Biblica, a major Bible publishing and translating nonprofit organization, has named former Open Doors USA Chief Executive Officer Dr. Carl A. Moeller as its new CEO this week.
Moeller succeeds outgoing CEO Doug Lockhart as Biblica continues its third century of ministry. He takes the position by unanimous vote from the organization’s board of directors effective Oct. 14.
“Biblica has been doing kingdom work for over 200 years — providing Bibles for those who don’t have any and helping those who do to experience them more deeply,” Moeller said. “I am so thrilled to be joining this incredible global ministry.”
Moeller served three years as a pastor at Saddleback Church, then nine years as president and CEO for Open Doors USA, before founding Sequoia Global Resources in 2012. He will replace Doug Lockhart, who announced last March that he would transition from his role as Biblica’s CEO by early 2015.
As president of Open Doors, Moeller was instrumental in helping churches in the West become aware of the ongoing persecution of Christians in other parts of the world. During his time with Sequoia Global Resources, he helped cultivate philanthropic partnerships to address some of the most intractable global needs, including poverty, autism, education, and more, Biblica officials state. He has worked in more than 75 countries around the world and is an ordained minister with the Evangelical Free Church.
“Throughout our search, we have been careful to seek God’s wisdom and direction as we make this important selection. We feel confident that Carl is the right person to lead Biblica into our next season of ministry,” said Rob Gluskin, chair of Biblica’s Board of Directors. “His unique combination of global experience, organizational leadership, and ministry mindedness is exactly what we need as we help millions of people around the world connect more deeply with the Scriptures.”
“I am grateful that Carl answered the call to become the next leader of Biblica,” said outgoing CEO Doug Lockhart. “Biblica is an amazing ministry, and I believe God will continue to bless its work under Carl’s leadership.”
Biblica, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, translates the complete Bible into the world’s top 100 major languages and is the translation sponsor and worldwide publisher of the New International Version Bible, the most widely used contemporary English translation in the world, the organization states.
Bishop T.D. Jakes is not happy with part of his sermon added to rapper Young Jeezy’s “Holy Ghost Remix” song and has threatened to take legal action.
Jakes, the senior pastor of The Potter’s House megachurch in Dallas, Texas, is featured in the introduction of the 36-year-old rapper Young Jeezy’s song, along with rapper Kendrick Lamar. However, Jakes’ team has made it clear that the rapper did not seek permission for using his voice on the record, which could possibly result in a lawsuit.
The pastor’s team took to Facebook to let people know that there was an issue with Jakes’ voice being used on the rap record.
“SPECIAL NOTICE: The ‘Holy Ghost’ remix by Jeezy featuring Kendrick Lamar was produced without the knowledge or consent of T.D. Jakes, TDJ Enterprises, Dexterity Music or its associated companies,” the Facebook message from T.D. Jakes Ministries reads. “We are taking the necessary legal actions to stop the unauthorized use of T.D. Jakes’ intellectual property.”
In the song’s hook, Jeezy, who was born Jay Wayne Jenkins, raps the Rolls Royce that he nicknames a Holy Ghost.
“Please Lord forgive him, you know he got that thug in him, we lust for alcohol and we love women … Got the seats reclined and I be doin’ the most in the back of this Holy Ghost,” Jeezy rhymes on the record.
Lamar also contributed a verse to the song which Jakes does not wish to be associated with.
“I swear to Lord as my shepherd, I’m ’bout to go cop a Lexus. I’m ’bout to go f— Alexis, take this and flood my Rolexes,” Lamar raps. “… Find inner peace inside heaven, find diamond pieces in hell, will I burn.”
Jakes voice is used in the song’s introduction where he states,
“… I’m under attack, but I’m still on fire
I got some chatter, but I’m still on fire
I got some threat, but I’m still on fire
I got some liabilities, but I’m still on fire
If it’s not amazing that I’m on fire
I’ve been to hell and back, but I’m still on fire.”
Christian Post – A Colorado church tops the Outreach Magazine’s 2014 100 fastest growing churches with an innovated approach to small group.
Cherry Hills Community Church ranked number one with 43 percent growth rate in the last year. The single site church grew to 6,201 members largely under its founder bible scholar Jim Dixon. However its new senior pastor Shane Farmer hopes to sustain that growth by creating section communities within the congregation.
Like small groups, section communities seek to offer members a smaller, more connected experience. Unlike small groups, section communities form and meet primarily on Sunday mornings.
A small part-time staff of 20, Farmer explained, breaks the worship center into sections and assumes leadership of each grouping. The sections then meet before and after church and share an after-service meal together once a month.
Since these communities are formed around where congregants tend to sit every Sunday, certain communities may have a natural affinity for families or young adults or a particular ethnicity, he explained to Outreach.
Farmer took over from Dixon October 20 2013. Before CHCC, the 33 year-old pastor spent nine years with Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek Community Church as an intern first and later a director of discipleship and a teaching pastor. It was at Willow Creek, ranked fifth among the 100 largest churches in America, where Farmer first began creating section communities.
The section community concept offers congregants the benefit of a small group feel without taking additional time out of their week. A possible con however could be that some members may become further entrenched in their own circle of friends rather than meeting and drawing from the experiences of others.
Still CHCC members seem to be taking to the idea. Farmer told Outreach Magazine that church members helped raise $2.5 million to fund the initiative.
Outreach Magazine contacted 27,000 churches to create the 100 Fastest Growing Churches list. The rankings are based on attendance averages, not membership. The final rankings reflect an average numerical gain and percentage gain
Second on the list of fastest growing churches is Perry Noble’s NewSpring Church with over 30,000 members and 34 percent church growth. Steven Furtick’s Elevation Church ranked 11 with over 15,00 members and 20 percent growth in the last year. Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church ranked 79 with 9 percent growth and over 23,000 members. J.D. Greer’s Summit Church ranked 94 with over 7,000 members 10 percent.
Christian Post reports – The man who co-created PayPal helped solve a big problem, how to make trustworthy payments on the Internet. This successful solution has enriched the lives of everyone—himself included. Now, he wants to think outside the box to solve another problem: Death.
(Photo: Christian Post)
Writing for the Telegraph of the UK, Mick Brown penned, “Peter Thiel: the billionaire tech entrepreneur on a mission to cheat death; The co-founder of PayPal and likely the most successful venture capitalist in Silicon Valley is on a mission to change the world through technology – and to find a cure for death.”
When Brown interviewed Thiel, the topic turned to “the question of death. ‘Basically,’ Thiel says earnestly, ‘I’m against it.'” Thiel reportedly returns to this topic often.
Thiel adds, “I think there are probably three main modes of approaching it. You can accept it, you can deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.”
When Brown interviewed Thiel, the topic turned to “the question of death. ‘Basically,’ Thiel says earnestly, ‘I’m against it.'” Thiel reportedly returns to this topic often.
Thiel adds, “I think there are probably three main modes of approaching it. You can accept it, you can deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.”
I’m reminded of the old story about our 30th president, Calvin Coolidge, a man of few words, who attended church one Sunday morning. When he returned, he was asked what the sermon was about. “Sin,” replied Coolidge. “What did the minister say?” Response: “He’s against it.”
And so Thiel is against death. Well, good luck with that. I am sure there are ways to increase the length and quality of the life that we have and to reduce some of the diseases that prematurely bring death. But ultimately all of these things will only prolong the inevitable.
Studies repeatedly show that getting more exercise within reason, that prayer and meditation, and having an optimistic outlook improve the quality of your life. Attending church on a regular basis tends to lengthens one’s life and also improves the quality of life. This is a repeated finding. It is a God-given desire to want to live forever. But none of this spells the death of death.
Wisdom from the Bible sheds light on this. It is written, “…it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.” Death is a fact, and it is universal. Yet death is the great enemy of humanity—certainly no friend. Proverbs says those who hate God’s wisdom love death.
Death entered into the world because of sin. In that sense, it is profoundly unnatural. Death is indeed the final enemy to be defeated. However, in one sense, death has already been defeated. Jesus defeated death both on the cross and in His resurrection.
Christ rose from the dead bodily and changed all of history because of it—and the Bible tells us His resurrection is the “firstfruits” of the Christian’s own bodily resurrection to come. How great to know that recently David Limbaugh’s book,Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel, which includes historical evidence for the resurrection, shot up to number one on Amazon.
C. S. Lewis once wrote: “…this universe is at war…it is a civil war, a rebellion [against God]…we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
Man’s works are like beautiful sand-castles, the elaborate kind, with all sorts of intricate details. But eventually they’ll crumble. They’re like beautiful sculptures of ice, destined to melt one day.
C. T. Studd once said, “Only one life, ’twill soon be passed. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” It isn’t how long you live. It’s what you do with the life you have.
Consider the great Christian hero, Jim Elliot. He and four other young men died as missionaries to Indians in the jungles of Ecuador in 1956.
His widow and female family members of some of the other dead missionaries returned to that place and lived among the tribes-people and brought the gospel to them. Some of the very men who had speared the missionaries to death found new life in Christ through these efforts.
These five missionaries who died so heroically helped spark a new interest in Christian missions at that time. I mention all this because Jim Elliot said famously, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the famous serenity prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Despite the noble-sounding aspirations of those like Peter Theil, death–at least this side of Christ’s return—is one of those things we “cannot change.”
If you want to live forever, then believe in Jesus Christ who alone has conquered death and will raise to new life all who believe in Him when He returns.
Dr. Jerry Newcombe is a key archivist of the D. James Kennedy Legacy Library and a Christian TV producer. He has also written or co-written 23 books, including The Book That Made America: How the Bible Formed Our Nation and (with D. James Kennedy), What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? His views are his own. www.jerrynewcombe.com
Joycer Meyer – One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is that you can’t be both selfish and happy. I know this is true through my own personal experience, but more importantly, the Bible has some things to say about the attitude we should have about “self.”
(Photo: Courtesy of Joyce Meyer Ministries)
For example, love is not selfish. In the Amplified Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:5 says, “…Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking….” In 1 Corinthians 15:31, the apostle Paul said, “…I die daily [I face death every day and die to self]” (AMP), which basically means he was not self-seeking but instead focused on doing what God called him to do with his life.
There are also scriptures that teach us the importance of having self-control. Galatians 5:23 lists self-control as a fruit of the Spirit, and 2 Timothy 1:7 says that in Christ, we have a spirit “of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control.” If you’ve lived very long, you realize that not being selfish requires self-control, because we’re all born with a human nature that is selfish. Think about how babies act: they are only concerned with what they need and usually cry when they don’t get their way.
hankfully, when we experience new life in Christ, we die to sin. Romans 6:11 (AMP) says, “Even so consider yourselves also dead to sin and your relation to it broken, but alive to God [living in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus.” But even though we die to sin, sin does not die. That’s why we have to continually make the decision over and over again to choose to do the right thing on purpose. And we have what it takes, in Christ, to do what’s right – whether we feel like it or not.
Discover Your True Destiny
As Christians, we’re destined to be molded into the image of Jesus Christ (see Romans 8:29). Jesus is the greatest example of what it means to love others and not live a selfish life. First John 3:16 (NIV) says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”
This scripture shows us that Jesus gave everything when He demonstrated His love for us. And we are to follow His example. The truth is, loving others is not always easy, and it always costs us something: time, money, convenience, etc. But through our relationship with Him, we can find the strength and ability to love others, even when it seems to cost more than we think we can give. God is faithful to give us His love, grace and wisdom to reach out and be a blessing to others. And when we do, we end up receiving more joy and peace than we had before.
Now it’s important to understand that God doesn’t expect you to take this to such an extreme that you don’t take care of yourself. We need to use wisdom so we can be healthy emotionally, mentally and physically while we’re helping others. In following Jesus’ example, remember to make your relationship with God your number one priority and do what He puts in your heart to do.
Get the Right Mindset
The world is full of lonely, hurting people who are hungry for the love of God and the hope that is only found in Jesus. I want to encourage you to get rid of a “What about me?” mindset and instead pray, “God, show me someone who needs a blessing. Show me someone I can help.”
We all have room to grow in our relationship with God, and learning how to reach out to others is a big part of that process. Selfishness and always trying to meet your own needs puts you in a position of weakness. But the more you trust God to meet your needs, the more you’ll be free to help others…and the happier you’ll be.
I used to be self-centered and focused on getting my way all the time. And I was miserable! But now I am happier than I’ve ever been because I don’t spend all my time thinking about what I want, what I think and how I feel. The truth is, you can’t be happy if the center of your life is you!
Imagine how different the world would be if everyone would just do one nice thing to help someone else every day. It can be so simple to put a smile on someone’s face. Give a compliment, give something away, take the time to listen, open a door for someone, let someone go before you in line at the store…the list could go on and on.
Make it your business to regularly reach out to people around you, encouraging them and meeting their needs as you are able to do it. Be determined each day to do at least one thing for someone else that makes their life better. Trust me: You’ll discover that serving God by loving others is the most wonderful, exciting thing you can do!
Joyce Meyer is a New York Times bestselling author and founder of Joyce Meyer Ministries, Inc. She has authored more than 90 books, including Battlefield of the Mind and Do Yourself a Favor…Forgive (Hachette). She hosts the Enjoying Everyday Life radio and TV programs, which air on hundreds of stations worldwide. For more information, visit www.joycemeyer.org.
What can entice 3.3 million Americans to leave their homes on a Sunday in the fall?
No, it’s not football. It’s church.
This Sunday, approximately 27,000 churches around the globe are participating in Back to Church Sunday, an ever-growing movement to reach out to communities with the clear message, “Come Back to Church!”
Back to Church Sunday, which started six years ago with only 600 churches involved, is now the largest annual community-based church-outreach effort in the nation. The campaign empowers churches and their members with the tools they need to welcome their neighbors, friends and loved ones back to church, while providing an easy way for everyone in the community to find a welcoming church.
The Back to Church Sunday movement aims to grow the church by reaching those not currently attending. Many may have grown up with a biblical foundation but fallen away due to the business of life or perhaps they’ve never been exposed to the church at all.
“We believe in this day because we know it helps people invite others to church. Back to Church Sunday really got its start from research that showed 82 percent of people said they would attend church if someone they knew invited them, but only 2 percent of church members were inviting others to come with them,” said Scott Evans, founder and CEO of Outreach Inc., the nation’s leading provider of church communications resources that helped launch the initiative.
In addition to churches being able to sign up at backtochurch.com, the information on the roster also allows those who are looking for a church to attend to see what churches in their community are participating. More information about Back to Church Sunday and available resources including videos are available at the Back to Church You Tube Channel, the Facebook page, and backtochurch.com.
A teenage girl at a refugee camp in Iraq who escaped from ISIS militants has described some of the atrocities being committed by the terror group, including forced conversion to Islam and the rape of young women by ISIS leaders.
“In Mosul they tried to make us change our faith and religion,” a 15-year old girl identified as “Aria” told CNN at the Khanke refugee camp in northwest Iraq. “They said to us, ‘Read our Quran.’ A couple of the girls said, ‘We never went to school — we can’t read.’ I couldn’t understand the Quran.”
Aria was kidnapped over six weeks ago while her family was trying to flee by car from their home in Sinjar, knowing that ISIS militants were coming. A convoy of vehicles carrying the terror group’s black flags surrounded them, and the young girl was taken.
“They forced us out of the car,” Aria said. “The girls and women were separated from the men, including my 19-year-old brother. But they only took the girls, forcing us into a minivan.”
The women were then driven to Mosul, where ISIS has created a stronghold, and taken to a house where they were locked with other teenage girls who had been captured.
Aria said that they were kept for over three weeks under horrific conditions, and that a sheik came to collect 20 girls, including her 14-year-old sister-in-law.
“He forced himself on her. I was so scared. A lot of my friends were raped. It’s hard to talk about it,” she said.
“I see their faces all the time,” Aria continued. “I have nightmares. I can’t stop thinking about how they forced themselves onto the girls. I have seen and been through too much.”
ISIS, which is active in Iraq and Syria, has been accused of beheading children and carrying out mass rapes in the region.
“They are systematically beheading children, and mothers and fathers. The world hasn’t seen an evil like this for a generation. There’s actually a park in Mosul that they’ve actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick,” National spokesman for Iraqi Christians and Chaldean-American businessman Mark Arabo said in a previous interview.
“And they have them in the park. This is crimes against humanity. The whole world should come together. This is much broader than a community or faith. This is crimes against humanity and they are doing the most horrendous, the most heartbreaking things you can think of,” he explained.
Other victims who have managed to escape the terror group, including a 13-year-old boy identified as Mohammed, have also said that ISIS isindoctrinating boys into their ideology at children’s camp, where the militants carry out beheadings, stonings and crucifixions.
Aria and a friend managed to escape by calling her friend’s uncle who knew people that were prepared to help. The girls put on veils and broke through the door in the house where they were being kept, and later the uncle’s friends were able to take them to a safe house on Fallujah.
When she was reunited with her family, Aria learnt that her brother had been killed.
“That made me very sad. I only had one brother. He was only married for six months. I was sad to hear this. They killed him and other men when they took me. They shot him in the head. My mother slept next to my brother’s body all night.”
She said that she is also haunted by guilt that ISIS members raped the other girls at the house once they discovered Aria and her friend had left.
“They raped them because we escaped. That was the punishment. They tightened security so no girls can escape anymore,” the girl said. “I have to live with that.”
This week my denomination, through its executive committee, voted to “disfellowship” a congregation in California that has acted to affirm same-sex sexual relationships. This sad but necessary move is hardly surprising, since this network of churches shares a Christian sexual ethic with all orthodox Christians of every denomination for 2,000 years. One of the arguments made by some, though, is that this is hypocritical since so many ministers in our tradition marry people who have been previously divorced.
The argument is that conservative Protestants already embrace a “third way” because we’ve done so on divorce. Couples divorce, sometimes remarry others, and yet are welcomed within the congregation. We don’t necessarily affirm this as good, but we receive these people with mercy and grace. Why not, the argument goes, do the same with homosexuality.
The charge of hypocrisy is valid in some respects. I’ve argued for years and repeatedly that Southern Baptists and other evangelicals are slow-motion sexual revolutionaries, embracing elements of the sexual revolution twenty or thirty years behind the rest of the culture. This is to our shame, and the divorce culture is the number-one indicator of this capitulation. The preaching on divorce has been muted and hesitating all too often in our midst. Sometimes this is due to what the Bible calls “fear of man,” ministers and leaders afraid of angering divorced people (or their relatives) in power in congregations. Sometimes it’s due to the fact that divorce simply seems all too normal in this culture; it doesn’t shock us anymore.
ABC News – The FBI knows the identity of the masked, English-speaking ISIS militant who has been videotaped apparently murdering American hostages, and he is likely from somewhere in North America, FBI Director James Comey said today.
Comey declined to reveal the name of the man, who top U.K. officials previously have saidappeared to be British. Comey told ABC News the FBI and international partners were able to identity him.
In several ISIS videos in which Western hostages appear to be beheaded, an armed militant — possibly the same man every time — stands beside them and delivers statements against Western actions against ISIS in Iraq. Then he takes his knife to their throats.
American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and British aid worker David Haines were all killed in a similarly public, brutal fashion. The life of another British citizen, Alan Henning, was threatened in the last video.
ISIS has been wreaking havoc as it captures large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, and the American military now has the group in its sights amid a sustained, U.S.-involved bombing campaign in Syria. In addition the group’s capabilities in that region, U.S. officials have expressed concern over the group’s “very slick media campaign” pushing out propaganda online and using social media to encourage people around the world to launch attacks in their homelands.
Part of that media campaign is a recent series of propaganda videos, including two showing the beheadings of Foley and Sotloff.
The latest video released by ISIS earlier this week, titled “Flames of War,” is narrated by another man speaking perfect English, but “there is no doubt [he] is speaking North American-accented English,” Comey said. And investigating him further “is a big focus of ours,” Comey said.
Comey also spoke today about the Khorasan Group, another target of U.S. airstrikes this week in Syria. The little-known group was “nearing the execution phase for an attack in Europe or the homeland,” U.S. officials have said. And the group was working to produce “creative” new designs for bombs that could be smuggled onto U.S.- or Europe-bound flights, sources have said.
“That group was at the top of my list of things that I worry about … [because] it is a collection of very bad and experienced terrorists, operating in a safe haven, into which we don’t have complete visibility,” Comey said today.
Due to that “limited visibility,” it’s hard to say whether their attack would come “tomorrow, three weeks from now or three months from now,” he said. “But it’s the kind of threat you have to operate under the assumption that it is tomorrow.”
In a one-on-one conversation with ABC News’ Pierre Thomas just hours after his pending resignation was announced, Attorney General Eric Holder said there’s no doubt Khorasan is “a real threat.”
“Trust me, those of us who have been in the situation room, we have been following them. … [And] we know what their capabilities are,” Holder said.
As for how effective the airstrikes were against Khorasan, Holder said, “Until we know that their capabilities have been very, very degraded, that key people have been eliminated,” authorities have to assume that the group remains a threat.
We truly experienced a move of the Holy Spirit this weekend! Our Reinhard Bonnke Gospel Crusade in Greensboro, North Carolina, has just finished, and once again we saw hundreds of churches join together across denominational lines to rally around the foot of the cross.
Over the two nights, nearly 15,000 people joined together in prayer and worship and were touched by the Word of the Lord. Each night, hundreds of people streamed to the altars to make a decision to follow Jesus as Savior after hearing the red-hot gospel message preached by evangelist Reinhard Bonnke. What a joy to see so many people move from darkness into light! Our team is busy even now working to connect these precious people into the participating local churches for follow-up and discipleship.
On Saturday night, power from on high was on full display as evangelist Daniel Kolenda prayed for every person in attendance to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Many testified of being healed instantly during times of healing prayer.
God truly is moving across America. Thank you tremendously for praying and standing with us as we believe and endeavor for America to be saved. Your continued support is so appreciated as we prepare for our next gospel crusade in the city of Houston on Feb. 20-21.
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