The church was built in the 1890s and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 for its architectural and engineering significance.

Firefighters say the flames didn’t spread beyond the church and were deemed under control by early Thursday morning. They haven’t determined how much damage was done.

Four firefighters have suffered minor injuries.

The cause of the fire hasn’t been determined.

Source: AP

Conservative Christians were horrified when Gross moved there last year and declared, “Jesus Loves Sin City,” establishing The Strip Church, attending porn conventions and handing out mini-Bibles.

But today, Gross is expanding his message of Christian love to the glutton, the disconnected, the crook, the outcast — and even the ultra religious who disagree with him.

Gross has joined forces with fellow activist pastor Jason Harper to promote their new book, Jesus Loves You, This I Know.”

The authors have launched a six-stop tour across the country, including a gay rally and a maximum security prison, to reach out to those cast away by many conventional churches.

“The church looks at the rest of the world with a score card and chalk board, marking people off,” said Gross. “Jesus is ready to sit down and dine with the sinner and the forgotten with no strings

The hip, young pastors are as comfortable with pop culture as they are with the latest Internet technology.

Just last week, while visiting the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., they had a Biblical confrontation with evangelical picketers carrying “God Hates Fags” posters at an Adam Lambert concert.

Gross and Harper carried their own posters, “Jesus Loves Gays.” Using video feeds, tweets and photos, they countered the protesters using #JesusLovesYou.

Their anti-hate message resonated so much with “American Idol” fans that it sparked a Twitter movement, #GodHatesHate, which became the number one trending topic that day.

According to the authors, over the last 2,000 years, the traditional church has for its own agenda, “distorted, twisted, hijacked, tweaked, relabeled and distorted again” the teachings of Jesus.

Jesus Loves Everyone, Say Pastors

In 2002, Gross, 33, founded Fireproof Ministries and XXXchurch.com, a web network for people struggling with pornography. Harper, 37, is the director of community outreach for Capital Christian Center in Sacramento, Calif., and founder of The Extra Mile, an organization for inner city children.

“We’ve always gone where the church hasn’t gone,” Gross told ABCNews.com. “We aren’t afraid of that. Where there is no competition, we have had our best success.”

But for Gross and Harper, success doesn’t mean crusading against sin, recruiting or even pushing book sales.

“I don’t think I have ever converted one person,” said Gross. “Even if I don’t sell one book, all these stops are a significant part of this rebranding of Jesus’s name.”

But that doesn’t sit well with some fundementalist churches like Westboro Baptist, which the authors target as “hateful and notorious for offensive protests.”

Westboro’s automated telephone recording tells callers, “This ministry centers around obedience to the command of God, who promises to bless you if you obey, and curse you if you do not.”

The church’s own message — “God Hates America” — is directed not only at the gay culture and pornography, but even at President Barack Obama, whom they view as “the beast,” the scriptural antichrist who arrives just before the Apocalypse.

The small, 79-member church calls the campaign of love “poison” and said in its review of the book that the authors, “offer this sappy-floppy-pretend-love for one reason only — to make the bucks.”

But, said Shirley Phelps Roper, mother of 11 and daughter of the church’s pastor, Fred Phelps, their visit to the church was “awesome” because it highlighted the conflict due before the Biblical end of the world.

“The scripture calls it the quarrel of the covenant, the conflict that Cain and Abel had, and today it’s alive and well and living on the earth,” Phelps-Roper told ABCNews.com.

“It’s a lying doctrine that God loves everyone and that you can live how you want and God will give over his will to you,” she said. “There’s not one word in the Bible that supports that lie. It’s the doctrine of Satan in the Garden of Eden.”

By her thinking, man has only two choices: “You either speak for God, or you speak for Satan, and there is no middle ground, only heaven and hell.”

But Gross and Harper take the opposite tack. They want to “flip” the conventional “three-step approach to God.”

According to their book, that starts with “belief.”

“Essentially, if you believe the right things, it will lead to a change in behavior,” they write. “When you have changed your behavior, you will be accepted by the church. Believe, behave, belong.”

In their faith, “Jesus loves…now fill in the blank. Think of crooks and soccer moms, prostitutes and pastors, porn stars and CEOs. Jesus loves every single one of them.

“To Jesus we’re all just people who need God to save us from the mess we are in and lead us to a better way.”

Their tour reflects each chapter in the book: the Aug. 30 Westboro Baptist Church stop highlighted “God Loves the Religious.”

On Sept. 30, they focus on “God Loves the Glutton” giving away 400 lunch buffets at a Las Vegas restaurant. On Oct. 7, Gross will engage in a friendly debate with friend and porn star Ron Jeremy at the University of Southern California.

In Detroit, home of the nation’s highest unemployment rate, Gross and Harper will meet with the “disconnected,” and help renovate a family home.

Demonstrating that “Jesus Loves the Crook,” they will visit maximum-security Folsom State Prison in California to teach a chapel service.

The tour will wind up at the Atlanta Pride Festival in Georgia where they will apologize to gays for the way they have too often been treated by religious groups.

While they may not have found open converts, they say they have found friendship and rare moments of understanding.

“When Jesus reached out, it became contagious,” said Harper. “People want to be around him.”

As a result of Harper’s pastoral work, he has become close to many with no religious leanings, including “Gay Joe.”

“I have given this book to many of my friends who don’t believe in Christ at all,” said Harper. “‘How does this sit with you?’ I ask. They say, ‘We like that you guys are addressing the core of our spirituality and not our sexuality.’”

As for Gross, he has become so comfortable with his friend, former porn star Ron Jeremy, that his two children, 4 and 6, call him, “Uncle Ron.”

But does he ever worry that keeping company with porn stars might push him over to the dark side?

“Every day I see the devastation this causes,” said Gross. “Marriages are destroyed and lives are wrecked at the consumer end. I tell Ron, “You always get high-fives and standing ovations.’ In my shoes, it’s not as glamorous.”

Source: Susan Donaldson James, ABC News

Angela Shiel, 41, was suspended on Monday after she refused to drive a bus that featured on its side an ad paid for by the Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers.

The ad reads “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”

According to the Des Moines Register, Shiel said driving with such an ad “goes against everything I believe in.”

“For me to drive a bus that is totally against my beliefs personally – that’s why I didn’t take it,” she added.

In dealing with Shiel’s response, DART general manager Brad Miller, said transit authority officials gave her four options: Shiel has to agree to drive any bus, resume her current position but face termination should she refuse again, resign, or drive paratransit buses – few of which have ads.

Notably, in choosing to resume her current position, Shiel would have a good chance of coming across another bus with an atheist ad as bus assignments are made on the spot, based on such factors as the number of seats and mileage.

While she considers her options, Shiel will remain suspended.

Miller expects Shiel to make a decision some time next week.

source: Christian Post

So the big question was: Why are people putting marriage off?

Jimmy Evans, senior elder of the Amarillo, Texas, megachurch, doesn’t blame couples for being wary about marriage and hesitating to take that next big step, especially at a time when many people have been hurt in marriages and cohabitation has become more mainstream.

But he’s convinced that God bestows a special blessing on those who tie the knot. And he wants to spread that message to a culture where marriage has become anything but what God intended it to be.

“God will bless you if you get married,” Evans said at the kickoff of his four-week marriage sermon series, entitled “Sex, Love and Communication,” last month. “I’m not talking about run out and get married. I’m saying if you got someone that you believe God’s put you with for the rest of your life, there’s a special blessing when you get married.”

The latest sermon series at Trinity Fellowship was developed partly to prepare couples for “The Big Summer Wedding” this month. Thirty-two couples were married at the same time by Evans in the west sanctuary of the megachurch last weekend.

Although the nearly $3,000 event was timely for couples caught up in the economic downturn (the wedding was free), it was also designed to provide a bit of a push to get couples who have been living together to the altar.

“Our goal was pretty simple – we wanted to help couples,” Matt Spears, executive pastor of Ministry Development at Trinity, told The Christian Post. “We believe in marriage – one man and one woman – living in covenant with one another. So many people are living together and having kids together, for whatever reason they are running away from marriage. Many couples are not getting married for fear of failure; others are not getting married simply because they do not have the means to do so.”

The Big Summer Wedding was one of the answers to the question of why people were delaying marriage, said Spears.

Although a small step toward “curing a large problem,” Spears believes it is a step many others will follow.

The church did not enforce any stern rules or requirements for getting married. But couples who signed up for the mass wedding were encouraged to attend pre-marriage training and also asked to either abandon cohabitation or not be sexually intimate until their wedding night. Moreover, they did not necessarily have to be a Christian. It wasn’t a requirement, according to Spears.

The only thing required of the couples was that they bring a Texas marriage license and a pair of rings to the ceremony.

Complete with the church’s female and male pastors as bridesmaids and groomsmen, the Big Summer Wedding may sound like just a big hoopla but it was a serious occasion for the 32 couples.

“We were a bit taken back at just how serious they took it,” Spears noted.

As Evans, the senior elder, emphasized to the church, marriage is sacred. It’s not just a piece of paper.

And when you’re married “God’s way, it gets better and better, not worse and worse,” he said during the marriage series.

The world is hungry to see a healthy and stable – not perfect – marriage, Evans indicated.

Calling the church to reveal such marriages, Evans said, “When a man and woman are loving each other as God intended, it portrays the love of God to each other and to the world like nothing else. Marriage is the image of God and the devil hates it because he understands its potential.

“What God wants is for other people in the world to look at us and say ‘I wish I had their marriage.’”

source: Christian Post

Yeary, pastor of Brookton Baptist Church on Clarks Bridge Road, told church members that if they raised $3,000 toward a new building, he would preach from the rooftop, wearing a hula skirt and wig.

“I never thought for a minute they could do it,” Yeary said. “I never even gave it a thought that the objectives could be reached.”

But then, the church raised $1,200 from a barbecue plate fundraiser.

Time passed by and “nothing came in, so I thought I was off the hook,” he said.

Later, he received a $2,000 check from the owner of the company where he holds a job in maintenance.

“Don’t think God doesn’t have a sense of humor,” Yeary said, laughing. “I first thought about hiding it. … I knew when I saw that check, I was in trouble.”

Yeary did as he promised, wearing the skirt over his dress pants, along with a long blonde wig atop his head.

“We had a wonderful time,” he said. “Everything was wonderful. I didn’t fall off the roof.”

Yeary added, “I wanted to show the people that God works in strange ways and we have an awesome God. And he does have a sense of humor — it’s isn’t always gloom and doom.”

source: Jeff Gill (jgill@gainesvilletimes.com), Gainesville Times

Police reports state the deacon admitted to paying $30 for sexual intercourse on Tuesday night.

Dwight Smith, 62, is a deacon at the Upper Room Apostolic Church. Police reports said that Smith solicited a prostitute at the intersection of North Main and Indianola streets.

Police said an undercover officer followed the pair to Smith’s home in Trotwood. One man who is friends with Smith said he is shocked at what happened. He said he and Smith are single and have become good friends.

Smith and the prostitute were arrested after they drove back into the city of Dayton. The two admitted to officers that they had sexual intercourse, police said.

When officers asked Smith why a deacon would do such a thing, he replied, “A man gets lonely.”

Smith was charged with misdemeanor loitering to solicit prostution. He has since been released from jail.

source: whiotv.com

More than $200 raised by children at Vacation Bible School was stolen from the church last Sunday. The funds were raised to help an orphan named Ruth living in a village in India.

After news outlets, including Channel 3, reported on the theft, residents from across the state and from as far away as Florida, volunteered to help.

The church has received letters and checks to help replace the stolen funds.

As of Monday, the church had received nearly $1,100, more than double what they had originally planned to send to India.

“On Saturday I had a call from a man in Florida, he had seen our story, was touched, and said, ‘I want to send you a check,” said Amy Hauser, who runs the Bible school. Hauser said that the children will be able to help other orphans in Manupur, India as well as Ruth.

“We couldn’t have planned this,” said Pastor Brad Evans. “It’s absolutely a blessing in disguise. God makes good out of evil, and this definitely good.”

source: wfsb.com

The monitor also found Randolph Christian Church paid pastor Eric Simons advances totaling more than $43,000 for his income taxes between 2007 and 2009, according to the report.

Simons and his wife, senior pastor Marianne Simons, submitted expenses with little documentation, some without receipts, and were reimbursed by the church, according to the report.

In April, Simons was reimbursed more than $1,400 by the church for a $600 Kenmore washer from Sears and more than $700 worth of items from Costco, according to the report.

The findings come as part of a series of reports conducted by fiscal monitor Donald Conway, a certified public accountant at the Princeton-based Mercadien Group, who has been examining the pastors’ finances and investments, including $1.6 million mansion in Randolph, a $450,000 schooner that associate pastor Philip DuPlessis lives on with his family in Jersey City and life-coaching classes.

The state Department of Consumer Affairs accused the religious leaders April 1 of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of church funds for their own personal use.

“It appears that RCC funds have been used to pay for personal expenses of Simons and DuPlessis,” Conway said.

The mansion, which the pastors had said is being used as a parsonage, has been listed with Weichert Realtors for $1.6 million, and the Simonses will continue living in the home until it is sold, state officials and Conway said. The mansion has been shown three times, but no offers have been made.

The furnishings in the mansion are owned by the church, also known as Church Alive. Conway said those items also must also be sold to reimburse the church.

Simons and DuPlessis also used $22,000 in church funds to enter a business venture with a Nevada law firm, which Conway believes should be paid back to the church, the report showed.

“I do not see how RCC has benefited from the services,” he said.

Conway also determined Marianne Simons must return the 2005 Honda Odyssey she drives. The car was bought with church funds, the report showed. It also said she has to reimburse the church for the use of her cell phone.

To cut expenditures, the church board is eliminating the congregation’s outreach program, advertising and promotion ventures, its dance and children’s ministry, some administrative expenses and miscellaneous support, according to the report.

In addition, the board is challenging Conway’s suggested $55,100 salary for Simons, insisting their pastor should receive a base salary of $85,400 plus benefits, the report showed.

Conway said that suggested salary does not reflect the current financial state of the church. In 2000, the church brought in nearly $400,000 in contributions. The projected 2009 contribution income is significantly lower at $72,024, according to the report.

The pastors are conducting worship services every Sunday in the Bible Church International building on Route 10. Randolph Christian Church last year sold the building to Bible Church International for $5 million.

The Simonses did not return calls for comment today. A cell phone number for DuPlessis rang but was not answered.

Former congregants and state officials have said the church members thought they were donating money toward a building fund.

“It just outrages me,” Maria Palumbo, a former congregant who lives in Jefferson, said today. “That money could have helped so many people in need, and he used it for his own selfish personal pleasure.”

But current church members are standing by their pastor.

“I am not happy that all of this is going on. But it has brought us all closer together,” church member Paul Bouscaren of Budd Lake said. “The first thing we need to do as a church is get things squared away so we don’t need a fiscal monitor anymore.”

source: New Jersey Real Time News

A teen says her family was going to kill her for converting to Christianity.

The girl’s father has gone to Florida where she sought refuge with a church that she found online. Although the father insists he is not a menace to his daughter, a Florida court has placed the 17-year-old girl in foster care until her claims can be investigated.

Fathima Rifqa Bary, who goes by Rifqa, left home in New Albany, Ohio, last month and hopped on a bus to Orlando to meet with husband and wife pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz, who she met through a Facebook prayer group for the couple’s non-denominational Global Revolution Church.

“When she came to our house, she told us her parents would not report her missing,” Blake Lorenz told ABCNews.com.

But they did report their daughter missing and the disappearance reached local news stations and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Lorenz said Rifqa, a native of Sri Lanka, had secretly converted from Islam to Christianity four years ago, but her religion was only discovered recently. Rifqa had snuck out to an area church where, according to Lorenz, she had an “incredible encounter with Jesus.”

Lorenz said Rifqa was so moved she posted about it on her Facebook page, writings that would later be seen by her friends from her family’s mosque and reported to her father, Mohamed Bary.

“That’s when he threatened to kill her for the first time,” Lorenz said, adding that he didn’t know on how many other occasions that threat had been made.

The battle finally came to a head about a month ago, he said, when her mother found a Christian book in the house while Bary was out of town. Rifqa’s mother, he said, threatened to tell her father.

“She did say she was dead to her” if she didn’t renounce her Christian faith, Lorenz said.

Rifqa confirmed to ABC’s Orlando affiliate WFTV that she believed her father would kill her.

“They have to kill me because I’m a Christian. It’s an honor [killing]. If they love me more than God, then they have to kill me,” she explained.

Terrifed and fearing she would be the victim of an honor killing, she got on a bus and borrowed a cell phone to contact Beverly Lorenz who she had been communicating with after finding the Lorenzes’ church on Facebook.

The pastors’ first move was to call an attorney, several of them, actually.

“No one really knew what to do,” Lorenz said, pointing out that Rifqa was not only a minor, but that she had crossed state lines and she wasn’t even a U.S. citizen.

Blake Lorenz said Rifqa arrived late at night after a two-day trip. The next morning, the couple called police for advice, but did not tell them Rifqa’s name. They did report Rifqa’s presence two weeks later, he said, when the couple realized the teen’s parents had reported her missing.

Lorenz said he fears Rifqa is “definitely not safe.” He pointed to other suspected honor killings in Muslim families, including two Texas sisters who were murdered by their Muslim father Jan. 1, 2008, in what some believed to be religion-fueled rage over the girls’ Western ways.

Rifqa’s father is now in Florida trying to bring his daughter home. A woman who answered the phone at the Bary home in Ohio said she was a relative, but declined to answer any questions.

Bary told WFTV that there was no truth to his daughter’s claims.

Lorenz said he called the abuse hotline Friday. Elizabeth Arenas, a public information officer for the Florida Department of Children and Families, said Rifqa is now in foster care, she said, while Florida officials work with Ohio child services to investigate the teen’s claims.

“We just want to be sure she’s going to be safe,” Arenas said.

Rifqa, her father, Lorenz and Florida DCF officials appeared in court Monday where a judge ordered her to remain in state custody for now. Rifqa is being represented by a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal group that takes on conservative Christian causes.

“When she saw her dad yesterday, she was scared to death,” Blake Lorenz said. “She literally believes she’s going to be killed.”

As for Bary, he said, “I don’t want to make him out to be a monster, because I’m sure he’s not.”

Arenas, who said Bary has been cooperative with Florida DCF officials, said the state had recommended the teen be placed in Ohio state custody. But a judge Monday granted emergency jurisdiction to the Florida DCF, meaning Rifqa will remain in the state’s care at least until the next hearing, scheduled for Aug. 21.

Her parents were also given supervised visitation rights, but only at the discretion of their daughter. Arenas said she was unsure if Rifqa had met with her parents since the hearing.

“I don’t want to see my father,” she told WFTV.

source: ABC news

Despite summer heat and the revealing clothing sold in most stores, office bosses, school principals and Denver’s Catholic archbishop are reminding women to keep their bodies covered.

This lesson was a hard one for an intern at Denver Advertising, a Christian-based agency.

Mike Lash, the agency’s director, said the woman would often wear cropped or low-cut shirts and too- short skirts. Lash had another female employee suggest clothing that might be more appropriate.

“Revealing clothing can be distracting and can send the wrong message,” Lash said. “We don’t want a client that wants us for our breast size.”

Finding fashionable and modest clothing can be difficult for everyone from preteens to middle-aged women.

“Either the neckline is too high or too low,” said Joan Bednarik, a 40-something Superior resident shopping Tuesday afternoon at FlatIron Crossing mall. “If I go to two or three stores, I can find one thing that works.”

Michelle Blanken of Longmont held up a striped Gap sweater with a low V-neck to illustrate how she struggles to find appropriate clothing for her kids, including her 14-year-old daughter, Claire.

“Kids tend to wear things like this, but I think you need to wear a tank top or something underneath this,” she said.

Claire felt differently.

“I disagree completely,” she said. “It’s so annoying how she goes around and picks out tank tops and things to go underneath something like that, when this is really not that bad.”

Blanken sighed.

These generational differences can turn up in more places than mother-daughter spats.

“I went to CU, so I see that stuff all the time,” said Mark Huebner, 27, the head of Motive Branding, a small marketing agency in Denver. “I wouldn’t say that I’m numb to it, but there’s so much of that stuff out there that you have to not notice it.”

But Huebner also said that now that he’s the head of his own agency, he thinks more about his employees’ dress.

“I’m not going to tell you what you can and can’t wear, but don’t make me have to send you home,” he said.

Kate Epstein and Kayleen Seaton, juniors at the University of Colorado, said they were comfortable wearing skimpy clothes to classes.

Something is inappropriate only if it is too “elaborate,” Epstein said, meaning metallic, beaded or otherwise heavily embellished “club” clothes.

At Denver Public Schools, the rules are a little stricter.

Antwan Wilson, the instructional superintendent of DPS and former principal at Montbello High School, said he was the first to implement a high school uniform three years ago. Student dress had become a distracting topic of conversations with parents.

“It was a very significant problem, about a 9.5 on a scale of 1 to 10,” Wilson said.

The district has minimum dress standards, and each high school can make them more stringent.

One consistent school guideline is that skirts and shorts must be as long as a student’s fingertips when her arms are hanging by her sides.

Churches also frequently hear complaints about the inappropriate dress of some congregants.

During the June 14 Evening Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput used his homily to address the topic.

“I think the Lord is always displeased if we dress immodestly,” Chaput said. “We should be modest in our dress everywhere, especially in church.”

But Chaput also said that church dress does not have to be formal.

“I suspect (the Lord is) indifferent if we just dress casually,” he said.

Sallie Hurley of Englewood, a former fashion designer, fought back against the trend toward revealing clothes.

Around 2000, she started holding fashion shows in the church basement and then in 2006 joined with Pure Fashion, a national Catholic ministry that advocates for modest dress for teenage girls.

“If you look at the fashion magazines, there is a clear message, and that is ‘be provocative,’ ” Hurley said. “Everything is about sex in our culture. I think it leads to immorality.”

Hurley’s complaints are echoed by other consumers who are part of the “modesty movement,” a backlash, perhaps evident earlier among faith- based groups but spreading in recent years to the wider secular society.

In 2004, two Mormon women launched Shade, a modest-dress line based in American Fork, Utah. In 2007, a former model launched the quarterly fashion magazine Eliza, “for women who want to be stylish, sexy, and engaged in the world while retaining high standards.”

Are stores listening?

Buyers for Nordstrom try to provide clothes with a variety of levels of coverage, spokeswoman Nicole Pietro monaco said.

“We recognize that some girls want more coverage but still want to be fashionable,” she said.

source: denver post