Haitian Health Foundation Benefit, July 11

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Come out for an exciting evening of Contemporary Christian Music performed by three talented bands and a chance to help the Haitian Health Foundation (HHF) battle the current food crisis in Jeremie, Haiti. All tax deductible donations and proceeds from this event will be donated to the Haitian Health Foundation of Norwich, CT for the Emergency Food Crisis Fund.

This event will be held at St. Bernard High School, Uncasville, CT, from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM on July 11, 2008.

Tickets will also be sold at the Gate; Adults: $10.00; Ages 12-18: $8.00; Children under 12: Free. Advance Tickets may be purchased by sending check made payable to the Haitian Health Foundation to: Benefit Concert C/O Leone, 18 Judd Brook Road, Colchester, CT 06415. Pre-paid Tickets will be ready for pick up on the night of the event.

Musical gusts include: Musical Guests: Spiritn3D, PS32, and Roy Dunn-Maclean.

For more information, phone: 860-537-1424.

Revivalist James Levesque in West Haven, May 24, June 1

James Levesque

Revivalist James Levesque will be ministering at Gateway Christian Fellowship in West Haven on May 24 and June 1.

James Levesque ministers powerfully in the prophetic under an open-heaven atmosphere. After a life-changing encounter with God in his teen years, he has operated as an evangelist and a church planter. James has a burning passion to see people step into divine destiny through a mighty move of God. Most recently, he has started Engaging Heaven Ministries, a committed team of radical believers who long to see Christ’s fullness established on the earth. Through crusades, a fresh approach to street ministry, teaching and training, James has a vision to see New England, the nation and the world changed by the power of Jesus Christ.

For more information visit www.engagingheaven.com.

To see or submit Christian events in our area, visit the Connecticut Christian Events Calendar.

New England Prayer Journey, June 3 - 5

Pray for God's glory to touch New England again...

I've received the following notice from the New England Alliance and the Connecticut House of Prayer.

On June 3, 4 and 5th, 2008 there will be a historic Prayer Journey that will cover the six New England States. This Prayer Journey is being sponsored by the New England Alliance, which is a movement of pastors, ministry leaders, and intercessors from a broad spectrum of Christian denominations representing prayer and ministry networks from the six states of New England.

The NE Alliance has been meeting since the summer of 2006 for monthly prayer gatherings and quarterly retreats to seek the Lord together. The group includes a steering committee made up of two representatives from each New England state. Rick McKinniss and I (Barbara Lachance) have been meeting with this group since its inception in 2006.

The NE Alliance beliefs are compatible with the essential teachings of Evangelical, Pentecost/Charismatic, Main Line, and Catholic/Orthodox churches. Our main focus is sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ including upholding traditional marriage and the value of life. The ultimate vision is to trust the Lord to bring about the transformation of our society by a four-part-process of preparation, repentance, agreements to united action, and ongoing transformation

Our intention for this Prayer Journey is to come before the Lord:

To seek revival and awakening

To share the vision of the New England Alliance

To establish connections with state leaders and

To pray together for the Lord to move in each of the New England States

On June 4, at 7:00 PM the Prayer Journey will be arriving at Wellspring Church, 202 Lincoln Street, Kensington, CT. Leaders from the six New England States will be traveling on this Prayer Journey representing their regions and will join with us here in Connecticut. The agenda for the service will be worship, share vision and prayer for revival.

Please prayerfully consider attending this meeting. It is open to all who want to see an Awakening in Connecticut.

Blessings in Christ,

Rick McKinniss
Barbara Lachance

If you can, please participate and seek the Lord's mercies on our region!

Flickr photo of Old Saybrook, CT by Dan Crosley; some rights reserved.

State Supreme Court allows limits on adult businesses

Some good news on the family front where the Connecticut Supreme Court has upheld the right of the Town of Berlin to regulate so-called adult businesses.

The high court's unanimous ruling comes a month after hearing arguments from attorneys representing the town and VIP, an adult novelty store. The dispute is over the legality of a Berlin ordinance regulating the location of sexually oriented businesses.

At least five other municipalities around the state enacted similar laws, said Berlin lawyer Erika Amarante.

"I'm obviously pleased," Amarante said. "I'm sure those municipalities are happy as well."

Berlin officials contend the ordinance is a way to control the adult businesses that have popped up in recent years. The ordinance bars adult-themed businesses from being within 250 feet of a residentially zoned area.

Give thanks for this good news and let's pray for sanity to make more inroads. More here from the Connecticut Post.

Christian events in Connecticut this week (May 19-25)

Dove Award winner Mitch McVicker in Danbury this Saturday

For more complete information or to submit events, please visit the Connecticut Christian Events calendar.

Monday, May 19
Litchfield County Regional Prayer meeting (Torrington)

Wednesday, May 21
Intercessory Prayer (Colchester)

Friday, May 23
Good Fridays Christian Coffeehouse (Naugatuck)

Saturday, May 24
Tom Conlon @Studio 150 Coffehouse (Wethersfield)

Mitch McVicker @ Community Coffehouse, appearing with Courtney Reid of Maeve (Danbury)

The list of America's 10 favorite books - and what it means

Let me alleviate the fears of Christians everywhere. The Bible is still ranked as America's Number 1 book. But now that we got that out of the way, what are the Top Ten, and what does this list say about our nation?

According to a Harris Poll, here they are:

1. The Bible
2. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
3. Lord of the Rings (series), by J.R.R. Tolkien
4. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
5. The Stand, by Stephen King
6. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
7. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
8. Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown
9. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
10. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

My observations:

1. My first observation is that traditional religious belief remains high. Of course, this could be too simplistic by far - perhaps people feel the need to put forward the Bible as their first choice. This is a classic problem in polling: is a certain response what the man really thinks, what he wants you to think, or what he is supposed to think?

2. Americans are increasingly cut off from their past. With the exception of the Bible, of course, no book on the list was written before 1936. This is dangerous in the life of any people - to be so cut off from their past and so to be lacking in any understanding of themselves.

3. What kind of literature is this?

• Nine out of ten books are fiction.
• Two and maybe three are "coming of age" stories.
  
• Most are fiction of a particular kind: fiction that explores a quest for meaning, often through struggle.
• Many could be viewed as protests against (or escapes from) the historic Christian order and the traditional roles expected of people in Western society.
• Several are deliberately aimed at undermining or assume the irrelevance of Christian character. Among those aged 18-31, the Harry Potter series was the most popular work.

I'm not sure this list bodes well for our future. If books 2 through 10 are today's Secular Canon we will never have a confident society but one which will exhaust itself by seeking to reinvent itself with little reference to what has inspired our culture for 3500 years. And to cut ourselves off from what has ennobled our society seems truly foolish.

We still like reading about Atticus Finch, but I'm not sure our secular culture is capable of producing too many like him any more.

Christian events in Connecticut this week (May 12-18)

Unspoken comes to Danbury this Saturday

For more complete information or to submit events, please visit the Connecticut Christian Events calendar.

Wednesday, May 14
Intercessory Prayer (Colchester)
Fairfield County Pastors' Fellowship (TBD)

Friday, May 16
Good Fridays Christian Coffeehouse (Naugatuck)

Saturday, May 17
Unspoken @ Community Coffehouse (Danbury)

Demographic Winter: coming soon to a country near you

Trailer for the DVD Demographic Winter

What is "demographic winter?" If you haven't heard this buzzword yet you will shortly. It refers to the belief that we are about to experience the opposite of a "population bomb." Abortion, failure to reproduce, denigration of traditional families and other factors are working to depopulate developed societies around the globe. In the short run, this will have the noticeable effect of Islamicizing regions such as Western Europe, a trend most ably discussed by political writer Mark Steyn in his bestseller America Alone. In the long term, even nations such as China will be affected by a failure to, well, breed at the "replacement rate" of 2.1 children per woman.

Worldwide, birthrates have been halved in the past 50 years. There are now 59 nations, with 44% of the world’s population, with below-replacement fertility

Sometime in this century, the world’s population will begin to decline. At a certain point, the decline will become rapid. We may even reach population free-fall in our lifetimes.

For some countries, population decline is already a reality. Russia is losing three-quarters-of-a-million people a year. Its population (currently 145 million) is expected to fall by one-third by 2050....

Of the 10 countries with the lowest birthrates, 9 are in Europe. Overall, the European fertility rate is 1.3, well below replacement level (2.1). No European nation has a replacement-level birthrate.

Italy’s fertility rate is 1.2. Spain’s is 1.1. That means in the not-too-distant future, absent massive immigration, these countries will lose half of their people in every generation.

Russia’s birthrate fell from 2.4 in 1990 to 1.17 today – a decline of more than 50% in less than 20 years. Each year, there are more abortions than live births in the Russian Federation.

These aren't even the scariest parts of the Demographic Winter movie website. Check it out here.

What would Jonathan Edwards think?

I think I know why the man in this picture looks so sour: he read this post!

I didn't know Yale once expelled students for being gay. The things you can learn from reading the Courant!

Act 1 was about to start and Richard Lalli had a few last words for his students. Orpheus, Apollo and the others huddled around in their white robes. "Try to be free," Lalli said calmly. "And make it as much your own as possible."

With that, he retreated to the church balcony, dressed for the opera in a silk scarf. In a few short months, his students had mastered "L'Orfeo," and as the opening music filled the rafters, Lalli looked as proud as any parent in the room.

A vocalist, pianist and professor, Lalli is about to take on a new role: master of Yale University's Jonathan Edwards College. He and his partner, Dr. Michael Rigsby, who will be assistant master, are set to become the first openly gay couple to head a campus dorm when they move in next January.

Yale is divided into a dozen residential colleges, each with its own dining hall, intramural sports teams and social events. The college master presides over it all: reassuring parents, nurturing students and providing entertainment, a job that can make directing a Baroque opera, by comparison, seem easy. With Lalli's appointment, Yale follows Harvard in naming a same-sex couple to a high-profile, mothering role, a milestone for a school that once expelled students for being gay.

In a sign of how far society has come, no one is expecting much controversy. "You can never control for every loose cannon, but I just don't think this is an issue anymore," said a close friend, Ralph Hexter, the openly gay president of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.

I guess not. We sure have come a long way indeed.

Holding on to teenagers

Can churches hold on to teens and young adults?

"Many churches are losing young people because there's not enough activities or support," said Josefina Cespedes, a community educator and member of the Pentecostal Church John 3:16.

Many of the churches are old-fashioned, she said.

"Churches are failing in providing enough resources for support to adjust to the new generation," Cespedes said.

Even the pastors' children have expressed doubt. Two years ago, Pavon's oldest son, Edward, stopped attending church for six months.

"I wanted to explore the world," Edward Pavon said. "I didn't want to listen to my dad or mom. I was tired of it."

His rebellion left his parents in tears.

Read the Stamford Advocate story "Raised in the Church," and the other stories in the series they are currently running about churches and immigrants.

There is no Christianity without Christ

Earliest known icon of Christ as Pantocrator (Almighty)

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him; and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. (Col. 1:16-18)

Stirring words, pointing to the centrality of Christ. There can be no Christianity without Jesus Christ - not the Jesus-as-moral-teacher of the modern "progressives," but the one of Whom the Apostle Paul was speaking in the passage quoted above. Remove Him from the edifice and you remove every support. Remove the Cross and you have deprived yourself of God's remedy for what you are. Strip Him of His Deity and you have gutted His demand to obedience and His intrinsic authority to command, so forcefully, in that Sermon on the Mount which seems to be highly prized nowadays. As if that Sermon contained only Matthew 7:1 and not Matthew 7:13.

Or 7:23.

We are nearing the time - it's almost here - when society will drop the pretense of the name of Christian. If only they would do it today, simply call their churches and their selves by another name!

The latest window into apostasy is provided by Canada's National Post, in a story featuring the Rev. Gretta Vosper of West Hill United Church in Toronto.

There is a Bible on a pedestal in Gretta Vosper's West Hill United Church in Toronto. She would prefer it did not have a special place, she said, because it is just a book among other books. In a similar way, the cross that is high above the altar has no special meaning, but there are a few older congregants for whom the Bible and the cross are still nice symbols so there they remain.

Though an ordained minister, she does not like the title of reverend. It is one of those symbols that hold the church back from breaking into the future -- to a time "when the label Christian won't even exist" and the Church will be freed of the burdens of the past. To balance out those symbols of the past inside West Hill, there is a giant, non-religious rainbow tapestry just behind the altar and multi-coloured streamers hang from the ceiling.

"The central story of Christianity will fade away," she explained. "The story about Jesus as the symbol of everything that Christianity is will fade away...."

Ms. Vosper does not believe in the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the miracles and the sacrament of baptism. Nor does she believe in the creeds, the presence of Christ in communion or that Jesus was the Son of God.

In With or Without God, her book that was formally launched this week, she writes that Jesus was a "Middle Eastern peasant with a few charismatic gifts and a great posthumous marketing team."

What is striking is the blatancy and self-assuredness, the willingness to reach beyond and no longer even feel the need to appeal to Jesus for anything of substance. Typically, love is all that is said to matter:

The focus of her "spiritual" life is love. And since love is the common bond between all people, it is really the only thing worth believing in.

"Here in the context of seeking out harmony with all things, the purest understanding of those values that enhance and sanctify life becomes the foremost spiritual practice," she writes.

"We call it love, radically inclusive love. It is here, in the caring, challenging, prophetic role with which it is so familiar that the church can really shine."

If only love were the common bond between all people. But, the reality of this life is that Man is at enmity with himself, with others, and with God. The Christ of Christianity is the answer to this problem.

Read the whole thing here.

Hartford Police Chief doesn't have the luxury of ignoring reality

Peter Wolfgang of the Family Institute of Connecticut gives us the scoop on last week's National Day of Prayer gathering in Hartford and the hypocrisy of the Left. Kudos for Police Chief Roberts for his courage. It's about time we heard this kind of talk from a high public official.

Speaking to a group that at one point reached standing-room-only size, Chief Roberts’ talk made a tremendous impact on the crowd. He called himself “a praying chief” and noted that he was a deacon in his church (his pastor was present). He asked us to work and pray that kids will be brought to God. He said he deals with the kids who are not coming to God, the ones who will kill you over a minor disagreement.

Read all of it and be encouraged.

Global Day of Prayer this Sunday, May 11

From Connecticut House of Prayer comes this notice:

On May 11, 2007 we will be holding our 3rd Global Day of Prayer here in CT. This years meeting will be different than what you have experienced in the past. We are planning a free flowing event that will combine worship and intercession. There will be prayer guides for our view on the overhead but we really want to have an experience of worship and intercession that will welcome the Holy Spirit into our midst. Connecticut is changing and I am hearing reports that salvations, moves of God in healing and deliverance are happening around the state. Please come and join us for this time of prayer with millions around the globe from every tribe and tongue. I am looking forward to seeing you on May 11.

Barbara Lachance
CT House of Prayer, Inc.

This year's event will take place on May 11, at 6:00 PM at Gateway Christian Fellowship, 129 Bull Hill Lane, West Haven.

We stand corrected, mostly.

I recently wrote about why America is falling apart, complaining about modern education, such as it is. An alert reader did pointed out that my story about the rigors of taking 8th grade exams in 1895 was false, as a simple check of Snopes.com would have pointed out. My bad.

However, the background on Snopes did prove my point in a way. The actual tests from that era do reveal how much "basic" knowledge we're not getting in 2008. While it may not be important to know the feminine of "bachelor," the knowledge expected of teachers in the late 19th century is interesting. Read more:

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp

Christian Events in Connecticut this week (May 5 - 11)

For more complete information or to submit events, please visit the Connecticut Christian Events calendar.

Monday, May 5
Litchfield County Regional Prayer Meeting (Torrington)

Wednesday, May 7
Intercessory Prayer (Colchester)

Thursday, May 8
Regional Prayer Meeting (New Haven)

Friday, May 9
Holy Grounds Christian Coffeehouse (Berlin)
Men 4 Men Ministries Coffeehouse (Clinton)
Good Fridays Christian Coffeehouse (Naugatuck)

Saturday, May 10
Statewide Intercessors Gathering (Kensington)
Dave Pettigrew @ House of Grace Community Coffehouse (Milford)

Sunday, May 11
Global Day of Prayer (West Haven)

National Day of Prayer 2008

On this National Day of Prayer, let's continue to ask God's mercies on America:

2008 Prayer for Our Nation, by Dr. Ravi Zacharias, Honorary Chairman, National Day of Prayer Task Force:

Holy Father, in a world where so many are hungry,
You have given us food in abundance
In a world where so many are hurting, You offer to bind up our wounds;
In a world where so many are lonely,
You offer friendship to every heart;
In a world longing for peace, You offer hope.

Yet, we are so stubborn and resistant.
Have mercy upon us, Lord
Our nation is at a crossroads this year;
We look to you to be our strength and shield.
Please give us the guidance to elect one who will honor You
And to respond to the wisdom from above
So that our hope may be renewed and our blessings be treasured.

In God’s holy Name!