A former professional football player has planted a church in Minnesota, hoping to establish an evangelical witness to a population increasing thanks to new economic opportunities.

NorthLight Community Church, a new congregation planted by retired NFL player Kurt Ploeger, held its first public worship service on Sunday at a primary school in Byron, a small but growing town outside of Rochester.

In an interview with The Christian Post on Monday, the former defensive end explained that the roots of NorthLight go back to August 2016, when he met with a pair of pastors looking to plant a new congregation in the Rochester area.

“They had a vision for not just planting a church, but planting churches that would plant other churches, and a process of multiplication,”…

A young girl who was the victim of rape made the courageous decision to keep the child she conceived. Now, years later, she is so glad she chose life.

A woman identified as Kali wrote about her choice in a blog for Live Action News, which was reported on by The Christian Institute.

Kali was raped at the age of 13 and afterward found out she was pregnant. Many people, including her doctor, suggested she get an abortion. “You’re going to ruin your life. You’re making a mistake. It would be so much easier if you got an abortion,” she says people told her.

But Kali says she couldn’t help but see her child as a person and she couldn’t blame him for the horrible thing that happened to her.

“That has nothing to do with my son. He didn’t choose how he got here,” she says she reasoned.

She further explained why she chose life:

“Now that I have been put in that situation, I am totally pro-life. Once you hear that baby’s heartbeat it is an indescribable feeling.”

“It was an emotional time”, she added, “but it wasn’t honestly that hard of a decision at the time. That’s a life.”

Kali’s son Smitlee is now four years old and she says she has never regretted choosing life.

Photo courtesy: ©Thinkstock/interstid

Publication date: March 19, 2018

 

The pastor and members of a Tennessee church were forced to defend their guest speaker, controversial internet preacher Greg Locke, during their spring revival service last Thursday after he was publicly rebuked for “not living up to what a pastor needs to be.”

Several videos of a brawl that erupted during the revival service at Benchmark Church in Oliver Springs, Tennessee, reflect an ongoing feud between the equally controversial Pulpit & Pen ministry of Pastor J. D. Hall of Montana, and Locke, who leads Global Vision Bible Church in Tennessee and boasts a massive audience of more than a million followers on Facebook.

Hall and those who write for his ministry describe themselves as Baptist, with most of them holding to the five points of Calvinism. They say they hold “similar convictions, including a belief in the Scripture’s inerrancy, young-Earth creationism, Biblical manhood and womanhood, and a general detestation of skinny jeans.”

For months, Hall’s ministry has argued that Locke is unfit for ministry because of his separation from his mentally troubled wife, Melissa.

On Thursday, a Pulpit & Pen associate, identified as Tim Weakley, attended Benchmark Church…

A young Christian mother of three has been in hiding for more than four months since Muslim Fulani herdsmen threatened her after killing her husband, she said.

 

Soon after the herdsmen killed her husband in an attack on Zanwra village, near Jos in central Nigeria’s Plateau state, 25-year-old Lami Bulus was forced to flee, she said.

 

“We had to leave the village after my husband was killed as we received death threats from the herdsmen for reporting the killing of my husband to security agencies,” she told Morning Star News. In tears, she added, “Please, I need your prayers for strength and for means to care for my children.”

 

After killing Bulus John, 30, on Nov. 5 in Zanwra village outside Jebu Miango, the herdsmen found her phone number in his mobile phone and called her several times, warning her that she, her family and other residents of Zanwra would be killed, she said.

 

The herdsmen have since attacked the village several times, and all Christians have now abandoned it.

 

Bulus, who has only a primary level education, said her husband also had provided for his mother and younger brother in addition to her and their three children, a 9-month-old and two others, ages 8 and 5.

 

A member of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) in Zanwra, Bulus said she had traveled to her hometown the day he was killed. The previous…

A student at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania is prohibited from his Christianity class after he refuted his professor and said there were only two genders.

Lake Ingle, a senior religious studies major, said he was punished by Professor Alison Downie for questioning her February lecture during her Christianity 481: Self, Sin and Salvation” class.

Downie had showed the students a 15-minute TED Talk from ex-pastor and transgender Paula Stone Williams. Williams’ talk was about “male privilege” and “sexism from men.”

Downie then asked the females in the class to give their thoughts on the TED talk. No women spoke up, so Ingle told the professor that the official view of biologists is that there are only two genders.

Downie told Ingle to leave the class and to not return. He was referred to the university’s Academic Integrity Board.

“You are barred from attending this class in accordance with the Classroom Disruption policy,” IUP Provost Timothy Moerland told Ingle in a March 2 letter.

The policy specifies that the “alleged violation” included “disrespectful objection,” “refusal to stop talking, “angry outbursts” and “disrespectful references to the validity of trans identity and experience.”

“My professor is violating my First Amendment rights because of the fact that my views and ideology is different from hers,”…

Of course an actor like Hugh Bonneville would be captivated by the drama of the last week of Jesus’ life, with his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, his challenging of the priests in the temple, his betrayal by Judas and his sentencing to crucifixion at the hands of a mob.

What will surprise many is that Bonneville, 54, whose biggest role to date has been as Lord Grantham in “Downton Abbey,” has a theology degree from Cambridge University, where he was taught Christian history by Rowan Williams, formerly the archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England.

After Cambridge, Bonneville went on to drama school, but last year he packed a suitcase full of his old Cambridge textbooks and headed for Jerusalem to research and retrace the last tumultuous days of of Jesus’ life. The result is a new hourlong documentary, “Jesus: Countdown to Calvary,” which will air on most public television stations before Easter.