Stephen Colbert roasts the Pope, Says he is off Message

Declaring himself  "American's most famous Catholic," comedian Stephen Colbert roasted church leaders at a charity event in New York on Thursday, taking aim at Pope Francis and Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

"As an observant Catholic, I believe the Pope is infallible," said Colbert, a Communion-class teacher at a parish in New Jersey. "But he's also wrong about a lot of things."

Colbert, whose bombastic persona on the "Colbert Report" often takes a conservative slant on Christianity, poked fun at the new Pope's humble lifestyle, saying that if the pontiff were in charge of the white-tie charity event, it would have been held at an IHOP, not New York's glitzy Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

“His Humbleness would be out washing the feet of the coat-check guy or something,” Colbert quipped. "We get it, you're modest."

"But it's not just his humble lifestyle," Colbert continued. "He's off message. He says Catholics need to stop obsessing about homosexuality, contraception and abortion. For Pete's sake, we need something to obsess about now that `Breaking Bad' is over."

WHY MILLENNIALS ARE LEAVING THE CHURCH

I wrote my first essay with a pen and paper, but by the time I graduated from college, I owned a cell phone and used Google as a verb.

I still remember the home phone numbers of my old high school friends, but don’t ask me to recite my husband’s without checking my contacts first.

I own mix tapes that include selections from Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but I’ve never planned a trip without Travelocity.

Despite having one foot in Generation X, I tend to identify most strongly with the attitudes and the ethos of the millennial generation, and because of this, I’m often asked to speak to my fellow evangelical leaders about why millennials are leaving the church.

Armed with the latest surveys, along with personal testimonies from friends and readers, I explain how young adults perceive evangelical Christianity to be too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

I point to research that shows young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith, between science and Christianity, between compassion and holiness.

Survey shows that Youth Groups; are responsible for Driving Christian Teens to Abandon Faith

A new study might reveal why a majority of Christian teens abandon their faith upon high school graduation. Some time ago, Christian pollster George Barna documented that 61 percent of today's 20-somethings who had been churched at one point during their teen years are now spiritually disengaged. They do not attend church, read their Bible or pray.

According to a new five-week, three-question national survey sponsored by the National Center for Family-Integrated Churches (NCFIC), the youth group itself is the problem. Fifty-five percent of American Christians are concerned with modern youth ministry because it's too shallow and too entertainment-focused, resulting in an inability to train mature believers. But even if church youth groups had the gravitas of Dallas Theological Seminary, 36 percent of today's believers are convinced youth groups themselves are not even biblical.

Japan Makes History with More Than 3,000 Attendees at a Christian Conference

The first Empowered21 All Japan Conference recently wrapped up a record setting conference for the nation at the Kyoto International Convention Center. The final registration data showed 5,000 Spirit-empowered Believers came to this 4-day event that featured worship, prayer and teaching. This makes the All Japan Conference one of the largest in Japanese History.

Anne Gimenez, senior pastor of the Rock Church and presiding bishop of the Rock Ministerial Fellowship, at 81, spoke for the first time on Japanese soil at this meeting. "It is time for awakening in Japan," said Gimenez.

"We have been very blessed to be at the E21 All Japan Conference. The E21 Asia cabinet believes that we are at the beginning of the 3rd Pentecost and we believe we saw evidence of that this week," said Niko Njotorahardjo, leader of the Healing Ministry Movement, pastor of over 200,000 believers in Indonesia and E21 Asia chairman.

A Christian for Objecting to Newark State’s First-Ever Homosexual ‘Marriage’ was ordered to be removed by the Mayor

The mayor of Newark, New Jersey ordered the removal of a Christian man from city hall on Monday for raising an objection in the name of Jesus Christ against one of the first-ever homosexual ‘weddings’ in the state.

As previously reported, the Supreme Court of New Jersey unanimously ruled on Friday to uphold a lower court order that mandated officials to allow same-sex “marriages” to be performed and recognized in the state. Ceremonies were then hurriedly organized for Monday, the day that the court set for nuptials to begin.

Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who was recently elected to the United States Senate, told reporters that he was making himself available to officiate ceremonies at city hall when the clock struck midnight on Monday.

Booker is a professing Christian and attends Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark, but states that “God’s truth might lie also in other faiths.” Throughout his campaign for the Senate, he was known for his outspoken advocacy of homosexuality and abortion, and has refused for years to perform any marriages in the state until New Jersey allowed homosexuals to also tie the knot.

Learning is the cheapest tool to deform failure

Hidden hunger – has three dimensions to it. We have

1.      Body - this has to do with lack of some essential nutrients and vitamins in the body. This manifests in form of one ailments or the other such as scurvy which is deficiency of vitamin C. so, feed well to live well.

    

     Soul : What you read is a food to your soul. Watch what you feed your soul with. Remember it is garbage in, garbage out, so read healthily. Watch films that are healthy for your life, relationship and destiny. Read wide for readers are leaders according to Bishop David Oyedepo. When you are not mentally satisfied, learning is the antidote.

When you feed your soul with junks, it will break down when you need it most. So, be wise. Read relevant materials in your line of interest. Many students failed in the examinations not because they fail to read but because they fail to read wisely and relevantly. Bishop David Oyedepo once said,” When you stop learning, you start dying”. Learning is the cheapest tool to deform failure.

3.      Spirit ; There is something in everyman that is crying for expression towards divinity. Spiritual food belongs to this group of hidden hunger which everybody is in need of although not everybody believes (knows) it. The major source of this food is the Word of God.

 When you feed your spirit with God’s word, it makes you healthy spiritually. It is not everything that comes your way that is food. Some are bait to your health, poisonous substance polluting your life and destiny. It is not every book that you should read, it is not every programme you should get yourself involved in. Some are bait to your relationship with God. So, watch it,

Zamboanga War Aftermath, The Love Of Christ Triumphs

Three weeks after fighting between Philippine troops and Muslim rebels, the fighting in the southern city of Zamboanga is over. And throngs of Muslims are looking to Christians for help.

Now, leaders face the difficult tasks of rebuilding their community and helping traumatized residents move forward.

Surprisingly, it's area churches that are reaching out to the mostly Muslim victims.

Zamboanga resident, Cristina, is still shaken. She recounted how God miraculously saved her from being taken hostage at the height of the fighting.

She went up to her room to rest when the MNLF Muslim rebels barged into their boarding house and took with them her three female housemates.

"I cried out to God to help me and surrendered everything to Him. A mortar exploded near our house and I could hear empty shells fall on the roof like rain," she recalled.

Relationship is a Product;Examine before You Buy

Friendship is all about suitability. You don’t buy a shoe that is not suitable for your leg. In the same vein, don’t buy into a relationship that is not suitable for your vision, marriage, life and destiny. Don’t buy into a relationship that holds no future for you. Relationship is a product you have to examine very well before you buy into it. Relationship has its reward, let it deliver them to you.

A good friend is hard to find, hard to lose and impossible to forget. Do you have any fruit to show for any good work in people’s lives?

Blackberry Founders Considers Take Over

Would you buy back your old and failing company?

Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin, co-founders of the company now known as BlackBerry, are considering a bid that could save the embattled smartphone maker.

The pair, who own 8 percent of the stock, are weighing options to take over the mobile company, according to filings. A Securities and Exchange Commission filing revealed the two co-founders are considering "all available options with respect to their holdings of the shares, including, without limitation, a potential acquisition of all the outstanding shares of the Issuer that they do not currently own, either by themselves or with other interested investors."

Lazaridis and Fregin have hired Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Centerview Partners LLC to assist with their review of strategic alternatives.

The co-founders also plan to "work exclusively with each other with respect to any potential acquisition of all or a portion of the assets or equity interests." 

Lazaridis and Fregin founded the company, formerly known as Research in Motion, back in 1985 along with Jim Balsillie. In September, the smartphone maker announced plans to layoff 40 percent of its staff and said the company would go private.

BlackBerry has already received a bid from Fairfax Financial Holdings of Toronto, its biggest shareholder, which has tentatively offered to buy 90 percent of the BlackBerry shares which is currently going  for $9 a piece.

The Loneliness Of The Christian Entrepreneur

This is the second in a series about my speech to the annual Christian Economic Forum in Jackson Hole Wyoming, a gathering of entrepreneurs, economists, philanthropists and non-profit leaders from around the globe who gather to challenge the dominance of a secular outlook in other business forums such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, TED Talks, the Aspen conference and the annual Fed conference also held in Jackson Hole. One of the key themes from my speech is the lack of support, and too often outright suspicion, for Christian entrepreneurs, from religious leaders.

“In my world, [almost] nobody thinks like me. I think that’s true of a lot of you, too. You know, I was a radio host for ten years — I actually did financial work and did radio at the same time — but I was a daily host for ten years and I met all sorts of people. When you go on the radio, the first people who call are almost always the fools of the community; the mockers, the scoffers, the gotcha-guys, the gotcha-mamas, the people who want to trip you up, the people who are angry, the people who have some really weird cause – whatever it is – that they’re going to push. And they just fill the airwaves with toxicity and I found it debilitating emotionally.
But there was this tiny group of people, maybe 5% of my listeners or 5% of my callers, and after the fools quieted down a little bit I started to hear from them. It’s almost always the same story: If it’s ‘he’, he’s forty or older and runs a business, or he has management responsibility, and he’s a decision-maker. If it’s ‘she’, almost always she’s a retired school teacher or a retired librarian, a pastor’s wife sometimes, occasionally a physician who is intellectually and spiritually thirsty, because they’re the only one in their world who has a pile of books this high and who reads them and who talks about ideas. For the business decision-maker (he could be for-profit or not-profit), he or sometimes she – they’re the decision maker, they stand alone in some sense, they’re the entrepreneurs.

How Christian Tech Entrepreneurs Find Funds, Support Among The Faithful

 

NEW YORK -- On a recent evening, a small group of tech entrepreneurs sat around a table in Manhattan's Flatiron District, swapping ideas on how to grow their startups.

Three men in their late 20s and early 30s announced they had signed up thousands of pastors to their startup, FaithStreet, which matches Christians and churches. An Episcopal priest wearing a white collar suggested ways they could refine their business model. And a young woman said she was frustrated with the designer for her mobile app, which helps people search for relevant Scripture verses.

After an hour, they bowed their heads, and a local church pastor led them in prayer, asking God for "fresh ideas of what you want to see happen with faith and technology."

The scene at the Faith and Tech meetup group is part of a small subculture of the tech world that supports Christian entrepreneurs. In contrast to the hard-partying, get-rich-fast lifestyle portrayed in a new Bravo reality show on Silicon Valley, these entrepreneurs and investors not only pray together, but also give financial support to faith-based startups and discuss how to build religious companies that are both financially successful and socially responsible.

Friendship is Gainful

Friendship is all about gain. If it is not gainful, it is not worthy. To be a friend means the following: 

F: - free Access: - Are you freely accessible by someone in need?

R: - responsive: - Are you responsive to someone in need?

I: - interesting: -  Are you interesting to relate with or boring? A man that

has friend must show himself friendly.

E: - encouraging:- Are you an encouragement or a discouragement to 

someone?

N: - needed: -    Are you there for those who need you or you are just there 

for yourself alone?

D:- darling :-   Are you a darling? Is your partner enjoying or enduring

you? 

S: - supportive: - Are you supportive or suppressive? Are you threatened

with your partners’ progress or achievements?

H: - helpful: - Are you helpful or hurtful? When someone is in a dire need            

or at a cross road, does your name ring bell in their heart?

I: - important: - Are you important and relevant in someone’s life or either

you are there or not, it makes no difference?

P: - profitable: - Are you profitable or poisonous to someone’s life?

Any friendship that you are not gaining from, you are adversely losing to. If it is not adding to you, it is reducing you.