Starting this weekend, City Harvest Church, a controversial 16,000-member megachurch in Singapore, has suspended all physical meetings and will instead meet online as the global coronavirus outbreak surged to more than 64,000 cases Friday.

The number of COVID-19 (formal name of coronavirus) cases in Singapore has risen to at least 58 cases.

“In view of the increasing number of cases of COVID-19 this past week, we have decided the best thing for our congregation is to bring service online. This means, we do NOT meet physically at Suntec for service, but stay home and worship online together through The CHC App or our website,” the church announced in a statement Thursday.

Mainland China, the epicenter of the new disease, which is accompanied by symptoms that may include a fever, coughing or shortness of breath, has recorded 5,090 more cases, bringing the global total to 64,435 CNN reported. At least 1,383 people, including three outside mainland China, have died from the disease.

Singapore, a nation of just 5.7 million, has one of the highest number of coronavirus cases outside of China. And while no one in Singapore has died yet from the disease, Janil Puthucheary, senior minister of state at Singapore’s Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Communications and Information, warned that the country should prepare for more infections.

“I think it’s really too early to talk about a peak. Cases are coming in on a daily basis and you have to have the expectation there are going to be more cases over the next few weeks,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”

“The issue is really whether these are going to be cases that are linked to the existing spread, existing cluster, links to China or whether we have an increasing number of cases that are unlinked community spread … At the moment, most of the cases can be linked back to known clusters,” he added.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair

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Thirteen Christian leaders have signed onto a letter speaking out against President Donald Trump’s budget proposal and other administration policies that they say will add to the nation’s poverty and hunger issues. 

The Circle of Protection, a coalition comprised of leaders from various Christian organizations, published an open letter Tuesday calling out “administration actions that affect people in poverty.”

“As leaders from all the families of U.S. Christianity, representing church bodies and networks serving more than 100 million Americans, we are concerned about administration action to cut safety net programs that help low-income people,” the letter reads. “The gospel of God’s love for all people moves us to speak together on this issue.”

The coalition is comprised of mostly left-leaning Christian leaders, including Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, Sojourners founder Jim Wallis, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton and Barbara Williams Skinner of the National African American Clergy Network.

Other signatories to the letter include the National Association of Evangelicals President Walter Kim, Gabriel Salguero of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, Jim Winkler of the National Council of Churches and Bread for the World President David Beckmann.

“We can do better. Jesus taught that the peoples of the world will be judged by what we do for the hungry, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner,” the letter explains, citing Matthew 25.

Among many things, the letter takes issue with an executive order signed by Trump in April 2018 that instructs government departments to look for ways to impose tougher rules and work requirements for eligibility in means-tested public assistance programs.

The agencies were instructed to gauge whether programs are helping individuals and families avoid long-term dependence.

The leaders argue that while they support the goal of helping Americans toward financial independence, they fear some of the administration’s policy changes and proposed cuts to low-income programs are “likely to add to the hunger, poverty and economic insecurity which are already far too widespread in our country.”

Nearly 40 million people are living in poverty in the U.S., according to Poverty USA.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Samuel Smith

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Amid growing concern that the nation’s largest Protestant denomination is increasingly “woke” and drifting from biblical orthodoxy, a new network has formed to emphasize evangelism and the sufficiency of Scripture within the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Conservative Baptist Network, which is being launched Friday, describes itself as a grassroots effort to maintain the proclamation of the Gospel at the center of SBC life, in addition to prioritizing fidelity to Scripture and all of its implications, including presenting a vibrant, biblically-informed witness when engaging culture. The network fully affirms the longstanding beliefs of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

Those involved in the network’s formation, many of whom spoke with The Christian Post, say their efforts are needed given the direction and perceived future of the Convention that many devout Southern Baptists find troubling. But the network is not, they say, a new denomination, a blog or a social media page that exists solely to air grievances or a competitor with other like-minded ministries.

“We are concerned about the current road our Southern Baptist family is traveling. It is a road that is twisting what God’s Word is saying about things like human sexuality, biblical racial reconciliation, and socialistic justice,” said Brad Jurkovich, the network spokesman and the pastor of First Baptist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana, in a press release exclusively provided to CP Thursday.

“There are three choices that every pastor and church have to make,” he explained.

Those three options, he said, are to remain in the SBC and say nothing and watch it drift into obscurity; walk away entirely, cognizant of what they are leaving behind; or remain within the denomination and contend for the restoration of what has been lost in recent years.

The Bossier City pastor believes many desire the third option and the CBN pastors, lay ministers and seminary professors are ready to stand alongside them.

“Are the apparent theological, ethical and social compromises simply indicative of Southern Baptists succumbing to the apostasy of the Laodicean Age? Are we doomed to the fate of an unrepentant church or will we open the door to let Christ in, overcome our present malaise and experience another spiritual renaissance?” Jurkovich offered, speaking to how he presently sees the spiritual status of the denomination as a whole.

He further maintained that a significant number of Southern Baptists are especially concerned about the overemphasis on certain issues that have received more attention than has evangelism and spiritual renewal — emphases that have helped make Southern Baptists the largest and most influential evangelical group in the nation.

For many, particularly those who make a point to attend the denomination’s annual meeting each year, their concern was crystallized following the 2018 gathering in Dallas when motions were made on the floor to prevent Vice President Mike Pence from speaking to the messengers. While those efforts ultimately failed, some in attendance nevertheless got up and left the convention center in protest as Pence began to speak, actions many considered disrespectful and contrary to the admonition in 1 Peter 2:11-17 about showing proper deference to governmental authority.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Brandon Showalter

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In an unprecedented move, the Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle, the ninth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, presented a Missionary Vision for a Racial Justice initiative that aims to repair and commence racial healing for individuals and communities who were directly injured by slavery in the diocese. The announcement was made at the 171st Diocesan Council held in Waco, Texas, February 7-8, 2020.

The Missionary Vision for Racial Justice initiative includes a $13 million commitment towards racial reconciliation projects and scholarships for the future training and education of people of color.

“The goal is to support the people of our communities who were actually injured by our past actions,” said Doyle. Doyle further explained to the clergy, delegates and members of the diocese, that he recently met with 38 representatives of the Historic Black Churches to invite their future collaboration and support. He worked for many years to dream with leaders and implement this initiative. “I have sought to undergird this work with the best theological and practical ideas in this present moment and from across the church to reinforce and amplify remedies and imagine a different trajectory for our future.”

The Bishop of Texas also reminded the audience that the Rt. Rev. Alexander Gregg, the first bishop of the diocese, including parishioners, had household slaves. “People don’t realize that our first congregation, Christ Church, Matagorda, was built by slaves. This is our truth. It is the truth of this diocese,” said Doyle.

Doyle added that although clergy and laity alike have spoken out against slavery, racism, and even courageously stopped lynching in our communities, other leaders, on the contrary, have defended slavery, white supremacy, and remained silent. Furthermore, Doyle also shared that he believes some lay leaders in the nineteenth century and early twentieth participated in lynching.

The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, commended the initiative. “When I read the Missionary Vision for Racial Justice, for a moment, to be honest, it took my breath away … One translation of the word ‘inspiration’ is ‘God breathed.’ What you, the good people of the Diocese of Texas have done together with God is something truly God breathed, inspired!’”

The money for the Missionary Vision for Racial Justice Initiative will go to fund the Bertha Means Endowment at Seminary of the Southwest, the David Taylor Scholarship at Seminary of the Southwest, the Pauli Murray Scholarship Fund at Seminary of the Southwest, the Thomas Cain Fund for Historic Black Churches, the Henrietta Wells Scholarship Fund for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the John and Joseph Talbot Fund for Racial Justice, and the Episcopal Health Foundation Congregational Engagement.

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During a recent sermon given at a Moody Bible Institute conference, missionary and author Francis Chan told the audience that he and a team of other Christians had witnessed the miraculously healing of several people in a rural village located in Myanmar, including two deaf children. 

The video of Chan’s entire sermon was posted online by the Moody Bible Institute. 

Chan, the former teaching pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, California, was preaching at the conference earlier this month when he told a story about visiting a village that had no believers.

“At one point, we were in this village that had no believers, like zero. Not a single one,” he recalled. “And this lady had built a relationship with the head monk and the village leader and somehow was able to work out that we could go into the village.”

“My translator told me he had been in that area before and was chased out with knives and stones thrown at him, so he was terrified,” Chan continued. “But the entire village showed up, and I had the honor of sharing the Gospel through a translator, to be the first one to lay out the Gospel and explain that they had a Creator and explain that He had a son and explain what He did on the cross and the resurrection.”

“There’s no way I can communicate to you how much peace I felt,” the pastor stressed. “I am sharing the Good News with a village of people who have never heard of this before. I can’t tell you how right it felt.”

The Crazy Love author told the audience that he asked God to help him heal the villagers who were suffering.

“I’m going, ‘God, please, please hear,'” he recalled. “People started coming forward for healing.”

“Every person I touched was healed,” Chan said as the conference crowd applauded.

“You guys, OK, this is craziness to me,” he added. “I have never experienced this in 52 years. I’m talking like a little boy and a little girl who were deaf. We laid hands, she starts crying and smiling. These are not Christians who have even heard about Jesus, and she’s freaking out. We lay hands on her little brother, we lay hands on him, and he starts hearing for the first time.”

Chan also admitted that the experience was out of his “comfort zone,” but “Man, it happened. It happened.”

“I thought I had faith, but my faith was at another level,” he noted. “And I think there are some things that contributed — some of it was just faith in His Word, that when Jesus says, ‘I am in you and you are in Me,’ to take that literally.”

Chan explained that although he disagreed theologically with some of his team members, he believes God was “honored by this fight for unity, and I believe God was honored by this pursuit of the unreached, and obeying the Great Commission and we saw power.”

“And I don’t know that that means it will happen every time,” he continued. “My theology says I don’t think it will happen everywhere … but best I understand Scripture, He wants me to believe in my unity with Him, this power that I have because He and I are one. He wants to believe that you and I can become perfectly one.”

Chan also announced that in a few weeks, he and his family will be relocating to Hong Kong. The reality of persecution, he said, has caused him to “evaluate” his beliefs. 

The missionary said there’s “nothing like” preaching to people who have never heard Jesus’s name. 

As CBN News reported last November, Chan announced he and his family were moving to Asia in February of 2020 to become international missionaries. 

The former pastor caused quite a stir in 2010 when he announced to the congregation at Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley he was resigning his post as lead pastor of the church he and his wife founded the same year they were married.

They then founded the house church movement called We Are Church, which is based in Northern California, where Chan moved his family in 2013. There are more than a dozen churches today with anywhere from 10 to 20 congregants and about 30 pastors (two per home), all of whom serve bi-vocationally, meaning they aren’t financially compensated for their ministry work.

Since making the rapid decision to move his family overseas, Chan admitted he is beginning to feel a bit nostalgic about the United States. But in moments of doubt, he said, the words written by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 2:4 have “convicted” him. 

The passage reads, “We reject all shameful deeds and underhanded methods. We don’t try to trick anyone or distort the word of God. We tell the truth before God, and all who are honest know this.”

Watch Chan’s entire sermon presented during the Moody Bible Institute’s Founders Week Conference below.

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