Today, relief groups, many of them Christian, are raising funds for emergency relief work in the aftermath of the deadly typhoon in Metro Manila, Philippines.

Here is a heart-breaking You Tube video:

Operation Blessing reports:

Disaster relief specialists Operation Blessing International (OBI) are responding to Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana), which dumped 13.5 inches of rainfall --an entire month's worth-- in just six hours, leaving the city 80 percent flooded. News reports confirm over 100 deaths so far and many people are stranded on rooftops throughout Manila as roadways are submerged. An estimated 300,000 residents are displaced. OBI has an office in Manila and has worked extensively in the Philippines for over a decade. Under the direction of Dr. Kim April C. Pascual, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Operation Blessing International Philippines, the charity has earned the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) of the Year by the Philippines government for 4 out of the last 6 years.

Dr. Kim, whose own home is underwater, is on the ground directing the relief and recovery operations. Currently, OBI teams are moving quickly to:

* Mobilize food and water distributions
* Deploy medical teams to hardest-hit areas
* Partner with local groups to begin flood clean-up and recovery efforts

Already, OBI teams have been able to feed more than 5,000 affected residents and will continue to expand relief efforts to reach more victims.

Dr. Kim said, "This is Hurricane Katrina of the Philippines. Almost a month's worth of rainfall has submerged riverbank cities like Marikina and Pasig, and buried neighboring cities and provinces under ravaging floodwaters, putting the whole region under a state of calamity."

Other relief groups include:

World Vision

Google list of relief agencies

This list will be updated,.

Posted by Tim Morgan at September 28, 2009 2:54PM | Comments (0)

Jennifer Knapp, who sold over a million albums in the late 1990s and early 2000s before abruptly stepping away from Christian music in 2004, is making a comeback.

Several weeks ago, she updated her official website, which had been stagnant for years. And her MySpace page has, for several weeks, included notice of a single show coming up next Friday in Los Angeles with another CCM veteran, Phillip LaRue.

Knapp's management confirmed to CT recently that she was making music again. "After a well needed hiatus, Jennifer has started writing/recording again and playing select shows," said her manager, Dave Hopper. CT's requests for an interview with Knapp were denied, though Hopper said she might grant one later.

This afternoon, Knapp made her first official statement on the matter on her website, starting off a brief entry with the words, "Yes, it’s true. I am the REAL Jennifer Knapp and I’ve been doing a little music lately."

Knapp wrote that she keeps running into old friends who are asking all sorts of questions about her "comeback." "We've been flooded with e-mails and phone calls simply by putting up a humble little homepage. So much for my little holiday. It’s looking very much like it may be over."

She didn't say why she left music in the first place (in 2004, she told Relevant that she was tired of touring one record while recording the next, and "it got to where I was just doing shows to support the record, rather than having a record support the heart of the people I was supposed to be serving"), but she did say she spent much of her time away "traveling mostly."

She wrote: "I have wasted too many days sulking about how strange life is and many more discovering just how truly beautiful people can be. My experiences have been both wildly exotic and extraordinarily mundane. But mostly I will say that I have had a chance to get my feet under me. I took that time to discover more about myself and my own faith without the veil of expectations to a cause. Without writing a novel at this point, I’ll just say that I’m starting to think that I might actually be a songwriter, musician, or artist of some kind . . . So, maybe I should do something about it?

"I know that many of you have persisted at hope that I would return to music. Why you have wanted or even cared has been one of the greatest mysteries to me, at the same time, a complete and utter blessing as it has always been. Thank you for your support. I can only hope to repay you with what you have waited for . . . music."

And to whet fans' appetites, Knapp has posted a new song, "Letting Go," on her MySpace page.

Personally, I'm thrilled about this news, and am somewhat bemused that Knapp is surprised that people "even cared" about her absence. I think she's one of the best things to have happened to Christian music in the last 15 years, and her albums are among my favorites. And I had the privilege of getting to know her a bit back in the 1990s when we worked together on a regular column (a few samples) for what was then Campus Life magazine (the now-defunct Ignite Your Faith), and have always enjoyed her honest, direct, sometimes even in-your-face approach to life. (A lot like me!) That outlook came through loud and clear in her music, which was as honest and confessional as anything you'd hear on Christian radio. Her music has always been good for the soul, and her return is good for it too.

Posted by Mark Moring at September 18, 2009 4:13PM | Comments (10)

Now that controversy over the fate of Rifqa Bary -- the teenage Christian convert who ran away from her Ohio home fearing her Muslim parents would kill her -- has reached Elian Gonzalez proportions, many evangelicals may be tuning out the never-ending headlines.

But don't miss this one.

Craig McCarthy was the Orlando attorney representing Rifqa Bary's mother until Sept. 3. He is also a committed evangelical. And, contrary to those who have mobilized around Rifqa's cause, McCarthy believes her Sri Lankan parents are in the right.

McCarthy is "happy that the child knows Jesus." But he is concerned that "many Christian conservatives have allowed themselves to adopt a narrative and thus reach conclusions ... prematurely" -- to the extent that their evangelistic zeal has led them to spread false information.

The core of his message: "Please recognize that the Lord is not so powerless as to need people to hide information, to embellish facts, or to give false witness in order to advance Christ's kingdom."

Read it all here.

Posted by Jeremy Weber at September 18, 2009 12:10PM | Comments (17)

Anti-discrimination statutes do not apply to an Idaho homeless shelter run by Christians because it is not a "dwelling," a federal district judge has ruled.

Moreover, the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects the Boise Rescue Mission Ministries' right to hold Christian services and encourage participants in its drug and alcohol recovery program to accept Christianity, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge ruled last Thursday (Sept. 10).

The 51-year-old non-profit says it runs three shelters that serve more than 28,000 meals and offers 8,000 beds to homeless persons each month. Lodge ruled that the shelters are not dwellings under the Fair Housing Act, but rather places of "temporary sojourn or transient visit."

At the same time, barring the Boise ministry from "teaching, preaching and proselytizing to individuals on its property, whether they be shelter guests, Discipleship program residents, or other individuals ... would substantially burden the Rescue Mission's ability to freely exercise its religion," Lodge wrote.

The Intermountain Fair Housing Council had sued Boise Rescue Mission Ministries on behalf of two individuals who said that guests who skip the shelters' worship services received inferior treatment, and that only Christians are allowed in its drug and alcohol recovery program.

"Most homeless people are desperately low in spirit," said the Rev. Bill Roscoe, executive director of the Boise Rescue Mission Ministries, "so we offer voluntary spiritual guidance to guests who desire to learn about Christianity."

Roscoe said the shelters do not discriminate on the basis of religion.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at September 15, 2009 11:46AM | Comments (1)

(Editor's note: As of Sept. 5, this posting was revised. We regret the errors in the earlier version.)

Anne Graham Lotz wowed the homeless crowd at the Bowery Mission in New York City yesterday.

Taking time off from a tour promoting her new book about Abraham, The Magnificent Obsession, Lotz told the men and women at the mission about how she deeply wanted a more vital relation to God.

She asked the audience if they “ever felt left out, felt shut out, that the world has discarded you?”

“Listen to me,” she said to the group. “No matter how shut out you are, this is not all there is. There is nothing at all that God won’t forgive.” (Click here for Time magazine's author interview.)

From the crowd of homeless, some nine individuals came forward during her altar call to pray with Lotz that Jesus would come into their lives.

James Macklin, director of outreach at the mission observed, “I know those guys and the one woman who went up. They are in search of change. Mrs. Lotz’s delivery, gently appealing without condemnation—she didn’t do it with thunder and roaring but with a gentle spirit. It had an impact on them.”

To some people, Lotz doesn’t seem to fit the picture of someone who could talk to people from the other side of the tracks.

She seems to be an evangelical princess, the cloistered daughter of Billy and Ruth Graham. She married young to a star basketball player and moved into a comfortable suburban lifestyle. She dresses elegantly and conservatively, favoring pin stripe pant suits with a white blouse, highly polished open back pumps and a single pearl necklace and earrings. In her new book she remarks, “It has been religious people, often within the organized church, who have been the most critical of and even hostile to my relationship with God. It was religious people from the board of deacons who voted to remove my nine-year Bible class from their church facility.” In an interview last fall with CT she mused that “I wondered why God hadn’t made me a man.”

Yet, she was effective at the Bowery.

A key to understanding the empathy that Lotz has with people on the street is to know that one of her favorite childhood books is A Little Princess. In the book a young rich girl gets thrown into poverty and becomes a scullery maid. One Christmas the girl passed a wonderful family gathering with food, presents and a beautiful tree. As her face pressed against the window, she began weeping.

During her address at the mission, Lotz asked the audience if they ever felt like the girl in that early 20th century novel, an outsider looking into another world where people had healthy relationships with God and fulfilling lives.

In interviews with Christianity Today this week, Lotz reflected on her own life. She hadn’t gone to college and her family life was good but her relation to God was not all it could be.

She told Time magazine that she felt trapped “in small talk and small toys and small sticky fingerprints.” That was about 1974.

Around that time, on a family outing from New York City to Cape Cod, their station wagon blew a tire, the first of four blowouts on that trip. Her mother-in law was "sitting in the back, waiting, and reading to no one in particular about the church in Philadelphia described in Revelation 3.” The words of this passage indicate that Jesus holds the key to open and shut the door to God's kingdom and the passage suddenly grabbed Lotz’s attention. “They spoke to me.” She decided to do something.

At the time, she had been seeking to participate in a local Bible Study Fellowship in order to study God's word more deeply. There were no fellowship classes nearby and no one seemed willing to start one. The doors seemed shut tight. But in the car she decided to knock on the door again. The Bible study ministry eventually agreed to come to her vicinity. She was living in Raleigh, North Carolina.

From the late 1970s until the late 1980s, Lotz was the teacher of this weekly local Bible study group. Also, she was drawn into the lives of hurting people, including criminals serving time in prison.

In the 1980s, the infamous serial killer, Velma Barfield, was waiting on death row when she heard the Gospel message on the radio that she could be forgiven of her sins. She became a Christian. Later, she wrote Ruth Graham, who asked Lotz to contact Barfield. The daughter agreed with trepidation. Barfield's lawyer contacted Lotz. And Lotz was added to the list of people approved to visit Barfield.

“I was so terrified when I arrived at the maximum security prison. My hand shook so much that my signature was just a squiggly line on the registry.”

The two women met, and Anne discovered her to be eagerly seeking spiritual insight. They started to bond over prayer and reading the Bible together. Their meetings took place frequently. Barfield became a light in the prison but she was still on death row.

“Even God let Cain off from the death penalty.” With this message Anne asked the North Carolina governor to halt the execution. In the midst of a heated senate election Governor Jim Hunt denied the appeal and Barfield was executed by lethal injection in 1984. “I was a state witness to her execution,” Lotz observes.

Later, Lotz started a Bible Study Fellowship at the North Carolina Women's Correctional Facility in Raleigh that grew to 300 participants. It is now a weekly Bible study ministry known as Shepherd’s Heart.

Periodically, Lotz teaches at this facility. “Last Christmas 220 came to Christ. The leaders of the Bible study are people I trained.” This occurred at a luncheon event put on by the men's Bible study that her husband leads.

On Wednesday, Lotz came to the Bowery Mission in part to commemorate another anniversary—her marriage to Danny Lotz of forty-three years. Just before walking into the 100-year-old chapel of the mission, Lotz called her husband, who came to Christ at age 5 in Vacation Bible School, to reminisce about their memories of the Bowery Mission and New York City. Danny’s father was a street preacher in the New York City area and preached at the Bowery Mission.

Danny was a very talented basketball player. At age 15, Danny was about to start as a freshman on the high school varsity team. Danny's father told his son he would have to miss the first game because he had agreed to play the trumpet at the Bowery Mission.

Recounting this time, Anne says, “He saw his father preach and the reaction of the men. He was moved.” On the way back home, his father pulled off the side of the road, “Danny, you have to decide. Jesus says, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things would be added to you.’ ”

At that moment Danny knew that for him it had to be Christ first, basketball second. The integrity of his commitment was one of the things that attracted Anne to him some years later. (As it turned out, the basketball chapter finished on a high note since Danny played on the University of North Carolina team that won a national championship in triple overtime against the Wilt Chamberlain team from Kansas.)

So, when Anne spoke at the Bowery Mission, she had a memory, a preparation and presence that was natural.

I asked Lotz about her Dad, who she said was stable. “His spirit is good but he does not have much energy.” He has many health challenges but is walking around with a walker and having people read to him. She said Billy talked about how every day he looks forward to seeing Ruth in heaven.

Anne told the audience at the Bowery Mission, “Death is a door. When we close our eyes in this life, we will open our eyes to Jesus.”

Tony Carnes is a senior writer for Christianty Today.

(Photos: Tony Carnes/Christianity Today)

Posted by Tim Morgan at September 3, 2009 10:02AM | Comments (13)

News of planned revisions to the NIV made the monologue in last night's Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien:

This is a weird story: The top-selling Bible in North America is being revised for the first time in 25 years to reflect changes in English usage. The language is changing so they're revising the Bible. For instance, the Book of Genesis now includes the line, "On the Seventh Day the Lord chillaxed."

It's 6:11 into the video.

Posted by Ted Olsen at September 2, 2009 7:13AM | Comments (0)

Note: An earlier version of this blog post said that Keith Danby's remark that "some of the criticism was justified and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made" was in regard to the Today's New International Version. He was discussing the earlier New International Version Inclusive Language Edition, released in the U.K. in 1996. I sincerely apologize for the error.

* * *

In announcing a major revision of the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible, Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society and Send The Light, or IBS-STL) CEO Keith Danby said decisions surrounding the release of the NIV inclusive language edition and the 2002 revision, Today's New International Version (TNIV), were mistakes.

"In 1997, IBS announced that it was forgoing all plans to publish an updated NIV following criticism of the NIV inclusive language edition (NIVi) published in the United Kingdom. Quite frankly, some of the criticism was justified and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made," Danby said. "We fell short of the trust that was placed in us. We failed to make the case for revisions and we made some important errors in the way we brought the translation to publication. We also underestimated the scale of the public affection for the NIV and failed to communicate the rationale for change in a manner that reflected that affection."

Danby said it was also a mistake to stop revisions on the NIV. "We shackled the NIV to the language and scholarship of a quarter century ago, thus limiting its value as a tool for ongoing outreach throughout the world," he said.

"Whatever its strengths were, the TNIV divided the evangelical Christian community," said Zondervan president Moe Girkins. "So as we launch this new NIV, we will discontinue putting out new products with the TNIV."

Girkins expects the TNIV and the existing edition of the NIV to phase out over two years or so as products are replaced. "It will be several years before you won't be able to buy the TNIV off a bookshelf," she said.

"We are correcting the mistakes in the past," Girkins said. "Being as transparent as possible is part of that. This decision was made by the board in the last 10 days." She said the transparency is part of an effort to overhaul the NIV "in a way that unifies Christian evangelicalism."

"The first mistake was the NIVi," Danby said. "The second was freezing the NIV. The third was the process of handling the TNIV."

Gender-inclusive inclusion?
Doug Moo, chairman of the the Committee on Bible Translation (which is the body responsible for the translation) said the committee has not yet decided how much the 2011 edition will include the gender-inclusive language that riled critics of the TNIV.

"We felt certainly at the time it was the right thing to do, that the language was moving in that direction," Moo said. "All that is back on the table as we reevaluate things this year. This has been a time over the last 15 to 20 years in which the issue of the way to handle gender in English has been very much in flux, in process, in development. And things are changing quickly and so we are going to look at all of that again as we produce the 2011 NIV."

I don't think any member [of CBT] would stand by the NIVi today," Moo said. "But we feel much more comfortable about the TNIV." He expects many of the TNIV's changes to appear in the updated NIV.

"I can predict that this is going to look 90 percent or more what the 1984 NIV looks like and 95 percent what the TNIV looks like," he said. "The changes are going to be a very small portion of the whole Scripture package."

Nevertheless, Moo said, the NIV does not currently reflect developments in the last 25 years of scholarship in Bible translation. CBT has made 1200 changes to the text in its database since the TNIV's most recent 2005 revision. (About 100 of these, such as typos, appear in current print editions.)

"I sit in a church where the NIV is pew Bible," he said. "But Sunday after Sunday I hear the preacher say, 'I don’t think the NIV is quite right here.' And I feel like saying I as a member of the CBT, 'Yes, but we've changed that!'"

Likewise, he said, the NIV is a translation that strives to reflect contemporary idioms and there have been significant changes to the English language in the last quarter-century.

"The English is understandable but not natural to people anymore. It's not what people are saying day to day," he said.

For example, Girkins said, the NIV uses the term alien rather than foreigner. Using contemporary English is particularly important internationally, Danby said, because that in some parts of the world the NIV is used for teaching English as a second language.

A question of process
Most translation revisions are not met with as much fanfare as today's announcement. But most translations have not been on top of the best-seller list for a quarter century. Nor had other translation committees previously announced that they would not update their text. Most importantly, other translations had not been the focus of boycotts, Christian bookstore chain bans, Southern Baptist Convention resolutions, and other outrage that accompanied the TNIV's release.

"We're trying to do this right and be as transparent as possible," Girkins said. The NIV team has already created a website, NIVBible2011.com, to solicit comments from scholars and Bible readers. Moo says the CBT will read and consider every suggestion received by the end of the calendar year.

Is the team's repeated emphasis on transparency and openness an admission that World Magazine was right when called the TNIV a "Stealth Bible" in a 1997 cover story that was the first volley against the translation?

"We're not saying the TNIV was a stealth Bible," Girkins said. "But the ways it was brought to market weren't transparent. We didn't bring people with us and caught people by surprise. ... We made a big press announcement today because want people to get on the page with us. We don't want to imply that we're going to overhaul the NIV. We could be giving the impression that this is a lot bigger than it is."

Best seller
The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association reports the NIV is still the best-selling Bible translation overall, though specific Bibles in other translations are outselling NIV Bibles. Last month, for example, the English Standard Version's Outreach New Testament and the New King James Version's Text Bible outsold the NIV's Adventure Bible. The TNIV is not among the top ten best-selling translations and no TNIV edition is among the best-selling Bibles. One bright spot for the TNIV, however, has been in sales to the Amazon Kindle e-reader, where the TNIV is the third-most popular translation (behind the NIV and King James translation).

The New International Reader's Version, a version of the NIV translated into simpler English in 1996, will stay as it is, Girkins said. The translation has had more commercial success than the TNIV; The NIRV Adventure Bible for Early Readers, for example, was last month's tenth-best selling Bible.

John Stek, who served as chairman of the the Committee on Bible Translation during the creation of the TNIV and the ensuring debate over the translation, died June 6.

Posted by Ted Olsen at September 1, 2009 10:08AM | Comments (97)