Los Angeles
Planners have announced the dedication of the new Azusa Street Prayer Tower in downtown Los Angeles. The Tower is an existing office building located some 200 feet from the original Apostolic Faith Gospel Mission where, in 2006, William Seymour led a revival meeting that is widely credited with triggering the modern global charismatic movement. It is anticipated that Christians will come to the Prayer Tower from all over the world to pray for the third great Pentecostal revival. The building will hold several hundred people at one time.
Sutherland Springs
The federal government has taken partial responsibility for the mass killing of 26 people at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas. They admitted that vital information about a U. S. airman was withheld, thus allowing him to purchase a semi-automatic weapon and attack the people at the church where his wife occasionally attended. $144.5 million will be divided between families of victims including wounded survivors, plus the attorneys.
McAllen
The Baptist General Convention of Texas meeting in the far southeast corner of Texas (on the Rio Grande) passed a resolution calling for recognition and support for all women in leadership positions in Baptist churches. This came just one month after the Southern Baptist Convention took action to prevent any woman from serving as any kind of pastor in a SBC church. The Texas action resolution was affirmed but only after the word “pastor” was stripped out and the word “minister” inserted.
Indianapolis
In news a little bit late, The Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis has awarded 77 grants to organizations across the United States through its Christian Parenting and Caregiving Initiative. Ranging from $240,000 to $1.25 million, the grants will assist organizations in designing and implementing programs to help interested parents and caregivers directly or through congregational ministries learn, adapt and embrace time-honored practices to share their faith and values with their children. In addition, the Endowment made a $2.6 million grant to Indiana Wesleyan University to support a coordination program for grantees in this initiative. Grantees include schools, colleges, and universities, foundations, publishers, congregations, and mission organizations.
Lexington
The Meetinghouse Inc. has announced plans for The Tangle Tour of ’23, taking its commitment to conversations on religion and American life on the road to eight cities. The non-profit, in conjunction with MHMedia LLC, normally uses a studio and/or social media technology to fulfill its mission but is now envisioning in person events in eight cities in Kentucky, Tennessee, and both Carolinas. In an essay describing the Tour, host Dwight A. Moody wrote that he is “taking these two artists—one a singer [John Prine], the other a son [Ike Moody]—on a road trip to reflect on life and its meaning, on love and its measures, and on hope and its moment in time.”
