A congregation in Massachusetts has raised money through a car wash and through their website to help the victims of the recent massive explosion in Beirut.

St. George Orthodox Church of Boston held the car wash on Saturday, with the youth raising thousands of dollars while cleaning a couple hundred vehicles.

The Very Rev. Timothy J. Ferguson, head pastor of the church, told The Christian Post that the congregation felt inspired to hold the charitable event due to the many personal ties to Lebanon.

“Our community, my parish that is to say, is about 60% immigrants from Lebanon. And so there were a lot of people who were directly affected by the explosion that took place there,” explained Ferguson.

“So they wanted to reach out and respond. It was an initiative on the part of the teenagers, the young people in the parish.”

While…

Welcoming energy could be felt through the phone when Sam Collier picked up and said “Hello.”

I’ve seen Collier up close several times at events, and frankly, he is a “what you see is what you get” kind of guy.

That being said, Collier, an Atlanta native and one of the teaching pastors at North Point Community Church in Atlanta, believes that God has given him a greater story to tell.

Collier’s story, which has a lot of twist and turns, started out with what he would call rejection and abandonment.

Collier was born into a life that was deemed unsafe and placed in the foster care system where his parents, the Colliers, would adopt him. Collier is clear that if it hadn’t been for his adoptive parents his life would have taken a completely different path. In fact, just the mention of his parents’ names causes Collier to light up and get excited. In Collier’s new book A Greater Story he paints a clear picture of why faith and adoption are very important to him.

According to IFoster and other leading foster care/adoption advocacy groups, the number of kids in America’s foster care system is estimated to be around 400,000 to 440,000 kids, many of them, kids of color. Collier knows that with figures like these, he’s a blessed man to have the parents that God has given him.

“My dad was never surprised, in fact, he normalized greatness,” Collier shared, noting that for this reason,…

A pastor of a Georgia megachurch who also is running for U.S. Senate said last week he believes legalized abortion is “consistent with” Christianity and he would “fight” to ensure it remains legal.

Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and a Democratic candidate trying to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler in November’s election, made the comments to WGAU’s Tim Bryant.

Bryant asked Warnock how the pro-choice views of the Democrat Party “square with” his “role as a minister, a leader of a church, a man of God.”

“I believe that healthcare is a human right,” said Warnock, who has served as senior pastor of the church since 2005. “And I believe that it is something that the richest nation in the world provides for its citizens, and for me reproductive justice is consistent with my commitment to that.

“I believe unequivocally in a woman’s right to choose, and that the decision is something that we don’t want government engaged in – that’s between her and her doctor and her minister. And I will fight for that in the United States Senate, and at the same time continue to fight so women can receive the kind of services that they need in order to have a healthy pregnancy and healthy babies. We have a maternal death rate in this country that is exceedingly high, particularly to be the richest country…

Current and former Black employees at Planned Parenthood and the NARAL Pro-Choice America say they faced “racism, pay inequity and lack of upward mobility” at their jobs.

According to CBN News, Some 26 employees of Planned Parenthood affiliates and of the NARAL Pro-Choice America told BuzzFeed News about the discrimination against Black staff and other people of color. Another 16 employees with other reproductive rights groups also reported the same.

“I’ve worked at plenty of nonprofits, and I have never been treated so horribly in my life as I was at Planned Parenthood, to the point where I grew very depressed, had a lot of anxiety, and cried in the bathroom almost every day,” said a former Planned Parenthood employee in Washington DC.

In June, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York was fired after being accused of racism and poor management. Staff accused the CEO of a “toxic” atmosphere that didn’t have a human resources department.

“After years of complaints from staff about issues of systemic racism, pay inequity, and lack of upward mobility for Black staff, highly-paid consultants were brought in three separate times to assess the situation,” a letter signed by hundreds of Planned Parenthood staff in New York reads. “Each time, employees of color were brutally honest about their experiences, but nothing changed.”

A…

Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki disclosed on Sunday that she had an “inappropriate personal relationship” that resulted in threatened blackmail from the man, although they added, “Our love has never been stronger.”

Falwell’s statement apparently was sparked by a Reuters story that quotes the man, Giancarlo Granda, who denies he was blackmailing the couple. It was published Monday.

Falwell said he and his wife “agreed that this was the right time for me to share more of our story, because the Liberty community deserves to hear it directly from me and from us.”

Falwell took an “indefinite leave of absence” last month from his role as president of Liberty University.

“During a vacation over eight years ago, Becki and I met an ambitious young man who was working at our hotel and was saving up his money to go to school. We encouraged him to pursue an education and a career and we were impressed by his initiative in suggesting a local real estate opportunity,” Falwell said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “My family members eventually made an investment in a local property, included him in the deal because he could play an active role in managing it, and became close with him and his family.

“Shortly thereafter, Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with this person, something in which I was not involved — it was…

President Donald Trump called the 2020 Democratic National Convention “the darkest and angriest and gloomiest convention” in U.S. history.

“They spent four straight days attacking America as racist and a horrible country that must be redeemed,” Trump said, according to The Christian Post.

Trump, speaking at the 2020 Council for National Policy meeting last week, also added if former vice president Joe Biden is elected, “China will own our country.”

“Where Joe Biden sees American darkness, I see American greatness,” the president added. “We’ve seen heroic doctors and nurses racing into action to save lives. We’ve seen first responders helping strangers in need. We’ve seen the passage of historic legislation to save 50 million American jobs. We’ve mobilized American industry like never before.”

The 2020 Democratic National Convention ended Thursday.

According to reports, during at least two public meeting at the DNC, speakers omitted the phrase “under God” from the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.

In the Muslim Delegates & Allies Assembly web meeting, the moderator did not say “under God” in the pledge. Then during the LGBTQ Caucus Meeting, the speaker also did not say “under God” during the pledge.

“It’s an attack on religion. Did you see the man that got up and sang a very, very special phrase from a very, very special…

In a pastoral letter, Doug Clay, the head of Assemblies of God, urged the leaders of the denomination’s 13,000 congregations in the United States to be “extremely cautious” as the upcoming election season will “certainly” be divisive. While maintaining spiritual unity, he said, they should advocate for biblical justice and liberty.

“Polarization and politics naturally go together,” wrote Clay, the general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, USA. “It’s the Spirit who brings unity.” 

“Polarization in 2020 has risen to a higher level and has trickled down to even mundane decisions,” the AG leader acknowledged. “We should be extremely cautious that we do not allow division to seep into Christ’s Church that will inevitably lead to self-destruction.”

Clay called on the church leaders to focus on the denomination’s mission, which is “evangelism, worship, discipleship, and compassion,” and not on politics.

He noted that it’s “becoming more and more…

The platform approved by Democratic National Convention delegates last week supports taxpayer-funded abortion, judges who will “respect and enforce” Roe v Wade, and “LGBTQ+ inclusive, age-appropriate sex education” for schools.

It is likely the most socially liberal Democratic platform in party history.

This year marks the first time a Democratic platform has explicitly endorsed judges who back Roe, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. (The 2016 platform didn’t mention Roe, although it did support legalized abortion.) It also is the first time a Democratic platform has endorsed LGBT-inclusive sex education.

It is only the second time a Democratic platform has explicitly called for taxpayer-funded abortion by reversing the Hyde Amendment, a legislation provision that prohibits federal funding of abortion. (The 2016 platform was the first explicitly to oppose Hyde.)

The 2020 platform also calls for restoring Title X federal funds to Planned Parenthood that were pulled by the Trump administration. Further, it calls for federal assistance to be used to pay for abortions in other countries.

“Democrats are committed to protecting and advancing reproductive health, rights, and justice,” the 2020 platform says. “We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should be able to access high-quality…