PITTSBURGH, PA - A leader of the newAnglican Church in North Americasays decisions being made at the Episcopal Church's General Convention underline why he and many others are no longer Episcopalians.Canon Daryl Fenton says in addition to rejecting biblical teaching against homosexuality, the Episcopal Church has watered down central Christian doctrines on Christ, salvation, and the authority of Scripture.Fenton says the fact that Episcopalians are openly accepting homosexuals in ministry and same-sex relationships should help the world's Anglicans decide whether the Episcopal Church is still the true voice of Anglicanism in North America.At that General Convention in Anaheim, California, Episcopal bishops have authorized the church to start drafting an official prayer for same-sex couples, another step toward acceptance of gay relationships that will deepen the rift between the denomination and its fellow Anglicans overseas.The bishops voted 104-30 at the Episcopal General Convention to "collect and develop theological resources and liturgies" for blessing same-gender relationships, which would be considered at the next national meeting in 2012.The resolution notes the growing number of states that allow gay marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships, and gives bishops in those regions discretion to provide a "generous pastoral response" to couples in local parishes. A conservative Anglican theologian says the Episcopal Church is experiencing a large membership decline because it's espousing neither a biblical gospel nor a New Testament understanding of evangelism.Episcopal Presiding Bishop Catherine Jefferts Schori acknowledged Monday that 19,000 more members die each year than are born or baptized into the denomination -- a trend she hopes to reverse through "evangelism." Jefferts Schori said Episcopalians "for a long time didn't do active evangelism," and now "need to be sent out into the world to take the good news of Jesus." Her emphasis on evangelism comes just days after she saidindividual salvation is a "heresy."

Dr. Kendall Harmon is Canon Theologian forThe Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. He is deeply troubled with the presiding bishop's understanding of evangelism as well as with the current practice of evangelism in the Episcopal Church.

Harmon believes evangelism involves three things: welcoming newcomers into the church, bringing the un-churched into a relationship with Christ, and reaching out to those who have drifted away from the church.

"In the Episcopal Church, most parishes aren't doing any of those three well," he confesses. "If you're really lucky, you'll get an Episcopal church that is half-decent at welcoming newcomers -- and that's not evangelism. And that's one of the many reasons why we're in long-term systemic decline: we don't have a gospel to proclaim with any sense of clarity."

Harmon says unfortunately most Episcopalians understand evangelism as persuading people who are already Christians to join the Episcopal Church.


7-14
ANAHEIM, CA - Episcopalians are moving toward affirmingan open role for homosexual clergy in their church despite pressure from fellow Anglicans not to do so.Episcopal bishops voted at a national meeting yesterday for a statement that says "God has called and may call" homosexual men and women to ministry. Delegates to the meeting already approved a nearly identical statement. This latest version is likely to be approved by Friday.
Episcopalians caused an uproar in 2003 by consecrating the first openly homosexual bishop, Vicki Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. That decision has nearly split the world Anglican Communion, which includes Episcopalians.
To calm tensions, Episcopal leaders three years ago had urged restraint by dioceses considering homosexual candidates for bishop. No openly homosexual bishops have been consecrated since then.What would be your advice to those in the Episcopal Churchwho disagree with its stand on homosexual clergy?Vote in our poll


7-13 From AFA
by Jeremy Wiggins In a story from the AP, President Obama has a meeting today, Friday July 10, with Pope Benedict XVI in what White House press secretary Robert Gibbs calls a "frank" meeting. Well at least the President has a whole afternoon with the Pope, whereas Speaker Pelosi only got about enough time for him to lay the smack down on her pro-choice views and actions. The article states that this is a meeting between "two men who share similar views on helping the poor and pushing for Middle East peace but disagree on abortion and stem cell research", even though I don't recall hearing the President speak lately about poor people, especially since his energy policies and spending sprees are dragging more and more people into that category, and his policy for the Middle East can be summed up in two words: I'm sorry. It isn't really so much a policy, as much as it is a road to the weakening of the world's opinion of the US.
Press secretary Gibbs also said, "We know the pope has been keenly aware of the president's outreach to the Muslim world. The pope shares the president's view on reducing the number of nuclear weapons. So I think there's certainly a lot of common ground." You could sum this statement up in a different way. It could read, "Well the president has been traveling around a lot bowing down to the Muslim community, and he wants to totally disrupt our security as a nation by destroying all of our nukes, thus making us vulnerable to an attack..." I can't believe that someone thinking of disarmament could be so naive to think that every one else would go along with it. It’s nice to be the good guy, but you do have to have that big stick.
The article continues on with "L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's daily newspaper, gave Obama a positive review after his first 100 days in office. In a front-page editorial, it said that even on ethical questions Obama hadn't confirmed the "radical" direction he discussed during the campaign." It appears to me that L'Osservatore Romano is obviously a liberal newspaper, perhaps it is the Roman equivalent of the New York Times. Also L'Osservatore Romano doesn't appear to believe in the art of actually "reporting" as it is out of touch with the president’s radical viewpoints on the ethical issues America faces. What about the speech he gave last week about how he is on the side of the homosexual - about how he is their champion? Or how about the Freedom of Choice act? Or about how he wants doctors and nurses to be forced to perform abortions, whether or not they want to? How about the fact that whenever he makes a speech at a religious institution he makes them take down all religious paraphernalia? How can they even get away with making such an untrue statement as "that even on ethical questions Obama hadn't confirmed the "radical" direction he discussed during the campaign."???
I could go on with the rest of article which discusses the face that Obama went to Catholic school for a few years, so he will understand some of the jargon the pope will be speaking. It also discusses the fact that Obama is a "Protestant" (although I've never heard of a pro-homosexual, anti-family, pro-choice, anti-religious Protestant, I could be wrong), and waiting to select a church because of the amount of political scrutiny it will receive. What, are we waiting to find another Dr. Jeremiah Wright? Hopefully another doesn't exist.
One final thing: "Just this week, Benedict issued a major document calling for a new world financial order guided by ethics and the search for the common good, denouncing the profit-at-all-cost mentality blamed for bringing about the global financial meltdown." Maybe he can personally relate this message to our commander in chief, who is even now thinking about wasting our money in Stimulus 2.0. I hope "search for common good" is taken as for the people, and not wasteful "green" efforts. Jeremy Wiggins, http://rebirthed1.blog.com/



7-9-09
ANAHEIM, CA - Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori says it's "heresy" to believe that an individual can be saved through a sinner's prayer of repentance.
In her opening address to the church's General Conference in California, Jefferts Schori called that "the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God."
The presiding bishop said that view is "caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus."According to Schori, it is heresy to believe that an individual's prayer can achieve a saving relationship with God. "That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words inthe place that only God can occupy."More info from the Conference below ...What's your reaction to these statements by Bishop Jefferts Schori?Vote in our pollBishops want marriage rituals for homosexualsMeanwhile, six Episcopal bishops are pushing for greater recognition of same-sex marriages at a national gathering of church officials in California. Bishop Thomas Ely of Vermont says he and other bishops from states recognizing same-sex marriage will offer a resolution urging the church to adapt marriage rituals to include homosexual couples.
Ely says the resolution will be introduced at the church's General Convention, which started Wednesday in Anaheim. The convention is held every three years.
Besides Vermont, states that have legalized same-sex marriage are Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Connecticut.



7-2 and marriages and political careers in this case. In one especially soul-baring e-mail to his Argentine mistress, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford quoted from 1 Corinthians 13 about the nature of love.


It is patient and kind, he wrote. It is NOT jealous or boastful.

The Christian counselors Sanford sought out while trying to decide whether to stay with his wife or jump on a plane to South America advised him what else love is and isn't.

"Their point is that love is not a feeling," Sanford told The Associated Press in a tearful two-day confessional. "It's a choice. It's an action."

That sentiment might seem cold to many Americans, but it is perfectly consistent with the born-again, evangelical Christian world that Sanford inhabits, says sociologist John Bartowski.

"What evangelicals are doing is sort of carving out a subcultural view of love which is not so highly romanticized as we see in movies, that is at odds with the dominant view of love," says Bartowski, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and author of the book, "Remaking the Godly Marriage: Gender Negotiation in Evangelical Families."

That world view, he says, "divorces" love from emotion, because "feelings are fleeting and not to be trusted."

"Love is something that is cultivated in the trenches of living a day-to-day relationship," says Bartowski. "That is not a Hallmark moment."

So while there are countless romantics out there urging Sanford to follow his heart, he can expect mostly tough love from his own spiritual community.

"The emotions are the icing on the cake," says Ben Witherington, a New Testament professor at Kentucky's Asbury Theological Seminary. "They're not the cake."

Witherington says feelings are a "notoriously unreliable guide" in personal relationships because they tend to change with time. Marriage is not just a commitment of will, he says, but a commitment before God.

"That's why, at a Christian wedding service, you don't say, 'I feel like' and 'I feel like.' You say, 'I will' and 'I will,' 'I do' and 'I do.'"

Sanford is a man writhing in agony as his emotions battle his sense of duty _ to his wife, to their four sons, to his office.

In one e-mail to his lover, Maria Belen Chapur, Sanford said to "sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul."

He told the AP on Tuesday that the past 8 1/2 years have been an emotional "wrestling match," a struggle "between one's heart and one's value system."

"A whole lot more than a simple affair," he said. "It's a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."

That is not how he talks of his bond with Jenny Sanford.

"I do have a love for my wife," he told AP. "I do have a love for my boys. I do have a love for the farm. I do have a love for the world of ideas and politics."

What has also become clear over the past few days is that Sanford has decided _ at least for now _ to take his friends' advice and try to repair his marriage. The friend whose words appear to echo loudest is Warren "Cubby" Culbertson.

The owner of a court reporting business, Culbertson, 51, is an influential Bible study leader and considered a pillar of the state capital's Christian community. Sanford told him about the affair immediately after his wife discovered it in January, and Culbertson has been counseling the couple ever since _ even holding a monthlong spiritual "boot camp" at the governor's mansion.

Culbertson told the AP he believes that "everybody's vulnerable, and there are no boundaries on darkness." He does not dine alone with other women and keeps his office door open when he has a female visitor.

He says he has counseled many men "who have fallen in the position that Mark's in."

"Everybody starts with the same exact story: 'We got to be friends. We started talking. I didn't mean for anything to happen,'" he says. "That's exactly where a sin begins."

Many times during the past week, Sanford has quoted Culbertson and others almost verbatim in describing where things went astray.

"It was innocent," he said of his first meeting on a beachside Uruguayan dance floor with Chapur. "That was the beginning of sin right there. ... If you're a married guy, at the end of the day, you shouldn't be dancing with somebody else."

Culbertson has advised Sanford to stay with his wife. If Sanford works diligently, he believes the couple can find an even "greater love" than they once had.

The Rev. Gary Chapman agrees.

A senior associate pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., Chapman has been a marriage counselor for 35 years. He has written several books, most notably "The Five Love Languages."

Chapman says Sanford is in the throes of what he calls the "in-love experience."

"It's not that there is not emotion involved in love," he says. "But the 'in-love' experience is super emotion. It's very euphoric. It doesn't take any effort. You're just pushed along by your emotions."

That high doesn't last, Chapman warns. Rather than seek that high over and over, he counsels couples to stick with the commitment they've already made and learn how to "keep love alive."

A faded love can be reborn, he says. But it takes time _ and work.

"You don't sit around waiting for the emotional love to come back."

7-1

Religious broadcaster building $4M home despite ministry layoffs

Associated Press - 7/1/2009 11:15:00 AM

CHARLOTTE, NC - A religious broadcaster is building a $4 million home in a gated, lakefront community in western South Carolina at the same time that the ministry has cut jobs and reset thermostats to save money in its new headquarters.

Inspiration Networks' CEO David Cerullo is building the 9,000-square-foot home on a lot that overlooks Lake Keowee, The Charlotte Observer reported Monday.

Inspiration Networks has drawn scrutiny for up to $26 million in incentives it won from South Carolina to move from Charlotte to Indian Land, South Carolina, in Lancaster County. The network's revenues are expected to approach $100 million, largely donations from people who are told God favors those who donate.

Cerullo has said 80 cents of each donated dollar is spent to spread the gospel.

In addition to laying off workers, the newspaper reported, the ministry froze wages and stopped making contributions to 401(k) retirement accounts. In addition, the thermostat on the network's new building was cut to 65 degrees during the winter.

A network spokesman did not respond to calls and e-mails requesting comment on the house. Cerullo defended his $1.5 million in compensation in a March interview and said he rejected recommendations that he be paid more.

"If they've got these kinds of assets, does the state really need to offer...tax breaks?" asked Don Weaver, president of the South Carolina Association of Taxpayers.

Employees told the newspaper the ministry began laying off some workers late last year.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is investigating the finances of six other televangelists and told the newspaper that leaders of religious nonprofits should be careful not to use viewers' donations to adopt extravagant lifestyles.

IRS rules bar nonprofits from paying "unreasonable compensation" to officials.


6/30 ( I am disgusted.)

A Catholic hospital chain in Massachusetts has bowed to public pressure.

Jim Sedlak of American Life League (ALL) points out a pending merger between the hospital and a pro-abortion healthcare network sparked an outrage among pro-life supporters.

"The Catholic hospital system in Boston, known as Caritas Christi, had already signed papers to enter into an agreement with a secular organization to provide a healthcare network that would cover abortions, contraception, and other things that are against Catholic teaching," he notes.

The contract with pro-abortion Centene Corp would have gone into effect July 1, according to an ALL press release. ALL members and others around the country urged Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley to halt the contract.

"The cardinal announced that he had gotten involved and that he had ordered that the whole arrangement be ended," Sedlak adds, "and that Caritas Christi will remain separate as a Catholic hospital system."

ALL president Judie Brown commended Cardinal O'Malley for his courage, leadership, and "pastoral concern for the health and well-being" of the unborn. His actions, she says, are "a sign of the vitality" of American Catholics' commitment to human life and personhood.

6/29 A conservative activist is questioning some of the conclusions Christian researcher George Barna reached in his "Spiritual Profile of Homosexual Adults."

The new Barna survey of homosexual adults finds that 27 percent qualify as born-again Christians and 43 percent have an "orthodox, biblical perception of God." According to Barna, "People who portray gay adults as godless, hedonistic, Christian bashers are not working with the facts. A substantial majority of gays cite their faith as a central facet of their life, consider themselves to be Christian, and claim to have some type of meaningful personal commitment to Jesus Christ active in their life today."




Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, believes Barna speaks "too cavalierly" about "homosexual Christians."

"My test is [to] substitute another sexual sin and see if it makes sense. Would we be talking about a survey of porn-using Christians or incestuous Christians? That sounds stark, but that's, I believe, the appropriate biblical analogy," he contends.

Barna, LaBarbera says, is naïve if he thinks the homosexual activist movement is not made up of "hedonistic Christian bashers."

"I think there are Christians who struggle with the sin of homosexuality -- but proud homosexual Christians? That's an oxymoron to me in the same way as I would say proud adulterous Christians," he adds. "And so, I think we have to be very careful because I see the tactic of the Emergent Church and the Christian left is to start talking more and more about 'gay Christians,' and what they end up doing is demonizing the so-called 'Religious Right' and saying that the Religious Right is all wrong in the way it has talked about homosexuality."

A book by Barna Group president Dave Kinnaman titled UnChristian contends that "hostility toward gays has become virtually synonymous with the Christian faith;" however, LaBarbera says he does not know any born-again Christians who hate homosexuals.

In his comments on the survey's findings, Barna notes that most homosexuals who have some history within the Christian church have rejected orthodox teachings and principles -- but in many cases, no more than have heterosexual Christians. "Although there are clearly some substantial differences in the religious beliefs and practices of the straight and gay populations, there may be less of a spiritual gap between straights and gays than many Americans would assume," he states. Of the more than 9,200 adults interviewed for the survey, 280 self-identified as being homosexual. (Read Barna's entire report)



6/27

ATLANTA, GA - A lawsuit filed in a California accuses Atlanta televangelist Creflo Dollar of stealing a spiritual text message business concept, then marketing the business to his worldwide audience for millions of dollars in revenue.


The lawsuit, filed by Devone Lawson of Marina del Rey, California, accuses Dollar, his son Jeremy Dollar, and other ministry staff of breach of nondisclosure agreement, fraud, unjust enrichment, civil conspiracy, breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets.

Starting in 2004, Lawson claims he spent a year working with Dollar's World Changers Church International ministry on a subscription service that would send daily inspirational text messages to church members' cell phones. In the lawsuit, Lawson claims the ministry violated a nondisclosure agreement when it eventually formed another company and launched a similar "Word On the Go" text messaging service in 2006.

Attorneys for Lawson estimate the $4.99 per month subscription service generates more than $50 million a year in revenue.
TESTING THE FAITH
Why are young people leaving the church?
Groundbreaking study says Sunday School makes exit more likely
Posted: June 14, 2009
10:11 pm Eastern

©2009WorldNetDaily What does the age of the Earth have to do with the exodus of young people from American churches? Ken Ham, known for his Answers in Genesis creation-science ministry, says a major study he commissioned by a respected researcher

unveils for the first time in a scientific fashion the startling reasons behind statistics that show two-thirds of young people in evangelical churches will leave when they move into their 20s. The study, highlighted in Ham's new book with researcher Britt Beemer, "Already Gone: Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it," finds church youth already are "lost" in their hearts and minds in elementary, middle and high school – not in college as many assume. "A lot of the research already done has been to find out how many believe, how many support abortion, believe in the resurrection, say they're born again," Ham told WND. "But nobody has really ever delved into why two-thirds of young people will walk away from the church."Get "Already Gone: Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it"The first-of-its-kind study by Beemer – a former senior research analyst for the Heritage Foundation and founder in 1979 of the American Research Group – included 20,000 phone calls and detailed surveys of 1,000 20 to 29 year olds who used to attend evangelical churches on a regular basis. The survey found, much to Ham's surprise, a "Sunday School syndrome," indicating children who faithfully attend Bible classes in their church over the years actually are more likely to question the authority of Scripture. "This is a brutal wake-up call for the church, showing how our programs and our approaches to Christian education are failing dismally," Ham writes in the book. Among the survey findings, regular participants in Sunday School are more likely to:

• Leave the church
  
• Believe that the Bible is less true
  
• Defend the legality of abortion and same-sex marriage
  
• Defend premarital sex

The bookexplores a number of reasons for the findings, but Ham sees one overarching problem that is related to how churches and parents have taught youth to understand the Genesis account of creation. Ham – who believes in a literal six-day creation that happened 6,000 to 10,000 years ago – says the church opened a door for the exodus of youth, beginning in the 19th Century, when it began teaching that "the age of the Earth is not an issue as long as you trust in Jesus and believe in the resurrection and the Gospel accounts."

Ken Ham

"What you see in the Bible is that when there is compromise in one generation, and it's not dealt with, you usually notice it to a greater extent in the next generation," Ham told WND. In previous generations, young people could live with this inconsistency, he said, but with an increasingly secular and atheistic public education system – where some 90 percent of church-going youth are trained – today's youth find it hard to see a connection between what they are taught in church and what they learn at school. "Because of the way in which they've been educated," Ham said, teens come to believe "that what they are taught in school is reality, but the church teaches stories and morality and relationship. Bible teaching is not real in the sense of real history." Now, as parents or leaders tell youth they can "continue to believe in evolution, millions of years," Ham said, young people are starting to see, 'Well, I can then believe what I'm taught at school – but school has nothing to do with God.'" The key issue is that this doubt about the Bible's account of origins causes youth to doubt the authority of Scripture, he said. "Salvation is not conditioned on what you believe about the age of the Earth and the six days of creation," Ham said. "There are many who believe in millions of years and are Christians." But the Genesis issue does matter, he contends, "because salvation does rise or fall on the authority of Scripture. The message of the Gospel comes from these words of Scripture." When thatBible is undermined, he explained, everything it teaches is in doubt. Ham's new book shows how young people can be given "answers to help them understand you can really believe God's word, that it "connects to reality and it's really a book of history." Helping young people makes sense of reports such as the claim last month of the discovery of a "missing link" proving Darwin's theory of evolution is Ham's specialty. In a May 19 interview with WND, he pointed to a line in the scientific report about the discovery that countered the researchers' bold claims to media. The fossil's species "could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved [the line leading to humans]," states the report, published in the online journal Public Library of Science, "but we are not advocating this here." The London Guardian newspaper also reported that scientific reviewers of the research asked that others "tone down" claims that the fossil was on the human evolutionary line. "The reviewers said we don't know this is a missing link, and they asked the people who wrote [the newspaper reports] to tone it down," Ham told WND, "and yet we have this media hype claiming this is it, this is the missing link."

***********************
ed. note. Could it be that they are starving and not being fed the meat of the word or not being taught the truth?
Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it. Prov 22:6
THAT is God's Word and his PROMISE.

Lord knows how I feel about experts, any one with hands on experience can put anyone of them in their place by proving by DOING it and not talking about it or theorizing about it. I think it's time to hit the sack soon.