Latest IRF scorecard grades each member of US Congress, as State Department releases annual report on 200 countries and territories. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called out Saudi Arabia. The Gulf kingdom “remains the only country in the world without a Christian church, though there are more than a million Christians living ,” he stated yesterday. Such high-level criticism of the key US ally is a departure from the foreign policy of the Trump administration, though the State... Read More
Month: May 2021
CCCU Says LGBT Lawsuit Is Frivolous
Evangelical association names itself as co-defendant to defend religious exemptions. The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) jumped into the legal fray over LGBT rights and religious liberties on Wednesday when it filed a motion to join a lawsuit against the US Department of Education (DOE) as a codefendant. Thirty-three current and former students from 20-plus religiously affiliated colleges filed the suit against the DOE in March to prevent the agency from granting... Read More
Low COVID vaccination rates in Broward could be a threat as restrictions disappear
Broward County had at one time doled out as many as 30,000 vaccines a day to residents. That count is now about 4,500 a day, Paula Thaqi, director of the Department of Health in Broward County, informed mayors on a May 7 conference call. In response, Broward County has launched a campaign called “I Did It,” a multi-lingual regional campaign to target vaccine hesitancy. ... Read More
Florida reports 4,064 new COVID cases, 47 more deaths
Palm Beach County: Test results for residents were reported , leading to a daily positivity rate of %. That’s from % the previous day. Broward County: Test results for residents were reported , leading to a daily positivity rate of %. That’s from % the previous day. Miami-Dade County: Test results for residents were reported , leading to a daily positivity rate of %. That’s from % the previous day. ... Read More
Joel Greenberg set for federal court hearing Monday, expected to plead guilty
On Feb. 28, Greenberg violated the conditions of his pre-trial bond release by leaving his Heathrow home just before 5 a.m. and driving to his mother-in-law’s condominium in Jupiter to look for his wife, Abby Greenberg. At the time, Greenberg was under an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and not allowed to travel outside the Central Florida area. ... Read More
The Pattern and Practice of Church Discipline, Part III
Church Discipline Does a Body Good In Part 1, the practice of church discipline was grounded in God's character and work as the Good Shepherd and how it informs church discipline. Part 2 considered the ultimate goal of church discipline: to redeem and restore the person to the church body. But when the person continues in rebellion, denial, or other ways that contradict the faith, church discipline offers a way to protect the church while still holding forth the hope of repentance. The... Read More
The Pattern and Practice of Church Discipline, part 3
Church Discipline Does a Body Good In Part 1, the practice of church discipline was grounded in God's character and work as the Good Shepherd and how it informs church discipline. Part 2 considered the ultimate goal of church discipline: to redeem and restore the person to the church body. But when the person continues in rebellion, denial, or other ways that contradict the faith, church discipline offers a way to protect the church while still holding forth the hope of repentance. The... Read More
Read God’s Words. Then Write Your Own.
The spiritual discipline of recording our prayers and Bible reading reflections is a practice rooted in Christian tradition. Three crows bickering on a rooftop against the sunrise, reads my journal entry from July 22, 2019. Lord, how obnoxious I am! Aside from a list of prayer requests, that is the entirety of the entry for that day. Out of context, it makes no sense. But reading those two sentences now whisks me back to that sticky summer morning. The trio of argumentative crows on my... Read More
A beloved fish may get the hook, as Florida approves proposal for killing goliath grouper
The fish, which are easy to find and catch, sustained severe declines from fishing in the 1970s and 1980s, leading the state to oppose a ban in 1990. Although the species has begun to recover, it has nothing like the numbers it had half a century ago, when it could be found all around the Florida peninsula, in the Caribbean and down to Brazil, according to a report by the wildlife commission. ... Read More
Congress candidate Barbara Sharief suggests legislator-opponents should quit current jobs now
Sharief’s call is aimed at putting some political heat on the three lawmaker-competitors. She and another congressional candidate, Dale Holness, are both Broward County commissioners, but Sharief’s call for immediate resignations doesn’t apply to herself or Holness. Their vacancies get filled by gubernatorial appointment, not a special election. ... Read More