CALVARY CHAPEL SEEKING TO ATTRACT YOUNG PEOPLE
Knight Ridder News ServiceANAHEIM, Calif. -- The goal was simple: Draw young people to Christ.
By 1990, the Calvary Chapel network in Southern California had built an impressive membership on the strength of middle-aged worshippers. But its founder, Chuck Smith, sought to reach out to future generations.
He remembered the roots of his own church's growth: the hippie-ish "Jesus Freaks" of the 1960s. He felt the '90s also had their share of young "lost souls."
So Smith envisioned a stadium-sized crusade.
And so the Harvest Crusade was born. Its main speaker since Day One, pastor Greg Laurie of Newport Beach, Calif., has been hailed as the next Billy Graham. More than 1.4 million people have attended the evangelical revivals in Orange County, Calif. Other crusades nationwide have attracted an additional 700,000.
This week, Friday through Sunday, the Harvest Crusade returns to Edison Field in Anaheim for the 10th year.
ALABAMA CHURCH'S SERVICES VIOLATES CITY'S SOUND CODE
The Associated Press
DAPHNE, Ala. (AP) -- The noise at Bay Community Church got a little too joyful.
After several verbal warnings, the church was handed a $166 ticket for violating the city's noise code. Now, church supporters say the ordinance is unconstitutional.
During a June 23 church service, a Daphne police officer measured the noise with a digital decibel meter and wrote a ticket. The noise registered 83 decibels, 13 over the limit for that time of day.
Stuart J. Roth, chairman of the American Center for Law and Justice of Alabama, says the year-old ordinance violates free speech and religious rights of church members because it exempts noise made by educational, recreational and construction activities.
Responding to neighbors' complaints, the 200-member congregation has toned down its music, which at the youth services include Christian rock. Taylor said they also are soundproofing the rented brick and metal building.
After receiving the ticket, pastor Jerry Taylor promised to "do what we have to do to make it right."
R.I. CHURCH DEDICATES BELL TO REPENT FOR SLAVERY PAST
The Associated Press
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- In 1636, an area now known as Rhode Island became a place of refuge for the religiously oppressed. But in the 18th century, its ports accommodated slave trading. No colony in New England had such a high proportion of slaves as did Rhode Island.
In an act of repentance, the United Church of Christ dedicated an 80-pound cast iron "bell of freedom." The bell is in Abbott Park, next to the Beneficent Congregational Church, which was part of the Underground Railroad that helped slaves in their escape to freedom.
The ceremony took place on the fifth day of the national convention of the United Church of Christ, a liberal-minded church with an anti-slavery heritage.
"Americans were only minor players in the whole slave trade, but Rhode Islanders were the principal American slave traders," said Stanley Lemons, a history professor at Rhode Island College.
WISE WOMEN CALL FOR EQUAL DECISIONMAKING POSITIONS
Ecumenical News International
LONDON -- An interdenominational women's synod has written to the heads of the churches in Britain and Ireland calling for women to be allowed half the places "on all decisionmaking committees and commissions."
More than 150 women met in Liverpool, northern England, from July 24 to 28 for the first women's synod in the two countries. The WISE -- from Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England -- church women also seek the ordination of women priests in the Roman Catholic Church and of women bishops in the Anglican churches of Britain and Ireland.
The letter to the church leaders urges them to "move from an ethos of obedience (for women) to an ethos of justice so as to challenge violence against women, sexism, racism and homophobia in our churches and exploitative market-driven values in society."
Women from the mainstream churches in Britain and Ireland took part in the synod. Foreign participants came from Austria, Germany, India, Japan, The Netherlands, Philippines and the United States.