President Obama to Appoint a Pastor to the Faith-Based Office

President Barack Obama will reportedly name a religious outreach director to head the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

According to The New York Times, Obama has tapped Joshua DuBois, 26, the Pentecostal pastor who spearheaded arguably the most aggressive faith outreach for a Democratic presidential campaign in U.S. history when he served as Obama’s religious affairs director.

During the Obama campaign, DuBois helped organize meetings with some of the most prominent Christian leaders in the nation, including those with markedly different views on culture war issues.

Exit polls after the November election showed that Obama had made significant gains among religious voters compared to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

Prior to working for Obama, DuBois had studied political science at Boston University where he graduated cum laude. He then went to Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and National Affairs where he earned a master’s degree in public affairs in 2005.

He was studying law at Georgetown University when he left to work for Obama.

Religious leaders, who have been informed of DuBois’ selection, say that he will not only be directing the office created by former President George W. Bush, but be in charge of expanding it to help groups more effectively address social problems, according to The New York Times.

The religious leaders requested anonymity because the appointment has not yet been formally announced.

Under Obama, the office will be renamed the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and will continue to facilitate the distribution of grants to religious and community groups.

Among the most pressing issues that await DuBois when he assumes the position is the debate over whether faith-based organizations will be forced to hire people whose faith differs from theirs if they receive government money.

Bush had allowed religious groups that accepted funding to hire employees that share the same religion.

But Obama, during a campaign speech last year, said that if a group receives a federal grant then it “can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion.”

It is unclear if Obama still plans to rescind Bush’s memorandum on the issue.

The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) was created in 2001 by executive order to “level [the] playing field” for faith-based organizations seeking federal funding. It was also created to lead a “determined attack” on poverty, disease, and other social problems combining the strengths of the government and faith-based and other community organizations. Bush had called these organizations the “armies of compassion,” praising them for being able to work more effectively with the local communities and those in need than government programs alone.

As of 2008, the concept of FBCI has been replicated by 36 governors (19 Democrats, 17 Republicans). More than 100 mayors have also created an FBCI office or liaison.

[By Jennifer Riley - Christian Post Reporter]

Oral Roberts University Board Elects New President

Oral Roberts University has elected its next president, ending a 14-month search that began after the resignation of former president Richard Roberts amid allegations of misspending.

Yesterday, the ORU Board of Trustees and Board Chair Mart Green announced the election of Dr. Mark Rutland as the school’s next president following a board meeting that day on the school's campus in Tulsa, Okla.

“We are excited about the future under the leadership of Dr. Rutland,” stated Green. “He has been selected as the result of a careful process and we are confident that he will take the university to new heights while continuing to uphold the mission and vision of Oral Roberts University.”

It’s been over a year since Richard Roberts, ORU’s last president and the son of ORU founder Oral Roberts, resigned after he and his wife were accused of using university money for shopping sprees, home improvements and a stable of horses for their daughters at a time when ORU was more than $50 million in debt.

Three former ORU professors had filed suit early October 2007, claiming that they were forced out after uncovering financial and ethical wrongdoing by the school's former president and family. The suit was finally settled late October 2008 after a court-ordered mediation session, bringing to a close the scandal that engulfed the charismatic school.

Two months later, the committee behind ORU‘s search for a new president selected Rutland as a candidate to recommend to the school’s Board of Trustees. Rutland, who is serving as the president of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla., was among the more than 130 presidential prospects submitted for consideration by Bruce Dingman of Dingman Company, Inc., the executive search and selection firm that helped with the search process.

According to Southeastern, Rutland will remain Southeastern’s president until spring commencement on May 2 while Southeastern's Board of Regents will appoint a search committee to begin identifying presidential candidates. Rutland will assume the presidency at ORU in July 2009.

[from The Christian Post by Eric Young]

Today's Quote

"You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity." O. A. Battista

[from Eagle Flight: Reach ~ Restore ~ Relate by Pastor Milton Gordon]

Christian Leaders Denounce Approval of Overseas Abortion Funding

Christian leaders and pro-life activists strongly denounced President Barack Obama’s repeal of the U.S. policy banning the federal funding of international organizations that provide or promote abortions.

"President Barack Obama promised that he would govern from the center if elected President, but his signing of an Executive Order overturning the Mexico City policy shows that he is committed to spreading abortion around the world,” criticized Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition. “This is hardly governing from the center on the sanctity of human life,” she said.

Instituted by former President Ronald Reagan in 1984 at the U.N. International Conference on Population in Mexico City, the Mexico City policy requires that all international groups receiving U.S. funds agree to “neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.”

Since Reagan’s administration, the policy has been twice repealed, first by former President Bill Clinton and by Obama last Friday. The policy had been immediately reinstated when former President George W. Bush came into office in 2001.

Last week’s move by Obama drew fire from a number of conservative groups, including Family Research Council, the Susan B. Anthony List, Wisconsin Right for Life, Concerned Women for America, and Priests for Life.

“Thanks to his (President Obama’s) actions today, U.S. taxpayers will be forced to take part in exporting a culture of death,” said Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, in a statement.

“We have a responsibility to respect the policies and traditions of the other countries, which have laws recognizing the right to life of the unborn, and it is an insult to fund organizations that are intent on overturning those laws by promoting an elite ideology of abortion on demand,” he added.

Despite the strong statements, most were not surprised by Obama’s rescinding of the Mexico City Policy, including Father Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International. "We are disgusted, but we are not surprised," he said. “President Obama knows that this is shameful, but he needs to placate those who got him into office,” Euteneuer added.
Obama was also criticized for signing the executive order one day after more than 200,000 pro-life activists filled the nation's capital in protest of Roe v. Wade, the controversial Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States.

[from The Christian Post by Ethan Cole]

Today's Quote

"Nobody’s perfect, so everyone’s welcome, because anything’s possible."

Boeing Leadership Expectations

When Ginger Barnes spoke to employees at a leadership development program at the Boeing Leadership Center, she said, “Leadership is all about leaders teaching leaders and about relationships. We can execute the daylights out of anything, so ‘finds a way’ and ‘delivers results’ have always been strong traits. Where we need to improve is in the areas of ‘charts the course,’ ‘sets high expectations’ and ‘inspires others.’”

That is probably true just about anywhere you go. To strengthen the culture of leadership and accountability within the company, Boeing defined its expectations for leaders as:

A Boeing Leader:
- Charts the course
- Sets high expectations
- Inspires others
- Finds a way
- Lives the Boeing values
- Delivers results

[from Leading Blog: http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/by Michael McKinney]

Do you want to fail?

Here are 10 guaranteed ways you can fail as a leader. (Just like the character George Costanza from the show Seinfeld, read this list and then make sure to do exactly the opposite.)

1. Control. Remember exercise control, you are the team leader, what you says goes!

2. Don't affirm or praise. You don't want your team members to get soft, therefore it is important to motivate with fear and intimidation.

3. Delegate and then do it yourself. This will drive your team crazy, but at least you will be able to sleep well at night knowing that the work got done right.

4. Make sure the team members are there to make you look good. Because isn't that what building and working with a team is all about?

5. Take the credit and pass on the blame to others.

6. Fill your team with people less talented than you. You don't want people to outshine you. Besides, who are you really going to find more intelligent and with more experience than you?

7. Fill your team with people just like you. Could there be a more ideal team than one comprised of multiple versions of the same you?

8. Make sure you micro-manage people's work. Get in their business and second guess all their decisions. Don't give them the freedom to be creative or innovate.

9. Don't welcome honest feedback.

10. Make sure the team is just there to implement your own ideas. Don't let the team come up with any original ideas. You are the one where all ideas, especially the good ones, are to originate.

I have known leaders guilty of many of these mistakes without lossing their job. But, their days are numbered.

[from Ministry Best Practices by Bill Reichart]

103 Years Celebrated

I (along with Pastor Ron Martin and others) attended the 103rd anniversary of the first Assembly of the Church of God with A.J. Tomlinson moderating near Murphy, North Carolina. The commerative service today was attended by Dr. David Roebuck (Church of God), conducted by Paul Holt (Heritage Ministries, Church of God of Prophecy), with the address given by General Overseer Randall Howard (Church of God of Prophecy).

Reba Sues Dottie Rambo's Bus Driver

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The daughter of late gospel singer-songwriter Joyce "Dottie" Rambo, who was killed in a bus crash in May, has sued the driver of the bus and the company that leased it to the entertainer.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday in circuit court in Nashville on behalf of Reba Rambo-McGuire. It asks for a jury trial and compensatory damages as determined by the jury, but in excess of $25,000.

The lawsuit names the bus driver, James Meadows; Nashville-based Pyramid Coach Inc., which the suit says was dissolved about a month after the accident; and DC Investments Leasing, a Vicksburg, Miss. - based subsidiary of Pyramid Coach.

No phone number was listed for DC Investments Leasing, and the number for Pyramid Coach Inc. was disconnected. Meadow's phone number wasn't immediately available.

Dottie Rambo died May 11 when the bus she was in ran off a road in southwest Missouri and struck an embankment. She was 74.

Seven other people were injured in the accident, which happened about 2:20 a.m. while Rambo was on her way to a Mother's Day performance in Texas.

The lawsuit contends that Meadows was speeding and negligent and that Pyramid/DC Investments Leasing are liable for his negligence.

Rambo was inducted to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007.

She has had more than 2,500 published songs, including gospel classics such as "He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need" and the 1982 Gospel Music Association Song of the Year, "We Shall Behold Him." Her songs have been recorded by Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, Crystal Gale and the Oak Ridge Boys.

[Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.]

Obama's Nonbeliever Nod Unsettles Some

Not everyone was happy with President Barack Obama's nod to nonbelievers and non-Christians in his inaugural address. And some of the stiff criticism about Obama’s religious inclusiveness is coming from African-American Christians who maintain that no, all faiths were actually not created equal.

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness," the new president said. "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth," he also said. Nothing too controversial, proclaiming that America's strength lies in its diversity.
But between those two statements, the new president got specific: "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers."

By mentioning, for the first time in an inaugural address, the 16.1 percent of Americans who check "no"’ when asked about religion, Obama turned it into the most controversial line in his speech -- praised by The New York Times editorial board and cited by some Christians as evidence that he is a heretic, and in his well-spoken way, a serious threat.

With that one line, the president "seems to be trying to redefine American culture, which is distinctively Christian," said’ Bishop E.W. Jackson of the Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake, Va. "The overwhelming majority of Americans identify as Christians, and what disturbs me is that he seems to be trying to redefine who we are.’"

Earlier this week, Jackson was a guest on the popular conservative Christian radio show "Janet Parshall's America," where a succession of callers, many of whom identified themselves as African-American, said they shared the concern, and were perplexed and put off by the president’s shout-out to nonbelievers.

Parshall noted that atheists were celebrating the unexpected mention, and indeed they were: "In his inaugural address … President Barack Obama did what many before him should have done, rightly citing the great diversity of America as part of the nation's great strength, and including 'nonbelievers'’ in that mix,’" said Ed Buckner of American Atheists.

"His mother would have been proud," Buckner said, referring to the fact that Obama’s mother was not a church-goer. "And so are we."

Jackson said he and others have no problem acknowledging that "this country is one in which everybody has the freedom to think what they want." Yet Obama crossed the line, in his view, in suggesting that all faiths (and none) were different roads to the same destination: "He made similar remarks in the campaign, and said, 'We are no longer a Christian nation, if we ever were. We are a Jewish, Hindu and non-believing nation.'"

Not so, Jackson says: "Obviously, Jewish heritage is very much a part of Christianity; the Jewish Bible is part of our Bible. But Hindu, Muslim, and nonbelievers? I don't think so. We are not a Muslim nation or a nonbelieving nation."

With all the focus on Obama as the first African-American president, the succession of black callers to Janet Parshall's show was a reminder that the "community" is not a monolith, and that many socially conservative black Americans are at odds with Obama's views, particularly on abortion and gay rights. Nor do they all define civil rights in the same way.

The Rev. Cecil Blye, pastor of More Grace Ministries Church in Louisville, Ky., said the president's reference to nonbelievers also set off major alarm bells for him. "It's important to understand the heritage of our country, and it's a Judeo-Christian tradition," period.

[By MELINDA HENNENBERGER, AOL News]

Choosing Advisors Carefully

Every governmental leader, corporate leader, and church leader needs to be surrounded by good advisors.

In 1976, Stephen Hess wrote in Organizing the Presidency that in choosing Cabinet members, while the notion of a Cabinet “type” can be overdrawn, there are qualities that the President should look for in public executives. May I suggest that every pastor and church leader will benefit by using similar caution in selecting close advisors.

Persuasiveness. “This is necessary in large, hierarchical organizations where leaders have limited control over personnel and where the tug of inertia may be considerable.”

Personal stability. “This calls for a sturdy internal gyroscope, stamina, and the ability to work under pressure."

Broad-gauged intelligence. “…ability to conceptualize, to see the policy implications and consequences of their actions.”

Flexibility. “They must do so without losing site of the leader's ultimate goals.”

A sense of duty. “Unlike the President and members of Congress, they are not elected. This means, paradoxically, that they must have an even sharper sense of responsibility than an elected official.”

A thick skin. They “should be lightning rods for public unhappiness and, if they are doing their jobs properly, they will deflect from the leader as much criticism as possible.”

Patience and impatience. They must be able to “deal with endless procedures,” hearings and meetings and yet at the same time they “must prod their subordinates to do better and must use their impatience with the status quo as a constructive tool of management.”

These qualities might well be considered when looking for any team of advisors.

[by Michael McKinney]

Church Super Bowl Parties Now Legal

Can churches host Super Bowl parties and escape the wrath of the NFL?

In 2005, the National Football League (NFL) threatened churches with legal action for holding Super Bowl parties and charging admission. According to a Rutherford Institute press release, the League said churches who viewed Super Bowl broadcasts on big-screen televisions at church-sponsored gatherings was a copyright infringement.

However, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently stated churches can now watch the Super Bowl live as long as they do not charge an attendance fee. John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute is thankful for the change.

"Well, churches can now have football parties and show the Super Bowl on a screen larger than 55 inches," he explains. "It's taken two years, basically, of the Rutherford Institute harassing them."

Whitehead notes the conditions. "As long as the viewings are free and they're on the premises of the church," he points out. "So it's legal now and you can do it. The NFL will not harass you."

However, as non-profit organizations, churches can accept donations to offset the cost of the event. "Well, you can ask for donations, in my opinion, for any event in a church," Whitehead concludes. "I wouldn't charge at the door, but sure you can ask for donations. It's a church, it's a non-profit organization, and that's just fine."

Whitehead believes the NFL's decision is a good public relations gesture to the church.

[OneNewsNow.com]

Research on the State of Church Planting in America

Leadership Network commissioned Lifeway Research to research the state of church planting in North America. The findings are encouraging, while pointing out we still have a long way to go.

The State of Church Planting in North America is a four-part report:
- Church Planting Overview,
- Who Starts New Churches,
- Improving the Health and Survivability of New Churches, and
- Funding New Churches.

You can download the study in its entirety here via the American Society of Church Growth Journal.

You can also download a podcast related to the study.

[by Patrick]

True Forgiveness

As a pastor, I am often asked about forgiveness - how it is accomplished, when is it required, what does it look like, what does it feel like, how does it act, etc.

Let’s start with what forgiveness is not:

- Forgiveness is not forgetting. Generally, our attempts to forget amount to denial. Whatever the offense was: betrayal of a trusted friend; abandonment of a parent or spouse; abuse from a relative; embezzlement of funds – whatever the offence, it did happen. It was damaging. It hurt. It is forever a memory. It will not be forgotten. God has the ability to forget. Generally, we do not have that same ability.

- Forgiveness does not always lead to reconciliation. Often our offender has already died. Sometimes they don’t want to reconcile. In many cases the offender claims a desire to reconcile, but isn’t willing to honestly own their responsibility, allowing for authentic reconciliation and relationship. A genuine relationship must be built on truth between two people. It simply takes two to reconcile.

- Forgiveness is not a one-time event. There’s simply not a blanket approach to forgiving someone. Because we remember, because there are triggers that take us back to the offense, forgiveness is cyclical. Actually, as I’m typing this very point, I’m remembering an offense that made me so angry. And, I have a choice. I can allow myself to relive it, mull over it, justify my anger and their stupidity … or I can choose to forgive, again.

Forgiveness says, “I will not hold you responsible for my choices in dealing with the pain. I will not allow you and the hurt you caused to control my life. I choose to not be held hostage to anger, bitterness, and vengeful thoughts.”

Forgiveness opens a door to new levels of relational connection with God – who demonstrates His grace and forgiveness through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.

(Recommended resource: Getting Rid of the Gorilla: Confessions on the Struggle to Forgive).

[by Mark Waltz]

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