Thousands of people gathered on Sunday at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas for Pastor Greg Laurie’s Harvest America 2018.

According to The Christian Post, Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in California, shared a message about his childhood and his struggle with drugs and alcohol.

“I was going downhill fast … I was too cynical, too hard … but Christ changed my life one day. I didn’t plan on it, but it happened,” he said.

He also talked about how the suicides of fashion designer Kate Spade and television personality Anthony Bourdain showed that fame and money are not the keys to happiness.

“I’m not here tonight to talk to you about religion. I’m here to talk to you about a relationship, a friendship, with God,” he said.

“There is someone who loves you and someone who values you. And He’s called Jesus Christ,” he added, and quoted Jeremiah 29:11, which reads, “For I know the plans I have for you” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Laurie walked through what a commitment to Christ means and then asked people to come down to the center of the stadium if they wanted to pray to accept Jesus.

Thousands responded.

“The good news is that God loved us so much that He sent His Son Jesus Christ on a rescue operation to planet earth,” he said.

Harvest America also featured musical…

Two thousand years of Christianity in Syria could be wiped out by the very forces Western governments are supporting, an Anglican vicar has claimed.

Rev. Andrew Ashdown, who has made ten trips to Syria since 2014 and is studying for a PhD in relations between Christians and Muslims there, also accused Western nations and Western church leaders of “neglecting” Syrian Christians.

Rev. Ashdown travelled to Syria in April with a group that included Anglican Canon Giles Fraser, Baroness Cox, Bishop Michael Langrish and Dr. Erica Hunter, an expert on Middle Eastern Christianity from London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The group was criticised for not cancelling the visit, which took place hours after British, French and American pilots carried out an airstrike on alleged chemical weapons facilities run by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The airstrike, near Homs, was ordered in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack and was backed by EU foreign ministers.

Addressing an audience at SOAS, Rev. Ashdown said many Syrians viewed Christians as vital for maintaining the balance in Syria’s pluralist society. He quoted a Muslim writer in Damascus, who had told him: “I speak to you as a Muslim. Go back to your country and tell your country not to worry about us Muslims, but tell your country to worry about the…

In the wake of the high-profile suicides of CNN host Anthony Bourdain and iconic fashion designer Kate Spade last week, suicide survivor Apostle Bryan Meadows, who leads Embassy Church International in Atlanta, has warned his followers to take care of their mental health and that pastors should not be treated like therapists.

“Creatives need PASTORS and THERAPISTS!!! Your Pastor is NOT your therapist, and your therapist is NOT your Pastor. While everyone should utilize these resources in their life, for the CREATIVE it’s absolutely necessary,” Meadows wrote on Friday after Bourdain’s death was made public. “When your life is spent processing intense stimuli, emotions and experiences, you have to address emotional and psychological constipation. When you are constantly living to make others happy and inspired, you need to understand how that takes a toll of your emotional and mental health.”

Meadows’ comments also come on the heels of a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week showing that suicide rates have gone up by 30 percent across the nation since 1999. Suicide rates, the federal agency said, have been rising in nearly every…

The United States Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal in the case of a conservative diocese that broke away from The Episcopal Church seeking to maintain ownership of $500 million worth of property.

In an order released Monday morning, the justices refused to hear an appeal in the case of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, allowing a state supreme court ruling against the breakaway leadership to stand.

The Rt. Rev. Mark J. Lawrence, bishop of the breakaway diocese, said in a statement released Monday that while he was disappointed with the decision, the legal battle for the church properties was not over.

“There are many unresolved legal questions which remain before the State Court as well as matters for prayerful discernment as we seek to carry out the mission…

Megachurch Pastor J.D. Greear of Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, delivered a sermon about some of the most difficult questions he has about God in his heart ahead of the Southern Baptist Convention later this week, where he has been nominated for president.

Greear preached on Sunday at Jack Graham’s Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, where he received a glowing endorsement by the latter.

Graham noted that Greear has been highly successful in growing his ministry, taking the Summit Church from a 300 membership to over 10,000 in weekly attendance in multiple locations.

At the same time, it has focused its efforts on missions and sending people to preach the Gospel.

“I don’t know of any other church anywhere that is putting more people on the missions field, and planting churches, like the Summit Church,” Graham said in the introduction.

“He is a leader’s leader. I am hopeful, prayerful, and confident that this week the SBC will elect him as our next president,” he said of Greear.

“I believe he is the man who can take one generation in one hand, and another generation in the other hand, and bring us together in…

Christian clergy in the United Kingdom are experiencing an increase in violence and verbal attacks with the rise of secularism and other changing societal factors, experts have assessed ahead of a nationwide survey.

The Sunday Telegraph pointed out that four Church of England priests have been murdered since 1997, ahead of a national survey of around 7,000 Church of England clergy to be conducted by the Royal Holloway, University of London, later in June.

The last survey of its kind in 2000 found that as many as 12 percent of all clergy had been assaulted in the previous two years.

Professor Jonathan Gabe at Royal Holloway’s School of Law said that “the declining status of clergy” could be making it easier for clergy to be attacked, along with the “increasing secularization” in British society.

Rev. David MacGeogh, the vicar of Glastonbury, shared that he receives verbal abuse on a monthly basis. He revealed that five years ago he found a witchcraft symbol sprayed onto his church’s door. During one service, he had to lock himself in a room and call the police after a man…