In the News

Vatican to discuss role of Scripture for Catholics
In an effort to “take back the Bible for Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI will be reciting verses of the Bible on Italian national television. In the past, the church had discouraged nonclergy from familiarizing themselves with Scripture but with the recent rise and popularity of “fundamentalism”, as the Vatican calls it, or the literal interpretation of the Bible, Benedict is concerned that Catholics are actually reading their Bible and using this same interpretation method. Is he concerned that they will find that purgatory is a tradition made up by the Catholic Church and no where to be found in the Bible? Or maybe he’s worried that they will read Ephesians 2:8,9 and Romans 3:21-26 and realize that upon the free gift of God’s grace through Christ Jesus, free meaning not through our good works, we are justified in the sight of a Holy God.

Green Bible
Harper One is releasing a “green Bible” that promotes the growing trend of environmentalism and answers questions such as, “Is God green?” Did Jesus have anything to say about the environment? What role should faith play in caring for the earth? It also highlights more than 1,000 verses that supposedly speak on environmental issues. Here’s one for you; “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen.” (Romans 1:25) Maybe they forgot to recycle that verse…

Homosexual Christian?
In another effort to push the homosexual agenda into the Christian church, The Houston Chronicle highlighted a New York Times article featuring a church that accepts homosexuality as a appropriate lifestyle. Randy Keel, who was married to Jill Keel, confessed his homosexual desires to his now ex-wife. So not only did he give in to his sinful desires but his selfish gain consequently broke up the marriage and led to a divorce. And accoring to the Rev. Jack McKinney, who leads the congregation, this is reason to celebrate and even deems “these gay people” as “spiritual heroes” because “they held to their faith”. Well…at least the parts of their faith that suits themselves.

Pastors protest limits on pulpits and politics
Andy Cherry, a Houston pastor, was one of 33 pastors who participated in a national protest of limits on mixing politics and preaching. “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” was part of an effort by pastors to exercise their First Amendment Right.

“If we see a candidate and we believe that candidate is not in line with our biblical standards, we are told that we can’t preach about it, “Cherry said. “we say: ‘Yes, you can.’ We believe it’s unconstitutional to tell pastors that and to have threats coming from the IRS that you can lose your tax-exempt status.”

Hotels offering up “spiritual menu”
Nashville’s Hotel Preston, along with four other boutique hotels, will be offering a wide variety of religious texts to customers to satisfy requests other than the Bible. This seems to be the trend across America, especially in San Francisco, where hotel managers believe that they must offer up a spiritual menu that is keeping with the culture of their company. In other words, you can have a spiritual buffet of sorts right in your hotel room…you can pick and choose what parts of each text you like…sounds a lot like American Christianity.

Google to advertise pro-life groups
After a recent lawsuit by The Christian Institute, religious and pro-life organizations will be allowed to advertise on Google. You can watch the news video here:

The Church of Montrose

Anyone who reads The Houston Chronicle has come across front page articles that consistently promote the paper’s left wing agenda. Unfortunately, this bias crosses over to their weekly Religion section which is featured every Saturday.

The featured article this week covered Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church’s ordination of an openly gay pastor, Lura Groen. The church had been without a pastor for five years until Groen, despite her “sexual preference”, was able to “win their hearts”.

In regards to her sexual orientation, Groen confesses, “It’s just my personality not to want to lie about who I am.”

Groen boldly asserts that the church "does not have the right to set a different standard for her and her straight colleagues". However, she insists that the church she loved and grew up in taught that God loves everybody. So as long as the church sets a convenient standard that fits her worldview, then she is willing to embrace and adhere to it.

Unfortunately Groen’s childhood church preached a different gospel that conformed and shaped a god to fit the lifestyle of a homosexual; a god completely lacking any reference to sin, judgment, righteousness and holiness. What’s even more alarming is we are now seeing the fruits of their labor. According to the article, there are now 15 to 20 openly gay clergy in the city of Houston. And if you take a trip down to Montrose and Westheimer, you’ll see more and more churches preaching the same message that “God loves everybody”...it's a watered-down message that loudly proclaims, “I will not worship the God of the Bible but a god that I am comfortable with”. And according to Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church’s website , it’s all about making it as comfortable as possible for YOU.

Rather than preaching a false gospel that creates a false image of god and consequently encourages us to remain in our sinful nature, the Bible commands us to put off our old selves…our old selves being our sinful desires and lusts of the flesh…just as we put off old and filthy garments. While Groen may seem humble in her profession to “not lie about who she is”, God commands all men everywhere to repent of their sins and place their trust in Christ (Acts 17:30). And in doing so He promises to set us free from our sinful nature (Romans 7:23,8:2), create in us new desires (Ephesians 4:22, 24) and give us the strength to resist and overcome our temptations (