01: The launching of the Center for Moral Clarity (CMC) last July by charismatic minister and televangelist Rod Parsley is one more sign of the growing charismatic involvement in social and public policy issues.
The center works to mobilize Christians around public policy issues that are said to have spiritual roots, such as abortion and same-sex marriage (pushing for the constitutional amendment limiting marriage only to heterosexual couples), and will likely have broader appeal among charismatics than other Christian political groups. Parsely says that the CMC will also champion issues on the other side of the political spectrum, such as racism, women’s rights, and poverty.
Another key concern of CMC is to raise awareness about the Houses of WorshipFree Speech Restoration Act, which would enable pastors to speak out about political issues without their churches’ tax-exempt status being threatened. The act passed in the House in July but must still be considered by the Senate. (Source:Charisma, December)
02: While there are many post-denominational” networks in the evangelical world, the Missions Catalyst Network is unique in that it has emerged from the Seventh Day Adventist Church and still maintains an Adventist identity.
MCN was founded by Ron Gladden, a Seventh Day Adventist church planting director who fell out with church officials over his view that the denominational bureaucracy was hindering new church formation and effective evangelism. The network, based in Vancouver, Washington, is Adventist in belief but no longer so in organizational structure and philosophy, particularly taking aim at the denomination’s practice of using the required tithes from members to absorb the costs of the higher level of the organization.
Gladden charges that outside of new ethnic churches, the growth of new non-Hispanic white churches is stagnant. MCN plans to plant congregations in roughly three hundred of the largest urban centers in the U.S.
(Source: Spectrum, Fall)