Congregations throughout the Denver, Colorado area area mourning with Grace Community Church who lost their pastor in a tragic accident while on a mission trip.
Pastor Terry Broadwater was in the Himalayas with his son and other church members conducting services. The pastor and the mission team would hike to small towns in the high peaks and minister to the villagers. The church said the pastor apparently slipped during one of the hikes and fell off a cliff.
“It is with extremely heavy hearts we share the news that, as a result of a climbing incident, Pastor Terry Broadwater went to be with the Lord today while on a mission trip to India,” Church leaders said in a statement. “Terry was on the trip with his oldest son and several members of Grace’s leadership and pastoral team. At the time of the accident Terry and the team were in a remote part of the Himalayas.”
“Due to the location, further details are taking time to be developed and efforts in country are being coordinated between Terry’s family, local Indian police, Grace leadership, and the U.S. Embassy in Delhi.”
The trip was said to be a way the pastor melded his passion for hiking and being outdoors with the gospel. He had been married to his wife Jo Ann for 32 years and leaves her behind with three children.
A pastor who was charged with murder after defending himself when a man attacked him in Las Vegas, Nevada called it an “answer to prayer” when the state dropped all charges.
However, the news was tempered with a need to continue to praying because a grand jury is being convened to hear the evidence and decide if the charges should be reinstated against Robert Cox.
Pastor Cox, his wife and 20 interns stopped at the Four Kegs Sports Pub in June 2013 during a Las Vegas trip to get dinner. As the group chatted in the parking lot before leaving, 55-year-old Link Ellingson approached the group and assaulted several of the members. Cox stepped in to stop him. At some point, Ellingson lost balance and fell hitting his head.
Cox’s attorney says he’s not concerned with the grand jury.
Frank Cofer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he believes that even if the grand jury indicts the pastor he will eventually be acquitted.
Pastor Cox says the whole episode made him rely more on the Lord.
“The whole time I’ve had to trust God,” he told the Journal.
While millions of American Christians are celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision protecting religious freedom, one prominent Baptist pastor is cautiously warning that the celebration of freedom may be short lived.
Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas says that while the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling “stopped the greatest attempted assault on religious liberty in history”, the case is a sign that the government is going to increase attempts to strip away the religious freedom of Christians.
“The Obama administration was basically saying that you can be religious and pro-life in your church, synagogue or at home on the weekend, but when you go to work on Mondays, you have to give up those beliefs and become pro-abortion,” Jeffress said to the Christian Post. “There is no such thing in the Constitution as the separation of faith from the rest of your life.”
Jeffress said that the mainstream media and pro-abortion activists have been repeating the complete lie that those who want to protect the life of unborn children are nothing more than religious fringe extremists.
“It is a part of the belief system of tens of millions of Protestants, Catholics, Jewish people and people of all faiths,” he said. “This country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. In this ruling, I think the court is very sound in saying that we have the right to uphold and exercise those beliefs.”
A Christian pastor imprisoned in Iran for his faith who had been feared executed because of his three week disappearance has been found at an Iranian prison.
Pastor Behnam Irani, who went missing on June 7, was found in Ghezal Hezar Prison in Karaj, Iran.
“He was unable to say where he had been taken or what they did to him,” Present Truth Ministries reported. “He was missing since June 7, 2014 without any information being given to his family regarding his whereabouts. The fear was that he was taken and executed without any notice. Thank you for praying and taking action on his behalf.”
Pastor Irani has been imprisoned since 2011 on charges of “action against the state.” He is serving a six year sentence on the charges.
He has suffered severe beatings from authorities during his imprisonment and is suffering from internal bleeding. Supporters say that just like imprisoned American pastor Saeed Abedini, Iranian authorities are denying much needed health care to Irani.
Iranian authorities would still not reveal where Irani was taken or why he was kept from family and legal counsel.
One of the opening speakers at the 42nd PCA General Assembly told those in attendance that America is rapidly progressing to the point where declaring Jesus the only way to eternal life will be considered spreading hate.
“It will be difficult to say in this culture ‘Jesus is the only way’,” Pastor Bryan Chapell warned. “That will be interpreted as hate speech.”
Chapell said that sticking to truth will be a point of contention with the world.
“If you continue to stand ‘for Christ alone’ in a culture that calls that bigotry,” he said, “that will be the issue that presses us in the future.”
Chapell, the former chancellor of the Covenant Theological Seminary, said that pluralism is becoming a major enemy of God’s church and that people of faith need to join together on issues so they can fight that enemy together.
Ron Taylor, the stated clerk of the PCA GA, agreed with Chapell’s assessment. He said we cannot forget the true enemies of the church are the world, the flesh and the devil.
Members in attendance at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Annual Meeting were taken to task by a Texas pastor who said they have been spending too much time talking to the wrong community of people.
Pastor John Meador said Christians need to stop talking about the gospel with others who are soaked in the gospel and start spending our time taking the gospel to the people who are starved for its good news.
“We’re not getting the gospel into the fields of America, we’re abandoning them and the reason for that is because our army has fled. We have no heart for the captives,” Meador said.
Meador said Americans need to stop thinking that evangelization and witnessing are for missionaries in far away parts of the world.
“The soul next door is as equal as the soul on the other side of the world,” he said.
Meador said that Christians need to realize a passion for everyone.
“What’s it going to take for the concept of your unreached neighbor to become totally intolerable for you?” Meador asked. “I don’t even know sometimes if we’re capable of that kind of anger or if we’re so tempered by the complacent apathy of our culture that we don’t feel this anymore. You and I have to come to the point where we spread the Gospel because we can’t take it anymore.”
Ronnie Floyd, one of three men in the running for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that the denomination has seen a decline in baptisms because of “cool pastors” who are more concerned with fitting into the world’s way of life than having a focus on glorifying God.
“Some of us have a heart to be so real with people that we just think if we’re cool enough, we’re going to get [the numbers],” said Floyd. “We’re never going to be cool enough to win our towns, our rural settings, to win our cities, to win the nation, to win the world, to win the nations. We’re never going to be cool enough; the only thing that’s going to bring that is a binding movement of the spirit of God that comes only when we are going up to be with God.”
Floyd, senior pastor of Cross Church in northwest Arkansas, cited statistics that showed 60 percent of SBC churches did not have a single baptism of anyone between 12 and 17 years old. A full 25 percent of churches overall reported that no one had accepted Christ and was baptized in their churches in the last year.
Floyd told the pastors in attendance at the 2014 SBC Pastor’s Conference that it was more important to spend time with God and to be right with Him than it was to be pleasing to the people and to “fit in” with society.
“The future of our leadership, the future of our church and the future of the Southern Baptist Convention will be discovered by one thing and one thing alone – us going up to be with God,” Floyd said.
An Irish pastor who condemned Islam during a sermon is being investigated by police in Northern Ireland for a possible hate crime.
Pastor James McConnell of Whitewell Metropolitan Church gave a sermon on Sunday May 18th condemning Islam after being outraged over the treatment of Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese Christian sentenced to death because she will not convert to Islam.
In the sermon, Pastor McConnell said that Christians around the world are persecuted and killed daily for belief in Christ by “fanatical worshippers of Allah.” He said that Allah is not the same as the Christian God but rather a heathen deity and the British government was foolish for attempting to appease radical Islamists.
Northern Ireland politicians immediately condemned the pastor’s comments. Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said that the preacher’s comments about the Islamic religion were “hate mongering.” He called for a full investigation of the pastor to see if his comments could generate racist attacks on Muslims.
New Jersey churches are gaining attention from the local community for a different spin the Stations of the Cross.
The churches held their annual Stations of the Cross processional around the city stopping at locations of violent crimes. The churches said the violent crimes reminded them of the suffering that Christ experienced on the cross.
“We see the connection between brutality in the streets of Jersey City and the brutality that Jesus witnessed against in his own death on the cross,” said Grace Church Rector Rev. Laurie Wurm. “In His crucifixion He exposed our violence to one another, which includes our silence and therefore complicity with violence. The church is called to witness to another way. We hope this is a first step.”
The pastors involved say it was an opportunity to work together to bring the Gospel into the community in a way that is socially relevant and connects to those who do not know Jesus but live having to deal with the violence every day.
Eight different churches banded together for the outreach. The local police department provided security and the route they said reached the most violent crimes in the city.
A man who calls himself a “militant atheist” will spend the next eight years in prison for his attack on a pastor last October.
James Maxie, 28, approached Pastor Norman Hayes of Bridge Community Church in North Hampton, Ohio after services after the pastor asked Maxie’s girlfriend if she was being abused. Maxie then beat the pastor, leaving large cuts on his face.
Maxie jumped on top of the pastor and kept beating him after the pastor had fallen to the floor. Witnesses say that they feared Maxie was going to kill him.
The police chief who responded to the incident said he had never seen “an incident this brutal.”
Maxie was sentenced under a plea deal that had him pleading guilty to second-degree felony assault.
Pastor Hayes says that he holds no ill will toward Maxie.
“I would want him to know going into prison hearing from me that I’ve extended forgiveness for him,” Hayes said. “[Forgiveness] is a gift. It’s something that you can’t earn.”
