Family Fun Fest returns to Plantsville

Faith Living Church in Plantsville invites you and your family to an exciting event, The Family Fun Fest '07. This safe, exciting and fun-filled family evening will be Friday, October 26th from 6pm to 9pm. Hundreds of people attend the Family Fun Fest each year!

A 40x100 foot tent will be packed with carnival games, an inflatable moonwalk, and the back parking lot will have an awesome paintball range. Everyone wins, play a game, shoot a target or Dunk the Pastor and you'll get a prize. Guarantee you go home with a bag full of bounty! Not to mention the whole event is absolutely free, including free cotton candy, popcorn, hot chocolate, & hot apple cider.

For more information or directions call 860.621.6452 or visit the church website.

End-times message in Bristol tonight

Bethel Christian Church in Bristol, Connecticut will host Evangelist Rev. Cecil Peasley of Living Ministries International from South Africa on Wednesday, October 17, at 6:30 pm. Rev. Peasley will be speaking on the world's Midnight Hour. The event is free and all are welcome.

For directions, please visit the church website here.

New churches added to the Connecticut Church Map

We're happy to announce the following churches have been added to the Connecticut Church Map:

Church On The Move, East Haddam, and

Faith Living Church, Plantsville.

Know of other good churches? Write us at info@prayct.org!

Radio ministry profiled

The Day has an interesting profile today of the ongoing strength and growth of shortwave radio ministry around the world:

He wound the little plastic handle round and round, charging the radio like winding a watch, and soon a preacher's voice boomed across a courtyard filled with goats and turkeys. Twenty miles from the nearest paved road, Matsimbe smiled as he listened to a Texas preacher's sermons about Jesus and Saint Paul, translated into a local language spoken only in the southern African backcountry.

“I love that this person has brought us this message,” said Matsimbe, 59, a farmer with 24 grandchildren, whose native language, Xitshwa, is spoken by only a million or so people. “It makes us feel like there is somebody who cares for us.”

Read the rest here.

Regional Prayer Conference with Jackson Senyonga, October 25-26

Jackson Senyonga, Pastor of Christian Life Church in Kampala, Uganda is coming to Connecticut for 2 days of transforming prayer and impartation.

Meetings will be held at The Westin Hotel, 1 Stamford Place, in Stamford, CT, each night at 7:00 pm.

Pastor Senyonga is the leader of the Ugandan prayer movement featured on the widely acclaimed Transformation 2 Video produced by the Sentinel Group.

Christian Life Church in Kampala has a membership of more than 40,000 people, with an average Sunday attendance of 22,000. The Church has also planted more than 600 new churches and is building homes for widows and orphans.

More information about Jackson Senyonga is available at www.christianlifeministries.org.

A Night To Honor Israel, October 21

On Sunday evening, October 21, Gateway Christian Fellowship in West Haven will host Connecticut's first annual "A Night To Honor Israel." The Christian community in Connecticut is invited to come and demonstrate our love and support for the State of Israel.

A Night To Honor Israel is a non-conversionary tribute to the nation of Israel and the Jewish people of the world. Its purpose is to promote esteem and understanding between Christians and Jews and to emphasize that the beliefs we hold in common are greater than the differences we have allowed to separate us.

Among the guests will be: Ambassador Asaf Shariv, the Consul general of Israel in New York; Roz Rothstein, the National Director of Stand With Us; David Brog, the Executive Director of Christians United For Israel; and Robert Stearns, Northeast Director of Christians United For Israel and Founder and Director of Eagles' Wings Ministries.

More information can be obtained from Christians United For Israel's Connecticut chapter (click here.)

New church added to Connecticut Church Map

We're happy to announce that we've added the Branford Evangelical Free Church to the Connecticut Church Map.

Got a church you'd like us to add? Write us at info@prayct.org.

Litchfield County prayer meetings make an impact

Good news from the northwest corner:

For the past 18 months, many local churches have been working together to bring another awakening to Litchfield County.

"When Greater Litchfield County Prays - A United Celebration" was the culmination of three weeks of prayers at every town green in the county, Pastor Ron Boratko of Torrington Foursquare Church said. The celebration was held at Coe Memorial Park late Sunday afternoon.

"This is the result of 18 months of churches getting together," Boratko said.

Boratko lamented that many churches have stuck to their denominations and prayers and have not worked with other churches in spreading the word of God. He said that people have been stuck in their own worlds, only concerned with themselves.

"No one church will bring an awakening to a city," Boratko said.

Another great awakening will come when the church gets on its knees and repents its sins and when churches come together to preach live and love Jesus Christ, Boratko said.

Amen. More here from the Torrington Register-Citizen.

America: Christian or Secular?

Michael Medved, who is no shrinking violet, is out with an op-ed piece claiming that the Founders intended a Christian America, not a secular one. Although this would have been obvious to anyone born prior to 1900, his historical review is instructive for us who live in this benighted latter day:

In fact, the same Congress that approved the First Amendment gave a clear indication of the way they understood its language when, less than 24 hours after adopting the fateful wording, they passed the following Resolution: “Resolved, that a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States, to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceable to establish a Constitution of government for their safety and happiness.” It never occurred to this first Congress in 1789 that their call for a government sponsored day of “thanksgiving and prayer” would conflict with the prohibition they had just adopted prohibiting “an establishment of religion.” Not until the infamous Everson decision of 1947 did the Supreme Court create the doctrine of a “wall of separation between church and state,” quoting (out of context) from an 1802 letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association. President Jefferson created the image of the wall in order to reassure the Baptists that government would never interfere with their religious life, but he never suggested that religion would have no role in government. In 1803, in fact, Jefferson recommended to Congress the approval of a treaty that provided government funds to support a Catholic priest in ministering to the Kaskaskia Indians.

Three times he signed extensions of another measure described as “An Act regulating the grants of land appropriated for Military services and for the Society of the United Brethren for propagating the Gospel among the Heathen.” Jefferson also participated every week in Christian church services in the Capitol Building in Washington DC; until 1866, in fact, the Capitol hosted worship every Sunday and, intermittently, conducted a Sunday school. No one challenged these 71 years of Christian prayer at the very seat of federal power: given the founders' endorsement of the positive role of organized faith, it hardly inspired controversy to convene worship at the Capitol. In fact, at the time of the first Continental Congress, nine of the thirteen original colonies had “established churches” – meaning that they each supported an official denomination, even to the point of using public money for church construction and maintenance. These religious establishments – clearly in contradiction to the idea of a “secular government” – continued in three states long after the adoption of the First Amendment. Connecticut disestablished its favored Congregational Church only in 1818, New Hampshire in 1819, and Massachusetts in 1833.

Amazingly enough, these established churches flourished for nearly fifty years under the constitution despite the First Amendment’s famous insistence that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Read the whole thing (and comments if you can tolerate it) here.

Photo by Joey Gannon; some rights reserved.

A Christian hangs a bullseye on his back to fight adult entertainment

But Portland First Selectwoman Susan Bransfield
Expresses First Amendment Concerns

A professing Christian in Portland, Connecticut has taken the career-threatening step of using the "C word" - "Christian" - in his role as a public official. In a Middletown Press article about the possibility of adult entertainment in that small town (pop. 10,000 approx.) we learn that:

The town presently has no adult entertainment venues. However, there have been persistent rumors that one may be in the offing.

The town restricts adult entertainment from being established closer than 500 feet from schools, churches, public parks, etc.

Deanna L. Rhodes, the town's planning and land use administrator, has proposed increasing the boundary to 750 feet.

But Selectman Scott A. Adamsons is pressing for a wider boundary.

When the selectmen discussed the issue earlier this week, Adamsons initially proposed a 3,000-foot barrier; however, he was persuaded to reduce that to 1,000 feet. But in a subsequent written communication, Adamsons said his real intent to is "take a stand on principle and ask for a three-mile buffer."

"As a responsible Christian and public official, it is my duty to bring this concept before the board and the community," Adamsons said.

First Selectwoman Susan S. Bransfield cautioned Adamsons that an effort to enact more stringent regulations could run afoul of court rulings that have designated adult entertainment as "protected free speech."

Adamsons was unmoved, however, saying that is a fight he would welcome. He said he wanted to "protect kids from doing things they probably shouldn't be doing." And, he said, adult entertainment is one of three of what he called "the fatal vices," the other two being gambling and alcohol.

We don't know Mr. Adamsons, what church he attends, or anything else about him. But we do applaud his willingness to revive the antiquated idea that there are things probably "shouldn't be doing." To some, this sort of rhetoric makes Christians look like the Taliban. To others, it just marks a call for a return to sanity.

Read the whole thing here.

Religious people are the happiest

Despite the recent disclosures about Mother Teresa's spiritual struggles, the data suggest that religious people are happier than the somewhat religious and the nonreligious alike:

Americans can be divided into three groups when it comes to religious practice. Surveys indicate that about 30% attend houses of worship at least once per week (I will call them "religious"), while about 20% are "secular"--never attending. The rest attend sometimes, but irregularly. These population dimensions have changed relatively little over the decades: Since the early 1970s, the religious group has not shrunk by more than two or three percentage points.

How do religious Americans compare to the secular when it comes to happiness? In 2004, the General Social Survey asked a sample of Americans, "Would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?" Religious people were more than twice as likely as the secular to say they were "very happy" (43% to 21%). Meanwhile, secular people were nearly three times as likely as the religious to say they were not too happy (21% to 8%). In the same survey, religious people were more than a third more likely than the secular to say they were optimistic about the future (34% to 24%).

The happiness gap between religious and secular people is not because of money or other personal characteristics. Imagine two people who are identical in every important way--income, education, age, sex, family status, race and political views. The only difference is that the first person is religious; the second is secular. The religious person will still be 21 percentage points more likely than the secular person to say that he or she is very happy.

More here from the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com.