The United Methodist Church Council of Bishops president has urged his fellow church leaders to be open to “changing one’s mind” on the homosexuality debate to avoid schism.

“Let’s be open to Christ changing our minds. Let’s show the world what unity in the Body of Christ looks like,” Bishop Bruce R. Ough said Sunday at a four-day Council of Bishops meeting in Dallas, Texas.

Ough referenced the special General Conference that will be held in 2019 aimed at resolving the mainline denomination’s internal debate over LGBT issues.

“Let us practice the Lenten discipline of listening to God and one another to the point of dying to ourselves,” stated Ough.

“Let us practice the Lenten discipline of self-emptying, letting go of the positions we came here to defend and the battles we are plotting to wage in this Council or the Judicial Council or on the floor of the Special General Conference.”

Ough also urged the bishops to “help our people empty themselves of their fear of the future and their fear of a changed church.”

“Let’s help our people empty themselves of their obsession for security. Let’s not hinder or harm one another,” concluded…

Reformed theologian and Desiring God founder John Piper is weighing in on a line in the New Testament that has boggled the minds of many — what Scripture means when it says Christians “will judge angels.”

In response to a question Monday from a podcast listener who asked him about what the Apostle Paul meant when he asked the Corinthian church “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” in 1 Corinthians 6, the renowned author emphasized that context is important. And the context there is, as evidenced by preceding verses, whether believers in Jesus should sue each other in secular law courts.

“When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!” 1 Corinthians 6: 1-3 reads.

Piper mentioned, however, that the first commentary he read noted…

Boko Haram, the Nigerian terrorist group, has kidnapped 110 schoolgirls in the town of Dapchi.

According to reports, many of the terrorists dressed as soldiers during the raid of the school and confused the students.

“The federal government has confirmed that 110 students of the Government Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State, are so far unaccounted for, after insurgents believed to be from a faction of Boko Haram invaded their school on Monday,” Nigeria’s information ministry said in a statement.

The raid could be the largest abduction since 270 girls were kidnapped in 2014 from Chibok.

That kidnapped prompted a worldwide #BringBackOurGirls campaign. It’s still unknown where more than 100 of those girls are.

One of the kidnapped girl’s fathers is asking the Nigerian government to act swiftly.

“We don’t want these girls to stay long with those militants. Anything can happen to them,” Kachalla Bukar told the BBC.

“We are begging the government to control the situation quickly,” he added.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who has promised to eradicate the terrorist group, said the kidnapping in Dapchi was a “national disaster.”

The school has been closed following the kidnapping.

“We want to assure Nigerians that no stone will be left unturned in our determination to rescue these girls,” Nigeria’s Information Minister Lai Mohammed told BBC reporters.

According…

New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, shot down online rumors Monday that Bishop Stephen A. Davis, the church’s senior pastor and successor to the late Bishop Eddie Long, had resigned after just a year on the job.

“Bishop Stephen Allen Davis has not resigned and is currently the bishop and senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in both Birmingham, Alabama and Stonecrest, Georgia. He along with his family are committed to continuing the legacy of Bishop Eddie L. Long in further advancing the Kingdom,” Davis’ executive administrator, Michelle Porter, said in a statement to The Christian Post Monday.

Citing information from unnamed sources Sunday, the Obnoxious Media blog claimed that Davis had resigned and the church was in foreclosure.

“Obnoxious Media learned about a week ago that the last Sunday in February will be Bishop Stephen A. Davis last Sunday as Pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church where the late Bishop Eddie Lee Long pastored. It seems that it has not been a very good situation for Davis. Taking over the work of the controversial Pastor, who died under a cloud of suspicion…

International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that on February 26, prominent Chinese Christian lawyer Li Baiguang died suddenly due to liver failure in PLA Bayi Hospital, Nanjing. He died at the age of 49 and is survived by his wife, Xu Hanmei, and their eight-year-old son.

According to his cousin, Liu Peifu, who is also his partner at their law firm, Li died of final stage liver cancer, though he appeared to be healthy beforehand.

Reuters reported that the hospital where he died declined to comment.

Liu also stated that Li was not detained by the authorities before his death.

However, his longtime friend Bob Fu of China Aid finds his death suspicious given that Li was just in Washington D.C., attending the National Prayer Breakfast, at the beginning of the month. “He did not have liver related illness before and his death raises a lot of questions,” Fu said.“Chinese regime should be fully held accountable.”

Last October, Li was kidnapped by more than 10 Public Security Bureau plainclothes officials in Zhejiang province when he was defending victims of land grabs. He…

This book is the heartfelt expression of the world-famous evangelist’s concern over the world’s despair; a Christian analysis of a world filled with riots, demonstrations, threats, wars, and rebellion against authority — divine as well as human.

Billy Graham examines the cause of the world’s tensions against the background of his own rich experience — years of travelling all over the world and meeting with world leaders.

He seeks to answer the questions we all ask as we keep watching the unfolding crises of our times: What is the cause? What has happened to our world? Can we do anything about it?

He acknowledges the answers proffered by economists, diplomats, educators and sociologists of this world. But he does not agree with them. His answers — in fact, his whole book — are based on the Biblical philosophy of man and of history.

“The more I have travelled,” says the evangelist, “the more convinced I have become that the Biblical revelation of man, his origin, his present predicament, and his destiny is true.”

WORLD AFLAME is frightening. It fully accepts the Biblical prophecy that the world as we know it will come to an end before a new world of peace and righteousness comes into being.

WORLD AFLAME is hard-hitting. Billy Graham minces no words in describing the morass of modern morality, the inadequacy of modern theology, the idolatry of men and nations worshipping false gods like Technology and Sex, which forebode a climactic end.

WORLD AFLAME is forthright. Billy Graham warns that Christians, if they really want to live up to…

Pastor Frank Pomeroy now carries a pistol to each and every church function.

The gun isn’t new; he’s had it for years. But it was not until the shooting rampage nearly four months ago that killed more than two dozen at First Baptist Church including a pregnant woman — and his own daughter — that he began wearing it regularly, in a holster on his hip.

As fresh mass shootings such as the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which killed 17, reopen debates about gun control, members of this  Southern Baptist congregation are relying on what they hope is added safety plus  ongoing prayer as they move forward.

At this 92-year-old congregation near the town’s one blinking red light, many members believe God allowed the Nov. 5 massacre to happen as — in Pomeroy’s words — “blood’s seed for revival.”

Those beliefs couldn’t be more different from those of the Florida teenagers who believe they can reform an American political culture that has resisted curbs on the availability of weapons.

This week, those students begged President Trump to support tougher gun control legislation, including bans on assault rifles.

Here in Sutherland Springs, a few days earlier at a Sunday morning Bible study, Pomeroy told members that for Christians, prayer, not protests, is the primary Christian response.

“When I see the aftermath…