner, Helen Szoke, told The Age discrimination was sometimes needed to allow people to achieve equal opportunities long-term, and religious freedom had to be balanced against the demands of equality.

From http://www.theage.com.au/national/church-would-defy-loss-of-exemptions-20090805-ea3l.html

Put in their Martin Place

When your own mind is your enemy

USA Today reports…

“Hopelessness haunted Tim Pollock for years after an Iraqi insurgent blew off half his skull during a reconnaissance operation in 2004. Back home in Columbiana, Ohio, the retired Army infantryman drank hard, bought a gun and considered suicide.But today Pollock, 30, has a renewed sense of purpose despite his seizures and other war-related disabilities. He visits soldiers in hospitals. He coaches veterans who struggle as he does with agitation, anxiety and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And he’s studying for ministry.

“I’ll always have post-traumatic stress, but I’m learning through God how to control that,” says Pollock, who leads a veteran support group through Point Man International Ministries, an independent non-profit. “I’m learning how to change my feelings of anger into feelings of love and help people with their problems.”

As soldiers return home from Iraq and Afghanistan, congregations are discovering how spirituality can help veterans afflicted with postwar stress. But many pastors remain unsure how to help when veterans contend with chronic nightmares, outbursts and panic attacks.

An army of helpers

Several ministries are trying.

•Since 2007, Campus Crusade for Christ’s Military Ministry has helped about 100 local churches launch or expand programs addressing spiritual needs that accompany PTSD.

•Point Man support groups, led by veterans and supported by local congregations, have grown from 219 in 2007 to 250 today. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans now make up 20% of attendees, up from just 1% in 2007, says Point Man president Dana Morgan.

•Other groups have launched grassroots efforts, such as the Coming Home Collaborative, a 3-year-old network of Minneapolis-area Lutheran congregations.

Propelling outreach efforts is a mounting need. Nearly 20% of service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan report symptoms of PTSD or major depression, yet fewer than half seek treatment, a Rand Corp. study found last year. Women with the disorder often go undiagnosed, in part because they’re wrongly presumed to be less susceptible in non-combat roles, said a report in July from the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury.

PTSD poses challenges even for well-intentioned congregations because it is often hidden. A veteran with the disorder may appear fine in worship, but at home he may obsess about security, struggle to sleep, panic at loud noises or become easily enraged. Such symptoms manifest in certain trauma survivors, including some who have experienced the horrors of war up close, says Matthew Friedman of the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the Department of Veteran Affairs.

For some congregations, PTSD ministries are largely about raising awareness. At Calvary United Methodist Church in Colorado Springs, where most members have a military connection, leaders have been trained to spot symptoms and refer those affected, especially family members, to counselors. But Calvary, like others, is still finding its way in this “new avenue that we’re not very familiar with,” says senior pastor Khan McClellan.

Confronting PTSD “is still something of a struggle for faith communities,” who might fear mental illness or assume the military should be handling it, McClellan says. “As much as we’re exposed to it in Colorado Springs, we have a long way to go in terms of meeting this need.”

Other congregations are tackling what they see as the disorder’s spiritual dimension. Skyway Church in Goodyear, Ariz., launched a support group last year for veterans and one for family members. John Blehm, a Vietnam veteran and PTSD patient who leads the support group, says military clinicians “do not address the spiritual wounds of our troops.”

“Many will feel guilty for the inhumane things they have done in order to survive in war,” Blehm says. “Once they understand they are not alone and can be forgiven, then healing begins.”

Cautious steps forward

Friedman says clergy can help facilitate connections among veterans or address spiritual dimensions, such as guilt or reconciliation. “People really don’t like to go to a psychiatric clinic unless they have to,” Friedman says.

James Knudsen, a Vietnam veteran and PTSD patient in Marion, Iowa, says local efforts to get churches to start support groups for veterans have largely “fallen on deaf ears.”

As churches test these new waters, they may just need to jump in and take one step at a time — and veterans may need to do the same.

“We emphasize that everybody else can forgive you, and now it’s your turn to forgive yourself because God already has,” Morgan says. “And then we go from there.”

From http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-08-04-ptsd-ministries_N.htm

Graeme or Graham? – Hey Lord, don’t ask me questions

Lance (Group Sects) writes…

I should know by now. You’d think I’d know by now. But I clearly don’t know by now.

I followed up on the offer by the Sunset Coast Christian Life Centre pastor to contact the church’s Business Manager to get details of the love offerings received by (visiting Generations Church pastor) Andrew Hoyes over the weekend at Sunset Coast.

The Business Manager was busy with someone when I first called at lunchtime and so kindly set aside a 1:30 appointment for me to speak to him.

At 1:30, I popped the question…and got a, “well, I don’t think it would be appropriate for the church to make available that kind of information”

The conversation quickly reached comic proportions when he wouldn’t even tell me if he spelled his name Graeme or Graham Barlow (sp?) and that I would have to find that information myself.

The summary of what he said was…

• He was aware of this site, that it was unbalanced and unhelpful, not fair and accurate and he would not be providing information because he would be misquoted.
• that I had a lack of understanding of the church, including the many people who had had their marriages restored with the help of Sunset Coast
• the only possible basis on which the church would provide information would be if they were able to ‘vet any article’ first
• that love offerings received are not as large as what one might think they are, and only ‘basically cover costs’.
• that I was ‘damaging the bride of Christ’ by attacking their church

He did not believe that I had been given an assurance by the pastor on Friday night that I would be given details of the love offerings, and signalled his intention to seek out the pastor who’d suggested I contact the Business Manager.

When I suggested that perhaps the church did have something to hide by not releasing the numbers, he repeatedly asserted that no church released the details of monies given to visiting preachers because it was inappropriate.

He said the bible taught that these pastors should be honoured, and that these love offerings were a part of ‘honouring’ the pastors.

After half an hour of a frank exchange of views, he’d had enough of ‘giving me half an hour of his time’ and hung up.

When you marry the pastor from hell

The Christian Post reports…

“At first Yvonne Partyka and Joanne Klinger might have thought they had only cancer in common: Yvonne had resigned her church-secretary job to deal with the aftereffects of breast cancer, and Joanne had recently relocated to be near a daughter fighting a malignant brain tumor.

But as Yvonne trained Joanne to take over her position and the two women to get to know each other, they realized they had something else in common:

both had been married to pastors who committed adultery and were abusive.

At the time they met, Yvonne had been married to her second husband for eight years and Joanne was recently divorced. Slowly, talking about their experiences with someone else who understood, the two created a strong friendship.

Today Yvonne and Joanne continue to enjoy their friendship. Both are actively involved in life and ministry and reaping the fruit of unwavering trust in God. Whenever they can, they tell their stories to show God’s faithfulness and share a message of encouragement and hope.

That’s also the message in their new book, Surviving Shattered Dreams: A Story of Hope After Despair (WinePress Publishing). The book chronicles each woman’s struggles and losses but also their joy, growth, and new life.

“Yvonne and I are very different people,” says Joanne. “We think and process differently.” Yvonne says Joanne “loves to be with people, and she’s creative.” Yvonne describes herself as “a jack-of-all-trades. I grew up on a farm where we had to do a lot for ourselves. I’m mechanical and like to tackle problems. I’m an introvert, really, but it doesn’t show because of all the years of serving as a minister’s wife.”

During the book-writing process, they sometimes had to call time out for a cup of tea, says Joanne. “We valued our friendship too much to let anything, even our book, interfere.”

Despite their different personalities, Yvonne and Joanne have singular advice for women, especially pastors’ wives, involved in marriages where there is adultery and abuse. “Don’t try to handle this on your own. Secrecy and cover-up don’t work. You’re not alone, and God is faithful.”

The problem of pastors involved in extramarital affairs, pornography, or abuse “is not uncommon,” says Yvonne. “Churches tend to look up to their pastors and don’t want to believe it when problems surface.”

That reticence creates a dilemma for pastors’ wives: who to talk to. Seminaries used to teach that pastors and their families “can’t talk to anyone-no close friends in the church,” says Yvonne. “Most ministry wives don’t have an opportunity to talk about these issues. They can be dying inside but they don’t know what to do about it.” She counsels wives in ministry to be sure to have godly friends to talk to about what is going on in their lives and how to make wise decisions.

Pastors’ wives can also look for friends outside of their own church, says Joanne. She encourages ministry couples to find an older couple in the pastorate to mentor them. “Friends must be cultivated,” she says, “but you can find them.”

Yvonne and Joanne encourage women in troubled marriages to find the help they need. “In Proverbs we’re told that the wise seek counsel,” says Joanne. “Find a pastor or a professional Christian counselor. Go with your husband if possible or go alone if necessary for help for yourself. I never advocate divorce,” she adds. “Each woman must make that decision for herself.”

“Once I knew what was going on, I didn’t lie or cover it up,” says Yvonne. “I reached out to people who knew what I’d been through.”

As part of prevention, pastors’ wives can learn to protect family time and couple time, says Yvonne, instead of believing that to do so steals ministry time. “Burnout makes a husband vulnerable,” Joanne explains, “and Satan uses that. It’s so easy to justify always serving others and not your own family.”
Pastors’ wives tend to feel overly responsible for their marriages and family life, and Yvonne and Joanne insist that women not take on unnecessary guilt. “Women don’t need to take responsibility for everything that went wrong,” says Yvonne. Each chapter title in Surviving Shattered Dreams is a question that the women have asked themselves at different times, including “Am I Abandoned?” and “Who Am I Now?”

“Where there is physical abuse,” adds Joanne, “you must get out and find a place of safety. From there you can decide what to do next to handle your situation.”

Both Yvonne and Joanne experienced a series of difficult circumstances after their divorces. Joanne’s daughter Kari died, leaving behind a husband and three children. Joanne required two painful surgeries due to arthritis. Although happily remarried, Yvonne faced the long-term illness and death of three parents, an accident at work that nearly killed her new husband, and her own breast cancer. Both women learned that their former husbands had sexually abused their children.

“Sometimes I look back and think, Did I really go through all that?” says Joanne. “When my daughter died, I felt the grief, but through a shield God put around me. Isaiah 40:31 says that those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength and soar on wings like eagles. I’ve said often that without God I would either be dead or in an institution. I really thought my life was over. But we can get through those times with him.”

Today Yvonne and her husband, Bill, teach an adult Sunday school class and mentor couples and individuals on marriage and family issues including single parenting and blended families. Looking ahead to Bill’s retirement, Yvonne recently resigned as director of a local crisis pregnancy center. Joanne, now a church administrator, leads storytelling workshops, teaches middle schoolers on Sundays and a weeknight women’s Bible study, and speaks to grief groups and pastors’ wives. Both women stay connected and involved with their children and grandchildren.

Joanne and Yvonne radiate hope and confidence. “I have a wonderful life!” says Joanne. “I love everything I do.” Yvonne reflects, “I think people see Bill and me as a couple that works together, and they come to us asking the reason for our hope.”

“In every situation now,” says Joanne, “no matter how small, I hand it to him before I do anything. God is amazing! It can take trials and time to realize that we can trust him, but he can be trusted! You are not alone!”

From http://www.christianpost.com/blogs/books/2009/08/never-alone-ex-wives-of-pastors-offers-insights-on-how-to-cope-with-adultery-and-abuse-by-diane-stortz-03/

Before Osteen there was Ike

The Toronto Star reports…

“Who was Jesus? “Jesus,” the Reverend Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II often explained, “was a capitalist.” Quite uncoincidentally, so was the Reverend Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II.

Eikerenkoetter, better known as Reverend Ike, was one of the earliest prominent proponents of the “prosperity gospel,” which claims material wealth is the ideal source of happiness. As an ostentatiously attired fixture on U.S. television and radio between the 1970s and 1990s, he exhorted hundreds of thousands of believers, mostly African-Americans, to do such things as close their eyes and “see green” – “money up to your armpits, a roomful of money, and there you are, just tossing around in it like a swimming pool.”

If such a prospect was far fetched for most of Eikerenkoetter’s followers, it was, because of them, something approaching his reality. To put it charitably, Rev. Ike practised what he preached. In 1976, according to the Los Angeles Times, his church owned 16 Rolls-Royces. (“My garages runneth over,” he said.) Seldom accused of hypocrisy, he alternated between six homes; at one point, the Times reported, he wore “a gold watch, a silver-and-diamond tie pin, a silver bracelet and a large gold ring studded with more than a dozen diamonds.” The son of a Dutch-Indonesian Baptist minister and a black teacher, Eikerenkoetter never practised traditional Christianity.

Born poor in South Carolina in 1935, his town’s Pentecostal congregation made him pastor as a teenager. When Pentecostal authorities excommunicated him in 1959 – among other heresies, he had mentioned “Lord Buddha” in his college thesis – he moved to Boston and founded a faith-healing temple. After he came to reject belief in God as a satisfactory solution to the problems of everyday people, he moved to New York in the mid-1960s to establish the wealth-focused church that would make him a multimedia star. Perhaps fittingly, congregants gathered in an old movie theatre – and then, following one of the fundraising drives in which Rev. Ike specialized, in a nicer old movie theatre.

The reverend’s worship of money, criticism of “hard-hearted” God and disdain for prayer engendered constant criticism from mainstream clergymen. His church was investigated, though never prosecuted, by tax authorities. Many followers grew disenchanted with his aggressive appeals for cash. But Rev. Ike never wavered. His belief in “positive self-image psychology,” he argued, had helped thousands of faithful live better lives – and gave them hope they never had before.

Two years after a stroke, Eikerenkoetter died Tuesday in Los Angeles at 74. He is survived by his wife and son.”

From http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/674973

Retired hurt

New Times Broward-Palm Beach reports…

“In advance of his retirement next month, the Rev. Mack King Carter of New Mount Olive Baptist Church has drafted an awesome wish list. The letter containing those items was made public in a court filing Friday. Carter asks for:

• the title of “Pastor Emeritus.”
• the church pay his health insurance premiums for the next four years.
• the rights to the income generated by video and tapes of his sermons.
• a $50,000 annual payment for the rest of his life.

And if that’s still not enough to boost his wallet and ego, a source with knowledge of church affairs tells Juice that Carter is also seeking the right to collect a portion of the profits from a $75-per-plate gala in his honor at the Hollywood Westin Diplomat. Finally, don’t forget that the church has also moved to name a street after Carter.)

Located in an impoverished section of downtown Fort Lauderdale, Carter’s members are mostly working class. Some of them are poor. Yet every time he has asked for money, they’ve given it to him. They’ve made him a very rich man. Just not quite as rich as he’d like to be.

A group of church trustees who challenged Carter in 2005 were condemned from the pulpit, then ousted from their volunteer positions. All for seeking an audit to learn whether Carter had improperly pocketed income that belonged to the church. That group is now embroiled in a lawsuit with Carter. (For more on that, see this feature I wrote in December 2007.)

On Friday the trustees’ attorney, Willie Jones, filed Carter’s letter to the church, along with an accounting of other lucrative perks: nearly $20,000 in tape and video sales, a $100,000 in donations for a new home, and $260,000 in anniversary gifts. The filing also calls into question whether Carter is being honest with church officials.

In his letter to the church committee, Carter explained that the $50,000 annual post-retirement payments will make up for the church’s not having a “formal” retirement package for the first 19 of his 27 years at the church, Jones’ filing says otherwise. It cites $400,000 in payments by the church toward Carter’s retirement, including a policy that was paid annually until 2000, at which point, the church began paying much higher premiums for another retirement plan.

So far church officials have approved $30,000 in annual payments to Carter but sources tell Juice that may be boosted up to $50,000 at the September 24 meeting that comes the week before Carter’s last sermon.

There may be signs that Carter has finally asked his church members for too much. Juice received a copy of a note that New Mount Olive’s members have been sealing into their offertory envelopes. It’s framed like $100 bill, except that where Benjamin Franklin’s portrait would be, there’s the following text:

“I cannot agree to give the pastor over $30,000 a year for life when he has over $800,000 in retirement and gifts. If I cannot vote, then I will hold my money until I can have my say and vote by paper ballot.”

From http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2009/08/mack_king_carter_retirement_new_mount_olive.php

The internet – Hill$ong’s new money honeypot

A lightsource.com press release states…

“Christian ministries and evangelists have found it increasingly difficult to reach new audiences as a result of declining television use. But with increasing internet usage and online video streaming, ministries are finding a wealth of opportunity to expand their broadcasts’ reach and engage their supporters. Online Christian video website, LightSource.com, has not only seen a significant increase in visits and pageviews for ministries such as Joel Osteen, Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah, Joyce Meyer, Beth Moore, and Life Today, they’ve also seen a lift in support and donations for ministries.

“With decreasing television use in the home, broadcast ministries are facing a difficult time growing their viewing audience. Ministries are in need of new methods for reaching more people and raising support for their ministry’s work.” said Brad Mauldin, Director of Ministry Relations at Salem Web Network. “LightSource.com has been a valuable asset for ministries in providing an expanding and engaging online audience of individuals who want to support the ministries work.”  

A new teaching series from Beth Moore that was promoted across LightSource.com and other Salem Web Network properties brought the ministry a return that was twenty-five times the cost of monthly service for online broadcasting. The results established Salem Web Network as a viable addition to their integrated television and media strategy.

Both mega-church broadcast ministries and local Christian ministries like TD Jakes and the Potters House, Brian Houston with Hillsong TV, Thomas Road Baptist Church with Jonathan Falwell, and Morning Star Baptist Church with Rev. John Borders, are equally benefiting from the audience provided by LightSource.com. Ministries are given additional opportunities to distribute their resources with free video podcast downloads and special offers for their products such as books and DVD’s.

“This is a great website for those of us who are longing to hear services daily not just on Saturday and Sunday! Thank you for helping us all grow in a deeper and more intimate relationship with our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ!” said Jeff, a visitor to LightSource.com.

Visit LightSource.com on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/lightsourcecom

Follow LightSource on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lightsourcecom

About LightSource.com
LightSource.com, recently named the Broadcast Site of the Year by the National Religious Broadcasting Association, offers video streaming, video podcasting, online Bible Study Tools and daily devotionals from well-known and respected Christian pastors, authors, and speakers. Acquired by Salem Web Network, LightSource.com has quickly become the leading online video website for Christian ministries.

About Salem Web Network:
Salem Web Network, the online division of Salem Communications, began in 1999 with a single website – OnePlace.com. Today, SWN consists of 12 national sites, including the most well known brands in the faith marketplace, such as Crosswalk.com, OnePlace.com, BibleStudyTools.com, and Christianity.com. Additionally, more than 50 radio station websites are part of SWN’s platform, which now reaches more than 7 million users every month. Visit: http://www.salemwebnetwork.com

About Salem Communications:
Communications (NASDAQ: SALM) is a leading U.S. radio broadcaster, Internet content provider, and magazine and book publisher targeting audiences interested in Christian and family-themed content and conservative values. In addition to its radio properties, Salem owns Salem Radio Network(R), which syndicates talk, news and music programming to approximately 2,000 affiliates; Salem Radio Representatives(TM), a national radio advertising sales force; Salem Web Network(TM), an Internet provider of Christian content and online streaming; and Salem Publishing(TM), a publisher of Christian-themed magazines. Upon the close of all announced transactions, the company will own 93 radio stations, including 59 stations in 23 of the top 25 markets. Additional information about Salem may be accessed at the company’s website, http://www.salem.cc. “

From http://www.prweb.com/releases/lightsource/video/prweb2703954.htm

Rehabilitating Hill$ong

John Alchin writes…

“…..I was involved in an outreach service of Hillsong Church for five years. I also worked in their drug and alcohol rehabilitation program for 8 years. It was the best of times for the first six years.

It turned tragic when a new CEO was appointed and over the next two years staff left in droves. A few of us had/have post-traumatic-like stress in the aftermath. It was [a] great place to work, the staff often socialised together, and people with experience working in the field had a voice. Later on we were introduced to the workplace psycho.

Yeah, I’d love to have a chat with Brian Houston about Rhett Morris, CEO of Teen Challenge NSW. I have no fear stating this publicly, I’m certain that there’s been a number complaints. I’m sad that Brian never chose to act publicly about this.

I’d also love to share with him about the spiritual abuse my sister continues to incur from a former pastor [...] and his wife, and how after years of involvement received less than minimal pastoral care from Hillsong when she was hospitalised with a mental illness. She now sends all her money to Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn Ministries – and what assholes they are! After 15 years involvement with Hillsong I’d had enough with the good-times Christianity and promotion-through-arse-licking culture.”

From www.facebook.com

The dying art of looking important

Lance (Group Sects) writes…

The down side of visiting a Pentecostal church service is, well, visiting a Pentecostal church service.

The up side is that it gives me about 2 months worth of material to post.

I’m sure you’d remember when mobile phones first became widely used. It was mainly business people who had them, and they would relish the opportunity to stop what they were doing, lower their head, furrow their brow and make sure everyone could see them having a very, very important phone conversation. AMP up? 12 cents today? Hmmm.

Of course, as soon as everyone had mobile phones, and fat blokes in stubbies and thongs started having umimportant conversations with some guy named ‘Chook’ about getting the retic installed, and girls called Skye were calling to ask who the fat slut was with Jaxon, then no-one noticed the very, very important conversations anymore, so it was pointless trying to engineer them in public places.

Even being a TV reporter, waiting around to do a very important live cross while shooing away excitable teenage girls is not as important as it once was, now we’re in the Youtube generation where anyone can be a TV star.

But fans of the very important look only has to go to their nearest Pentecostal Church to be re-assured that the look is a well-preserved tradition.

From my back-row-bogan pozzie at Sunset Coast Christian Shite Centre, one could not help but marvel at the almost rhythmic precision of the very important look in action.

And there is an art to it.

One must have a certain mystique about them.

Wearing nearly all-black, walking with back dead-straight slightly faster than normal walking pace past the worshipping congregation into an unmarked side-room door.

And then back out again.

And back in once more (did you notice me the first or second time?)

Usually, but not always visiting the audio desk on the way through.

Or there’s the very important look of the congregation-counter guy.

Now this guy is doing something really important. For the pastor.

Therefore, you can’t just saunter past, quietly counting in your head, while wearing a ‘Hay, I was baled at the 1994 Goondawindi Show’ t-shirt.

To be noticed as having the very important look, while snazzily-dressed, one must stand on their toes, and repeatedly point/jab horizontally in the air, and put one foot in front of the other in a sideways motion.

Yes, yes, we can also see you out of the corner of our eyes. You look very important.

With the addition of video cameras in Pente churches, the possibilities of very important looking camera and sound people is now limitless.

There truly is no end to the importance of a guy with a camera crawling around on stage during the worship to get THAT shot of the drummer’s arse.

Of course, you can go much further still as Revenue Church did a few years ago with aisle ushers wearing suits and earpieces, because GOSH I don’t know how anyone has ever found a seat just by using their own five senses.

Of course, I’d love to tell you more, but I have to walk across the room hurriedly and back again for no apparent reason.

Just keep reading and pretend not to notice me, but really, please  notice me.

Youtube – the End Times Nut’s best friend

Awesome

The Age reports…

“The promise of awesome worship. That’s what got me rocking up to a Planetshakers meeting. And I wasn’t disappointed. They said ‘‘awesome’’ 20 times.

Planetshakers is a megachurch, which is like a spiritual mega-meal deal. Pizza, Coke, chocolate bavarian. If we could masticate it for you and pump it into your stomach, we would. Because we love you. And so does Jesus.

Standing outside Planetshakers surrounded by chirpy, bogan-cool teenagers fizzing with excitement, one of the two gay atheist friends I was with described the crowd as “very Australian Idol”.

It was the first time I’d been excited about going to church. I spent every Sunday of my first 18 years sitting on wooden pews listening to a bloke talking about his imaginary friend in the sky who did magic tricks. Women were virgins, saints or whores. Men were the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Outside Planetshakers it felt as if we were about to see a rock concert. And we were. As the band fired up and went off like a frog in a sock, I thought: “I don’t care what they’re selling but I’m buying it.”

Christian pop, ’80s power anthems, Metallica meets Cheap Trick. A mosh pit for Jesus was jumping with teenagers in rapture and a balcony of Planetkids went off for Christ. Music blared from the stadium sound system while the screen seduced us with slick videos edited so fast the phrase ‘‘subliminal image” kept popping into my head. Lyrics flashed up: “Come like a flood and saturate me now.” I wondered what Freud would have made of the disproportionate use of such words as ‘‘come’’, ‘‘touch’’ and ‘‘feel’’, and the phrases “move within me” and “being filled”. My favourite was “King of Glory, enter in”.

Sexual psychoanalysis aside, the Planetshakers are clearly awesome, with lyrics such as: “How can I explain the way u make me feel ’cos Jesus your love for me is so unreal.” Several references were made to not being ashamed of Jesus (despite no one having suggested they were).

The room was buzzing with anticipation. I felt like a kid expecting Santa to arrive. It felt as if Jesus was going to turn up any minute.

Then out came the pastors. Middle-aged blokes peppering talk about Jesus with constant references to the footy, reality shows and McDonald’s. Almost swearing with ‘‘flipping angry” and “What the heck?” and plenty of ‘‘awesomes’’ thrown in to convince everyone they were down with the youth.

A pastor banged on about sacrifice and said it wasn’t important how much we sacrificed just as long as we gave as much as we could. No matter how small it was. I didn’t know what he was on about until the giving cards came round. And a little bucket for coins. No lid with a slot. A big open bucket, so you could be shamed by your paltry donation.

Then there were the plugs for the Mighty Men’s night and Beautiful Women Seminar. Male volunteers were encouraged to get involved with the ladies’ seminar with the promise of ‘‘being able to tell 3000 women what to do’’. Beautiful women. Mighty men. Note: not mighty women and beautiful men.

Then the headline pastor came on, all charisma and awesomeness. He spoke of worship, sheepgate, building in salvation, sheepgate, sacrifice and a bloke called Eliashib. And more sheepgate.

As people yelled, “Yeah!”, “Amen!” and ‘‘Awesome!” I wanted to yell, “I don’t get it”. I love the way religion convinces people by making things deliberately incomprehensible and you feel too shy to say ‘‘I don’t understand’’ lest you reveal your stupidity.

After ‘‘sheepgate’’ the pastor asked us to close our eyes and bow our heads. He urged people who had left Jesus, had never had him in their heart, or were confused, to raise their hands so they could be prayed for.

He sounded like a real estate agent. “One over there, thank you, sir. Anyone else? I’ll wait a few moments. Yes, one down the back.” Dummy bidders anyone? Then bewildered-looking new disciples were led out by the old hands.

The crowd left believing they had been moved by God and touched by Jesus. They hadn’t. They had been seduced by slick video packages and had their emotional desire for love, community and certainty met by manipulation. It wasn’t the Holy Spirit; it was just people.

Aren’t we awesome enough?”

From http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/shaken-but-not-stirred-by-stadiumrock-spirituality-20090728-e02k.html?page=-1

 

Sunset Coast Christian Life Centre (CLC) – The Benny Hill$ong

Lance (Group Sects) writes…

You may be wondering why I’ve embedded the Benny Hill theme on a post about Perth’s Sunset Coast Christian Shite Centre.

It’s because, I kid you not,  the musicians actually played the theme while the ‘tithes’ were being collected during the Friday night service.

I didn’t go along to the church with the intention of doing a critique of Sunset Coast. I went for two reasons; one, I feel a bit stale in trying to write on the Pente Church if I haven’t been in one for awhile (and it’s been many months now) and secondly, I wanted to hear Andrew Hoyes, who crossed my virtual path recently as someone still giving Pat Mesiti a church platform.

Hoyes is quite a gifted communicator; not someone who I put in the ‘wanker’ category for presentation style. He made a reasonable case for faith in God, but unfortunately it got lost in vague twaddle about the importance of vision. (although it did renew my vision for tearing the layers of BS off Pentydom.) It sounded like he was just parroting Houstonism, and like Brian Houston, couldn’t come up with specific real life examples of his ‘vision principles’. More Penty fluff.

After the service, a pastor bowled up to me and made the mistake (they don’t have sin in the Pente church, just ‘mistakes’) of asking me what I thought of the service.

I really, really, tried not to start an argument. I just said it was ‘different’.

He pressed and asked me what was wrong with it.

All I could think of was ‘where do I start’?

The music was boring (does anybody remember the guy on Signposts who commented that he was in Hill$ong and the place was rocking, but it was still boring? That kind of boring)

The offering mini-sermon (pre-Benny Hill) was about as manipulative as you can get (plucking out of context…faith without actions is dead – therefore giving to the offering determines whether or not your faith is real)

There were TWO of those dreadful find someone you didn’t come to church with and say ‘hi’ (where people give a token handshake and then go on chatting with the people they came to church with. I put on my best ‘I’m not one of your kind’ disinterested faces, so nobody bothered me - twice)

There was the auctioneer-style altar-call (on the count of one…blah blah blah…, on the count of two blah blah blah… on the count of three put up your hand if you want to make a fresh start with God…..three)

Again, sin not mentioned, the closest it got was ‘God can forgive you of your ‘mistakes’..and you can be a friend with Jesus. I’m not a sin freak, but it’s got to be mentioned somewhere in the salvation deal.

Anyway, all of these were running through my head as I thought of ‘where do I start?’ and I decided to go with Benny Hill.

According to the pastor, it was played during the offering because it was ‘fun’.

Well, mooning passing trains is fun too, but you wouldn’t necessarily do it during the offering. Sunset Coast seems to have drifted into self-parody in the last couple of years since I last went. Don’t these people know what Phil Pringle says about giving money being the most solemn worship you can give? (Sarcasm alert)

I ended up calling the pastor ‘arrogant’ several times, including after when he gave me a ‘gold star’ for agreeing with him that the church needed money to operate. (A late 20’s pastor telling a 42 year old they get a ‘gold star’….I see)

I informed him on my departure that he was a ‘wanker’ as he seemed to be blissfully unaware of this..

I’ve been up there to Sunset Coast a few times now, and I really can say they are a pack of arrogant bastards, of the street-preacher variety.

On a positive note though, I think I’m pretty ‘Pentecostal proof’ now.

I was able to sit through the service and have it all wash over me, knowing beforehand that there would be several ‘what??’ moments during the service, and the inevitable argument with a pastor.

It’s just an unfortunate fact of life that if you’re going to stand-up to a pastor who’s trying to bully you with self-serving rubbish then there’s going to be an uncomfortable confrontation.

The next uncomfortable confrontation will be this coming week, when Sunset Coast’s Business Manager inevitably reneges on an assurance given by the pastor that I will be able to find out from that Business Manager how much Andrew Hoyes received this weekend in ‘love offerings’ as the church has ‘nothing to hide’.

How hard is it to steal money from a church when you know the system inside out?

The ABC reports…

“A Sydney man has been jailed for at least two years for stealing $1.14 million from the Wesley Mission charity.

David Vincent transferred the money into his bank account over five years when he managed the charity’s payroll.

The 42-year-old was caught after an audit when he was transferred into another job.

Vincent told Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court he was desperate to do anything for the love of his second wife and started stealing after gambling mortgage payments.

He said his wife was overbearing and yelled at him for being useless.

Magistrate Jane Mottley said the offences were committed out of greed and involved a degree of sophistication.

Graeme Cole, from the Wesley Mission, says the charity has been hit hard by the theft.

“Were concerned for the welfare of Mr Vincent and his family, but were equally and probably more saddened for those people who have impacted by this crime: those we care for and our staff,” he said.

“This has been a very traumatic time for Wesley Mission.”

Vincent had pleaded guilty to at least 79 counts of obtaining money by deception.”

From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/30/2641081.htm?site=sydney

Church fugitive – release the hounds

The Standard-Examiner reports…

“Maybe he also missed the day the sermon covered the Eighth Commandment: Thou shalt not steal.

A 7-year-old boy led officers on a car chase Sunday through Weber County in an attempt to avoid going to church, authorities say.

“Most kids fake illness,” said Weber County Sheriff’s Capt. Klint Anderson. “They don’t take the car out and go joy riding.”

Dispatchers received reports of a child driving a vehicle recklessly near 4100 West and 1975 North around 9 a.m.

The motorist who called in the complaint followed the child and witnessed the boy drive through a stop sign at 4700 West, Anderson said.

Two deputies caught up with the boy a few blocks away and attempted to stop the car, but the child kept driving, Anderson said.

The boy drove through a parking lot, then went south on 4700 West before driving the family’s white Dodge Intrepid into a driveway on the 5000 block of 1500 North. The driver reached 40 mph and ran stop signs along the way, Anderson said.

The boy reportedly entered the home through the garage and ran upstairs. When deputies questioned the child’s father, he told them he had no idea his son had taken the car.

“They had to explain to him they had chased his car,” Anderson said.

“The father confronted the kid, and the boy straight-up admitted he had driven it. When asked why he took the car, he said he didn’t want to go to church.”

The boy’s father was told to make sure his car keys are kept where they are not accessible to children, and the child was lectured about the dangers of taking a vehicle out on the road, but authorities cannot do much else.

Police would not identify the family, as there would be no citations issued.

Anderson said the boy is too young to prosecute and that the boy’s father won’t be cited because he was unaware his son had taken his car.

For a 7-year-old, his driving wasn’t too bad, Anderson said.

“He had a few near misses, but he didn’t hit anything or crash.”

From http://www.standard.net/live/news/179343/

The Adelaide showdown – Arrogant street preachers Vs Arrogant AOG college

This Youtube video appears to be audio of a meeting between street preachers and a Paradise Church College staffer about the expulsion of a street preacher from the College.

Baptist College gone to pot – updated*

*WA Today reports…

“The father of a boy shunned from Winthrop Baptist College says the school was being “un-Christian” in its hardline application of rules.

Terry (surname withheld) is disgusted at the expulsion of a Year 11 boy, and the shunting of seven of his friends, from the college for allegedly smoking marijuana at a school camp in Dwellingup on the evening of June 30.

He said that, after returning from the camp, the boys were isolated and questioned by college staff for hours at a time.

“The boys were isolated one by one and then were subjected to a full-on interrogation like would happen in a detective’s office – but at least there you would have a responsible adult present,” Terry said.

“If you have kids interrogated as they were for up to three hours – 15, 16-year-old boys are that impressionable – they will say what they have to say.”

Yesterday, the mother of another of the boys confirmed her son had never admitted to any wrongdoing. She confirmed one boy was expelled and the other seven asked to leave the college.

However, a written statement yesterday from the college’s board said each of the boys had owned up to participating in activity banned under the college’s zero tolerance drug policy.

Today, Terry said the college had been hypocritical in shunning the boys when a girl who had previously been caught drunk on a school bus, and a boy and girl found cohabiting a tent at a separate camp on June 30, were still enrolled at the school.

Terry demanded the college act on a letter from eight parents, which begged the school to re-admit their sons.

“If this is the way the Baptist Church handles these situations, it is highly unacceptable,” said Terry, who confirmed he was a Protestant but not a Baptist.

“It doesn’t matter if they are Baptists or Catholics, Christianity is based on forgiveness – so much for forgiveness this time around.”

Rather than suspension, the parents’ letter suggested that a code of good behaviour be developed for the boys, which would include compulsory community service.

Terry said he believed the school failed in its duty of care in allowing the boys to remain unsupervised in a dormitory for three nights.

“If I had have been left out in the bush unsupervised for three nights when I was 15 I would have got up to some mischief myself,” Terry said.

Calls to college principal Peter Burton remain unanswered but a college administration staffer gave WAtoday.com.au an insight into the school’s priorities.

“The school is busy teaching kids,” the employee said when advised of the benefits to the college of defending today’s allegations.

Pastor Mark Wilson, the Director of Ministries with the Baptist Union of Western Australia, has also been contacted for comment.”

From http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/baptist-college-dope-ban-unchristian-father-20090728-dzo6.html

Richmond Vs The Demons

Troy Waller blogs…

“Pastor Tom (not his real name) was easily the most screwed up individual I met during my time as a Christian. That guy had more issues than anyone else I knew both in and out of the church. Let me tell you about the day I first met him.

Not long after I joined Richmond AOG, I started dating a girl who was very shortly after to leave the church. I was trying to be a good Christian but she wasn’t. She had just come out of a sexually active relationship with another guy in the church and was looking, I suppose, for someone to continue exploring her sexuality with. We ended up sleeping together twice. I was racked with guilt but she wasn’t. To be honest, I was really surprised by her lack of remorse and, realising she wasn’t the kind of girl I should be with if I wanted to try and live some semblance of ‘holiness’, we broke up.

A few weeks later, Pastor Tom , who was then one of the youth pastors, called me and said he wanted to meet, get to know me and have a chat. He came by in his car and picked me up and we went for a drive. For a few minutes we talked about my Christian conversion, my background, and a few other things of a similar topic. He then asked me about the girl and if I had been seeing her. I said that I had but that we had broken up. He then asked a few benign questions before finally getting the crux of the matter, the real reason why we were on that drive. He asked me if I had slept with her. Now I was new to the church and didn’t know this pastor at all. I also didn’t understand how it was any of his business and figured it was a moot point anyway as she and I had stopped seeing each other. So I lied and told him we had never had sex. He asked me if I was sure. I said I was. He then headed the car back to my house and the drive was over only a few minutes later. I got out of the car a little shaken having not expected the interrogation. Sure I was upset with myself on one hand for having lied, but at the same time I glad to have deflected whatever would have come had I admitted to the sexual realtionship.

Many years later I reflected on this episode and realised that Pastor Tom was not interested in me as a parishioner or getting to know me as a new member of his youth group. Rather, he was solely interested in the sexual nature of my relationship with the girl. Who knows how he had even heard about me having had sex with this girl. I guess the rumour finally reached his ears, or maybe some well meaning parishioner reported the rumour to him. However he found out, he took it upon himself to get to the bottom of it. Pastor Tom made an appointment with me, drove to my house, feigned interest in my story…all to find out where my penis had been.

All this makes me wonder, why did he need to know or even ask any questions? Was he trying to keep his youth group ‘clean’ of sexual immorality and thus preventing Satan from getting a ‘foothold’ in his group? This doesn’t make too much sense as he already knew the relationship was over. Was he somehow titillated by thinking about a young girl (or boy) in his youth group ‘doing the do’? Was he concerned about someone in his flock having broken the rules? After all, nothing is of greater importance than the breaking of the rules, and nothing is of greater importance than the breaking of the sexual rules.

I was only 20 years old when this happened and I handled it the best I could at the time. I now wish I had simply said, “That is defintiely none of your business. Thanks for the drive Tom but how about you drop me home now and piss off!”

From http://whyidontbelieve.blogspot.com/2007/01/pastors-questions.html

The scammed scammer pastor

The Times Herald-Record reports…

“Federal prosecutors allege a local pastor with a religious cable television show scammed investors out of more than $2 million for a phony jewelry business.

Samuel A. Solanky, 61, was arrested at his Hamptonburgh home on Monday and charged with one count of mail fraud. He’s being held on $200,000 bond.

Here’s how the scheme unfolded, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in federal court:

Solanky runs Vandana, a Christian cable television show geared toward the South Asian community and broadcast in both the U.S. and Asia. Its mailing address is a post office box in Maybrook.

In 2007, Solanky offered several individuals, including ones he had met at religious events, the opportunity to invest in a gemstone business he was starting. He promised a 100 percent return on their investment within months.

The investors wired money to several bank accounts in Solanky’s name. In return, Solanky mailed them investment agreements acknowledging he received the money.

Several months later, Solanky sent two $100,000 checks to a pair of investors from another bank account, but the checks were rejected because of insufficient funds. Further investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service revealed that the money sent to Solanky was wired abroad from the accounts and withdrawn in cash.

The complaint states that when Solanky, whose house is in foreclosure, was arrested, he admitted to the scam. He claimed he was contacted several years ago by e-mail from individuals in Nigeria who wanted to donate money to his ministry, but who needed him to send them money in order to obtain the proper paperwork to make donations.”

From http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090723/NEWS/907230324/-1/NEWS

Church blesses the heterosexual lifestyle

The Courier-Mail reports…

“The head of Australia’s Anglican Church has welcomed a Church of England decision to overturn centuries of history by blessing couples who have children before they marry.

The Church of England has declared that while sex is best kept for marriage, couples who live together and have children without marrying will no longer be regarded as living in sin.

Instead, they will be encouraged to adopt traditional values at special new services in which they will be able to get married and baptise their children.

In the services, couples will exchange vows and then present their babies for christening.

The new services – dubbed “hatch ‘n’ match” by church insiders – mean the church is openly accepting sex before marriage among worshippers.

Australia’s Anglican Primate Archbishop Phillip Aspinall said be believed the change would have wide support.

“I think that the move would be broadly acceptable to most Anglicans in Australia,” he said. “God accepts and loves all people, particularly children, as the gospel shows us.”

A Church of England spokesman said the combined ceremonies would not require the couple to apologise.

Instead of standing in judgment, the church would welcome unmarried parents “pointing to a fresh future”.

Until now, those whose past included sexual sins were asked to repent. Notably, Prince Charles was required to confess his “manifold sins and wickedness” at his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles.”

From http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25826697-952,00.html

When churches take on bloggers, churches lose

WJXT reports…

“The controversy started on a blog called fbcjaxwatchdog and now the man behind the blog has filed a defamation lawsuit against his former church.

 Thomas Rich was unhappy with things going on in the church when Mac Brunson took over as the new pastor. Rich is suing his former church and Brunson for reasons that include defamation and fraud.

 “Mr. Rich feels that it’s his civic duty and religious duty,” said attorney Michael Roberts. “He’s had to leave the church because of what they’ve done.”

 Roberts said his client was airing out grievances on his blog when they claim First Baptist asked a church-goer, who happens to be a member of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, to find out who was responsible for the then anonymous blog. Rich was essentially “outed” as the blogger.

In a statement from Rich he writes, “then they found out my identity, they never once contacted me according to scripture and their church teachings, but had trespass warnings delivered to me and my wife.”

 “It’s created other problems at his new church,” Roberts said. “We believe First Baptist has contacted his new church asking that church to somehow sanction Mr. Rich.”

 The suit cites an article from the Florida Times Union where it said Pastor Brunson described Rich as “(1) obsessive compulsive (2) unstable and (3) a sociopath.”

 “Tom Rich is not a sociopath,” Roberts said. “I invite anyone to go to this blog.”

 The church released the following statement:

 “Despite numerous efforts by the church to facilitate resolution privately and in accordance with Holy Scripture, Mr. Rich has been unwilling to participate. Having made every effort to settle this matter biblically, the Church stands ready to have the matter addressed according to law, though this is not, and never has been our desire.”

 “Their side of the story will be able to be told, but we believe the facts will show that they made mistakes, serious mistakes,” said Roberts. “And they weren’t honest mistakes, they were intended to hurt Mr. Rich.”

From http://www.news4jax.com/news/20161425/detail.html

Battle of the Alamo – updated*

*Associated Press reports…

“Tony Alamo, a one-time street preacher who built a multimillion-dollar ministry and became an outfitter of the stars, was convicted Friday of taking girls as young as 9 across state lines for sex. Alamo stood silently as the verdict was read, a contrast to his occasional mutterings during testimony. His five victims sat looking forward in the gallery. One, a woman he “married” at age 8, wiped away a tear.

“I’m just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel,” Alamo called to reporters afterward as he was escorted to a waiting U.S. marshal’s vehicle.

Shouts of “Bye, bye, Bernie” — Alamo was born Bernie Lazar Hoffman — came from a crowd gathered on the Arkansas side of the courthouse. Some came from Fouke, the nearby town where Alamo’s 15-acre compound sits. Others were former followers of his ministries in Arkansas, California and New York.

The jury of nine men and three women took about 11 hours to consider the charges against Alamo. The 10-count federal indictment accused him of taking his underage “wives” across state lines as early as 1994.

Jury foreman Frank Oller of Texarkana, Ark., said jurors deliberated more than a day only to ensure they considered everything. The testimony convinced them the 74-year-old evangelist kept the girls as sexual partners, not office workers as his defense team claimed.

“That was the evidence. That was proven,” Oller said. “We came up with a full decision that we are quite satisfied with.”

Defense lawyer Don Ervin called the evidence against Alamo “insufficient” and said the preacher would appeal. He also said Alamo’s criminal history — he served four years in prison on tax charges in the 1990s — “will hurt him” at sentencing in six to eight weeks.

Prosecutors said Alamo could face a total of 175 years in prison over violating the nearly century-old Mann Act, a morality law once aimed at stopping women from being sold into prostitution. Each count also carries possible fines of $250,000.

U.S. Assistant Attorney Kyra Jenner said Alamo’s conviction would end his cycle of abuse, as he told his followers God instructed him to marry younger and younger girls.

“We believe he will face the rest of his natural life in prison,” Jenner said.

The five women, now age 17 to 33, told jurors that Alamo “married” them in private ceremonies while they were minors. Each detailed trips beyond Arkansas’ borders for Alamo’s sexual gratification.

Alamo never testified. Though he announced to reporters that he wanted to, his lawyers told him he should not directly challenge their testimony. Defense lawyers said the government targeted Alamo because it doesn’t like his apocalyptic brand of Christianity.

With little physical evidence, prosecutors relied on the women’s stories to paint an emotional portrait of a charismatic religious leader who controlled every aspect of his subjects’ lives. No one obtained food, clothing or transportation without him knowing about it.

In the end, prosecutors convinced jurors in Arkansas’ conservative Christian climate that Alamo’s ministry offered him the opportunity to prey on the young girls of loyal followers who believed him to be a prophet. They described a sect that ran on the fear of drawing the anger of “Papa Tony.”

Alamo, who founded the ministry with his wife Susan in the 1960s, remained defiant during the trial. He blurted out a reference to the Branch Davidian raid at Waco, Texas, muttered expletives during testimony and fell asleep even while alleged victims were testifying.

After Susan Alamo’s death in 1982, Alamo began focusing his tracts on bashing Catholicism and the Vatican. His ministry, built on the backs of followers who worked in various businesses to support the church, designed and sold elaborate denim jackets for celebrities.

Federal agents seized a large portion of his assets in the 1990s to settle tax claims after courts declared his operations a business, not a church. Among items offered for auction were the plans for the studded jacket Michael Jackson wore on his “Bad” album.”

From http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j7JRsIm1DgSBIfIFSL3D_fjT1HmwD99L13380

‘You’re traumatised by combat? Hmmm. Well, I’ll give you Bobbie’s Kingdom Women Love Sex and Brian’s tape series Just Keep Turning Up. And hey. Stay Awesome.’

The Sydney Morning Herald reports…

“The defence force has decided to employ for the first time a chaplain from the Assemblies of God pentecostal movement.

The chaplain from the evangelical church will join other padres from the Catholic, Anglican, other Protestant and Jewish faiths employed on either a part-time or full-time basis.

The chaplain, who is yet to be appointed, will be employed part-time by the army and be selected by the Assemblies of God.

The decision to employ the Assemblies of God chaplain was made last year by the religious advisory committee to the services, which advises the chief of the defence force and the service chiefs on religious matters, and is based in part on the demographics of the defence force.

The Australian Defence Force, which is often criticised for the lack of diversity of background among its personnel, does not employ a Muslim chaplain because there are not enough personnel who identify themselves as belonging to the Islamic faith.

The Anglican army chaplain, Haydn Swinbourn, said the religious advisory committee “also considered a Muslim and they thought about Buddhism as well but the representative numbers are so small in the ADF at the moment that it just doesn’t justify having someone in uniform to support those few folk”.

However, defence had an agreement with religions outside those covered by defence chaplaincy, Reverend Swinbourn said.

“We do have contacts within the community with just about every sort of religion you can imagine and one of the roles of chaplain is to make a bridge for members of religions not covered,” he said.

According to the 2007 defence census, 29.6 per cent of defence personnel describe themselves as Anglican, 26 per cent as Catholic, 3.3 per cent as pentecostal, and 2.6 per cent as Baptist. Only 0.4 per cent describe themselves as Muslim and 0.2 per cent as Jewish.

The census is conducted every four years and asks the question “with what religion are you affiliated?”. It then nominates 11 religions (Anglican, Baptist, Buddhism, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Lutheran, pentecostal/charismatic – Assemblies of God, pentecostal/charismatic – other), plus the categories “other religion”, “none”, “can’t say”, and “no answer”.

A defence spokeswoman said decisions to appoint chaplains from particular faith groups on a full- or part-time basis were based on how many personnel described themselves as followers of that religion. “A religious denomination/faith group with a minimum of 250 self-declared adherents in the permanent forces shall be entitled to a full-time chaplaincy position,” she said. “A religious denomination/faith group with a minimum of 100 self-declared adherents in the permanent forces shall be entitled to nominate a candidate for a part-time chaplaincy position.” The principal air force chaplain for the Protestant denominations, Murray Earl, said he saw defence changing so that one day it would employ a Muslim chaplain, though it might not be soon.”

From http://www.smh.com.au/national/pentecostal-soldiers-to-get-their-own-chaplain-20090710-dg2q.html

The Exorcist

Metro reports…

“Gay exorcisms are regularly being performed in Christian churches in Britain, it has emerged.

The ceremony is being carried out to rid worshippers of the supposed dem­ons which make them homosexual.

The pastor of one Pentecostal church in north-west London said he held four or five exorcisms a year and claimed they always worked.

However, gay campaigners said the 20-minute ritual often traumatised those on whom it was carried out.

Details of the practice emerged after a video of the exorcism of a 16-year-old American boy was posted on YouTube.

The footage was taken down amid calls for the church leaders involved to be prosecuted.

Here, the Rev John Ogbe-Ogbeide, who runs the United Pentecostal Ministry in Harrow, said he carried out the riutal to cast out evil spirits that were responsible for homosexuality.

He added: ‘The evil spirits are telling you what’s wrong is right, the opposite sex is not attractive.’

There was no minimum age for the ceremony because a demon could take hold at any point in life, said Mr Ogbe-Ogbeide.

Sometimes people were calm during the process but sometimes their body convulsed.

‘There are some who speak but we know this is the demon. The demon can speak through anybody,’ he added.

Mr Ogbe-Ogbeide last performed the ritual in January to help a young man, who was planning to marry his girlfriend but said he was also in love with another man.

He added: ‘He said if it carried on it would upset their plans to have kids and he wanted to live in matrimony.’

But the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement said it was frequently contacted by people left traumatised by the experience.

Chief executive the Rev Sharon Ferguson, said ‘a lot of fundamentalist groups believe homosexuality can be cured’.

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said he had heard of exorcisms on children, which was child abuse ‘pure and simple’.

He added: ‘Some adults who have been pressured into exorcisms have been preyed upon when they’re in a vulnerable state and not really able give fully informed consent.

‘They’re maybe people with learning difficulties or mental health problems. There needs to be a thorough investigation of all the churches who are doing these exorcisms.’

In March, it was revealed that a fifth of therapists, many in the pay of the NHS, had attempted to ‘cure’ patients of homosexuality.”

From http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Homosexuals_left_traumatised_by_ceremonial_cure&in_article_id=692445&in_page_id=34

Faith-killing

Associated Press reports…

“An Oregon couple who relied on prayer instead of medical care were acquitted of manslaughter Thursday in the death of their 15-month-old daughter.

The jury convicted the father, Carl Brent Worthington, of criminal mistreatment, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum sentence of a year in jail. The mother, Raylene Worthington, was acquitted in the 2008 death of their daughter Ava.

Both had faced manslaughter charges, which could have carried a sentence of up to six years in prison. The mother also was acquitted of criminal mistreatment.

The prosecution said Ava Worthington failed to flourish through most of her life because of a cyst on her neck that impeded her breathing and eating, contributing to her fatal pneumonia. She died on a Sunday evening after family and church members prayed over her and anointed her with olive oil.

The state medical examiner said she could easily have been saved with antibiotics.

But the defense attacked the credibility of the state’s expert witnesses and said the child died of a fast-moving form of sepsis, an infection. The Worthingtons testified that the cyst was a trait in the father’s family and that they thought their child only had a cold.

Jurors saw the Worthingtons as loving, caring parents, said 25-year-old juror Ashlee Santos.

“They’re people. They’re not monsters,” she said at a press conference at the Clackamas County courthouse. “They had no intention of harming their child. They’re good parents.”

She said the father was convicted of criminal mistreatment because the mother wasn’t monitoring the girl as closely as he was, so he was more responsible for her condition.

During the trial, the defense made a point of noting that in families of the Worthingtons’ church, the Followers of Christ, husbands make all important decisions.

District Attorney John Foote said Thursday prosecutors were “saddened and disappointed,” convinced the facts were clear in this case, and determined to be aggressive in enforcing “laws that require parents to protect their children regardless of their religious faith.”

The Followers of Christ shuns conventional medicine in favor of faith healing. The church has been in Oregon City since early in the 20th century. Its members, by their own description and that of others, keep to themselves.

The trial was the first under a 10-year-old Oregon law that bars legal defenses based on religious practices in most abuse cases. The law was a response to previous deaths among young members of the Followers of Christ.

The jurors reported on Monday that they were deadlocked on all the charges, but Judge Steven Maurer sent them back to deliberate. Under Oregon law, the verdicts required only 10 votes among the 12-member jury. The jury included eight men and four women.

The jury voted 11-1 to acquit Raylene Worthington of manslaughter and 10-2 on the rest of the charges against her and her husband. Santos said she voted with the majority on every count.

Throughout the trial, which lasted nearly four weeks, members of the church were in the gallery. Courtroom crowds ranged from about 40 people to as many as 80. Carl Brent Worthington and other church members refused to speak to reporters after the verdict was announced.

The husband, who goes by Brent, is a commercial painter. Raylene Worthington is a homemaker and is pregnant.

After Ava’s death, their surviving daughter, then 4, got a medical checkup at the insistence of Oregon child welfare workers, one of whom testified at a hearing last year the girl was in good health.

The father’s sentencing is scheduled July 31.”

From http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hqQCVrCVD0SydBszbOAX2-y24osQD99KG1K00

And The Oregonian reports…

“The Followers of Christ have a long history of children dying from untreated medical conditions.

Of 78 children buried in the church cemetery from 1955 to 1998, at least 21 could have been saved by medical intervention, according to a 1998 analysis by The Oregonian.

None of the deaths from that era, including the high-profile case of an 11-year-old boy who died from diabetes, resulted in prosecution.”

From http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2009/07/followers_of_christ_church_has.html

 

Will Joyce Meyer and Brian Houston use the people of PNG for propaganda fund-raising purposes the way Benny Hinn did?

Brian Houston twitters…

“Just had dinner in PNG with the team! Preaching tomorrow morning before joycemeyer. Her night meetings in the stadium are going to be huge!”

From http://twitter.com/BrianCHouston

Emmanuel Narokobi blogs…

“The Joyce Meyer Ministries traveling show has arrived in PNG and I was out at Sir John Guise stadium yesterday to have a look at Next of Kin Productions setting up of the huge stage which is just one of 3 which will be running from the 24th to the 26th of July. In the way of faith I’m a catholic, although a spiritually poor one at the moment and I know I gotta lift my game in that area, but the flesh has been too weak many a Sunday mornings just to get to church. But if faith can move mountains then right now faith has brought us a private jet flying, multimedia, multi-staged, multi-screened, multi-million kina concert extravaganza and all for the people for the price of nothing. All they want are your souls, well I shouldn’t put it that way, but all they want is for you to take part in their brand of faith.

I must admit I have on occasion stopped to listen to Joyce Meyer and her ’wan-wok’ in Christ Creflo Dollar. Their brand of faith has made me listen and it is actually quite inspiring in that you are told that God wants you to be  holy and if you do then you open yourself to the Lords  blessings and so you can actually lead a prosperous life and in the light of the lord. I’ve come to learn recently that there’s actually a name for their brand of teachings and its called ‘Prosperity Theology‘. Simply put a religious teaching that God desires material prosperity for those he favors. Material prosperity in this theology not only includes financial prosperity but success in relationships and good health as well.

Now I’m not going to discuss the theological aspects of their teachings because I doubt that I’m qualified to do so, but what I have always been attracted to with these teachers of Prosperity has been how on a media level they have seemingly perfected a business model which could only work if you had a spiritual following. Make no mistake about it, these evangelical churches are media conglomerates and Joyce Meyer Ministries alone has a global presence of 15 international offices. Joyce Meyer’s radio and television show airs in 25 languages in 200 countries. She has written over 70 books and has a website with podcasts, streaming video and an online store.

So I would be interested to see how her visit effects the sales of religious music and DVD’s in the country, which in the end makes sense when you think about how such a media conglomerate would sustain itself. Yet I still doubt that coming to PNG would make a profit for her, not because we’re not interested in her but simply because the supply chains in the industry have not been set up appropriately for her to maximise her media presence in the country.

Imagine if all those Kundu Cards were Visa Debit Cards and Telikom’s X’cess and Digicel’s Web Stik had been launched some 12 months ago. You’d have a craze going on with downloads of music, and online purchases of DVD’s and books. Imagine if you have video enabled on bemobile and digicel mobiles, hell someone all the way in Southern Highlands would be able to tune in and watch the Ministry concerts happening live in Port Moresby.

The thing is I’m simply a media freak and the closest thing I believe we will come to a full on media onslaught will not be some international singer coming to PNG but a Teleevangelist like Joyce Meyer. The Church brought us soul, R’N’B and rock’n’roll maybe soon it will bring us multi-media religious salvation and in doing so pave the way for a new way to reach the masses in a developing world. Whether its comforting or scary that’s another argument, but I’m just simply amazed at the scale of her visit…………”

From http://masalai.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/festival-of-light-2009/

And Personal Freedom Outreach reported…

“…………When [Benny] Hinn took his “miracle crusade” to Papua New Guinea, it was not his “anointing” that ruled but Murphy’s Law. It was not miracles but mishaps that ruled the day. Hinn’s efforts there were a public relations disaster from start to finish.

Papua New Guinea is a Pacific island nation of about 4.5 million people, 96.8% of whom profess Christianity. There are 600,000 Pentecostals alone.³ It is one of the most evangelized places on earth.

The Roman Catholic population is over a million strong and is a potent religious and political force. With all these demographics working in Hinn’s favor, it is no wonder he was able to pull in 300,000 people for the meeting. He was, for the most part, preaching to a largely Pentecostal “choir.” All those who attended the New Guinea meetings became unwitting partners in this charade, becoming free “extras” for what amounted to a slick promotional film that tried to foster the illusion that Hinn had won an entire heathen nation to Christ. During the Praise the Lord show, the people of Papua New Guinea were referred to by Hinn and Jan Crouch as “headhunters.” Hinn’s promotional piece called them “witch doctors and headhunters.”

Paul Crouch, Trinity Broadcasting Network’s chief executive, was trying to establish a TBN affiliate in Papua New Guinea. A letter from Crouch to New Guinea’s Prime Minister apparently tried to capitalize upon what appeared to be Hinn’s influence with the chief political leader of the country. Hinn promised that because of his intervention through the Prime Minister, TBN would be moving into Papua New Guinea.

RAGING ROMANS

Hinn’s Papua saga all started with advertisements for the crusade, which enraged the Roman Catholic establishment. Hinn had a photograph published in the local newspapers of himself with Pope John Paul II. It was supposed to give him credibility and acceptability but backfired with a vengeance.

The Post-Courier of Papua announced, “Hinn’s crusade gets Catholic rebuff.” The newspaper’s report disclosed:

“THE Catholic Church has questioned the benefits and genuineness of the Benny Hinn crusade to be held in Port Moresby over the next two nights. The church said this in a statement issued yesterday when objecting to the use of a photograph of Pastor Hinn’s meeting with the Pope to promote the crusade. President of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of PNG and Solomon Islands, Bishop Stephen Reichert, said the advertisement implied that the Holy Father (Pope) and the Catholic Church gave uncritical support for this and similar crusades. … ‘We see the use of Pope John Paul’s picture in the advertisement for the Benny Hinn Crusade as an unscrupulous misrepresentation that is meant to mislead those who see it.’ … Fr. Ambane said in a statement that people should be wary of televangelists who line their already rich pockets under the guise of faith healing. He said Pastor Hinn had come under strong criticism, doubt and skepticism by those he tried unsuccessfully to heal, theologians and by the international media.”⁵

The news article went on to fault Hinn for being a “multi-millionaire” who lives in a “luxurious mansion,” suggesting he was a con artist who was in collusion with certain politicians there for mutual gain.

Hinn was off to a bad start, but it got worse.

NO MIRACULOUS FORESIGHT

Hinn says he has a gift of “revelation knowledge” and can speak “words of knowledge.” His faithful believe he can somehow discern their ailments, call them out and pronounce healings. Although this is more like fortune-telling than truth, it is always used on those who blindly believe in Hinn’s powers. It is an illusion based on the laws of probability that anyone can perform. There are no supernatural powers involved.⁶

Apparently Hinn’s supernatural radar was off considerably in angering the Catholic Church and stirring their ire even more by showcasing his meetings with Bill Skate, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea. Skate was, for months before Hinn’s crusade, under attack by members of his parliament and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church for poor management, corruption and unethical and immoral behavior. His administration, from the very start, was rife with scandals. An international news report disclosed:

“Just four months after national elections in Papua New Guinea resulted in the installation of Bill Skate as head of an unstable coalition, a corruption scandal has left the government in disarray.”⁷

Hinn presumably was oblivious to the sour political climate of the country; knowledge of which could have been easily obtained from published news reports by the self-proclaimed conduit of supernatural information. Such information would have perhaps kept Hinn from making the bold pronouncement that “God has put you [Skate] in that position because you are a righteous man. And I am volunteering as your ambassador at large, spiritually speaking, to keep promoting your country.”⁸

Skate was a poor poster boy for Hinn in spite of his political position. Tete-a-tetes with corrupt politicians are not the best advertisement for a Christian minister. The local headlines could have read “Skate on thin ice.” It was, perhaps, thinner than Hinn and Skate realized.

The Post-Courier newspaper reported on Jan. 4, 1999, that the Catholic Archbishop of Papua New Guinea had called for Skate’s ouster to “rescue the country and its people from suffering and disaster.”⁹

Skate, the man whom Hinn was using as a photo opportunity, was a corrupt politician who in turn thought he was using Hinn to bolster his image as a moral kind of guy. Hinn would have been just as well off buddying up to a mobster.

Despite the political unrest prior to and in the wake of his crusade, Hinn apparently decided to pitch his New Guinea Crusade on TBN to prove to his supporters and partners all that God was doing through him. Perhaps Hinn reasoned that there was no use in dumping a perfectly good publicity newsreel — especially when the presentation stemmed from a small, otherwise remote, island in the Pacific. Patronizing and fawning, Jan and Paul Crouch surely agreed with Hinn as they gushed all over him at the amazing demonstration of his abilities, great powers and political influence.

Hinn’s ministry web site advertised that “Prime Minister Bill Skate, a Christian, personally invited Pastor Benny Hinn to come and speak to the nation.”¹⁰

It was during this time that Skate was under investigation by his own cabinet for corruption and was in a struggle for his political life. He had been firing opponents and hiring accomplices to try to hold onto his faltering position. This political battle was being reported daily by the news media.

Yet those with a handle on New Guinea’s political climate and Skate’s legacy were not beguiled by Hinn. A reporter who specializes in Pacific politics told PFO:

“I take it you saw the way Hinn made sure to build up Skate at his rally in PNG? Sickening and utterly transparent. The pair needed each other — Skate because he desperately required some sort of religious backing to deflect the criticism from the churches, and Hinn because he can use his relay station in PNG to extort more money from gullible Americans on the theory that he is saving a whole country from cannibalism and headhunting and turning the poor ignorant savages to Jesus. Never mind that PNG has been almost totally Christian for the last hundred or so years and the place is overrun with churches, that won’t get widows digging into their pensions in Indiana to send to Benny Hinn to ‘convert the natives’.”¹¹

But Skate’s effort at a public relations coup failed.

EXIT STAGE RIGHT

Just two months after Hinn’s crusade, on July 7, Skate resigned as Prime Minister to pre-empt his expected ouster by a no-confidence motion of his cabinet. He stated that his resignation was to stabilize Papua New Guinea’s politics. If Hinn accomplished nothing else, he helped to hasten the demise of Bill Skate. Unwittingly, Hinn and Skate focused the opponents and set up Skate’s last outrage. Many there would say that this is the only blessing that came out of Hinn’s visit.

Everything around the New Guinea Crusade and its aftermath conspired against Hinn. As the Pacific politics reporter told PFO, “Now that Skate is gone, it looks as if Hinn and Crouch have lost their chance.”¹² Even before Skate’s departure, influential parties were calling “for PNG not to grant U.S. televangelists broadcast license.”¹³

An Australian radio news article reported:

“Church leaders in Papua New Guinea have reacted angrily to comments by a leading American evangelist that the country needs a Christian television station because Papua New Guineans are cannibals and head hunters. Prime Minister Bill Skate has indicated approval for American evangelists Paul Crouch and Benny Hinn to set up a Christian television station in PNG. But, the general secretary of the Catholic Bishops conference of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, Father Henk Kronenberg, says the comments are un-Christian and a disgrace.”¹⁴

DOMESTIC PROBLEMS AS WELL

Within weeks of Hinn’s TBN appearance and just days before Skate’s political life unraveled, an embarrassing video clip from World Outreach Church (Hinn’s church) was broadcast. The footage was aired on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and featured Hinn’s wife Suzanne bellowing to the congregation at WOC that, “If your engine’s not revving up — you need a Holy Ghost enema right up your rear end.”¹⁵

The comedy show’s “God Stuff” segment concluded with Mrs. Hinn frantically darting back and forth behind the pulpit, shrieking and finally taking an unladylike belly flop on the platform.

Hinn and his organization, obviously embarrassed by the unsavory conduct of his wife, directed lawyers to issue a letter to Comedy Central, its producers and associate companies, including Time Warner Entertainment and Viacom, Inc. The correspondence charged commercial exploitation of Mrs. Hinn’s comments from stolen videotape. In addition, the letter suggested that if the network was involved in any way with the theft or misappropriation of the heretofore unreleased tape, it would be held liable. Hinn’s lawyers further demanded that Comedy Central reveal how it obtained the footage.

Here the question is begged: If Hinn possesses the gift of “revelation knowledge” and is repeatedly in direct communication with the Divine, why does he need lawyers to demand such information?

Comedy Central and its lawyers were not intimidated by Hinn’s threats…………..”

From http://www.pfo.org/thin-ice.htm

Scandal at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church?

The Courthouse News Service reports…

“While providing marriage counseling, two associate pastors concealed that a third pastor was having an affair with a man’s wife, and the adulterous pastor had the gall to pray with the husband, asking God to reveal the identity of his wife’s lover, the cuckolded husband claims in Harris County Court. 

David Molina claims the Rev. Johnny McGowan carried on the affair with Molina’s wife for years. Molina says the affair began in 1998 when his wife began working with McGowan’s construction company.
     

He says he and his wife sought marriage counseling from associate pastors Leo Tyler and Paul Osteen in 2003. Molina sued all three pastors, and the Healthy Soul Network Inc. and Lakewood Church.
     

“Osteen instructed (Molina) to spend more time with his wife, and less time at the church,” according to the complaint. “That meeting occurred after Osteen had counseled Mrs. Molina and he learned of the adulterous affair she was having with McGowan.”
     

Molina says that in 2006 he found proof of other affairs his wife was involved in, and of her extensive “phone relationship” with McGowan.
     

He says [...] met with McGowan and his wife after Sunday service to discuss the improprieties and McGowan claimed he used the phone conversations to counsel Molina’s wife about her other affairs.
     

“McGowan claimed he personally knew of three such extramarital affairs of Mrs. Molina. Plaintiff only knew conclusively about three affairs, but felt strongly there was a fourth. The plaintiff and defendant McGowan prayed that day for God to reveal the identity of the man in the fourth affair. Sometime later God answered plaintiff’s prayer,” according to the complaint.
     

Molina claims that Tyler told him about his wife’s affair with McGowan later that year, and subsequent DNA tests revealed McGowan was the father of Molina’s youngest daughter.
     

McGowan then threatened to strike up a relationship with his biological daughter and cut Molina out of her life if he took action against him, according to the complaint. 
     

After an attempt at reconciliation, the Molinas divorced in April.
     

Molina seeks punitive damages for fraud by nondisclosure, conspiracy to commit fraud and gross negligence. He is also suing on behalf of his non-biological daughter, whom he is raising as his own. He is represented by Arden Morley of Bellaire, Texas.”

From http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/07/21/Duplicitous_Affair_Alleged_Against_Houston_Pastor.htm

The TV channel that broadcast Todd Bentley to the world is about to meet its maker

A God TV supporters email circular reports…

“Dearest Partner,

The Lord is with us and so many great things are happening, but right now GOD TV is in a dire situation.

We are facing some truly tough decisions, which we believe you’ll want to know about -

- because this situation affects not only countless people worldwide who are yet to hear the Gospel message through this media ministry …but also our ability to minister to YOU.

Wendy and I invite you to become a GOD TV ANGEL with your generous donation right now and committed monthly giving of any amount. Keep GOD TV bringing the life-changing Gospel of Jesus to the nations!

Cash flow is desperate, and unless we IMMEDIATELY remedy this, we will be forced to fundamentally restrict the GOD Channel you so enjoy!

In fact, the next 30 days will literally make or break this ministry.

Why? Because we are now at a place where we cannot cut back any further without severely damaging the structure, distribution and programming of this ministry.

We desperately need your support today, as never before.

Become a GOD TV ANGEL with your ongoing monthly gift. You empower us, we will go … and TOGETHER we reap a HARVEST and earn His reward!

The Lord has shown us that we need to invite ALL OUR VIEWERS, starting with this letter, to do something EVERY MONTH … through our new GOD TV Angel Program. No gift is too big or too small.

This is a call to immediate action … please respond online right away and be part of this “Gideon’s Army” — the small band of saints whom the Lord has called to be a part of His GOD TV Team and impact the WORLD with His Glory through Media!

Be part of 100,000 GOD TV Angels across the earth with your generous online donation and monthly commitment … help us bring GOD TV into your home and reach out to win ONE BILLION SOULS worldwide!

Wendy and I also invite you to join us for a live broadcast event on July 21. I will be sharing a special announcement that you won’t want to miss! It is definitely a new season at GOD TV … a new time of giving and receiving. Check your local listings and plan now to watch this live event.

You are always in our prayers, and Wendy and I look forward to welcoming you to the new GOD TV ANGEL monthly partner program.

In His amazing love,
Rory & Wendy Alec”

From http://www.god.tv/apw-090721

Ted Haggard says every pastor should see a counsellor

Christian News Northwest reports…

“Two and a half years ago, with his sins now known to the world, a deeply embarrassed and shamed Ted Haggard at times felt suicidal. In a stunning downfall, he had lost his reputation, his job and financial security, his spiritual and political influence, his friends, and feared even losing his wife. What he never lost was his Savior.  “When we go through the darkest times in life, all your friends may abandon you, but Jesus will never leave you … Jesus is fanatically in love with people who just can’t get their act together,” said Haggard.

The same message comes today from his wife, Gayle, who acknowledges that her husband’s gay sex scandal was “the most painful thing I could have possibly gone through,” but that God has walked closely with them through a “very dark” time. “I feel God’s grace in our lives in a way I did not ever know I would,” she said.

The result — the Haggards say their marriage today is stronger than ever and they have fresh hope.

“I really love this man,” she said as she sat next to her husband on the platform during a special breakfast presentation Friday, June 19 at Vancouver’s Living Hope Church. “He’s so much more than the sin that so easily beset him.” Haggard, in turn, calls his wife “the hero of this story,” because she chose to stay with him even though the burden of the scandal “placed all my sins on her.”

When things were at their worst, he even urged her to divorce him because he thought he had become so “toxic” that divorce was best for her and their family. She refused to leave him and is now writing a book about why she didn’t.

John Bishop, pastor of Living Hope, invited the Haggards to appear at the breakfast, as well as at the church’s worship services that weekend. Bishop felt it was important to hear from the Haggards because he and many others in the Christian community had many questions about how a nationally-known spiritual leader could fall so stunningly. Because of the scandal, Haggard resigned in November 2006 as pastor of 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., which he had founded. His severance agreement with the church required him to leave Colorado for two years. He also stepped down from his politically powerful role as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, representing 45,000 churches with 30 million members. The resignations came after Haggard acknowledged soliciting a male prostitute for homosexual sex and methamphetamine. Initially Haggard denied even knowing the prostitute, but as a media investigation proceeded he admitted that some allegations, such as his purchase of methamphetamine, were true. He later added “sexual immorality” to his list of confessions. “I didn’t do everything I was accused of, but I sure did enough,” Haggard told the Vancouver audience.

Since the scandal broke, Haggard has undergone intensive restoration counseling.

Insisting he is heterosexual and that he “never embraced” the gay lifestyle, Haggard said his times of immorality had roots in sexual abuse from an adult when he was 7 years old. “It was buried under the blood of Jesus, but still in my brain,” and thus became his personal torment for decades, said Haggard. “I thought it was a demon, that it was spiritual. But it was in fact psychological.” Haggard said he should never have allowed years of ministry and leadership to pass without seeking help. “It used to be that only ‘crazy people’ went to counselors,” he said. “No, I think the pastor of every rapidly growing church should go to a counselor … What I should have done is resigned all my positions and gone to a good counselor.” The scandal finally forced him to do just that.

“I got 30 years of prayer answered with a relatively simple process in a counselor’s office,” he said. What he is still grappling with, he admitted, is the way much of the religious community responded to the scandal: “I only needed a few hours with that counselor … (but) I many need a lifetime of counseling to recover from the church.” At the same time, however, Haggard was quick to praise Tommy Barnett, famed pastor of First Assembly of God Church in Phoenix, Ariz., for his role in the restoration process. Haggard said Barnett welcomed him and his wife “when nobody knew what to do with us.” According to Haggard, Barnett himself wasn’t sure what to do, but simply told him, “Keep reading your Bible and do what the Holy Spirit tells you to do, and you’ll be fine.” Haggard said his situation is a vivid reminder to all Christians — especially those in prominence — that they are always sorely in need of a Savior, and of God’s grace. In reality, he said, “nobody deserves to be on the platform.”

“In every church … every family … all the time, things are going woefully wrong. Any goodness that we tap into is purely a gift.” Haggard reiterated that his personal failings never separated him from God’s love. “I never fell from grace; I fell into grace because of this scandal,” he said. Bishop said an honest expression of that need for grace is necessary if the Body of Christ is going to reach the world with the Gospel. “The only way there will be authentic revival is authentic brokenness,” Bishop told those at the breakfast.

Bishop said that in addition to having the Haggards speak at his church, Living Hope treated the Haggards and their entire family to their first-ever stay on the Oregon coast as an expression of love and appreciation.”

From http://oregonfaithreport.com/2009/07/fallen-evangelical-leader-ted-haggard-tells-his-story/

When honesty in church is the new normal

New Man Magazine reports…

“Glenn Packiam, the worship pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., recalls the national scandal with the church’s former pastor, Ted Haggard—how it shook the congregation and the impact it had on Packiam’s faith. He speaks with disarming honesty about the half-measures many of us settle for in our walks with God—and the full experience we miss as a result. We hope you enjoy this special selection from Packiam’s book Secondhand Jesus.

Life couldn’t have been any better. We had been in our new house for just over a year, and it was almost time to start decorating for the holidays. Winter’s frost was just blowing in over the Rocky Mountains. These were days of sipping hot chocolate and looking back over a year of steady church growth, rapidly expanding influence, and a company of close friends to enjoy it with. On top of all that, my wife, Holly, and I were expecting our second child, another girl. Life was good and there was no end in sight.

And then it was Thursday.

Everyone was distracted at work. There were meetings going on, first upstairs and then off campus, and, later, on campus in an impromptu staff meeting. Internet clips kept us glued to the screen as we tried desperately to decipher truth, accuracy and some reason to believe the best. But as Thursday soldiered on, doubt was sitting lower and more heavily inside me.

I remember the feeling when I got home. My heart was kicking against my chest with frantic irregularity as I ran up the stairs to our room. The sinking, tightening knot in my stomach seemed to sink with each step. I opened our bedroom door, and with breathless shock sputtered, “Babe, some of it’s true.”

I had just returned from an elders’ meeting where I learned that the seemingly absurd accusations leveled against our beloved pastor, Ted Haggard, had enough truth in them to warrant his removal from office. On Friday, we learned that he would never be allowed back. By Sunday, we were sitting in church with hot tears racing down our faces, listening to letters that told us words we never thought we would hear. Our pastor had been a prominent national figure because of his role as president of the National Association of Evangelicals. He had been interviewed by Barbara Walters and featured on major news shows, had been called the most influential pastor in America. It was the biggest religious debacle in my lifetime. And it happened at my church. My church.

Thursday came and everything changed; my unshakeable “good life” became a nightmare of uncertainty. Would the church implode? Would everyone leave? Would I have a job next week? Could I ever get hired in ministry again? The songs, the influence, the success, the notoriety—it all became foolishly irrelevant.

Slowly, I replayed the past. The preceding years had been heady times. Our pastor’s meteoric rise to the evangelical papacy paralleled the growing muscle of a conservative Christian movement now beginning to flex in the public square. The young men who had helped build our church, myself included, now found themselves swimming in much bigger circles of influence. We were talking to the press, traveling to Washington D.C., and dropping more names than Old Testament genealogy. We had become powerful by association. And it was intoxicating. We were like the eager young men in Tobias Wolff’s fictitious memoir of an elite prep school on the East Coast, full of idealism and world-changing dreams.

“It was a good dream and we tried to live it out, even while knowing that we were actors in a play, and that outside the theatre was a world we would have to reckon with when the curtain closed and the doors were flung open.”

On Thursday, our theatre doors flung open. The dream was over now. There was no thought of making an impact or changing the world. It was now about survival. How could we help our church stay intact?

As the days became weeks, it became clear that our church was made up of strong families who truly were connected to each other. It is a community akin to a small Midwestern town. So what if the mayor is gone? We’re all still here. I watched men and women rally together in a heroic display of Christ-like love.

It wasn’t long before the shock of scandal gave way to the discomfort of introspection. This was ultimately not about a fallen pastor; it was about fallen nature, a nature we all have lurking within us. It became less about the worst being true about him and more about the worst being true about us.

We began to allow the Lord to turn His spotlight, one more piercing than the light of any cameras, on our own hearts. Secret sins, recurring temptations, hidden pride all looked sinister in His light. There was no such thing as a little white anything. Every weakness was now a dangerous monster with the potential of ruining our lives. Couples began to have difficult conversations with each other, friends became more vulnerable than they had ever been. Honesty was the new normal. That sounds so strange to say.

But far beyond discussions and confessions, one question, one I never thought I would have trouble answering, relentlessly worked its way to my core. It surfaced from the pages of Henri Nouwen’s book In the Name of Jesus. Nouwen had been an influential theology professor at Harvard, living at what most would have considered the apex of his career. But something was wrong.

“After twenty years in the academic world as a teacher of pastoral psychology, pastoral theology, and Christian spirituality, I began to experience a deep inner threat. As I entered into my fifties …I came face to face with the simple question, ‘Did becoming older bring me closer to Jesus?’ After twenty-five years of priesthood, I found myself praying poorly, living somewhat isolated from other people, and very much preoccupied with burning issues.”

But Nouwen’s inner wrestling was largely unnoticed by those around him, which made it more difficult for him to accurately gauge the condition of his heart.

“Everyone was saying that I was doing really well, but something inside was telling me that my success was putting my own soul in danger. I began to ask myself whether my lack of contemplative prayer, my loneliness, and my constantly changing involvement in what seemed most urgent were signs that the Spirit was gradually being suppressed. … I was living in a very dark place and … the term ‘burnout’ was a convenient psychological translation for spiritual death.”

Haunted by the emptiness of his own spiritual walk, Nouwen started on a journey that eventually led to his resignation from Harvard. He took a position as a chaplain at Le Arche, a care facility for the handicapped. There he learned what it meant to live out a life of love and servanthood, to live as Christ among the broken, to truly “lead in the name of Jesus.” I had read his profound and honest reflections years before, but as I reread them in the wake of the scandal, I found myself convicted. Nouwen’s question dealt with something deeper than sin; it was about the essence of the Christian life, the thing we must have above all else.

I remember sitting with a few friends in my living room on New Year’s Eve, reflecting on how insane 2006 had been. We decided to have a little dessert and ponder the year that was now in its closing hours. Each couple took turns reviewing highs and lows of the year. For the most part, it had been a good year. Bigger and better opportunities, unexpected financial success, the births of healthy children and the accelerated elimination of debt were some of the items on the good list.

But we had also experienced “Thursday,” and “bigger and better” now seemed as days long ago, auld lang syne. The events of that day in November now overshadowed everything the next year might hold. Everything was good now, but how long would it continue? Would the things that had gone awry last year create repercussions that would undermine all the things we had held so dearly? For some, the fear of losing the jobs they loved was becoming a distinct possibility. The reality of how suddenly a curve in the road can appear was sobering us.

And then I raised “the question”: Did we—did I—know Christ more as a result of the passing of another year? Were we any closer to God? It was not the sort of question to answer out loud. I wrestled with it in silence. It was a question of my own relationship with Christ.

I have been a Christian since I was a young boy. I spent my high school years sitting in on the Old Testament history classes my mom taught at our church’s Bible college, listening to sermon tapes, and praying and planning with my dad as he and my mom planted a church. My youth was defined by long quiet times, meaningful journal entries, and leadership roles in our youth group. I was a theology major in college and had been in full-time, vocational ministry for six years. Yet in the wake of Thursday, none of this mattered. Did I truly know God … today? Was my knowledge of Him active and alive, or stale and sentimental?

I have come to the uncomfortable realization that I have believed rumors about God that have kept me from Him, kept me from really knowing Him. I suspect I am not alone. This book is about some of the more popular rumors, and the path to finding the truth. What you read here is not intended to be the basis for your view of God. Instead, this book is an attempt to jog your mind, stir your heart, provoke your questions, and whet your appetite for the quest, for the journey that only you can take.”

From http://newmanmag.com/e-magazine/072009/story1.php

At Revenue Church there’s never a bad time to talk about the offering

Heather Baker writes…

“Hi My Church,

I wanted and felt it necessary to give you an update on Philip [Baker], and also give you some more information so you understand more clearly what he has been through and what is still yet to have done.

Immediately after the operation to remove the tumour, which was done back on the 12th June, Philip then had a complication which was a rare problem, that is, his pressure spiked and it was necessary for the surgeons to perform a second operation to remove a section of skull to allow space for the brain to swell without it being damaged.

So, with two back-to-back surgeries we have been waiting for the brain swelling to go down and for him to go through the resurfacing phase. Within this phase, there are many steps he has to go through, which all takes time and rest. He is still in this phase, and has a long way to go – including a third operation to replace the skull bone.

All this requires time. Nobody can say how long. So I have asked the Board to go ahead and make arrangements for the security and stability of the church to enable it to continue to go from strength to strength and to maintain our focus on the vision that God has given us as a church.

The arrangements are as follows –

• Philip has time off owing to him so the decision has been made to give him a sabbatical for up to a year for further procedures and recovery.
• Haydn [Nelson] will continue as Executive Minister, fulfilling what would have been Philip’s normal roles – his primary focus being the weekend services and the running of the Riverview Group.
• I will be at work as much as I can, with the permission from the Board to have the freedom to be with Philip as needed.
  

On a personal level, our family is standing strong – we are all closely standing together. We are supporting Philip and each other in this battle and journey and really won’t quit until we are at the end. Thank you for all your gifts, flowers and cards, I think from now on if you would like to do something to express your kindness and love to Philip and myself, send a card or email with your thoughts and if you were wanting to send something, hold onto the money you would like to spend on us and put it into the offering on a weekend instead, we would love that.

I want to encourage you my church, Philip appointed Haydn last year, with full confidence in him. I know without any doubts, only a great peace and assurance that he is the man for the job at hand. The leadership team – Duane, Penny, Adam, Amanda, Alyson, Paul, Kelley and Haydn, have all stepped up into places that Philip and I had confidence that they needed to and would anyway, and I am sure you would agree with me, as a result, the church has received brilliant ministry and ‘will’ continue to do so. I trust them implicitly. We all continue to grow in God…have a greater understanding of His love for us, of His power in and through us, and His goodness. Keep your eyes on God as we continue to grow together in Him.

As individual members of the church before God…ask what you can do to grow…what you can step up and do …many of you that are mature in Christ need to step up and become involved in some way… we need you.

Stay in faith and keep trusting, there is grace in the beginning, grace during and grace for the end of any battle, and when we have done all “we stand”.

My love to you all,

Heather Baker.
 
Note: If you wish to send a message of support to Phil and Heather, cards can be posted to – Riverview Church, PO Box 524 Victoria Park WA 6979.  

Emails can be sent to the following email address: reception@riverviewchurch.com.au “
 

From http://www.philbaker.net/blog/6033?sf=&st=&l=0

Hill$ong – championing the cause of your local dickhead

Unequally bloked

The Age reports…

“More Australians are marrying outside their religion, with second and third-generation family members increasingly willing to walk down the aisle with people of other faiths.

Monash University research has found Christians have the highest rates of intermarriage, particularly with people from other Christian denominations, while newly emerging religions in Australia such as Hinduism and Islam have the lowest.

About 60 per cent of Presbyterian men and women had married someone of another faith, followed by more than 43 per cent of Uniting Church-goers, 41 per cent of Anglicans and more than 37 per cent of Catholics.

By comparison, 10 per cent of Hindus had married out of their faith along with just 8 per cent of Muslim men and 6 per cent of Muslim women.

Researcher Genevieve Heard said that as Australia became a more secular society, the role of religion in some individuals’ lives would also change.

“It doesn’t mean an absence of religion, it means the withdrawal of religion from everyday life and practices, including partnering,” she said. “Sociologists are very careful not to say that people aren’t spiritual or that they’re not religious in their own way, but religion doesn’t have a big sway over their day-to-day decisions and their big life decisions about partnering, as it might once have done.”

The research, which appeared in the June edition of the journal People and Place, analysed 2001 and 2006 census data. According to the 2006 census, 64 per cent of Australians identified as Christian but this was a drop of 7 per cent from a decade earlier. Instead, non-Christian faiths experienced a rise, as did people identifying with no religion at all.

Dr Heard said that smaller religious communities in Australia, especially those tied to emerging migrant groups such as Muslims and Hindus, had not had as long to establish themselves as those of Christian faiths. Many were still in the first-generation phase of their settlement and so their second and third generations were yet to test the intermarriage theory.

“Once upon a time … if you were a Protestant and married a Catholic that would have been a big deal. This paper shows that divide has certainly all but disappeared but that’s largely because Protestants and Catholics have had so long to get along with one another in Australia.

“It would be unfair to say of more recently arrived religions that people of that religion are not mixing as well, because they haven’t had the chance. But it will be interesting to see whether they all follow the same path.”

 From http://www.theage.com.au/national/christians-lead-way-in-interfaith-marriages-20090719-dpn6.html

Hill$ong’s Shine gets a ‘foot in the door’ at Noosa schools

“…..It gives the church an opportunity to have a foot in the door…to show them love in this basic simple way.  Just to show them that they are special and to give them those principles that my mum gave me that I know they might not get if they’re not in a Christian family.

I want to see these young girls come to a knowledge of salvation…to get to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour….” – ‘Sunshine’ (from Youtube video)

—-

“Shine is a nine-week personal development program designed by Hillsong CityCare to help young women tackle issues of self-esteem, value and self-worth.

SHINE is a community-based, not religious based program, which Hillsong City Care and Hillsong Youth Services facilitate in 10 schools in Sydney. The SHINE program is delivered in a non-confrontational, non-religious way to young women from a range of backgrounds.

Professionally qualified staff, with degrees in youth work, community work and welfare, facilitate Shine in schools and also provide group and one-on-one facilitator training to volunteers as well as ongoing support…..”

- From Hill$ong Shine Program Statement, July 26, 2008.

Steve Penny – full of it

Steve Penny blogs…

“Last night we experienced with awe the opening night of Hillsong Conference 2009. The amazing light and sound show that started the night was indescribable. It was sheerly amazing. However the best was yet to come. The worship was electric and the sense of God’s presence in the place was tangible. Then Craig Groeschel preached a message on the “IT” factor in our lives. That intangible blessing of God that makes the difference between winning and losing. The messsage brought an amazing response from everyone present and was a life changing moment for us all.

I cant help but be challenged by the Hillsong miracle, which keeps happening year after year, and I have many times tried to see what makes this great church continue to go forward in the grace of God.

Let me suggest a few things that I think are in the mix of the Hillsong “IT”.

1. A WILLINGNESS TO LEAD WITH HUMILITY

Starting with Brian & Bobbie Houston and flowing through all the key leaders of the church is an obvious spirit of humility in the way they lead.

2. A WILLINGNESS TO SERVE

Somehow the people of Hillsong have heard the call to build God’s kingdom and are willing to give of their all to make this happen.

3. A WILLINGNESS TO RISK

Brian & Bobbie’s willingness to follow God and not settle down is frightening. They continue to press forward despite the challenges and the costs.

4. A WILLINGNESS TO SHARE WITH OTHERS

The generosity of the Hillsong church is now legendary and continues to impact lives and nations. Their hands are always full to bless others.

5. THE WILLINGNESS TO USE WHAT THEY HAVE

Hillsong church is renowned for taking the ordinary and making it outstanding. They know how to turn a worthless stick into a miracle rod.

I continue to be blessed every time I attend the Hillsong conference, and this year has the feel about it of being something very special.

Looking forward to day two.

Steve Penny”

From http://www.stevepenny.net/the-hillsong-it/

Sydney Anglican bishop’s message to gay and unbeliever students: get out of our schools

The Sydney Star Observer reports…

“The law shouldn’t allow religious organisations to discriminate just because of their sexual orientation, a Sydney Anglican bishop has claimed. But students who come out as gay or atheist in a religious school should consider leaving voluntarily.

South Sydney Bishop Robert Forsyth made the concession as gay rights groups called for anti-discrimination law exemptions to be limited to professed faith, not a catchall waiver for discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

“I don’t support an exemption for [sexual] orientation as a grounds for discrimination,” Forsyth told Sydney Star Observer.

“I’ve got friends who