Category: Apostasy

Shaky Economy Costs General Conference Millions of Dollars

An unsteady global economy shaved 20 percent off the income received by the General Conference last year, and church leaders are reworking budgetary plans as they prayerfully seek to navigate the uncharted waters ahead. While tithe and offerings remained strong worldwide in 2015, exchange-rate losses linked to the fluctuationsadventist-spring-meeting-april12-2 of regional currencies against the U.S. dollar cost the General Conference, the administrative body that oversees the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a total of $19.4 million.

“My fears that were presented in October actually came true,” General Conference treasurer Juan R. Prestol-Puesán said in an interview…

The General Conference would have had $19,441,294 additional income this year if 2015 exchange rates had remained the same as in 2014, according to the treasury report to the Spring Meeting. In another loss, the variability of financial markets cost the General Conference a total of $2.8 million in capital and unrealized gains in 2015. Those investments had represented a gain of $2 million in 2014.  Source

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Protestant South Becoming a New Catholic Stronghold (2013)

st-_dominics_monastery_courtyardDixie Catholics credit the strong Southern sense of community, and dialogue with faithful Protestants, with helping to power the Church’s growth there.

LINDEN, Va. — In the waves of turbulence that rippled throughout the Catholic Church in the 1970s, the nuns of St. Dominic’s Monastery found themselves forced to leave their longtime home in Wisconsin in search of a new one.

The nuns moved to a temporary residence in Washington, D.C., while looking for a permanent setting conducive to the cloistered, contemplative life they sought to lead. It would be more than two decades before they found one. When they did, it was in what may seem a most unlikely place: the rural northeast of Virginia, considered one of the Protestant Bible Belt states of the South.

The story of St. Dominic’s Monastery’s southern move may be the story of U.S. Catholicism. New data shows that some of the fastest-growing dioceses in the country are deep in the U.S. South.

The third-fastest-developing diocese is Atlanta, which saw the number of registered parishioners explode from nearly 322,000 in 2002 to 1 million in 2012 — an increase of more than twofold, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. Atlanta also has the largest Eucharistic Congress in the country, with an annual attendance of about 30,000, according to an archdiocesan official. Source

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Megachurch Pastor Preaches About Christians Making the ‘Dangerous Prayer’

a-gathering-of-evangelical-christians-in-washingtonChristians must push themselves to pray the “dangerous prayer” of availability, Pastor James Brown of Crossroads Church said in a recent sermon, telling his congregation that when “God calls you, he equips you.”

Brown, who serves as the executive pastor of discipleship at the Minnesota-based evangelical church, said in a March sermon that Christians need to be more like children in their service to God, pushing themselves to “fearlessly” invite God’s presence into their lives. Source

 

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