An evangelical advocacy organization is supporting a push in Congress to ensure working families  — in the government and private sector — are ensured paid parental and family leave as hope builds that bipartisan legislation will be passed this election year.

While the United States remains the only industrialized country to not guarantee workers paid family leave, there is optimism that 2020 could be the year that changes.

Only eight states and the District have paid family leave programs on their books.

But the increasingly bipartisan paid family leave movement got a small victory last year with the passing of a national defense spending bill that for the first time guaranteed most federal workers up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave for the birth, adoption or fostering of a child.

Since the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act does not cover all federal employees or nonfederal workers and also doesn’t provide other types of family leave such as when a family member is sick, advocates feel that improvements can be made.

While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a bill to extend the FEPLA benefits to all federal workers, there are three other pieces of legislation looking to further guarantee paid parental leave for all other Americans.

The Center for Public Justice, a Christian nonpartisan research and civic education organization, released a policy brief examining each bill’s different approaches. All three proposals accommodate workers that don’t hold “full-time salaried jobs” that traditionally enjoy parental leave benefits in the private market.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Samuel Smith

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In an image-obsessed society, “Biggest Loser” winner and outspoken Christian Michelle Agular Whitehead is encouraging others to find purpose and worth beyond the number on a scale, as true, lasting joy is found in Christ alone.

Twelve years ago, Whitehead was propelled to fame after winning the NBC reality television competition that documented her remarkable 110-lb weight loss. Whitehead, who competed alongside her mother, took home $250,000 and, more significantly, a new perspective.

“I remember one of the greatest compliments I ever got was from a dear friend after I had left the show and come home before it aired,” she recalled in an interview with The Christian Post. “I was having lunch with friends and he looked at me and said, ‘You know, I never saw you as someone who was overweight. You’re just Michelle. I just see you. I don’t see anyone else.”

“A huge lesson weight loss taught me was, we think everyone sees our flaws, but really, they see you,” Whitehead shared. “They see who you are as a friend, a wife, a mother, a sister. They see who you are and not what you are. The scale wants to tell you what you are. It’s a great way to check in or keep you accountable, but it’s a tool, it doesn’t define who you are.”

“I would encourage women and men who get caught up in that and to look at their bodies and say, my body is amazing. I look at my arms and I think, ‘They’re not my favorite body part, but they lift my children off the floor when they’ve had a bad day. My hands can reach out and hold onto my spouse. These legs carry my children in the rain to the car.’ Our bodies are amazing and meant to do great things.”

Back in 2006, Whitehead sat down with I Am Second in her White Chair Film to divulge the behind-the-scenes reality of her experience on “Biggest Loser.” Recently, she returned to I Am Second to share her struggle with self-worth beyond the scale.

Now a mother of two little girls, she revealed that motherhood introduced new obstacles and insecurities that she soon discovered couldn’t be overcome or prevented through mere physical change.

“A lot has happened over the last decade,” she said. “I got married, had two children — the responsibilities of life have been forever changed.”

Whitehead admitted that she felt “trapped and lost” in those early years of marriage and parenting.

“It very easily becomes this thing where you get caught up in all the things that come along with being a wife and mom and lose track of who you are and your relationship with the Lord,” she said.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leah MarieAnn Klett

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It was the second day of the  2020 Women of God Through Promise Conference at True Cornerstone Church in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, when the “devil…showed up in a deadly way,” according to Pastor Derek Scott Gandy.

“Pray for True Cornerstone Church. Tragic incident tonight after a Holy Ghost blow out service that I cannot discuss at all but your prayers are greatly appreciated. Cannot answer or respond. Have to wait around to secure our building. Thanks in advance for your prayers,” Gandy wrote in a series of Facebook posts early Saturday morning. “Arrived home about 30 minutes ago trying to wind down and get some sleep. Women Of God Through Promise was much more anointed than the devil desires and he showed up in a deadly way. Cannot go into specifics or names but please pray for those who witnessed what no one should, especially children.”

The Mobile Police Department said in a statement that at approximately 11:23 p.m. on Friday, they responded to the church on Halls Mill Road after receiving a report about a person being shot. When they got there, they saw a woman on the ground who had been apparently shot.

The suspect involved reportedly fled the scene as police arrived. He was pursued by authorities and subsequently returned to the church. As officers approached his vehicle, however, the suspect shot himself. His car then crashed into the church. He was pronounced dead on the scene while his wife was taken to a local hospital where she is recovering.

Friends of the woman told WKRG that the man came to the church looking for his wife and just shot her outside.

Pastor Gandy, who said both the shooter and his wife were friends of his family, was not available to discuss the incident with The Christian Post on Monday. His wife, Kula, told WKRG that as soon as the victim was shot, she started praying right away.

“She was calling on Jesus, even with the bullet in her she was calling on Jesus,” Kula Gandy said.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair

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The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of BCNN1. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s).

The California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) of 2018 went into effect January 1, 2020, but enforcement begins July 1, 2020.  This Act expands the personally identifiable information (PII) categories to include name(s), addresses, account names, biometrics, geolocation data, employment information, social security, and drivers’ license and passport numbers; radically changing how organizations collect and manage PII.

Does CCPA impact Churches?

The Answer is Yes. The CCPA covers For-profit legal entities.  Not-for-profit organizations, e.g. churches, appear to be exempt.  In reality, most churches are probably not selling goods or services, yet their third party service providers do. For example, they collect and use PII for financial and membership management, fundraising and social media engagement.

How to Prepare?

You may have noticed, churches and their service providers updating website “Cookie” and “Privacy” policies and anonymize IP addresses to prevent data aggregation among other things.  The reason being the 2018 European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation does not exempt Not-for-profit organizations. From collecting and managing PII on donors, employees or even visitors to websites or mobile apps, the prospect for running afoul of GDPR’s regulators motivated churches and their service providers to voluntarily comply.

Now in 2020, many churches and their service providers that are now GDPR compliant are hoping they are legally exempt or that being located outside of California protects them from CCPA compliance.   This position is temporary.

SOURCE: Christian Post, T. Jeff Vining

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The contrast between the two videos is stark. The first is terribly disturbing. The second is tremendously inspiring. The first shows security camera footage of some young thugs vandalizing a building and assaulting a female worker. The second, which is an interview I conducted, shows the female worker and her father expressing their love and concern for the thugs. That is the power of Messiah’s grace in Jerusalem. And that is the opposition faced by Messianic Jews living there.

The community that was attacked is called Adullam. It focuses on compassionate, humanitarian outreach to hurting Israelis, including ultra-Orthodox Jews and those who have left that community. It also serves at-risk Israelis from other backgrounds.

But because of its effective outreach to religious Jews, it has come under intense fire, with a well-known radical inciting some young people to go on the attack.

As reported in Kehila News, “Members of Lehava, a violent anti-assimilation organization led by Ben-Zion Gopstein – a former disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahana – have been attacking a safe house for at-risk youth which is operated by a Messianic family.”

Michael, who manages the safe house, tells the story.

“When they came, during opening hours, we asked them to leave and said that we have three little children here. They didn’t care. They left and came back throwing bricks and stones at us. One flew right by one of our heads.”

But that was not the end. The thugs returned again, ultimately knocking out the windows with bricks and rocks as well as carrying out at least one physical assault.

Thankfully, with security cameras just installed, the last attack was captured on video. As for how the police will respond, that remains to be seen.

Does all this confirm the worst suspicions of the antisemites? Does it prove how evil “the rabbis” are? Does this point to the fundamentally corrupt nature of “the Jews”?

Certainly not.

There are bad apples in every religion, including Judaism.

There are corrupt leaders in every religion, including Judaism.

And there are thugs in every nation, including Israel.

The vast majority of rabbis would not support a violent attack on a Messianic Jewish center, let alone one with women and children inside.

And the vast majority of Israelis, most of whom are not religious, would be appalled at such an attack.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Brown

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I admire the believers who’ve never questioned why God allows suffering because I have to admit, I’ve directed my attention to the heavens and cried out, asking God the reasons we endure pain. There have been times that life felt like it was too much to bear, and I wondered why an all-powerful, merciful God would allow us to experience such hurt and devastation.

From losing my mother to cancer to my husband’s painful knee injury to the countless children around the world suffering from incurable illnesses, my heart has cried out so many times I’ve lost count.

Non-believers, too, have questioned God’s power because they wonder why Christians would praise Him when our world is plagued with disease, war, heartbreak, poverty, famine and many other tragic issues.

Well, the truth is — the fingers pointing at God and questioning His power are pointing in the wrong direction.

The Bible reminds us that God “saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31), but when Eve bit the forbidden fruit and shared the apple with her husband, they began to reap the consequences of disobedience. It was mankind that defied God’s rules and bit the fruit of evil which paved the way for suffering to enter the world.

You see, God allows us to have free choice, and with choice comes consequence.

As a child, my mom warned me not to touch a hot stove because if I touch a hot stove, I will get burned. Well, I touched the stove anyway, and what do you know — I got burned. Badly. Similarly, Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, and their consequences were deadly.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Laci Swann

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A multisite megachurch primarily based in Ohio partnered with a nonprofit to eliminate $46.5 million in medical debt, the largest medical debt relief amount to date.

Crossroads Church, a nondenominational church with multiple campuses in Cincinnati, as well as elsewhere in Ohio and central Kentucky, worked alongside RIP Medical Debt to raise the funds.

Senior Pastor Brian Tome announced the total amount of medical debt cleared near the beginning of his sermon on Sunday, receiving an applause from the congregation.

“The partner we work with said in a one-time shot, a one-time act, that’s the largest amount of medical debt that has ever been retired in one shot. Come on, who’s excited about that?” declared Tome, receiving more applause. “That is amazing.”

The money raised by the church in partnership with RIP Medical Debt has been given to many families in the Cincinnati area and some families outside of Ohio, according to Tome.

In a post to their Facebook page on Sunday, Crossroads Church celebrated the news, thanking all those who donated to the charitable endeavor.

“We asked our Crossroads community to come together and bless some of our neighbors in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee. And you did just that. Thank you!” the church said.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Gryboski

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The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of BCNN1. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s).

In 1968, Stanford entomologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, warning that the earth was overpopulated and that millions of people would starve to death. His doomsday warning did not come true. Starvation has occurred on much smaller scales, due largely to government mismanagement and corruption, not overpopulation.

Yet the myth of overpopulation persists. Ecologist Emma Olliff of the UK based group Population Matters recently said, “More of us is only going to make (the environment) worse.”[1] This kind of reasoning was famously cited by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who are choosing to have only two children because of global overpopulation.

At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, famed primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall said that human population growth is responsible for most environmental problems.[2] Goodall stated, “All these (environmental) things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if there was the size of the population that there was 500 years ago.” Apparently, Goodall pines for the good ol’ days when the average life expectancy was around 40 years of age and infant mortality was around 20%.

Human life is not the problem, and human death is not the solution. Since the publication of The Population Bomb, several books have debunked the myth of overpopulation, including The Myth of Over-Population (1969) R.J. Rushdoony, Fewer (2004) by Ben Wattenberg, and Population Control (2008) by Steven Mosher. Governments in Japan, Finland, Italy, and Australia (to name a few) are now paying people to have babies.[3]

Currently, no European country has a population replacement rate of 2.1 babies per woman.[4] Globally, many countries are below the replacement rate, including  China (1.7), Brazil (1.7), Canada (1.5), Puerto Rico (1.1), Thailand (1.5), and Chile (1.7).[5]

In 1968, the fear was global starvation. In 2020, humans waste 1.6 billion tons of food at a cost of $1.2 trillion dollars annually.[6] In 1968 the fear was overpopulation. In 2020, under-populated towns and cities are paying people to move there.[7]

SOURCE: Christian Post, Adam Groza

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