Connecticut Church Map back in operation

Our world famous church map (I exaggerate slightly) was temporarily offline but is now back in action and humming along. Sorry for any inconvenience. Check it out here if you've never done so and if you'd like to suggest a church for inclusion, drop me a line here. Thanks!

Greenwich Church celebrates 25th with special services

Pastor Jackson Senyonga of Kampala, Uganda

Harvest Time Church in Greenwich, CT is hosting a series of special services this week to celebrate its 25th Anniversary. Among the evening speakers are:

October 15: Jackson Senyonga
Founder and pastor of Christian Life Church in Uganda, with 40,000 members. Jackson delivers an unforgettable message and his ministry has planted 600 churches in Africa. He is featured in the Transformations II video.

October 16: Jan Nel
Jan is the founder of TEEM.Net, an apostolic network of ministries in South Africa, Australia, and the U.S. He is a true teaching father and prophetic trainer in the Body of Christ.

October 17: Raymond Mooi
Raymond is the founder of the School of Acts, a ministry training center with branches in Malaysia, the Phillipines, and Indonesia. he travels extensively throughout Southeast Asia conducting mass healing and evangelistic campaigns in closed nations.

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.

Watch your roofs!

Now it's not just copper; church thieves are after the lead in your roofs as well:

“Whenever I get an early morning phone call these days, I think, ‘Oh no, they’ve taken the roof again,’ ” said John Deave, 80, a retired barrister and a churchwarden at St. Guthlac’s church in Stathern, another Leicestershire village, where the church was vandalized in January.

Part of the problem is that no one is going to church in some of these places.

National Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church this Sunday

Come Brother Andrew speak this Sunday at 7:00 pm at Wintonbury Baptist Church in Bloomfield about secret believers on the National Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

Brother Andrew is the founder of Open Doors International and author of the international best-seller, God's Smuggler.

This event is free of charge.

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!

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.

Updates to the Connecticut Church Map

A quick note to let you know that we've updated the Connecticut Church Map by adding an index. You can now search for churches by town, making the map much more useful for everyone. Check it out here!

"The Call" rocks Nashville

Lou Engle prays for America in this clip:



And in this one you can experience some of the worship:



From Baptist Press:

"America is a sleeping nation. We have casually and nonchalantly let things slide and get worse," said Morgan Blount, a staff member of The Call from Dallas. "We are calling for young people in this country to wake up and take a stand, to pray about our world instead of just complaining about what's wrong with it. We are calling them to take action and believe that the Lord can change things."

Prayer is the key to spiritual awakening, said Adam Thomas, a staff member of The Call from Louisville, Ky.

"This weekend was about prayer, whether you are Baptist or Catholic or Church of Christ. We believe that prayer changes things," Thomas said. "Our desire is to see God come back on the scene like He did in the 1800s, when there was a great awakening that shut down entire towns with the power of God.

"I believe that a movement of prayer is going to unlock these things for America. We believe history belongs to the intercessors. Ezekiel 22:30 tells us God is looking for a company of people who will stand in the gap in prayer so the country will not have to be destroyed. We want to be like the widow in Luke 17 who kept pressing the judge until he gave her what she wanted."

As midday temperatures soared near 100 degrees, worshipers lifted their hands in prayer. The stadium floor was sectioned off for those who wanted the freedom to prostrate themselves or kneel in prayer.

Many of those in attendance had fasted for up to 40 days in preparation. Prayerwalkers left Nashville's Centennial Park at 7 a.m. and made their way in silence through downtown to the stadium.

To symbolize their desire for America to return to a covenant relationship with God, three couples simultaneously exchanged marriage vows late in the afternoon.

Organizer Lou Engle, who initiated The Call in Washington, D.C., in 2000, chose the date -– 7/7/07 -– because seven is the biblical number of covenant.

"In the Old Testament, the cult of Baal was identified with violence and death, sexual promiscuity, pornography and promiscuity," said Dutch Sheets, senior pastor of Springs Harvest Fellowship in Colorado Springs, Colo. "We are here today to confess our nation's sin and ask God to renew His covenant with us. This stadium is a courtroom today. We have filed for divorce as a nation from the spirit of Baal, and we are petitioning God for custody of our children."

Church for Men

You've seen the pews and maybe you've seen the statistics: in the American Church the population is mostly female. How can this be fixed? Now there's something called Church For Men. Before you laugh, watch this video (3m 42s):



What do you think?

Hispanics Changing American Christianity

Here's an interesting profile piece on religious trends among Hispanics in the U.S., based on a recent survey of 4,600 people. A casual observer would probably have to say that these trends are at work in Connecticut as well:

'Evangelicalism as we know it in this country is fast disappearing in many places,'' said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which conducted 4,600 interviews for the survey with the Pew Hispanic Center. ``Not surprisingly, we're beginning to see some of that in the immigrants who are coming to this country. They're helping to transform American Christianity.''

In South Florida, Pentecostal and evangelical worship is growing among Hispanics as storefront churches multiply and megachurches draw thousands of Hispanic worshipers with lively worship and extensive social programs.

Calvary Chapel, a 20,000-member church in Fort Lauderdale, has about 4,000 Hispanic congregants, said Guillermo Novoa, Calvary's Spanish ministry assistant. The church's Hispanic outreach includes English classes, live Spanish translation of services and Bible study, discipleship and marriage counseling in Spanish.

Attendance in the Spanish-language services has grown to 300 people, up from 40 people when the church launched its Hispanic outreach seven years ago.

''The majority of them are Latin American immigrants who are Roman Catholic when they come here,'' Novoa said. ``They see it's a huge difference to be a Christian in this country.''

At El Rey Jesus, a 7,000-member church in West Kendall, worship services are punctuated with Pentecostal practices such as casting out demons and hands-on healing.

Some Spanish-speaking Pentecostal megachurches -- such as Alpha and Omega Church in south Miami-Dade County -- are offering live English translations of their services for second-generation Hispanics who prefer English.