Schools May Not Open to Students This Fall, But Churches Might — For Remote Learning

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Schools May Not Open to Students This Fall, But Churches Might — For Remote Learning


Schools May Not Open to Students This Fall, But Churches Might — For Remote Learning

(RNS) — Remote learning will be the rule for schoolchildren in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for at least nine weeks this fall as the city tries to stem a surging coronavirus caseload. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll all be staying home.

Some could be in church instead.

That’s the vision at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, one of several churches in Winston-Salem hoping to host remote-learning sites for small groups of socially distanced kids.

If the bishop approves the idea, as many as 30 students would gather daily — spread across three buildings at St. Timothy’s campus — in the mornings.

Church volunteers would enforce health protocols, tutor and lead prayers to begin and end the day.

“We know in our faith that it’s not good for us to be alone,” said St. Timothy’s Rector, the Rev. Steven Rice, in a reference to the Bible’s Book of Genesis. “Some socialization among people of their own age will be a great benefit (to the students). And if both parents have to work, at least half the day is better than nothing.”

From Connecticut to Hawaii, congregations are seeking ways to support families still smarting from last spring’s sudden adjustment to home-based learning during the pandemic lockdown. They’re exploring how underutilized church buildings might be put to a new use that allows education to continue while freeing up parents…

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Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

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Are these the “last days”? Why evangelicals are losing the rhetorical high ground and two ways to respond

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Are these the “last days”? Why evangelicals are losing the rhetorical high ground and two ways to respond

The Orel nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine in the Kronstadt roadstead is pictured during a military parade on Russian Navy Day, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Alexei Druzhinin / Sputnik via AP

Are these the “last days”? In Luke 21, Jesus made three predictions.

One: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (v. 10). 

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that the Russian Navy would be armed with hypersonic nuclear strike weapons and underwater nuclear drones. Such weapons would be difficult for the US to track and intercept. 

Experts say the risk of military conflict between the US and China is higher than ever. After the closing of the Chinese consulate in Houston, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated, “If we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party.” 

Two: “There will be earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven” (v. 11). 

Regarding “earthquakes,” a magnitude 7.8 quake struck off the coast of Alaska last week. Regarding “famines and pestilences,” as of this morning, COVID-19 has infected more than sixteen million people and caused more than 648,000 deaths. Experts say the pandemic has put 265 million people at risk of famine. 

Regarding “terrors and great signs from heaven,” Hurricane Hanna made landfall in South Texas Saturday afternoon, flooding streets and knocking out power. And Hurricane Douglas is brushing the Hawaiian Islands this morning, bringing as much as eight inches of rain. 

Three: “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you” (v. 12). 

China is escalating its persecution of Christians: Believers are being jailed for praying online and even official churches are being closed. The Communist government is supervising a new Bible translation. Chinese citizens are being urged to use an app dedicated to…

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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Denison Forum.

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Ten Reasons Why Your Church Members Are Ornery in the Pandemic

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There have been three consistent questions our team has received during the pandemic.

In the first weeks the question was, “When do you think we can return to in-person services?” 

As a number of churches began to regather, the question became, “When will more of our church members return to in-person services?” 

Today, a common question we get at Church Answers is, “Why are so many of our church members ornery?” 

The answer may seem obvious, that we are experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. After all, who would not be concerned, frustrated, and uncertain? But as we dug deeper talking with pastors and other church leaders, we began to understand there is no simple response to the latter question.

Indeed, we are finding the “ornery factor” to be more complex than it initially seemed. Here are ten of the factors putting your church members in a concerned and bad mood: 

  1. They are weary. The cumulative toll of the pandemic is telling. Some are weary because loved ones and friends have COVID. Some are just tired because of the pandemic in general.
  1. They are confused. It’s difficult to get a consistent story about COVID. Even the organizations of expertise don’t seem to be on the same page. 
  1. They are fearful. It’s easy to tell a believer he or she should not fear. It’s a challenge to fight fear with the barrage of bad news we get every day. 
  1. They feel like they have lost their church. In some ways, they have lost their church. It will not likely return to…

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Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Thom Rainer.

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Postcard from the mighty river at Great Falls

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Postcard from the mighty river at Great Falls

By Dennis Lennox, CP Contributor Follow
The Missouri River at Great Falls, Montana. | Dennis Lennox

Great Falls is more than just a quick stopover on a summer road trip across Big Sky Country.

As a destination, Montana’s third-largest city punches well above its weight, thanks to the big-city feel of its downtown, a couple of notable museums and a landscape that remains beautiful despite being partially covered up by the progress of industry.

Great Falls, as its name implies, is situated at the great falls of the Missouri River. Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame called the falls — some 900 feet wide and 80 feet tall — “the grandest sight” he ever saw.

Dams and power plants changed much of the scenery, though a small stretch of the river at the aptly named River’s Edge Trail in Giant Springs State Park offers a vista from the past.

Inside the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. | Dennis Lennox

Fittingly, this is also where the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center is located. The two-story museum, run by U.S. Forest Service in partnership with a nonprofit foundation, gives visitors a crash course in the history of the Corps of Discovery’s 8,000-mile expedition in the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase.

Beyond the history of this important chapter in the story of America, there is the art found in the city’s two art museums.

The C.M. Russell Museum has 16 galleries devoted to its namesake, Charles M. Russell. The artist,…

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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

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This week in Christian history: Scottish preacher martyred, OPC founder born, Lutheran missionary to India

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This week in Christian history: Scottish preacher martyred, OPC founder born, Lutheran missionary to India

By Michael Gryboski, Christian Post Reporter Follow
Getty Images

Christianity is a faith with a long and detailed history, with numerous events of lasting significance occurring throughout the ages.

Each week brings the anniversaries of great milestones, horrid tragedies, amazing triumphs, and everything in between.

Here are three things that happened this week, July 26–Aug. 1, in Church history. They include a Scottish preacher being martyred, the founder of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church being born, and a Lutheran missionary arriving in India.

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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

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Supreme Court rejects Nevada church’s appeal to lift state’s limits on worship gatherings

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Supreme Court rejects Nevada church’s appeal to lift state’s limits on worship gatherings

By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor Follow
An attendee raises his hands to the sky during a drive-in Easter service amid the Coronavirus pandemic at the International Church of Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Sunday, April 12, 2020. | AFP via Getty Images/BRIDGET BENNETT

The Supreme Court has rejected the plea of a Nevada congregation to suspend state-imposed restrictions on in-person gatherings that only apply to faith communities and not secular entities.

In a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts joined liberal justices to deny an appeal of Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley in Lyon County, whose plea had been rejected by lower courts, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The church argued that Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak’s public-health orders gave casinos and other secular businesses greater leeway than houses of worship, which are prohibited from conducting in-person worship services with more than 50 people.

Calvary Chapel wanted to hold services for up to 90 members, 50% capacity, while fully complying with social-distancing rules and other required measures.

The judges made no comment while…

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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

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Youth pastor becomes guardian of underserved Chicago teens, moves them to suburbs

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Youth pastor becomes guardian of underserved Chicago teens, moves them to suburbs

By Blake Fussell, Contributor Follow
Terrance Wallace, the founder of The InZone Project, poses with the young men housed through the program. Youth from underserved communities have been relocated to receive better opportunities and discipleship. | Courtesy of Terrance Wallace

A youth pastor from Chicago has taken dual-guardianship of several young men from some of the city’s most underserved neighborhoods and has allowed them to live in the suburbs where they are offered improved education, discipleship and resources.

Pastor Terrance Wallace, founder of the InZone Project, helps oversee seven young men living in a suburban home in Wauconda, Illinois, and has brought them into his family in a literal sense. He plans to move over 20 others from the city into a suburban mansion in the affluent Barrington Hills this fall. 

Wallace’s structure of removing youth living in underserved areas to another area with more opportunities first came to be in 2011 when he initially launched the InZone Project in New Zealand.

“My kids in New Zealand had to come home and write essays on Chicago violence and gangs,” Wallace, a…

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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

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13 Catholic sisters killed after coronavirus sweeps through Mich. convent ‘like wildfire’

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13 Catholic sisters killed after coronavirus sweeps through Mich. convent ‘like wildfire’

By Leonardo Blair, Christian Post Reporter Follow
The 13 Felician sisters who died after battling COVID-19. | Felician Sisters of North America

An outbreak of the new coronavirus swept through a Michigan convent “like wildfire,” killing 13 of religious sisters who lived, prayed and worked together in a matter of weeks, a Global Sisters Report said Monday.

“I get chills thinking about that,” Sr. Mary Andrew Budinski, the superior of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary convent in Livonia, where the women lived communally, said in the report. “The raw grief is yet to come, I think.”

The Global Sisters Report, which is a nonprofit project of the National Catholic Reporter publishing company, said all of the women who died were members of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Felix of Cantalice, or Felician Sisters. St. Felix was a Franciscan friar.

Between Good Friday on April 10 and May 10, 12 of the sisters died after battling the coronavirus. Then on June 27, one of 18 other sisters who initially survived the illness died from its effects to become the 13th fatality. Obituaries provided by Suzanne English,…

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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

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John MacArthur says Grace Community Church ‘has duty to remain open’

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John MacArthur says Grace Community Church ‘has duty to remain open’

By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor Follow
Pastor John MacArthur speaks at Shepherd’s Conference at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, on March 7, 2014. | Grace Community Church

Pastor John MacArthur of California’s Grace Community Church has announced that his church would continue to hold in-person services despite state-mandated restrictions banning in-person worship services.

About two weeks after California indefinitely closed churches and other businesses in more than 30 of the state’s 58 counties as part of its response to the coronavirus, author and theologian MacArthur has given a biblical basis for his decision. “Compliance would be disobedience to our Lord’s clear commands,” he wrote in a statement to the congregation on Friday. 

“Government officials have no right to interfere in ecclesiastical matters in a way that undermines or disregards the God-given authority of pastors and elders,” MacArthur wrote.

Christ is Lord of all. He is the one true head of the church (Ephesians 1:22; 5:23; Colossians 1:18). He is also King of kings—sovereign over every earthly authority (

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Click Read More to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – The Christian Post.

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Islamic Extremist Militants in Nigeria Execute Five Men as Warning to Christians, Video Shows

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Islamic Extremist Militants in Nigeria Execute Five Men as Warning to Christians, Video Shows


Islamic Extremist Militants in Nigeria Execute Five Men as Warning to Christians, Video Shows

JOS, Nigeria, July 23, 2020 (Morning Star News) – Islamic extremists have executed five Nigerian men in Borno state, with one executioner saying it was a warning to “all those being used by infidels to convert Muslims to Christianity,” according to a video posted on Wednesday (July 22).

Three of the men shot to death from behind on the video were identified as Christians by a resident of Borno state, where the executions apparently took place.

In the 35-second video posted on YouTube by Eons Intelligence before it was removed, the three Christians kneel blindfolded by red cloth alongside two others believed to be Muslims while five men armed with AK-47 rifles stand behind them.

“This is a message to all those being used by infidels to convert Muslims to Christianity,” one of the executioners says in the Hausa language, translated by Morning Star News. “We want you out there to understand that those of you being used to convert Muslims to Christianity are only being used for selfish purposes.

“And that is the reason whenever we capture you, they don’t care to rescue you or work towards securing your release from us; and this is because they don’t need you or value your lives. We therefore, call on you to return to Allah by becoming Muslims. We shall continue to block all routes [highways] you travel.

“If you don’t heed our warning, the fate of…

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Click here to read the rest of the story from our content source/partners – Christian Headlines.

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