City officials last week ordered an Elgin, Ill., man to stop using his home to host “slumber parties” for the homeless. But this week, the city wants Greg Schiller’s help to find new ways to fill gaps in services for the homeless.

Though his suburban Chicago home remains off-limits as a temporary shelter, Schiller said the city’s new attitude about how to house people on cold nights is “like an answered prayer,” according to WMAQ-TV in Chicago.

Schiller had defended welcoming the homeless into his home as a compassionate outreach: “I would stay up all night with them and give them coffee and stuff and feed them.” He insisted he never allowed drugs or alcohol inside his residence on the freezing nights he invited the homeless in. His kindness included a cot in the warm, dorm-style basement, plus hot drinks and movies.

And Schiller came to the work with experience. He previously co-founded Matthew 25:40 Ministry, a homeless shelter outreach program at Elgin First United Methodist Church. After his resignation in 2016, Schiller began to minister to the homeless, first in his garage, and this year in his better-equipped basement.

But city officials in Elgin said Schiller’s basement didn’t meet its “sleeping regulations” code. When police officers inspected and shut down the basement “party” space last week, they cited the ceiling height as too low and the…

President Trump is under fire for referring to certain countries as “s—hole countries” and questioning why we are allowing so many people from these countries to immigrate to the U.S.

Following the alleged comments, Trump tweeted:

The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made – a big setback for DACA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018

Although the President denies this statement, a firestorm quickly ensued.

Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor of First Baptist Church in the Cayman Islands, which are located south of Cuba, wrote a piece in The Gospel Coalition in which he details the beautiful diversity of the Body of Christ, and his subsequent distress over the President’s comments about immigrants and places that are very different from the U.S.

“This is my immigrant family, my true brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. We have been a diverse family from the start, from the time we were sent from a larger diverse congregation of brothers and sisters. I look out on embodied, relational evidence of the reconciling power and reality of Jesus Christ,” said Anyabwile.

Anyabwile went on to explain why the President’s comments were so hurtful to him and so insensitive to many immigrants:

“I’m a pastor, not a…

Who would steal a 400-pound church bell?

That’s the question baffling the parishioners of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church near Norris, S.D., where the hundred-year-old bell has chimed for news, services and emergencies from atop its small wooden tower.

The bell was swiped between Dec. 30 and Jan. 6, the church’s pastor guesses, and would be welcomed back with thanksgiving and forgiveness.

“(B)ecause that’s what we do in the Church,” the Rev. Lauren Stanley said in a Facebook post appealing for the bell’s return.

“Losing this bell — having it stolen from us — means that we have lost a part of our community,” Stanley said in an email. ” … (I)t is still part of who the people are. We have members who remember it being used all the time, and for them, this is an appalling attack on us as a community, and the loss of a community member, as it were.”

St. Paul’s is one of 11 churches in the Rosebud Episcopal Mission spread across the Rosebud Indian Reservation, home to members of the Lakota Sioux. All 11 churches have bells, some in towers atop the main church building and others — like St. Paul’s — in small towerlike stands adjacent to the sanctuary.

The Episcopal Church founded its mission to the Lakota peoples in 1875 and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was founded there on tribal lands in 1890. Many of the mission’s bells were donated…