A historic New England church building was destroyed by fire Tuesday, although one thing survived virtually unscathed: a painting of Jesus.

First Baptist Church in Wakefield, Mass., was built in 1872 but burned to the ground Tuesday within hours after being struck by lightning.

The next day, a large painting of Christ was found in the rubble, “unmarked by fire, smoke, or water,” The Boston Globe reported.

The painting hung inside the front doors. Its survival is “a beautiful sign of hope and a reminder that Jesus is with us,” church member Maria Kakolowski told Boston 25 News. 

“Even though our church building is gone, our church is here and the God that we serve is still here.”

The building was used by many people in the community.

“You just try and focus on the fact that the building is just a building,” Amy Burd, a teacher at a school which held classes in the church, told The Globe. “The building doesn’t hold all the love that happens in there.”

A message on the church’s website expressed hope for the future. 

“While we lost our historic building from a lightning strike this week, we praise Jesus that our church community was kept safe,” the message stated. “A very big thank you to the many firefighters who did their jobs with excellence, and to the outpouring of support from the community.

“We know that we serve a God who…

The Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College has received a $1 million grant to help build the Church Evangelism Initiative, a program that supports religious organizations and helps pastors build mentorships with other clergy.

The Church Evangelism Initiative is part of Lilly Endowment Inc.’s Thriving in Ministry program. 

“With support from Lilly Endowment’s Thriving in Ministry, the Church Evangelism Initiative’s fruitful efforts will considerably expand to gather pastors into pastor cohorts of 6-10 each for peer mentoring, problem-solving and mutual support,” said Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. 

“The result is that pastors will thrive in their congregational leadership and thus enhance the vitality of the congregations they serve.”

The program expects to work with more than 200 pastors over five years.

“We have piloted an approach to revitalization that has begun to work in many churches, and now, thanks to the Lilly Endowment grant, we can expand significantly in both the numbers and the diversity of the pastors and churches we are serving,” said Dr. Rick Richardson, Project Director.

Stetzer said many pastors today don’t always feel like they are “thriving.”

“Pastors today face a complex set of leadership challenges and are often struggling to feel like they are…

A male P.E. teacher could lose his job at a Florida middle school because he refused administrators’ demands to supervise the showers where a biological girl could be showering with boys, according to a legal group.

The biological girl at Chasco Middle School in Port Richey, Fla., claims to be a transgender boy and was given access by the administration to the boys’ bathroom and locker room “with no forewarning” to the boys or their parents, Liberty Counsel said in a letter to the Pasco County School Board. Liberty Counsel is urging the board to change the policy. The letter was dated Sept. 28 but was released to the public this week. 

Both P.E. teachers, Robert Oppedisano and Stephanie Christensen, objected to the biological girl being allowed in the bathroom and locker room without accommodations being made. 

“The girl was admitted to the boys locker room for the first time, and walked in, catching boys (literally) with their pants down, causing them embarrassment and concern by the fact that they had been observed changing by an obvious girl,” the letter says.

Boys came out of the locker room to express their concern but were told by Oppedisano and Christensen that nothing could be done. Administrators “had placed a gag order on them, and told them that they could not answer the boys on these questions,” the letter says.

Administrators…

Christian rock band Switchfoot made a comeback last Friday by dropping their first song since announcing their hiatus last year. 

The rock band, which had vowed to take a hiatus “for the foreseeable future,” announced the release of a new album titled Native Tongue which is set to come out on January 18, by releasing the album’s title track. 

According to The Christian Beat, the Granny winning rock band’s frontman Jon Foreman wrote the song “Native Tongue” with the bassist Tim Foreman and One Republic’s Bret Kutzle. 

The group also decided to release the tracklist for their upcoming album on social media. Switchfoot members took to Twitter with a photo of a handwritten tracklist and captioned it, “Here are the tracks of our rock-&-roll love letter to you.”

Here are the tracks of our rock-&-roll love letter to you. pic.twitter.com/u7O7dAGmh0

— Switchfoot (@switchfoot) October 21, 2018

The album’s first single tells a story of how love must overcome hate in such a divided world. The lyrics read: “Back before we learned the words to start a fight / Back before they told us that the haters were right / He spoke the truth, “let there be” and there was / Love is the language, love is your native tongue.”

The Christian Beat reports that Foreman wrote this song with the polarization of the world in mind. Forman said, “These are polarizing…