A gunman opened fire at a church youth performance Sunday…
He killed two people, including a man who witnesses called a hero for shielding others from a shotgun blast. Seven adults were also injured but no children were harmed at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. Church members said they dove under pews or ran from the building when the shooting started. The gunman was tackled by congregants and eventually taken into police custody. Associated Press Check your heart; because this is a Unitarian Church (cult), are we “less” concerned and upset over this event? I checked myself tonight during the new, it’s a good measuring stick.
With attendance becoming increasingly irregular and tithing on the decline…
Churches across the country have struggled with how to appeal to their memberships for money. Add economic woes like rising gas and food prices and an unsteady job market, and many Christian groups are bracing for an extra financial pinch, if they haven't felt it already. Even the Vatican showed a $13.5 million deficit last year, which it recently blamed in part on the weak dollar hurting its investments. But any movement that calls for a bountiful increase in church giving is bound to stir the ire of skeptics — even some from among the ranks of Christian conservatives. Twin Cities News Of course, most Christians give much less than 10 percent of their earnings, a figure with Biblical significance: According to the research group Empty Tomb Inc. of Champaign, Ill., Protestants donated a smaller percentage of their income in 2005 (2.6 percent) than they did at the depth of the Great Depression (3.2 percent). Because attitudes toward giving have changed as Americans have gotten wealthier and more insulated from the desperately poor. Before World War II, about 40 percent of U.S. residents lived in poverty by today's federal standard. Is this “really the reason”, or is it poor church leadership as it relates to stewardship? People are tired of activating their faith, as they watch the church live lavishly off of the tithes and the offerings.
Who is having the “best sex”; Christians have the best sex…
Contrary to popular notions of Christians as sexual prudes, 15 years of study have convinced a psychologist and professor that "knowing" your spouse "in the biblical sense" can be scientifically verified as a fulfilling and spiritual experience. While many people assume biblical writers used the phrase "knowing" a person as a bashful way of saying "having sex," he believes the writers and translators were tapping into the uniquely intimate sense of knowing God that can be found within married, Christian sexuality. World Net Daily
Airplanes, Oil Fields and Family Members making thousands…
Here in the gentle hills of north Texas, televangelist Kenneth Copeland has built a religious empire teaching that God wants his followers to prosper. Over the years, a circle of Copeland's relatives and friends have done just that, The Associated Press has found. They include the brother-in-law with a lucrative deal to broker Copeland's television time, the son who acquired church-owned land for his ranching business and saw it more than quadruple in value, and board members who together have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking at church events. Yahoo News Prosperity, property management or proper scheming?
