Whitney Houston was a surprise guest on BET’s annual “Celebration Of Gospel” event which aired Sunday. The “I Will Always Love You” singer joined her friend, Christian vocalist Kim Burrell on stage for a moving inspirational rendition of Houston’s “I Look To You,” the title track from her 2009 come back album.

Burrell opened the song alone before Houston accompanied her on the stage. It was a risky move for Houston to sing a duet with one of the genre’s strongest voices.

Watch Whitney Houston’s performance at the 2:05 mark:

Houston’s live performances over the last year for Good Morning America, the Oprah Winfrey Show, and her “Nothing But Love” world tour were all criticized for her disappointing vocals. Her years of drug abuse had apparently ruined her voice beyond repair.

But Houston wowed the “Celebration Of Gospel” audience with a remarkable performance. She connected with the song’s R. Kelly-penned lyrics that pay homage to a trusted support system. But her voice sounded much stronger than it has recently.

Houston didn’t sing any bad notes during this set taped in December in Los Angeles. She nicely handled some signature riffs, even dipping into a crisp falsetto. She didn’t sound as strong as she did in the ’80s and ’90s, but she was great, considering her pitfalls.

Maybe this is a sign that she should record a gospel album next.

An encore of “Celebration Of Gospel” airs Thursday, February 3 at 8 p.m. eastern/7 p.m. central.

She read about how she was a princess in God’s sight and how he wanted the very best for her. She committed herself to sexual purity, to high standards, and to waiting for the good Christian man that God was going to bring her.

Just as she was getting old enough to start dating, however, she noticed something. Some of the popular Christian books were talking about not dating at all, and just being friends, until God had made it clear that the guy she liked was exactly the right one for her. Her Sunday school teachers taught from a very popular book about how dating was unbiblical, and how a truly righteous young Christian man would initiate a courtship with marriage as the goal, working in tandem with the girl’s father and the pastor and others in the church body.

The heroine of our story observed that as these things were being taught, the level of romantic involvement among her peers at church, not very high to begin with, shrank to practically nonexistent.

But the knowing ones, the Christians who seemed to have all the answers, told her, “You’re young, there’s plenty of time, and you need to learn patience.” So she concentrated on her education without worrying too much about men. She graduated from college and found a good job, and then she started to look in earnest for the right man. All the guys in her church were apparently still waiting for the divine signal to initiate courtship (an idea that she had never really taken to), but there were dating websites, and there was the occasional colleague or friend of a friend.

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Source: Christianity Today | Gina R. Dalfonzo

“I’m a strong, faith-based person,” Jones said.

“Whatever God has for me, is for me. My faith is very important to me.”

Recently Jones moved to St. Louis to take his new position while his family remains in Detroit.

Joyce Meyer Ministries has 15 international offices with a potential global audience of three billion people.

Joyce Mayer Ministries’ Enjoying Everyday Life program currently airs on nearly 1,000 television and radio stations in 38 different languages.

Joyce Meyer herself is a New York Times No. 1 best-selling author. Her Conference Tour will stop in St. Louis September 16-18.

Less than a year ago, when Jones was between jobs, he started his own consulting firm, as public relations/communications strategist at 1 Voice Communications. In the past Jones was communications manager at Chrysler, manager of public relations at Daimler Chrysler and public affairs/media relations consultant at FEMA.

Jones started off working for New Jersey Transit as a senior communication services coordinator. He helped New Jersey Transit grow into one of the largest transit agencies in the nation.

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Source: STL American | Joia Williamson

“Many of my young years were devoted to my sisters and brothers. I had no childhood,” Sheila tells The 700 Club. “I remember it being on a Saturday, and I was washing clothes. I hadn’t been outside, and I just wanted to go. I said, ‘I’ll just put this basket of clothes here and I’ll sneak downstairs, just for a minute, [to] get some fresh air.’ Well, I went downstairs, and I don’t think I was there for maybe three minutes. I heard my mom yell my name. I just felt my heart drop. She didn’t take it too well. I paid for it.”

When she was seven, Sheila’s mother had a nervous breakdown. The children went to live with different relatives.

“My brother and I went to live with my grandmother. I think that was one of the happiest times of my life, actually, because I got to be a little girl then.”

Sheila attended Catholic school and learned about God. She vowed her life would be different from her mother’s.

“I loved getting up and going to church. It was just my time. If anybody asked me what are you going to be when you grow up, I’m going to be a nun.”

Despite her good intentions, Sheila got pregnant when she was 15. Her mother wasn’t happy.

“Her first response was, ‘Of course, you can’t keep it.’ But I told her I don’t want to get rid of it. I went to the young man and spoke to him. He said, ‘Oh no, I want this baby.’ In fact, he gave me a ring. He said, ‘You’re going to keep this baby. You’re going to finish school. When you’ve finished school, we’re going to get married.’”

Two months after her daughter was born, Sheila’s fiancé got into an argument with someone and was shot and killed. At 16, Sheila felt like her life was over. She recalls, “I felt lost. All my hope was just gone.”

Sheila’s mother tried to convince her to try prostitution, but Sheila resisted. She finished high school, moved out, and got married. After the birth of her second baby, Sheila felt her life was falling into place.

“I’m finally happy. I’m finally getting the brass ring. I’m finally at a place where I have some peace. I have someone who loves me.”

Then one morning after her husband had left for his job, she got a phone call.

“It was the president of the company. He said there’d been an accident. I get to California hospital, and there he is. I was 21 years old. I remember I just fell to my knees, and I said, ‘Not again. Not again.’”

After his death, Sheila was devastated.

“At that time, I begin a downward spiral. Because I couldn’t understand why it was snatched away. So I went into a state of depression. I stayed there. I didn’t know how to get out of it. I started relying on medications.”

Sheila went from taking painkillers and smoking pot to using cocaine. During the day she tried to be a good mom. At night she prostituted herself for drugs.

“Honestly, I was no better than my mother, and it deeply disturbed me because I had become her.”

One night, Sheila went to a hotel with a customer. After she arrived, she discovered it was a set-up, and Sheila was raped by a gang of 15 men. Physically, emotionally and spiritually at the end of her rope, Sheila cried out to God.

“I looked up to God and said, ‘I’m hurting, and I don’t want to hurt anymore. I’m tired of the life that I’m living. Only person that can help me right now is You, God.’ That was the first time I ever heard God speak to me. I heard that voice loud, and it was audible. He said, ‘I’m here, and it’s going to be okay.’ I’ll never forget that. That was the first time in my life I felt secure.”

Sheila moved in with her grandmother and started going to church.

“My whole life changed. I joined a church and God spoke to me. When God calls us, we have to heed.”

Today she is an ordained minister and happily married to Donald.

“He’s a man after God’s heart. We’ve been able to build a relationship based on the love of God and that makes a difference.”

Sheila is grateful for the new life she has found in Christ.

“It’s like that butterfly. A butterfly has to go through a metamorphosis. He has to struggle to be able to gain his wings. When we become that new creature, we get our wings. Because we are that new creature in God, God has built us up from the inside out. Just like that butterfly.”

Source: CBN.com

Meanwhile, folks were somewhat flummoxed by various reports on who gave and how much. Here’s some clarification from A. Larry Ross, a spokesman for Warren.

Although Associated Press said all the gifts came only from “members” and all were under $100, that’s not exactly on target.

The vast majority of gifts were under $100, “from individuals and families doing what they could, not from “fat cats,” according to Warren’s weekend message, says Ross.

The potential size of the pool of givers is also confusing. Outreach Magazine lists Saddleback with 22,000+ in weekend worship attendance. But remember, not everyone goes every Sunday; not everyone who goes is a “member” (which Saddleback, like many conservative evangelical churches, reserves for people who have taken classes in discipleship and committed to joining the church); and not every member goes.

At Saddleback, which draws from the densely populated region south of Los Angeles, membership is higher than average attendance and there are more than 30,000 people who participate in Saddleback-sponsored small groups across the region.

As for how many people — members, attendees or total strangers — saw Warren’s initial appeal, addressed “Dear Saddleback Family” last Wednesday, we’ll never know.

Ross points out:

At virtually every Saddleback church service, a disclaimer is made from the platform and reinforced in the bulletin to the effect that, “if you are not a member or regular attender who considers this your church home, you are our guests – please do not feel compelled to give.” So, by posting the Intranet letter addressed to church family on the church blog, it is akin to the plate passing a visitor by in the pew — it is an appeal intended for members only, giving them an opportunity to minister through giving.

So, it’s entirely possible that several hundred thousand dollars in donations are still in the mail, working their way through the holiday postal glut. Stay tuned for a final tally.

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The UK’s Telegraph reports Father Tim Jones, 42, also suggested stealing from national chain stores rather than targeting small, family-owned businesses.
The priest argued his advice did not break the eighth commandment “Thou shalt not steal” because “God’s love for the poor and despised outweighs the property rights of the rich.”
Mr Jones told his congregation: “My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift.”
“I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.”
“I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.”
“I would ask them not to take any more than they need, for any longer than they need. I offer the advice with a heavy heart and wish society would recognise that bureaucratic ineptitude and systematic delay has created an invitation and incentive to crime for people struggling to cope.”
The priest from North Yorkshire was later slammed by police andpoliticians, describing the sermon as “irresponsible”.
A spokesman for Yorkshire police told the Telegraph: “First and foremost, shoplifting is a criminal offence and to justify this course of action under any circumstances is highly irresponsible.”
“Turning or returning to crime will only make matters worse, that is a guarantee. We recognise some people find themselves in difficult circumstances but support is readily available and must be sought.”

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Jones, a Grammy winner and longtime music producer whose gospel shows have aired on Black Entertainment Television for decades, officially presented Tennessee State University with the exclusive rights to all his performances and all his television broadcasts.

The collection, formally presented to the university Friday evening, has an appraised value of $6 million.

“Tennessee State University holds a special place in my heart,” Jones said in a statement Friday.

He earned his undergraduate degree from TSU and went on to earn a doctorate from Vanderbilt.

“So this gift reflects my appreciation for the place that helped me begin a career that I dreamed about as a child. I felt it was important to give something back to the institution that shaped me into who I am today, and this is a fantastic way to leave a legacy for future generations.”

For TSU students, having the massive collection at the school will mean access to 30 years of music, marketing and technology. Professors are eager to work the collection into their lesson plans.

“It’ll be a good way for students to research, experience and listen to this genre,” said professor Mark Crawford, coordinator of TSU’s commercial music program. “Hopefully, they’ll be able to see the musical changes, the marketing changes, even the formatting changes” over the decades.

Communications professor Donald Page thinks his students will be more interested in the technology and technique on display through 30 years of music videos and broadcasts. He remembers Jones when he was still producing a local gospel show that aired on Nashville’s Channel 4 on Sunday mornings.

TSU now has 30 years of recordings of, as well as exclusive rights to, his performances and television programs he hosted and produced on BET. University spokeswoman Cheryl Bates-Lee said the gift is the largest in-kind donation TSU has ever received.

Jones serves as host and executive producer of Bobby Jones Gospel and producer of Video Gospel on BET. His Bobby Jones Gospel was the first nationally syndicated black gospel television show and has been on the air since 1980, when BET went on the air.

In a statement, TSU President Melvin Johnson said: “We are thrilled to receive this generous gift from Dr. Jones. Not only will these recordings contain a wealth of information for our students, but this gift makes TSU the steward of important works from this genre while perpetually generating additional resources for the university.”

Police on Saturday charged Richard Alden Samuel McCroskey III with first-degree murder, robbery and stealing the automobile of Mark Niederbrock, a pastor at Walker’s Presbyterian Church in Appomattox County. Farmville police Capt. Wade Stimpson said McCroskey likely would be charged with killing three others found in the home of a Longwood University professor on Friday once the medical examiner identifies the victims. That is not expected before Monday.

Police arrested McCroskey, 20, of Castro Valley, Calif., at the Richmond airport Saturday. The aspiring rapper in the horrorcore genre, which sets violent lyrics to hip-hop beats, was found sleeping in the baggage area as he waited for a flight back to California. He is being held in the Piedmont Regional Jail and has an initial court appearance on Monday. It was unclear if he has an attorney.

On Friday, authorities discovered the bodies in the home of Debra Kelley, an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice studies at the university in the town of Farmville, about 50 miles west of Richmond. Stimpson said Niederbrock and Kelley were separated.

Stimpson said police were called to the home on Thursday by the parent of a girl who was visiting the couple’s daughter because she hadn’t heard from her child. A man at the house told police the girls were at the movies. When the mother in West Virginia still didn’t hear from her daughter on Friday, she asked police to go back. That’s when they found the bodies.

Police have declined to say how the four were killed and why they have not been able to identify all of them immediately.

McCroskey recorded songs that spoke of death, murder and mutilation under the name Syko Sam. His MySpace Web page said he has only been rapping for a few months but has been a fan for years of the horrorcore genre.

In a song called “My Dark Side,” McCroskey sings: “You’re not the first, just to let you know. I’ve killed many people and I kill them real slow. It’s the best feeling, watching their last breath. Stabbing and stabbing till there’s nothing left.”

A friend who owns a small, independent record label that specializes in horrorcore confirmed the site and the songs were McCroskey’s. Andres Shrim, who owns Serial Killin Records in New Mexico, said others shouldn’t judge McCroskey by what they see on his Web site or hear in his music.

Describing McCroskey as a “great kid,” Shrim said he has known him for at least two years, and he last saw him Sept. 12 at an all-day music festival in South Gate, Mich.

“You would never, ever imagine that kid even being a suspect,” Shrim said. “If he is found to be guilty, I would be 100 percent shocked.”

Shrim said even though horrorcore focuses on murder and other morbid subjects, performers and fans shouldn’t be labeled violent.

On his Web page, McCroskey posted videos and pictures of a grave where a cross and miniature American flags had been turned upside down.

“We defiled the grave, and then lightning struck seconds ago. I think we were being warned,” he says in the video, laughing. In the photos, the gravestone identifies the person buried there as a Marine.

Longwood, a school of about 4,500 students, sent an e-mail to inform students when the bodies were found, but did not issue a full-scale alert because the crime happened off campus, Caldwell said. She said the small town was unaccustomed to such violence.

“Not only on campus, but even in Farmville — it just doesn’t happen here,” she said.

The study, by Baylor University researchers, found that the problem is so pervasive that it almost certainly involves a wide range of denominations, religious traditions and leaders.

“It certainly is prevalent, and clearly the problem is more than simply a few charismatic leaders preying on vulnerable followers,” said Diana Garland, dean of Baylor’s School of Social Work, who co-authored the study.

It found that more than two-thirds of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance.

Carolyn Waterstradt, 42, a graduate student who lives in the Midwest, said she was coerced into a sexual relationship with a married minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for 18 months. He had been her pastor for a decade, she said, and told her the relationship was ordained by God.

“I believed him because I was looking for direction and for help,” said Waterstradt, who ended the relationship years ago and entered therapy. The pastor was removed from the clergy.

Waterstradt said she has suffered lasting psychological and spiritual consequences from the relationship, including depression and a deep distrust of organized religion. “It’s very difficult for me to walk into a church,” she said.

A growing number of denominations are moving to do something about such problems, particularly since the Catholic Church’s highly publicized sex scandal involving its clergy.

At least 36 denominations have policies that identify sexual relations between adult congregants and clergy as misconduct, subject to discipline.

The Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis, uses investigating panels to look into complaints against rabbis. It notes that the “power imbalance between clergy and those to whom they minister makes it clear that sexual contacts in these situations are by definition non-consensual.”

In the United Church of Christ, ministers must attend a workshop on clergy sexual abuse every three years, and those seeking jobs in the ministry must have their names checked against government sex offender lists, said the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, spokesman for the 1.2 million-member denomination.

Locally, the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia requires clergy members, other employees and volunteers to receive training in prevention of adult sexual misconduct and prevention of child abuse, spokesman Henry Burt said.

The diocese “takes very seriously its obligation to make its churches and institutions safe places for children and adults to grow in their faith in the church,” Burt said.

Lawmakers are also taking note. Clergy sexual misconduct is illegal in Minnesota and Texas. Texas law, for example, defines clergy sexual behavior as sexual assault if the religious leader “causes the other person to submit or participate by exploiting the other person’s emotional dependency on the clergyman in the clergyman’s professional character as spiritual adviser.”

For its study, Baylor used the 2008 General Social Survey, a nationally representative sample of 3,559 respondents, to estimate the prevalence of clergy sexual misconduct. Women older than 18 who attended worship services at least once a month were asked in the survey whether they had received “sexual advances or propositions” from a religious leader.

The study found that close to one in 10 respondents — male and female — reported having known about clergy sexual misconduct occurring in a congregation they had attended.

Researchers say they don’t know whether the incidence of clergy sexual misconduct had changed over the years. Nor do they know whether sexual wrongdoing by clergy is more, or less, frequent than in other well-respected professions.

But, Garland said, “when you put it with a spiritual leader or moral leader, you’ve really added a power that we typically don’t think about in secular society — which is that this person speaks for God and interprets God for people. And that really adds a power.”

The Arlington Independent School District was one of several across the United States that opted out of the live broadcast of the president’s speech challenging students to take personal responsibility for their own education. Facing concerns on the part of parents and teachers that the speech might be used to promote a partisan political agenda, other districts responded by allowing individual schools to decide or to allow individual children to opt out of viewing the speech at their parents’ request.

School officials in Arlington — a large suburb located between Dallas and Fort Worth — said students with appropriate parental notification could take a half-day excused absence to watch the president’s address at an off-campus location like a home, church or community center.

One of those sites was Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington. The 4,500-member, predominantly African-American congregation invited students from both Arlington and the neighboring Mansfield Independent School District to watch the message at the church and offered free lunches to the first 100 students requesting them.

Veronica Griffith, minister of communications and special events at Cornerstone Baptist Church, said 160 students and more than 35 adults showed up for the screening.

Dwight McKissic, the church’s pastor, said it should be up to parents, not school administrators, to decide whether or not students should hear the president’s address. “No one should be forced to hear the message,” McKissic said in a press release. “However, what parent, teacher or administrator would not want students to hear a message encouraging them to be persistent in succeeding in school and to be challenged to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning?”

Later McKissic learned the Arlington Independent School District had accepted an invitation to take 28 fifth grade classes to a Sept. 21 media event sponsored by a committee preparing for the 2011 Super Bowl to be played at Arlington’s new $1.15 billion Dallas Cowboys football stadium.

Along with the former president and first lady, the program will feature “legendary Dallas Cowboys,” along with business and community leaders from across North Texas. The event, being held to announce “the largest youth-education program in Super Bowl history,” will give invited students free lunches and a T-shirt. Planners were also working to “secure a performance by a well-known recording artist to cap the festivities in high style.”

McKissic responded with a second press release calling it a “blatant double standard” to not permit students to hear one message while busing them to hear the other.

“Why is it appropriate for students to hear from former President Bush on Sept. 21 at the Cowboy[s] Stadium, but inappropriate for the current president to address students while they remain on school campuses?” McKissic asked. “Why is President Obama’s message considered to be an intrusion on the school day, a disruptive and unplanned class activity, a message ‘not deemed appropriate’ for students to hear or a message regarded as ‘something students should not be exposed to?’ Yet it is accepted as an appropriate message for students to hear from unnamed Dallas Cowboys, business and community leaders?”

McKissic said students and the public “deserve and need to have these differences explained.” He said the double standard reveals “obvious duplicity” in the district’s decision making.

McKissic is a former trustee at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He resigned from the post in 2007 over controversy about a sermon he preached in the seminary chapel voicing disagreement with a new policy at the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board disqualifying missionaries who admit to using a “private prayer language” in their devotional life. McKissic said the experience — viewed by many as a form of speaking in tongues — was part of his own prayer life, and that he first experienced it while attending Southwestern Seminary as a student in 1981.

McKissic made news earlier this year when he called on the SBC to pass a resolution celebrating the election of America’s first black president. The convention responded in June with a resolution applauding Obama’s election as a sign of “our continuing progress toward racial reconciliation” while deploring many of his policies.

McKissic posted audio of a sermon he preached prior to Obama’s January inauguration on the Cornerstone Baptist Church website comparing questions raised about the sincerity and legitimacy of the president’s faith to similar criticism directed toward Martin Luther King in the 1960s.

“Whenever a black man ascends to prominence and power, the political establishment tries to demonize that person,” McKissic said. He quoted the late Jerry Falwell, who in 1961 questioned “left-wing associations” of Martin Luther King. “They were accusing him of being a communist and a socialist like they accuse Barack Obama of being a communist and socialist,” he said.

McKissic went so far as to wonder if Obama’s election might have been foretold in an obscure reference in Psalm 68:31 prophesying, “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.”

“I don’t believe Barack Obama would be president if God hadn’t set him up to be president,” McKissic said.

McKissic said many white preachers want God to judge America for abortion and gay marriage. McKissic said he feels strongly on both of those issues but believes that racism is also a sin, and God must judge America for that sin as well.

“If I were God and I wanted to judge America for her racism, slavery, unjust wages — all the inequities that have occurred in this country — what better way to do it than go get a direct descendant of Africa?” he asked. “I’m talking about a man whose daddy comes from Africa — a people you thought were going to be your slave, to pick your cotton. If I were God, and I wanted to punish you for racism, I would go to get an African, and put [that] man as your president.”

Later in the sermon, McKissic chastised black teenagers for high dropout rates that he said dishonor earlier generations like the Little Rock Nine who faced threats and intimidation to improve educational opportunities for minority students.

“Folks paid a price for you to go to school and graduate,” he said. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

SOURCE: Associated Baptist Press News – Bob Allen