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Patriarch Kirill to give Africa new bells as a present

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

Moscow, March 5, Interfax – Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia during his visit to Alexandria planned for spring is going to present a set of seven bells to Patriarch Feodor II of Alexandria.

Experts from the Vera Voronezh bell casting plant are working on the bells, organizers of the visit told an Interfax-Religion correspondent.

Iranian Pastor Has Visible Marks of Torture, Says Wife

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By Ethan Cole|Christian Post Reporter

An Iranian evangelical pastor who was suddenly arrested and then imprisoned has visible marks of torture, his wife said after she visited him.

Pastor Wilson Issavi of the Assyrian Evangelical Church in Kermanshah, a remote city in western Iran, is living in dreadful condition and appears to have been tortured while in prison, his wife Medline Nazanin told reporters and human rights activists in Iran, according to Farsi Christian News Network.

Opinion: Task force's proposals may be at odds with goals

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By Bill Webb

(ABP) -- The Great Commission Task Force's recent progress report to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee suggests the final report will at the very least be interesting, if not confusing, reading.

Chairperson Ronnie Floyd suggests that "envy, strife and division need to become unacceptable" and that a new denominational structure should be characterized by Christlikeness, unity, trust and recognition of the responsibility of the local church for fulfilling the Great Commission. Those are admirable goals, but the task force's recommendations could undermine some of them.

Victims of alleged abuse come forward after Baptist pastor's arrest

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By ABP staff

PALESTINE, Texas (ABP) -- A Texas sheriff says more alleged victims of a Baptist preacher behind bars on a felony charge of indecency with a child are coming forward.

Authorities say Hezekiah Stallworth has preached in the Palestine, Texas, area for more than 30 years, most recently as pastor of a Southern Baptist congregation in Elkhart, Texas.

Hezekiah Stallworth, 74, of Palestine, Texas, was arrested Feb. 26 after allegedly fondling a 7-year-old girl following services Feb. 21 at Oak Grove Baptist Church in Elkhart, Texas.

Protest to go on against Israeli occupation of Christian-owned land

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By Judith Sudilovsky

Protestors before police clash. Photo: © Judith Sudilovsky / ENI

Beit Sahour, West Bank (ENI). Palestinian activists say they will continue protests against an apparent re-occupation of an abandoned Israeli army outpost on the outskirts of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, despite being repelled by the Israel Defence Forces.

"We are going to be there next week. We object to the military presence there, and will demonstrate peacefully against that presence there," said Bethlehem University professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, who belongs to the Greek Melkite Church and lives in Beit Sahour.

Luis Palau to Preach to 20,000 at Chinese Megachurch

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By Michelle A. Vu|Christian Post Reporter

(Photo: AP Images / Elizabeth Dalziel) In this file photo, American evangelist and preacher Luis Palau, center, looks at a printed copy of the book he co-wrote with former spokesman for Communist China's Cabinet and atheist Zhao Qizheng, at a bookfair in Beijing, China Aug. 30, 2006. The 140-page work is in part a public relations exercise. Palau wants to reach out to Chinese curious about religion.

American evangelist Luis Palau will preach to an overflow crowd of up to 20,000 people at a megachurch in mainland China this month.

Baylor University slated to receive its largest gift in history

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By ABP Staff

WACO, Texas (ABP) -- Baylor University has announced the largest gift in the school’s history -- an estate provision estimated at $200 million from an anonymous donor. Much of the gift will benefit the Baylor School of Social Work.

The announcement came less than three weeks after the school's board of regents announced it had selected former Whitewater special prosecutor and current Pepperdine University Law School Dean Kenneth Starr to be the next Baylor president. However, there is no indication that Starr's selection -- controversial among Baylor alumni and supporters -- had anything to do with the donation.

New paradigms needed, Rankin says

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

by Mark Kelly

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (BP)––The Feb. 21 preliminary report of the Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) Task Force deals with some of the areas where Southern Baptists "are languishing in the task of the Great Commission," International Mission Board (IMB) President Jerry Rankin told the entity's trustees March 3.

While much more needs to be done to focus the denomination on evangelizing a lost world, Southern Baptists "must be creative and willing to explore new paradigms ... for the sake of mobilizing the resources impacting a lost world," Rankin said.

Pro-Israel groups face off with campus 'apartheid week'

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By Josh Nathan-Kazis, The Forward

"Do you suffer from ANIS?"

That's ANti-ISrael Fixation Syndrome, according to a caustic poster produced by one pro-Israel group in response to Israel Apartheid Week, a global pro-Palestinian event that began on March 1 and featured events on some 14 university campuses across the United States.

The poster showed a drawing of a human posterior and a list of symptoms, asking readers if they, "Project a bloated sense of victimization?" or "Ignore the persecution of non-Arabs in Arab countries?"

Hologram Preachers Slated to Appear in Churches

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By Lillian Kwon|Christian Post Reporter

Holographic preachers are stirring another technology-gone-too-far debate among Christians.

(Photo: Tony Morgan) Pastor Tony Morgan (right) stands next to a holographic figure.

While the dust over beaming preachers on a video screen on multi-site campuses has somewhat settled, the new 3D tool is raising more questions and concerns among some believers.

"Since so many of us in the west are convinced that entertaining pew fodder is critical to advancing 'the gospel' and that only a very few have the necessary gifts to preachertain – this will become the 'perfect' solution," Bill Kinnon, author of A Networked Conspiracy, Social Networks, The Church & the Power of Collective Intelligence, wrote in a recent blog post.

MacArthur Tells Christians: Don't Fornicate with the World

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By Lillian Kwon|Christian Post Reporter

"The church, if it is to be anything, it is to be absolutely distinct from the culture, absolutely distinct from the world, absolutely distinct from unbelievers," said prominent author and evangelical pastor John MacArthur.

(Photo: Lukas VanDyke) John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, Calif., addresses thousands of pastors at the March 3-7, 2010, Shepherds' Conference.

Speaking from the pulpit to thousands of fellow pastors at the Shepherds' Conference, MacArthur underscored the biblical command not to be yoked with nonbelievers and to be a separated people.

FIRST-PERSON: Using Facebook for the Gospel

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By Bryan McAnally

GRAPEVINE, Texas (BP)--As one of 400 million people using Facebook, I joined the social network specifically to extend my ministry. Today, I'm "friends" with more than 2,200 people, and the number grows virtually every day. My goal is not to be popular, but to be connected, so that relationships built there can bear the weight of the Gospel.

These efforts have allowed me to use Facebook to exhort and encourage believers, to establish grass-roots prayer networks, to teach doctrine and offer real-life ministry. I've been honored to lead people to faith in Christ and have ongoing witnessing conversations with atheists, agnostics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, New Agers, Muslims, Buddhists, and secular humanists. Here are a few tips for how to use Facebook in your own obedience to God's Great Commission:

Church of God in Bulgaria Helping Haiti

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

The following is a testimonial from a Bulgarian church leader…

One morning I woke up and began watching the news. I just couldn’t believe the devastation that I saw in Haiti due to the earthquake. The tragedy there was too much to handle for anybody who is Christian and wants to be of help to others.

I started praying to God and interceding for the surviving children who had lost their parents, and for the parents who have lost their children.

'Avatar' and Salvation from Beyond

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

Waiting by the Phone
By Chuck Colson|Christian Post Guest Columnist

This year’s Oscar race is being billed as duel between epouses-Kathryn Bigelow, the director of the critically acclaimed war film about Iraq called The Hurt Locker, and her ex-husband, James Cameron, director of the phenomenally lucrative 3D blockbuster, Avatar.

But Avatar is part of another, more important, competition-one between competing accounts of where salvation is to be found.

'Rachel's Tomb was never Jewish'

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By JPOST.COM STAFF

Photo by: Associated Press

Speaking to Saudi paper, Turkish PM criticizes Israel's nat'l heritage list.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday continued his verbal assault on Israel, according to Saudi paper Al Wattan, which quoted him as saying that that al Aksa Mosque, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb “were not and never will be Jewish sites, but Islamic sites.”

Supreme Court to decide if there is an ‘Israeli nation'

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By DAN IZENBERG

21 appellants, including former MKs, want their population registry entry changed from Jewish or Arab to Israeli.

The Supreme Court is due to rule on an appeal by 21 Israelis, Jews and non-Jews, who are demanding that the Interior Ministry register all of them as belonging to the Israeli nation.

Since the establishment of the state in 1948, the nationality of Jewish citizens of Israel has been registered as “Jewish,” that of Muslim and Christian-Arab citizens as “Arab,” and those of non-Jews who immigrated to Israel and received citizenship as their country of origin.

A must-see for Israeli Jews

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By Elia Leibowitz

Israeli movie theaters have been showing "A Serious Man," written and directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, for a few weeks now. The film is called "Yehudi Tov" in Hebrew, which translates as "A Good Jew." Generally speaking, movies fall into accepted rubrics, such as drama, suspense, action, comedy, musical comedy, farce, tragedy and so forth. "A Serious Man," however, fills a unique category: It is a statement movie. Indeed, it is making the most profound and most important statement that has been made in recent years on the subject at hand: What is Judaism?

Cowboy survives scare, shares Gospel in the West

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

by Mickey Noah

North American Mission Board missionaries Jim and Myrtle Ballard serve in Idaho, where Jim spends his days recruiting church planters and helping plant new churches as director of missions for the Eastern Idaho Southern Baptist Association. Photo by Erik Stenbakken.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of eight stories highlighting North American Mission Board missionaries as part of the 2010 Week of Prayer, March 7-14, and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, with a goal of $70 million to help support Southern Baptists' 5,300 North American missionaries.

Religious disillusion?

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ENGLISH (March 11/10)

By AKIN AJAYI

A fictional sociology of faith starring an atheist with a soul, the mathematical genius son of a rebbe and the goddess of game theory.

36 Arguments for the Existence of God

By Rebecca Newberger Goldstein | Pantheon Books | 402 pages | $27.95

As intellectual heroes go, Cass Seltzer – the principal of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s new novel, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God – is a rather unlikely candidate. Affable and unassuming, he teaches at the cash rich but second division Frankfurter University near Boston. He is descended from a line of respected hassidic rabbis, albeit thoroughly secularized; his mother tells him once, in connection with religious ritual, that “if it seems crazy to you, then you understand it completely.”

Kremlin supports plan to form higher coordinating Muslim council

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ENGLISH (March 04/10)

Kazan, February 27, Interfax - The Kremlin's chief domestic policy advisor Alexey Grishin has put his support behind plans to set up a higher Muslim coordinating council in Russia.

"This form will help deal with the Muslim community's most important problems on the basis of consensus, make joint statements and pass mufti's fatwas (edicts), and organize effective ties with the government," Grishin told the 4th congress of Tatarstan Muslims in Kazan on Saturday.

The idea was proposed by head of the Central Muslim Board of Russia Talgat Tajuddin who sees the council as a body co-chaired by the heads of three leading Muslim associations - the Central Muslim Board, the Council of Muftis and the Coordinating Council of North Caucasus Muslims.

The idea of setting up a council "with an equal representation of all Muslim boards has been backed by most of Russia's muftis and imams," Grishin said.

Russian Patriarch blesses Yanukovich ahead of inauguration ceremony

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ENGLISH (March 04/10)

Photo by Sergey VLASOV

Kiev, February 25, Interfax - Ukraine's next president Viktor Yanukovich has received a blessing from Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia at the Kiev Laura of the Caves ahead of the official inauguration ceremony.

"May God bless you in your accession to power," the Patriarch told the president-elect.

The Church Primate stressed the importance of establishing friendly relations between “component parts of Kievan Rus.” “God grants, your undertakings will be aimed at Ukraine’s prosperity,” the Patriarch said after reading in Ukrainian several lines from the Prayer for Ukraine and giving Yanukovich an image of the Savior as a present.

A Time to Die: How do -- and should -- churches die?

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ENGLISH (March 04/10)

By Vicki Brown

(ABP) -- Churches close their doors every day. But is a church’s death inevitable? Who can give congregations permission to die? Should church members feel guilty for closing their facility’s doors?

Peter Bush, author of In Dying We are Born: The Challenge and the Hope for Congregations, believes every church must “be prepared to die” because each will die in one of two ways. Each church must die to “deeply held understandings of life and the purpose of the congregation” or it will close its doors.

Congregations are organisms, subject to an organism’s life cycle -- birth, development, plateau and aging -- and that cycle is inevitable, Bob Dale, author of To Dream Again, Seeds for the Future and Cultivating Perennial Churches, believes.

“Living things don’t live forever, but there are some living things that last a long, long time,” he said.

Seminary president apologizes for calling IMB head a liar

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ENGLISH (March 04/10)

By Bob Allen

While he still believes using the Quran to point Muslims toward Jesus is deceptive, Ergun Caner says he went too far in calling a Southern Baptist Convention leader dishonest for defending it.

LYNCHBURG, Va. (ABP) -- The president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary has apologized for calling the head of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board a liar, saying he got carried away in an interview while criticizing a mission strategy used to evangelize Muslims.

In a Feb. 24 podcast on the SBC Today website, Ergun Caner, a former Muslim turned Southern Baptist who has written extensively labeling Islam a false religion, defended earlier statements critical of a strategy called the Camel Method.

The method uses verses from the Quran to convince Muslims that what the Christian Bible says about Jesus is true. Caner said that is like using the Book of Mormon as a bridge to someone in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

James Dobson Says Final Farewell to Focus on the Family

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ENGLISH (March 04/10)

By Lillian Kwon|Christian Post Reporter

In this file photo, Christian evangelical leader and founder of Focus on the Family, James Dobson, right, sits with his wife Shirley at the National Religious Broadcasters 2008 Convention at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tenn., Tuesday, March 11, 2008.

Dr. James Dobson is saying his final farewell to the ministry he founded 33 years ago.

His last day at Focus on the Family is Friday.

"Nothing is forever. Everything has a shelf life," Dobson said in one of his final radio broadcasts at the Colorado Springs-based organization.

Some 40,000 cards expressing gratitude and appreciation have poured in for the evangelical leader who has spent three fourths of his professional life helping people build healthy families. Calls from listeners around the world were featured this week on the ministry's daily broadcast, each sharing how much Dobson has influenced their lives.

A Time to Die: Can Baptists learn from Anglican revitalization?

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ENGLISH (March 04/10)

By Jim White

(ABP) -- If turning around a declining church were easy, more declining churches would be reversing course.

And if Christians in the United States think turning around a church is difficult, think of trying it in the Church of England, where tradition reaches back hundreds of years and a hierarchical structure often hamstrings local congregations when they want to make major changes.

But Bob and Mary Hopkins believe fresh expressions -- a term they prefer over “revitalizing a congregation” -- can come even to Anglican churches in the United Kingdom.

Although they began -- and continue -- as church planters in urban settings with Anglican Church Planting Initiatives, from 1998 to 2005, the Hopkins served on the leadership team of St. Thomas’ Church in Sheffield, England, which grew to 1,500 in attendance, primarily reaching young adults with emerging-culture interests.

A Time to Die: When churches die, can they live again?

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ENGLISH (March 04/10)

By Jim White

RICHMOND, Va. (ABP) -- One sees them occasionally. Abandoned church buildings in rural areas stand in mute witness to changing times. In urban areas, big brick structures once crowded with eager worshipers now house restaurants, community centers or even nightclubs.

Sometimes churches die. Like individuals, some may reach the end of a long and fruitful life and pass away with a sense of triumph. Others may die from years of self-destructive choices.

Every denomination in the United States has scores of churches that expect to die within a decade. No one can prevent the cultural shifts that leave behind churches unable or unwilling to adapt.

German Church's first female Protestant head resigns

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ENGLISH (March 04/10)

by Audrey Barrick, Christian Post

Lutheran Bishop Margot Kaessmann announces her resignation during a news conference in Hanover, Germany, on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010. Germany's top Protestant cleric has announced her resignation...

Just months after becoming the first woman to lead the largest Protestant church body in Germany, Bishop Margot Kaessmann has resigned.

Her resignation on Wednesday was submitted days after she was caught drunk driving and is effective immediately.