ALL CHURCHES NEWS BLOG: January 2016

Saturday 30 January 2016

Britain First condemned by UK Churches

Far-right political party Britain First has been criticised by every major Christian denomination in the UK, according to a media report.
The group recently held a "Christian Patrol" in Luton, during which members brandished wooden crosses and claimed to be defending "Christian values" while handing out anti-Islam newspapers to Muslims.
Although the march and others like it have only attracted marchers in their tens, a video of the Luton patrol has been viewed more than 21 million times on Facebook.
As stated on its website, Britain First's first principle is a commitment to "the maintenance of British national sovereignty, independence and freedom".

Ten people drowned while 43 others were rescued after a boat carrying migrants to Greece sank off Turkey's western coast, Turkish news agency Dogan reported on Saturday.
More than one million refugees and migrants arrived by land and sea in the European Union last year and some 3,600 died or went missing.
The Turkish coast guard was continuing search and rescue efforts where the boat sank off the coast of Ayvacik, a town across from the Greek island of Lesvos.

Anyone familiar with the Church of England understands that at all the big celebrations, it was long traditional for the men to dress more beautifully than the women. But with the advent of women clergy and bishops, now the divide is more between clergy and laity than between the sexes.
Few who admire the gorgeous colours and gold-embroidered robes, mostly relics of ancient day dress worn in the Roman Empire, might realise that clergy have little choice in what they wear for each service.

There has just been a disturbing development in the case of a soldier—a war hero—who is facing removal from the military for defending a child from abuse.
Green Beret Non-Commissioned Officer Sergeant First Class (SFC) Charles Martland needs you to speak up for him now more than ever after the Army Human Resources Command has recommended that he be kicked out of the Armed Services.

Several years ago, I met with a former employer who was looking to hire for an inside sales position, and he wanted to offer the job to me first. The job was in my general hometown; the company was a strong, ethical, growing global company; pay would exceed six figures; travel was little to none; and the benefits were great. And I turned it down! Some might think me crazy.

Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported missionaries and workers will reach out with food, clothing and medical aid on Jan. 31, World Leprosy Day, to more than 4,000 sufferers in 63 leprosy colonies, highlighting the plight of those suffering from this brutal, but highly treatable disease.
"Typically, it is the poor who suffer most often from the effects of this illness—the clawed hands, the damaged vision, the lost tissue, the permanent limp from damaged feet," said K.P. Yohannan, founder and international director of Gospel for Asia.

The prolific author, talk show host, comedian, game show host and then Miss Universe host made the mistake of the year when he accidentally crowned the wrong woman.
Steve Harvey mistakenly announced Miss Colombia was the new Miss Universe, rather than Miss Philippines.
Now, Harvey told The Hollywood Reporter he blames the gaffe on God.
"I was asking God to help me increase my global persona," Harvey told THR.

Three cheers for the First Amendment, at least for the cheerleaders at a Texas high school.
A judge ruled this week that the Kountze Independent School district is "not required to prohibit messages on school banners . . . that display fleeting expressions of community sentiment solely because the source or origin of such message is religious."
The battle between the school district and the cheerleaders began in August 2012, with appeals going back and forth for years.
"We're just all Christians and believe the Bible is from God and so if it's from God, why not?" one cheerleader said at the time.

Mexican community expels 10 Baptist families for refusing to recant faith

Ten Baptist families have been expelled by an indigenous community in Mexico for refusing to recant their Christian faith.
The 18 adults and 10 children from Tuxpan de Bolaños in Jalisco state were put in a pick-up truck and driven to nearby mountains where they were abandoned, according to International Christian Concern.
The charity reports that Omar Rodriguez,

A baby boy who was laid in a manger and left in a church navivity scene 44 years ago has enjoyed an "amazing" reunion with his natural "birth" siblings.
DJ Williams became known as The Manger Baby after stunned parishioners discovered him wrapped in a blanket and crying in a Catholic church in Texas in 1971.

There have been 13 popes named Leo in the history of the Roman Catholic Church but perhaps none of them was as famous as the Leo who entered the Vatican on Thursday - Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio.
DiCaprio, who is known as Leo, was received by Pope Francis, the Vatican said, without giving details.
But the one-line announcement was enough to send photographers and television crews scrambling to stake out the Vatican's gates to try to catch him coming out.
Footage issued later from Vatican television showed that the audience was connected to their mutual concern about the environment and climate change.
DiCaprio, speaking Italian, thanked the pope for receiving him and then, switching to English, gave him a book of paintings by 16th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch.
Pointing to one painting, DiCaprio told the pope it had hung over his bed as a boy and said "through my child's eyes it represented our planet."
"It represents to me the promise of the future and enlightenment and it is representational of your view here as well," he said.

Sexual sin brings a great deal of self-condemnation, regret, shame and embarrassment.
People involved in sexual sin have a tendency to think they are safe in their sin. They think as long as no one knows what they are doing they are safe. Unfortunately, they are not.
Whether they are in pornography, masturbation or adultery, they are in captivity. They are in captivity to themselves and the sin of which they are indulging. Often this becomes an addictive behavior pattern where the emotions of unworthiness set in and the person begins an internal emotional spiral downward.
On the outside, appearances and emotions are fine, but inside they cannot shake their captivity.

There were five confirmed cases of the Zika virus in Germany between October 2015 and January 2016, a spokeswoman for the German health ministry said on Friday.
The virus has been rapidly spreading in the Americas, and women in affected countries have been advised not to get pregnant until the severity of the virus subsides.

Twelve youths, all residents of Tel Aviv, were arrested last week on suspicion of stealing and selling electric bike parts.
According to police, the boys would arrive in small groups and congregate near high schools and shopping centers in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan and Givatayim, stealing batteries and bicycles to be sold in local stores.
Israeli Police contacted school and shopping centers security guards and told them to contact police as soon as they detect any suspicious persons who might be trying to steal batteries and electric bicycles.
On Tuesday, a guard at one of the high schools in Ramat Gan reported that three teenagers tried to steal a bike batteries in a school. The guard took the suspects and sent their photographs to policemen who were nearby. The police, who arrived at the scene a short time, carried out a search and seized three boys with stolen property.

10 Ways to Reduce Your Risk of Cancer

You can't possibly avoid every single cancer-causing substance, and you can't avoid stress—it is a fact of life. What you can do, however, is counterbalance stress with daily choices that at least give you a fighting chance.
You can adopt practices that make your body more resilient in the face of cancer. It doesn't really matter whether you are genetically predisposed to contracting a certain kind of cancer. What matters is the genetic expression that comes from your daily choices, behaviors and habits.
It has been said that genetics loads the gun, but daily choices pull the trigger.
1. Put on the right set of glasses.

When you got married, you didn't imagine this is how it would be. After all, you love each other. You are attracted to one another and have good chemistry.
However, when you are intimate, there is something missing. Maybe it is a new development in your relationship. Perhaps it has always been that way, and you hoped it would eventually change, but it hasn't. Your married sex life is passionless.
Sex is not always going to be earth-shattering, particularly when a couple has been married for a long time. When it consistently lacks passion overtime is when it can become divisive.
The frequency of its occurrence tends to become less and less. Filled with unsatisfied desires, some turn to unhealthy things such as porn or an affair to attempt to quench their thirst. In order to find the solution, it is important to identify the problem.
If your married sex life lacks passion, it could be because of one of these reasons:
1. Inhibitions.

The Most Rev. Justin Welby, the leader of the Anglican Communion, has asserted that the potential presidency of Republican candidate Donald Trump would be "very challenging" and problematic.
Welby made the comments on ITV's "Good Morning Britain" program, when he was asked about his thoughts on Trump's suitability as the next president of the United States and leader of the free world.

"It would certainly be very challenging, wouldn't it?" Welby said, with The Telegraph suggesting that he indicated possible doubts about Trump's presidential campaign.
One major issue that Welby and Trump have struck different tones on concerns the ongoing refugee crisis. Welby has repeatedly called on the British government to welcome in more refugees fleeing war and persecution, and has reminded Anglicans that Jesus Christ was a refugee.
"As the archbishop has said,

A South African mayor is defending her controversial decision to award college scholarships to 16 girls who can prove their virginity, arguing that the unconventional scholarship offer will prevent the spread of disease, as well as unwanted pregnancy.
Dudu Mazibuko, mayor of the Uthukela district of the KwaZulu-Natal province, has argued that despite criticism from the feminist women's rights group, People Opposing Women Abuse, she believes these scholarships will "reduce HIV, AIDS and unwanted pregnancy" among young girls in the area, which has some of the highest incidences of AIDS in South Africa," according to the BBC.

The 16 university-age women who would be eligible for the scholarships would be subject to routine virginity tests, the mayor told BBC News.
Mazibuko added in an interview that this type of scholarship does not focus on academic merit, but rather chastity.
"As part of the incentive, for those maidens who have remained pure until they finish high school, we say they can go further and study.

A fortnight ago, West Africa breathed a collective sigh of relief as the World Health Organisation declared that Liberia was officially Ebola-free, having gone 42 days without a new case.
The announcement signalled the long-awaited end of a two-year battle against the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history: one that devastated communities in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Nobody could have imagined that our joy would be so short-lived: hours later, officials announced a new Ebola death here in Sierra Leone.
Over 250 people are now in quarantine and one person is receiving treatment, as emergency measures come back into force.

A terrorist militia responsible for around 100,000 deaths before being hunted out of Northern Uganda is regaining strength in the Central African Republic (CAR), according to a senior Roman Catholic bishop there.
The Lord's Resistance Army, headed by Joseph Kony, imposed a reign of terror on the Acholi region of Northern Uganda in the 1980s and 90s.

Marriage is a wonderful experience that man and woman often share, but sometimes it can also be a hefty weight to carry. There's this joke that says that in marriage there are three rings that a man gives to a woman- the engagement ring, the wedding ring and then the suffe-ring.
But kidding aside, marriage is a privilege, but also one that needs extra care and work. Married couples need a new level of grace and ability to carry through a relationship and maximise it to it's full extent.

The European Union is offering Britain a new "emergency brake" rule that could help curb immigration from other EU states in a reform package before a British referendum on EU membership, sources close to the negotiations reported on Thursday.
The proposal would give any member state that could convince EU governments its welfare system was under excessive strain a right to deny benefits to new workers arriving from other EU countries for up to four years.

France and Iran hailed the sale of Airbus planes and the renewal of a decades-old carmaking venture as symbols of thawing relations on Thursday while protesters in Paris tried to get human rights onto the agenda.
President Hassan Rouhani was accompanied on his official visit to Paris, the first by an Iranian president since 1999, by ministers and business leaders who announced deals including a joint venture between carmakers PSA Peugeot Citroen and Iran Khodro and plans for Iran to buy 118 Airbus passenger planes to update its aging fleet.
His visit after a stop-off in Rome for more deals follows an agreement between Iran and the west on Iran's nuclear programme, allowing the lifting of sanctions this month.
The deals were signed at a ceremony attended by Rouhani and French President Francois Hollande.
Construction group Bouygues and airport operator are set to build an extension for Tehran airport,

Balwant looked at the well near his house. He wondered if he could do it, if he could jump in and end his life. Would it be quick? Would it be painless? He had already experienced more pain than he wanted to endure. Death would be a welcome end to this marred life of illness and rejection he was now living. He didn’t know what else he could do.
Balwant was an educated man who worked as a tutor, helping the children in his village with their studies.

A Turkish court ruled on Tuesday (Jan. 26) that the government was negligent in its duty to protect three Christians who were tortured and killed in 2007 and ordered it to pay damages to the victims’ families.
According to the Middle East Correspondent of Morning Star News,

The wife of Saeed Abedini, the Iran-American pastor freed this month from an Iranian prison as part of a prisoner swap, has filed for legal separation from her husband, according to an Idaho state judiciary website.
Naghmeh Abedini previously had said in a message to supporters, that became public last fall, that her husband had been abusive and suffered from a pornography addiction.
Reporters have not been able to independently confirm her allegations, and the husband could not be reached for comment through a spokesman.
Naghmeh Abedini said on Wednesday that her husband,

The Mexican Supreme Court ruled Tuesday this week that the civil code of the state of Jalisco is unconstitutional because it defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, according to reports in the national media.
However, pro-family activists say the fight isn’t over yet, and that state lawmakers are free to ignore the decision and maintain the civil code as it is for at least 90 more days.
In a unanimous vote by a plenary assembly of all eleven ministers, the Supreme Court sought to nullify article 258 of the code, which states that

Every morning in the Kayole Matopeni slum in Nairobi, Kenya, you’ll hear the singing. The students of Candlelight School gather together in the courtyard of the brick and mud building to raise their voices in worship. Music time is part of the learning philosophy at Candlelight, serving as a therapeutic activity to calm nerves and focus minds as it teachs lessons from Scripture.
Orphan Outreach partners with Candlelight, a school that is gaining quite a reputation for its approach to teaching.

Minorities Fear Backlash Over Sri Lanka’s Proposed New Constitution

Sri Lanka’s minority religious groups are concerned after Buddhist hardliners reacted angrily to the President’s proposed new constitution.
President Maithripala Sirisena’s new constitution, proposed on 9 Jan., would decentralise power in a bid to prevent ethnic tensions in the country, but Buddhist hardliners say it contains provisions that regulate the power of the Buddhist clergy.

The Zika virus is strongly suspected of causing birth defects and may infect 3-4 million people in the Americas, including 1.5 million in Brazil, a World Health Organization expert said on Thursday.
Marcos Espinal, head of communicable diseases at PAHO -- the WHO's Americas arm -- said a study would soon be published suggesting a correlation between Zika and microcephaly -- babies born with small heads and brains -- in Brazil.
"We don't know yet if this virus crosses the placenta and generates or causes microcephaly. We think it plays a role. There's no doubt about that," he told the WHO's executive board meeting in Geneva.

A refugee will be a torch bearer in 2016, Olympic committee says

The flame for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro will pass through a refugee camp in Athens and one refugee will be among the torch bearers, the head of the International Olympic Committee said on Thursday.
The torch will be lit in Greece's ancient Olympia on April 21 before leaving for the South American country 12 days later.

A UKIP peer has been heavily criticised for asking if it will be illegal to read the Bible out loud in public.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch, former leader of the UK Independence Party, submitted a question in the House of Lords asking if Christians are at risk of committing a hate-crime against Muslims by "preaching the divinity of Christ or by reading aloud sections of the Bible in public".
The peer praised Cameron as "brave" for saying Jesus was the only son of God, because "this will not have gone down all that well with the Islamists".
In response, Home Office minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon rebuked him saying:

Terror group Boko Haram has yet again hit the Nigerian town of Chibok, where in 2014 it kidnapped over 200 Christian schoolgirls, this time killing 16 people in suicide bombings.
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that the death toll from Wednesday's attack continues to rise, and so far 15 civilians and a soldier are reported to have died.

Pogu Bitrus, head of the Chibok Development Association, revealed that six male and female suicide bombers carried out the attack on a weekly vegetable market in Chibok, starting when one of the men blew himself up at a military checkpoint.

Iraqi authorities have uncovered a mass grave in Ramadi containing at least 40 bodies, including women and children, apparently killed by Islamic State insurgents when they seized the city in May, police and provincial officials said.
Footage posted on the Facebook page of the provincial police on Wednesday showed what appeared to be bodies in varying states of decay being pulled from a shallow grave in the capital of Anbar province which Iraq's military recaptured last month.
Police chief Major General Hadi Razij spoke in the video about the grave, and an adviser to the governor confirmed the images were authentic.

Sweden is preparing to deport up to 80,000 of last year's record number of asylum seekers, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said in an interview with business daily Dagens Industri on Thursday.
Ygeman said he estimated about 60,000 to 80,000 of the 163,000 people who sought asylum last year would be expelled and either leave voluntarily or be forcibly deported.
The government fears many of those will go into hiding, Dagens Industri reported, and police are increasing their work to find and expel those.
"We have a big challenge ahead of us.

The "gut" is a complex organ that can provide us with many clues related to health. Some of the signs of a healthy, or unhealthy, gut are obvious.
A few of the signs of an unhealthy gut include having issues with diarrhea, bloating and constipation, as noted by Dr. K. King.
Research in the area of "gut balance" is evolving all the time, and the complexity is truly amazing. A healthy gut can ward off diseases and fight infections, just to name a few benefits. The perfect balance of microbiomes in the colon are essential to this process.
Let's Talk About the 6 Signs
1. Do you have issues with diarrhea? Individuals who have ongoing issues with diarrhea are at risk for an imperfect environment for gut bacteria.

The Azusa Street Revival was catalytic and played a significant part in the expansion of the Pentecostal movement around the world. This revival was marked by a hunger to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. People from around the world flocked to Los Angeles to be a part of this great move of God and to receive impartation to take back to their nations.
They, like many in the early church in Acts (see Acts 2), waited on the Lord until they were baptized in the Holy Spirit and also spoke in tongues.

With much of the Middle East in meltdown from the carnage in Syria and Iraq through to continued violence in Israel/Palestine and the horrific campaign of violence targeted at Yemen, it seems there is little reason to be positive. That's before we even consider violence against Christians in Pakistan, Egypt and elsewhere.
However, this week saw a ray of hope emerge. Not from any of those trouble spots but from Morocco, where hundreds of Islamic scholars had gathered.

The relationship between Islam and European identity clouded a robust debate last night as audience members and panellists clashed over the future of the European Union.
The discussion, hosted by think tank Theos, focused on a vision of what Europe should look like and coincided with the launch of a report entitled "A soul for the union".

The UK will accept more unaccompanied child refugees in response to pressure from opposition parties and charities.
Although the Home Office has not said how many the UK will take,

Hillary Clinton thought she had the full support of young American voters last year. She got high-profile endorsements from singers Pharrell Williams and Christina Aguilera. She appeared in a goofy skit on Saturday Night Live in which she praised herself for having a "young, cool vibe." She even brought in pop star Katie Perry (sporting Hillary Clinton campaign fingernails) to sing her signature anthem "Roar" at a campaign event in Iowa.

But now, just a few months later, 68-year-old Clinton is scrambling to convince Millennials and GenXers that she is their candidate.

USA Today published the results of a national survey among 18 to 31-year-olds regarding living together. A whopping 76 percent of young Americans said that cohabitation before marriage is fine.

If you have children or grandchildren, do you think they're being influenced by this cultural trend? It's on television, in movies and commonplace among celebrities and sports heroes.

The stark reality is that 65 percent of "altar-bound" singles—many of whom identify as "Christians"—now live together before marriage.

Adding to the conversation are people making statements like the following:

A congregation in Georgia that voted overwhelmingly to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) is being prevented from disaffiliating from the Mainline Protestant denomination, according to one church leader.
Central Presbyterian Church in Athens voted Sunday to leave the PCUSA for a more conservative denomination with the final tally being 159 in favor and 36 opposed.
The PCUSA's Northeast Georgia Presbytery, which Central Presbyterian Church belonged to, does not recognize the validity of the congregational vote, however.
Jeffrey Dorfman, treasurer for Central Presbyterian Church, stated that presbytery officials not only "don't care about our vote" but also "did everything in their power (and things far beyond their power) to try to block the vote."

"They are now trying to remove our pastor for allowing a vote on dismissal with property while moderating the congregational meeting we held this past Sunday," asserted Dorfman.
"Thus, I do not expect an easy road in getting presbytery to approve dismissal with our property.

"We live our lives as 'sent ones.' Our focus is on how to 'be' the church instead of how to 'do' church."
That's the way Tina Spellman, senior pastor of Living Way Network (Adairsville Foursquare Church) in Adairsville, Georgia, describes the major shift from "tradition" to "mission" that's occurring with her congregation. "I tell our people: 'You are Plan A. There is no Plan B. You are God's plan [for introducing people to Jesus],'" Tina says.
Tina and her husband, Jon, who serves with Tina as co-pastor, assumed the pastorate of the church 20 years ago, with Jon serving as senior pastor at that time.

Trevor Phillips, the former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is never shy of expressing unpopular views. His latest is to claim that Muslim communities are "unlike others in Britain" and "will not integrate in the same way".
He told the Policy Exchange think tank, "it was disrespectful to suppose that Muslim communities would change" and that "Continuously pretending that a group is somehow eventually going to become like the rest of us is perhaps the deepest form of disrespect."
Muslims, he said, "see the world differently from the rest of us" and part of the integration process is for "the rest of us to grasp that people aren't going to change their views simply because we are constantly telling them that basically they should be like us".
He has been roundly abused on social media, accused of being divisive, simplistic and generally wrong.

It's Hollywood week on the 15th and final season of American Idol, and once again Christian singers will vie for the title. Mandisa, Jordin Sparks, Colton Dixon, Chris Daughtry and other Christians have launched their singing careers on the show. And in 2015, Lee University alum Clark Beckham made the finals—while tweeting Bible verses and A. W. Tozer quotes along the way. Will it happen again?

Last night and tonight (American Idol airs twice this week) at least three worship leaders among nearly 100 contestants seeking to survive the next cut to the top 52.

The Bible Series That's Too Edgy For TV

Of Kings and Prophets, a new series set to air on ABC in March, is a Hollywood rendition of the stories of Samuel, Saul and David from 1 and 2 Samuel in the Bible. The show's trailer recently previewed at the Television Critics Association winter press tour.
During the panel with the show's producers and executives immediately following, questions were asked regarding the apparent level of sexual and violent content in the trailer, and what that means for the series. Multiple critics who saw the pilot were surprised by the amount of nudity included, especially considering the fact that Of Kings and Prophets follows the relatively family-friendly TV series Marvel's Agents of Shield on Tuesday nights in March.
Executive producer Chris Brancato said that the series isn't going to shy away from mature content.
"We're going to go as far as we can," Brancato said.

Plans to build churches in Kuwait have been rejected by MPs because they "contradict Islamic Sharia law".
he Gulf country's government, which is unelected and seperate from the elected MPs in parliament, initially accepted the church building proposals and allocated a number of sites for construction.
However it was rejected by MPs in the legislature. Islamist MP Ahmad al-Azemi said he and other MPs would reject the plans because they "contradict Islamic Sharia law".
He said his rejection is based on constitutional and religious grounds since Islam is the official religion of Kuwait and the main source of legislation.

A Polish court has ruled that a six-year-old boy is the only heir of a prominent priest who died without making a will.
Roman Catholic priest Monsignor Waldemar Irek, rector of the Papal Faculty of Theology in the southwestern city of Wroclaw, died in 2012 of a heart attack.

Christian singer-songwriter and American Idol alum Colton Dixon is making headlines over his comments about saving sex for marriage.
Dixon, 24, married his fiancee Annie Coggeshall (27) on Jan. 8, in Nashville, Tennessee, after three years of dating.
The two honeymooned at the Polynesian resort in Moorea (an island in French Polynesia).
The coupled waited until they tied the knot before becoming intimate.
In an interview with People, Dixon shared why the couple waited until they were married to have sex.
"It was not easy!" said Dixon.

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