Ministry Today Articles

With Mormon candidates such as former congressman John Huntsman and
former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney considering 2012 runs for
president, evangelicals are beginning to discuss the implications of a
Mormon president. In a controversial column at the Patheos website, author Warren Cole Smith argued that “a vote for Romney is a vote for the LDS Church.”

Smith
admitted that evangelicals will be attracted to a Mormon candidate’s
shared views on social and moral issues, but argued that they shouldn’t
overlook the fact that Mormons have a different religous worldview than
evangelicals, and that worldview shapes their behavior. He pointed to
Mormons’ various positions, from polygamy to racial discrimination, that
have been reversed in light of “continuing revelation” that comes
through the church’s prophets.

In the wake of Family Radio founder Harold Camping’s failed rapture
predictions, unbelievers are mocking and evangelicals are distancing
themselves from the sect whose followers traveled around the world
renting billboards and motor homes with signs proclaiming the end of the
world on May 21. One billboard playfully reproving Camping—a photo of which quickly went viral—was unveiled on
May 22, reading, “That was awkward. ‘No one knows the day or the hour …’”

A group of alumni from Wheaton College have formed OneWheaton, an
organization to provide
support for the gay community on the conservative Christian campus and
to promote the view that homosexual practice is compatible with the
Christian faith.

“If you are a student and this is part of
your story, your sexual identity is not a tragic sign of the sinful
nature of the world,” a letter to Wheaton students posted on the group’s website reads. “You are not tragic. Your desire for
companionship, intimacy and love is not shameful. It is to be affirmed
and celebrated just as you are to be affirmed and celebrated.”

Church planting can be an attractive opportunity for entrepreneurial
leaders and those wishing to start churches without the baggage and
limitations of beginning ministry on staff at an existing church. But
many find themselves encountering the commonly-repeated statistic that
80 percent of church plants fail in the first year.

In response to the growing interest in new church planting, LifeWay Research unveiled an online Church Planter Candidate Assessment (CPCA)
during the Expontential Conference in Orlando. Fla. LifeWay worked with
11 denominations and church-planting networks to develop the tool to
aid them—and other organizations—in evaluating strengths and
weaknesses of candidates who desire to establish new churches.

Congregations in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Georgia gathered in tents, borrowed space or in buildings with the sunlight streaming through the damaged—or nonexistent—roofs. Last week’s storm, which has claimed 340-plus lives so far, was the most devastating natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans in 2005.

In the town of Phil Campbell, Ala., a tornado killed 20 people and destroyed 40 percent of the homes. At the Phil Campbell Church of God, congregants gathered on a bare concrete slab. Pastor Chris Burns—who lost his own home in the tornado—delivered his sermon behind the remains of the altar and in front of a cross with a hand-lettered sign reading, “He makes all things new.”

The release of Love Wins, by Michigan pastor Rob Bell, initiated a firestorm of blog posts, news articles and even mainstream media attention on the topic of hell. The controversial pastor’s book, which suggests that everyone will eventually be saved and challenges the traditional Christian view of hell as eternal punishment, has been met with criticism in the evangelical community. But a recent study from The Barna Group reveals that the functional universalism of Love Wins may be held by many professing Christians.

“Despite their own personal faith convictions, many born again Christians embrace certain aspects of universalist thought,” the April 18 report, titled “What Americans Believe About Universalism and Pluralism,” stated. “One-quarter of born again Christians said that all people are eventually saved or accepted by God (25 percent) and that it doesn’t matter what religious faith you follow because they all teach the same lessons (26 percent). An even larger percentage of born again Christians (40 percent) indicated that they believe Christians and Muslims worship the same God.”

Sojourn Community Church, a fast-growing baptist congregation in Louisville, Ky., is moving into the soaring gothic sanctuary once occupied by St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, a parish that has been closed since 1996.

Founded in 2000, Sojourn’s restoration of the historic building highlights a century-long trend that has been overlooked by Catholics and Protestants alike.

Although books and articles have been written on the more recent trend of Protestants converting to Catholicism, this dynamic is a mere trickle compared to the losses the Catholic church has sustained in the last century.

“One out of every 10 Americans is an ex-Catholic,” Thomas Reese notes in an April 18 article in the National Catholic Reporter. “If they were a separate denomination, they would be the third-largest denomination in the United States, after Catholics and Baptists. One of three people who were raised Catholic no longer identifies as Catholic.”

Reese’s article, which generated buzz and debate in the Catholic world, argued that the primary reason people leave the Catholic church for Protestantism is not disagreement with the church’s doctrinal or social positions, but spiritual hunger.