Worship from Casting Crowns, Paul Baloche
Plus New fiction releases
Loving God When You Don’t Love the Church
By Chris Jackson, Chosen, softcover, 208 pages, $13.99.

Although the title may lead one to think the author endorses leaving tradition behind for cell groups, house churches or other alternatives, Chris Jackson delivers a stirring exhortation for the body of Christ to mature. Executive pastor at Dutch Sheets’ Freedom Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., Jackson doesn’t gloss over the fact that some churches deal in spirit-killing legalism or function more like spiritual fraternities than loving fellowships. Yet this book forces readers to look deep within and acknowledge that their flaws and shortcomings have hurt others instead of carting around grudges for the offenses others inflict on them. Particularly insightful is the chapter titled “Ten Times Better,” in which he questions whether Christians’ marriages, job performance and integrity are 10 times better than those around them—as were the wisdom and understanding of Daniel and his friends in Babylon (see Dan. 1:19-20). Jackson emphasizes that one reason so many people are leaving the church is that there is seldom a discernible difference between Christians and the world.
Ken Walker

BOOKS

Praying Through the Deeper Issues of Marriage
By Stormie Omartian, Harvest House Publishers, hardcover, 250 pages, $21.99.
Stormie Omartian tackles 14 of the most difficult problems that confront couples today in Praying Through the Deeper Issues of Marriage: Protecting Your Relationship So It Will Last a Lifetime. Knowing firsthand the joys and sorrows of marriage, she shares wisdom gained from personal experience. Deftly balancing practical advice with prayer, Omartian reminds readers that the dangers to the marriage union are primarily spiritual. In lighter moments, she tells stories of her chihuahua, Wrigley, to help illustrate the importance of good communication. At other times, Omartian offers sober advice on how to cope with a spouse’s addictions and infidelities. Each chapter concludes with a prayer and selected Scripture passages for personal reflection. Omartian’s latest title will appeal to both husbands and wives and also to couples considering marriage. After years of writing her best-selling The Power of a Praying series, Omartian undoubtedly has something to say about integrating the practice of prayer into the oft-challenging marriage relationship.
David Rogers

Prophecy & Responsibility
By Graham Cooke, Brilliant Book House, softcover, 245 pages, $17.99.
Author Graham Cooke declares, “The world today desperately needs a prophetic church.” In the pages of Prophecy & Responsibility, Cooke sets forth a lesson guide in prophecy that will bring about required, and much desired, functionality and efficiency to an essential spiritual gift. To those who apply its teachings, Prophecy & Responsibility will help a prophet learn how to be “accountable,” “humble,” “safe” and “strong.” Although many churches crave the freshness of a spiritual “word” in their midst, many don’t know what prophetic ministry looks like. Still others have denied the potential for fear of error and misuse. Cooke embraces Scripture in order to define and map out a practical route to prophetic service.
James Estrada

I Dare You
By Joyce Meyer, FaithWords, hardcover, 256 pages, $22.99.
“If purpose is our journey and destination, then passion is the fuel that’s going to get us there.” This is just one of the many nuggets you will gain from reading Joyce Meyer’s newest book, I Dare You. This book is the missing link to many messages on purpose. Meyer positions herself as a “purpose coach,” taking readers from dream to reality with each passing chapter. With the “I Dare You” action points, readers are challenged step-by-step to move further out of their comfort zones and into their life purposes. Sections such as “Check Your Motives” and the teaching on the eight ways people extinguish their own passions will not only get readers where they want to go but will also help keep them there.
Jevon Bolden

Pray Big
By Will Davis Jr., Revell, softcover, 208 pages, $12.99.
Pastor and intercessor Will Davis Jr. believes that one of the best ways to access God’s power is through a deliberate prayer life. He offers simple tips on praying for brokenness, praying during periods of “spiritual blackout” and even praying for your prayer life. His perspective is bolstered with scriptural principles and peppered with vibrant and compelling personal encounters. In order to pray big, Davis says, one must abandon the meaningless, Christianized terms during prayer and instead pray specific, aggressive “pinpoint prayers” in understandable language. In other words, prayer should contain “no fluff, no fat, no extra words or theologically heavy terms.” Actually, Davis seems to interject this advice into his own writing style. By communicating practical truths without leaning upon elevated diction, Davis crafts a prayer manual for the everyday believer. By offering daring, concise prayers Davis helps make speaking to God “as natural as breathing.”
Jonathan Merritt

Applying the Kingdom
By Myles Munroe, Destiny Image Publishers, hardcover, 256 pages, $24.99.
Author and teacher Myles Munroe uses his third book in his Kingdom series to teach readers the importance of establishing and following through with priorities—and the top priority should be establishing the kingdom. He says that priority was never a problem with the first family in the Garden of Eden. They had all their needs met, and ruling was their top priority, not pursuing resources. All that changed after the fall. Today man’s consuming priority is in meeting personal needs. Munroe works to offer a solution to the materialism trap that is evident all around us. He provides practical principles designed to free readers from the self-destructive spirit of materialism so they can experience stress-free living above the world’s standards of success. He wraps up each chapter with a handful of principles that quickly and simply summarize the lessons taught.
Rhonda Sholar

MUSIC

Every Reason Why
By Mark Roach, Myrrh Records.
Worship leader Mark Roach delivers his debut album, Every Reason Why. His voice will soon be unmistakable to everyone, but it’s his lyrics that will stir listeners’ hearts to sing along and worship the Lord (toe-tapping or even dancing is likely to occur). Serving as worship pastor at Morning Star Church in Missouri, Roach writes music for the church. His smooth voice fits well on rousing songs such as opener “A Thousand Hallelujahs,” yet seamlessly flows straight into ballads such as “You Are,” which declares who God is. “As Long As I Have You” offers an upbeat tempo as well as faith-filled words of courage, declaring that as long as we have Him we can face anything. These songs are perfect for worship—at home or at church.
Leigh Devore

Pages
By Shane & Shane, Inpop Records.
After more than three years Shane & Shane are back with a new release. The songs came directly from the pages of Shane Barnard’s journal—hence the title, Pages. “Beg” does just that—it’s a cry for God to break through and cause us to love Him more. “Burn Us Up” speaks of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego’s trust in God and willingness to surrender. “We Love You Jesus” is a rousing song about love but also about death and how Jesus takes away the sting. “Holiday” is a pleasant, upbeat song that declares that Jesus is “my favorite part of me.” This duo continues to offer the acoustic-based melodies and reflective lyrics fans have come to expect and relish.
Leigh Devore

Our God Saves
By Paul Baloche, Integrity Music.
Singer-songwriter Paul Baloche demonstrates again why he is one of the most prominent names in praise and worship music with his latest album, Our God Saves. In keeping with the genre, Baloche writes emotive, lyrically repetitive songs that build to a crescendo. But unlike many of his colleagues, he never gets too comfortable with any one style, as this latest album demonstrates. Incorporating moments of rock, pop and even country, Baloche gives listeners more than a dozen songs, which collectively clock in at just over an hour in length. The disc is a comprehensive worship experience, from “Beyond Us (Only True God),” a soaring duet with Kathryn Scott, to the rock song “Your Love Came Down,” a surprisingly powerful number with arresting lyrics (“Your blood ran down from Your head to Your face, from Your hands to Your feet”). Nice moments on the album also include Baloche’s beautiful arrangement of “Rock of Ages,” as well as his duet with worship leader Matt Redman (“I Cling to the Cross”). “The Kingdom of God” and “Our God Saves,” the title track, are both fairly standard. Baloche is best when he’s doing something a little out of the ordinary. Yet, even when he’s not, his songs are catchy—and likely coming to a church near you.
Cameron Conant

The Altar and the Door
By Casting Crowns, Reunion Records.
Casting Crowns return with their third album, The Altar and the Door. This collection is packed with faith-filled, heart-stirring lyrics that will challenge and encourage listeners and bring glory and honor to God. Opener “What the World Needs” offers hard-hitting truth that Christians have to care more about the inside than appearances, and we have to stop being so like the world that the world can’t see a difference in us. The title track is based on how easy it is to know right from wrong when spending time with Him. But somewhere between “the altar and the door” we can lose sight of the lines. “I Know You’re There” is an album highlight with Megan Garrett taking lead vocals. She declares: “I know You’re there / I know You see me / You’re the air I breathe / You are the ground beneath me / I know You’re there / I know you hear me / I can find You anywhere.” This group continues to create music that helps usher listeners into God’s presence.
Leigh Devore

Fiction

SUPERNATURAL

Angel
By Alton Gansky, Realms, softcover, 304 pages, $12.99.
California has a new visitor. Aster speaks with wisdom and makes promises—and miracles happen all around him. People are drawn to him: Politicians look to him for advice, and religious leaders befriend him. It seems only one person is leery of this stranger. Priscilla Simms, an investigative journalist, is determined to find out if Aster is too good to be true. She could lose everything, even her life, in uncovering the truth.

ROMANCE

A Family in Full
By Vanessa Del Fabbro, Steeple Hill, softcover, 331 pages, $13.95.
Monica Brunett’s life seems idyllic in Lady Helen, South Africa. She has two adopted sons, a meaningful career, great friends and a beau. But things aren’t perfect. A young girl holds a grudge against Monica, a friend is filled with grief and criminals are wreaking havoc on the village. But Monica has the faith to know that love is worth any risk.

CONTEMPORARY

A Promise to Remember
By Kathryn Cushman, Bethany House Publishers, softcover, 320 pages, $13.95.
Two women’s lives collide when their teenage sons are killed in a car accident. Melanie Johnston, a single mom, feels the rich boy is getting more attention from the press. Andie Phelps, the wealthy son’s mother, and her husband feel partly responsible for the boys’ deaths. Melanie is determined to keep her son’s legacy alive and sues the Phelps, dividing the church, friends and the community.

New On DVD

3:16 Stories of Hope
Lionsgate $19.98
This companion DVD to Max Lucado’s new book, 3:16 the Numbers of Hope, features Lucado’s teaching on the message of John 3:16. He also wrote the story for the short film included, which has themes of rebellion and consequences, forgiveness, and unconditional love. This DVD has a running time of 75 minutes.

Buzby and the Grumble Bees
Thomas Nelson $14.99
Hermie and Friends are back. Buzby’s niece and nephew come for a visit and everyone gets a rude awakening when the two youngsters misbehave. Buzby’s friends devise a plan to teach them the importance of cleaning up after themselves, using good table manners and getting enough sleep. Victoria Jackson (Saturday Night Live) joins the cast as Beebee.

Travel the Road Season 2
Challenge for Christ Ministries $49.99
Follow along as missionaries Tim Scott and Will Decker travel from Borneo to the Himalayan Mountains to Tibet. The pair shares the gospel wherever they go. Season two is now available on DVD, and the 14 episodes add up to more than 500 minutes of footage. Also included are commentary, deleted scenes, maps, photo galleries, country profiles and much more.

Watch and Pray

Mike Bickle’s worship-driven prayer movement partners with GOD TV.

In July, GOD TV moved its cameras into the International House of Prayer (IHOP) in Kansas City, Mo., transmitting to more than 200 countries live footage of a worship-fueled prayer room that has burned day and night since September 1999.
“Our vision with GOD TV is to [work together] to establish 100,000 houses of prayer [worldwide],” says Mike Bickle, founder and director of IHOP. “We are not establishing an IHOP network. … We do not want them to be called IHOP, but rather to use whatever name the Lord gives them.”

Bickle’s partnership with GOD TV formed after the network’s founders, Rory and Wendy Alec, interviewed him last October during GOD TV’s initial U.S. launch. He now heads GOD TV’s global division of prayer and hosts a daily one-hour devotional program. GOD TV also airs three hours of IHOP’s prayer room live every day and streams it 24-7 over its Web site, god.tv.

Bickle’s vision for nonstop prayer began in 1983 when prophetic minister Bob Jones declared Bickle would spearhead a “24-hour house of prayer in the spirit of the Tabernacle of David.” Bickle says that at the time “the Lord promised we would eventually have 5,000 full-time staff.”

Today IHOP is nearly halfway there, due in large part to its distinctive “harp and bowl” model of prayer—worship music mixed with intercession. “You can’t imagine how powerful it can be to mingle songs with spoken prayers and proclamations,” said Rory Alec, GOD TV’s co-founder and CEO, after he visited IHOP.

The harp and bowl model of prayer is sustainable, Bickle says, because it’s both powerful and enjoyable. “[Without intimacy in Jesus] it is much more difficult to motivate people to pray [for hours]. The war cry in prayer is best fueled by love songs.”

Bickle says some Christians find it difficult to accept the idea that aside from training and outreach, the primary responsibility of IHOP’s 1,300 full-time staff and students is worship and intercession.

“We believe that the most effective way to evangelize and care for people is in the context of night-and-day prayer, which releases more of the power of God in our labors,” he says. “This is a new paradigm for many in the church today. The New Testament presents the missions movement as deeply connected to continual prayer.”

Over the satellites of the fast-growing GOD TV, Bickle hopes thousands of believers will tune in and catch IHOP’s latest vision for 100,000 houses of prayer worldwide.
Paul Steven Ghiringhelli

SPOTLIGHT

Finding Joy

Joan Rosario: Worshiping God on the mountaintop

When Joann Rosario was writing the songs for her latest CD, Joyous Salvation, she says she wanted the project to show listeners “how to worship on the mountaintop.” But the depth of her gratitude was born in the valley, when she had lost her voice and wasn’t sure it would return. During that time, before the nodules on her vocal chords healed, she says she learned not to put her confidence in her gifts. “When you read about David it says he was excellent, but the Lord was with him,” she says. “And I think as human beings … we strive so much to be excellent in our talent and our gift that we forget to seek that the Lord is with us. The Lord being with us is the most important thing.”
Adrienne S. Gaines

Prayer Point

Roughly 1.6 billion unevangelized people live in the 10/40 Window, a region from 10 degrees north to 40 degrees north of the equator that includes Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. This month we encourage you to join Window International Network (win1040.com) in praying that:

Terrorist groups in that region will be thrown into confusion
Laws banning conversion to Christianity will not be passed
The murders and inhumane treatment of Christians would be investigated.

To sign up for regular prayer updates from Charisma’s Prayer Initiative, visit prayerinitiative.com

Bible On Film

This month the first in a series of 12 animated epic Bible stories will open in theaters. The Ten Commandments—featuring the voices of Ben Kingsley, Christian Slater, Alfred Molina and Elliott Gould—releases from Promenade Pictures Oct. 26. The 3-D production is to be followed next year by Noah’s Ark: The New Beginning. “Not since my years working with Walt Disney have I been so happy to bring motion pictures to families,” says Promenade Pictures CEO Frank Yablans, former president of Paramount Pictures and former CEO of MGM/UA. “I truly feel that we are helping accomplish God’s work in bringing stories to film that will make a difference in the lives of people.”

PEOPLE

Angel Sightings

Though some Christians worry that the current fascination with fantasy novels may be luring people away from biblical truth, California-based author Alton Gansky sees it as a sign that individuals are longing to understand the supernatural. “We have a curiosity about such things because we are spiritual beings,” says Gansky, a former pastor who has written 20 novels. “The problem is if you go into them without any [biblical] grounding, it’s easy to be misled.”

Gansky explores the lure of deception in his latest novel, Angel, a supernatural thriller about a miracle-working stranger who appears in a California town after an earthquake. In a time when Gansky says many churchgoers don’t understand basic Christian doctrine, he hopes Angel—drawn from Galatians 1:6-8, in which the apostle Paul warns the church not to believe any other gospel than what he has preached—will entertain and provoke thought. “When they’re done reading the book, I hope the reader will lean back and say, ‘I wonder,’ and then maybe do some self-examination.”
Adrienne S. Gaines

EVANGELISM

Evangelism 101

Evangelist helps Christians witness without fear

She average Christian in America will likely die without ever having told anyone about Jesus. So says Daniel Owens, founder of Eternity Minded Ministries (EMM), who hopes to change that trend through his books and workshops on evangelism.

“For the unbeliever, we’re trying to get them to think more about their eternal soul, and for the church, we’re trying to get them to think more about their accountability to Christ,” he says. “And that’s really what moves us.”

Since he founded California-based EMM nearly 10 years ago, Owens has spent most of his time leading festival-style evangelistic crusades in nations such as Burundi, Peru, India and Uganda. He says thousands have come to Christ and dozens of churches have been planted in regions that previously had little Christian witness. All around the world, he says, believers have the same anxieties about evangelizing.

Through his book Sharing Christ When You Feel You Can’t and related seminars, Owens helps Christians, especially those who are introverts, find ways to share their faith. “You start with just being yourself and recognizing that the average person has seven to nine contacts with the gospel before they ever make a decision,” he says.

“So when Jesus says, ‘I want you to be My witnesses,’ that’s what He’s asking us to do, and it doesn’t mean you have to close the deal every time. It’s just being part of the person’s spiritual journey, one of their many contacts they’re going to have.”
Rachael Cox

Anne Rice, the queen of Gothic fiction, has found Christ and dedicated her writing to God. She recently talked with Charisma about her life and how it changed.
The author of The Queen of the Damned is now worshiping the King of kings.
Anne Rice, the acclaimed icon of modern Gothic fiction, who once rode in a coffin through her native New Orleans in the back of a blacked-out hearse flanked by a horde of personal undertakers, is writing Christian fiction and has vowed never to write anything else.

Books about vampires, witches and erotica by the Southern author have sold more than 100 million copies. They have made a household name of the vampire Lestat, who was the subject of a Tony-nominated Broadway musical in 2006 and who was played by Tom Cruise in the 1994 film adaptation of Rice’s first novel, Interview With the Vampire.

It was therefore startling to her publisher and millions of readers when in 2003 Rice, then known as an avowed atheist, announced that her 26th book would be a fictional first-person narrative given by Jesus at age 7, titled Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.

Not only would the book be about Christ and not Lestat or a similar figure, but it also would have the “audacity” to delve into Jesus’ incarnation, how He came to realize He was both man and God, and when He began His battle with Satan. It has sold more than 400,000 copies since going on sale in November 2005 and was listed 13 weeks on the New York Times best-sellers list. It dares to answer questions on which the Bible is largely silent.

Rice’s surprising shift in subject matter was closely aligned with her return in 1998 to her spiritual roots in the Roman Catholic Church—a move that has been chronicled in print by Newsday and The New York Times and discussed during television appearances on Today, Good Morning America, The O’Reilly Factor and other programs. The year after she announced Christ the Lord, as if punctuating the new direction she intended her stories to take, Rice left her Louisiana home of many years and moved to California.

She lives today in Rancho Mirage near Palm Springs in an enormous house—a single-story, pale-yellow edifice of stucco and glass that sits behind two sets of gates and includes a massive library with thousands of volumes on theology and church history. Open, bright and airy, it is far different from her lush, ornate and historic New Orleans mansion—the scene of lavish parties hosted by Rice, clad perpetually in black, and her atheist husband, Stan Rice.

Her guest house in Rancho Mirage is home to her assistant, Sue Tebbe, and to a young man named Becket Ghioto, a former Benedictine monk with a master’s degree in theology who helps Rice with research and enjoys playing the baby grand piano in the author’s tennis-court sized living room.

The main house is filled with religious statues. Yet hanging in a hallway is a painting, one of about 300 by Rice’s late husband, that depicts in gay colors a playful demon who is perhaps Lucifer himself seducing a coy but obviously delighted, unclothed woman.

Rice enters the room, tiny but looking trim and vibrant today at 66, and sits on a tan overstuffed couch. Her Irish-brown eyes hold an unexpected sparkle and peace. She talks fast and laughs often.

Telling the Old, Old Story

“We’ve been telling the story of Jesus for over 2,000 years, and it has as much power today as it ever did,” Rice states emphatically. “When I was an atheist I thought Christianity was a dying religion. That’s nonsense; it’s like an explosion going off all the time.”

Though exuberant, she is a diabetic and receives six insulin injections each day. Without them, she says, she would die within 24 hours. In 1998 she went into a diabetic coma and later suffered an intestinal blockage.

Rice had gastric bypass surgery in 2003 and lost 25 pounds. Best of all, her chronic depression has disappeared.

She prays before writing and, although confident of her talent and skills, says that depicting the thoughts, attitudes and spirituality of the boy Jesus in her latest book is a task she takes very seriously.

“It feels frightening at times,” she admits. “But it never feels anything less than incredibly exhilarating. Even the terror is exciting. I wake up thinking: I can’t do this. I can’t, I can’t.

“And the terror is inside: How am I going to do this? Christ is sinless, yet He is tempted. He’s a healthy man, yet sinless. How do I do this?

“But then I say: ‘I am going to do this somehow. I am going to make this a fictional reality in which a person can enter and be close to Christ.'”

Christ the Lord is the first of four novels Rice will write about Jesus’ life. In the postscript, she asks, “After all, is Christ our Lord not the ultimate supernatural hero?”

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, the book portrays the Savior as supernatural, as well as sinless and serious. It provides a well-researched but historically debatable look at the lifestyle and events surrounding the young Jesus.

“To me it’s the most gorgeous and beautiful mystery I could ever think about,” Rice says. “God became this man who descended, not just for a day or a week. He was born here and grew up here and lived here over 30 years. I could meditate on this until my head explodes.”

The story tells of Christ’s family fleeing Bethlehem and living in Egypt’s largest city, Alexandria, where Jesus studied the Torah and learned Greek under Hellenistic philosopher Philo. Joseph leads his extended family home to Nazareth by way of Jerusalem during the brutal Jewish uprising against King Herod Archelaus.

Rice’s literary license is broad if not breathtaking. Jesus makes it snow and heals his uncle. An off-handed curse kills an attacking bully whom He later brings back to life. He makes a group of clay pigeons fly away.

The huge family sleeps in the same room. In the book Mary never sleeps with Joseph, and Jesus’ brother James is seen as Joseph’s son by a previous marriage. Both parents seek to protect Jesus by keeping secret the miraculous details of His birth and the reason for the flight to Egypt.

On some levels, Jesus always understands He is God yet on other levels gradually realizes what that means.

“I really do believe and I hope it comes across in the book that Jesus is God and at any given time can know anything He wants, yet He might not want to because He is human and going through this for us,” Rice says. “He knows we can approach Him more easily if He has been through suffering, persecution and temptation.”

Rice researched the book for three years using a variety of sources, but most scholars doubt Christ spoke Greek and was already 7 years old when the Jews rose up against Herod. In addition, it is set during a period of time the Bible is silent about.

The Infancy Gospels of Thomas, Rice’s source of two childhood miracles by Jesus, were reportedly used by the Gnostics, a heretical group that believed special knowledge was needed for salvation. Rice insists no reputable scholar considers them Gnostic teachings.

“Gnosticism is heresy, and I have no interest in it,” she says. “The most radical thing I did was use the Apochrya legends, which some people think are the Gnostic gospels. It has nothing to do with the Gnostic gospels. The Infancy Gospels of Thomas are far different.”

Doubts about that and her source material caused some Christian bookstore chains to keep her book from their shelves. Yet it is consistently reverent.

Rice hopes the same people who call to ask if her vampire creation Lestat is a real person will also believe that the shepherds saw angels, the wise men came and Mary bore Jesus as a virgin.

“I know that many, many of the people I’m writing for don’t believe any of that,” the author notes. “I’m just struggling to get it right. And it’s worth all the work if I can reach one person who reads the book and says, ‘I want to know more.'”

Rice’s typical characters are complex, conflicted and confused, their lives riddled with paradox. Rice was like them, a prodigal daughter on a long day’s journey into light. The journey had a nexus moment in June 2002 when she walked into St. Mary’s Assumption Church in New Orleans for counsel and prayer.

“I said to God: ‘I won’t write anything anymore except for You. I don’t care what happens. You figure it out, how I take care of the people and things I have to take care of. It will work out. And I will not write another book about vampires. I’m not going to glamorize evil. I’m not going to write another book about anything except what’s for You.’ And I walked out of that church a changed person.”

Getting there, however, had taken her a lifetime.

‘I Lost My Faith’

Rice was born in New Orleans, where her father Howard Allen O’Brien worked in the post office and her mother, Katherine, stayed home, read palms and drank. Named “Howard” after her father, Rice would often join her namesake at dusk in their blue-collar neighborhood to walk through the cemeteries and gaze at the above-ground crypts.

Having two aunts who were nuns and a cousin who was a priest, she was confirmed in the Catholic Church at age 12. She adopted a saint’s name, following a family tradition, hers being Alphonsus Liguori. Afterward, “Howard” became “Anne.”

She attended Catholic school, went to Mass daily and even followed a tradition of visiting 12 churches on Fridays. She was disappointed when she learned women could not become priests and begged her father to let her enter a convent. He insisted she first finish high school.

Katherine died of complications from alcoholism when Rice was 14. She remembers that her mother described her disease as “a craving in the blood”—a malady that was shared by Katherine’s father and grandfather. Her father later married Dorothy Van Bever, and for a time Rice and her sisters lived in a Catholic boarding school.

She moved with her family to Richardson, Texas, near Dallas, and at her first public school met Stan Rice. He was an avid atheist, but the two shared a love of the arts. When Rice attended Texas Women’s University she was drawn to the literary fad of existentialism, and her faith soon underwent a crisis.

“All of this was forbidden by the church,” she says. “I broke with the rigid perception of what it meant to be a Catholic. I didn’t grow up in a university community, so I didn’t have the intellectual equipment to deal with doubts and shades of gray. Had I gone to a Catholic college it might have been different. But it is pointless to say that. I lost my faith.”

At 19, she moved to San Francisco just as the hippie era was dawning there. After Stan proposed by telegram, she returned to Texas where they were married in a civil ceremony.

The couple moved to San Francisco’s counterculture Haight-Ashbury district, got jobs and went to college. Stan painted and became a nationally known poet. When he was teaching at San Francisco State University, Rice, then 24, gave birth to Michele, a brown-haired, blue-eyed child they nicknamed “Mouse.”

At age 4, Michele came down with a constant fever, and a doctor told the Rices their daughter had leukemia. The couple was spending the night with Michele in her hospital room when she died, one month before her 6th birthday.

Transformation

Five weeks later Rice finished Interview With the Vampire, a story about Louis—a 17th century New Orleans vampire and former member of the Catholic Church who was dealing with the death of his brother and his need for blood.

Though the couple drank heavily, Rice says she never became angry with God over Michele’s death. Still, her fictional characters wavered between belief and despair as they wrestled with timeless themes of good and evil.

Apparently, so did Rice.

“To me the vampire was a metaphor for the lost person disconnected with God,” she says. “There I was, lost and groping and convinced on some level that faith in God was impossible. But that was all I could do at that time. I thought we were lost and not created by a loving God, and this concept was a myth.”

Using a pseudonym, she wrote four pornographic novels, and under her name wrote books on the Mayfair family of witches and a 10-book series on vampires. In 1978 the couple had a son, Christopher, and in 1988 they moved into a New Orleans mansion.

They traveled to research locations and, oddly, visited Israel, where Rice says she became impressed by the survival of the Jewish nation. She read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and by 1998 was again reading the Bible.

She came to realize that writing about witches and vampires fed her chronic depression. God began dealing with her, she says, and she found that the same verse she read at night began to show up randomly—in another book, or when she and her sister Karen read the Bible together.

“The verse in the Gospel of John when Jesus is saying, ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in Me,’ kept coming to me,” Rice recalls, referring to John 6:53. She says she came to understand that for both Christians and fictional vampires eternal life lies in the blood.

In her books Rice explored gay sex and glamorized androgyny. When she learned that her own son, Christopher—today a successful novelist—was gay, she knew his lifestyle could endanger him physically and also block her return to Christ, since the Catholic Church condemned homosexuality. She once asked a Christian friend how she could return to the church when the priest says her son is going to hell.

“He thought for a moment and said, ‘Our God is a merciful God,”‘ she recalls. “That started me on the glimpse—that God will work it out, He will take care of everything. He is not going to let someone go to hell by mistake.

“If someone is going to hell, it is because they rejected Him. God made the world. He will let them know.”

In 1998, she confessed her sins and received Holy Eucharist, the sacrament of communion, in which Catholics believe the bread and wine become the very body and blood of Christ. She and Stan renewed their marriage vows—this time in a church.

Tragically, in 2002, Stan was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died less than four months later. Anne’s epiphany moment in a church pew closely followed.

“Certainly at that moment something incredible happened,” she says. “It was like untying a knot. I was finally able to say, ‘I love You too, Christ.’ The effect was unbelievable. I was transformed. I knew I was talking directly to Christ.”

A New Chapter

Rice left New Orleans a year before Hurricane Katrina and moved into a large seacoast home in La Jolla, California, near San Diego. She found it damp and cool and the sidewalk filled with hundreds of fans waiting to see her when she’d leave for church. In the winter of 2005-2006 she moved to sunny Rancho Mirage.

Today Rice will write only about Christian redemption. The Road to Cana, the second volume of her series about the life of Christ, is scheduled by Knopf for publication in March. It will cover the life of Jesus from the time He starts His ministry to the wedding feast at Cana, where the Bible records He performed His first miracle, changing water into wine.

Says Rice of book two: “It’s my full answer to the DaVinci Code, and more, I hope and pray.”

She also wants to write a Christian play. Given her enormous fan base, she has the potential to depict Christ as Lord to millions of unsaved people.

She constantly studies and reads the Gospels. And she gathers regularly with Sue Tebbe and Becket Ghioto to pray. Each Sunday she attends church locally.

Rice firmly believes in the power of prayer and that Jesus has the power to heal today, but she says her message to the world, at least for now, is that God is love.
“This, for me, is what I want to emphasize; this is what I want to say. I guess one of the greatest gifts we can get is to actually feel Him, and those times when we can talk about His love with conviction and not feel self-conscious.

“I always thought that to go back to the church, to believe again, was the annihilation of one’s spirit and brain. But I feel I’ve opened the door on this immense palace just gilded with riches and filled with rooms and vistas waiting to be explored.

“That’s my belief and my church and my relationship with God. It’s just filled with beauty. That I can find the mystery of the Incarnation radiating and exploding in everything, the source of light itself, it’s just unbelievable.”

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Ed Donnally, a former Dallas Morning News writer, is a Foursquare minister and chaplain. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Sandi.

My Turn

Thanks again, Charisma, for making me think. Your story on immigrants (August) reminded me of the richness that different races and cultures bring to our relationships.

One of my favorite experiences at my church has been getting to know Peter and Tetyana, a Ukrainian couple who had moved to New Orleans then fled to my city during Hurricane Katrina. Two avenues opened up to facilitate our friendship. One is music; the second is language. Were they not willing to learn English, they would remain always at a disadvantage.

What if they had refused to learn English and demanded that the U.S. government and culture adapt to their individual needs? That is neither practical nor logical. I admire Hispanics in our area who are committed to retaining their culture, and I admire those who speak Spanish in their homes. But they will not serve themselves or their adopted community well if they refuse to learn English.

Immigrants can teach their children the richness of living in a multicultural society, but unless they learn English, that won’t happen. They’ll isolate themselves in cultural neighborhoods and never experience all that this country has to offer.

English is not a threat to anyone’s heritage or culture. It offers immigrants a path to a richer, fuller life.
Randall Murphree
Tupelo, Mississippi

The Immigration Debate

Regarding your coverage of immigrants (“Immigrant Faith” by Joel Kilpatrick, August), my mother was an immigrant, as were my father’s parents. I’m thankful they came to the United States. However, they came legally!

The issue of open or closed borders is all about people who are coming here illegally. Let’s be open to those who come here legally and closed to those breaking the law and entering illegally.
Michele Horna
Dixon, Missouri

I am so glad someone is finally speaking out about the role that Pentecostal ministers should take concerning illegal immigration. Until now the matter was left to Hispanic ministers and Catholic bishops to address.

In God’s kingdom there are no borders. Where are the conservatives? Are they not the ones who oppose abortion and gay marriage? Yet the church is keeping silent while our immigrant nation turns into a nation of hatred.
Noble Osabu
New Brunswick, New Jersey

Christian conservatives have written far too many words that are denigrating to immigrants, trampling their dignity in the name of the law. A higher law commands us to love our neighbors—even if they weren’t born in this country.
Pamela McClure
Franklin, Tennessee

It is time to close the borders. Unsecured borders in Texas have allowed every kind of crime to affect our citizens. It is not just drugs and the mafia that come from Mexico. Illegals take jobs from American citizens.

Illegals have ripped off our hospitals and schools. Quality health care and education programs have been replaced by bilingual classes that don’t teach English well. It is your grandchildren who will not have education or job choices because of this foreign invasion.
Betty Thompson
San Antonio, Texas

Few if any Americans are opposed to immigration when it is done properly. The point of today’s problem is folks who come here without permission. That is a violation of our laws and must not be allowed.

These folks do not want to be U.S. citizens or to learn our language. Therefore we are not a melting-pot nation any longer.
Curtis Bellomy
Raleigh, North Carolina

There is a real difference between immigrants and illegal aliens. How many years should we support illegal immigrants who have no evident desire to become citizens?

They come here with no plans of becoming citizens. They pay $5 for a green card. They drain our social security system while hospitals provide free care for them. They are given a free ride at taxpayers’ expense.

It’s time we started drawing lines between these two distinct groups. Immigrants? Yes! Illegal immigrants? No! And, as Christians, we need to show our opinions when we go to the polls to cast our votes.
Doug Jones
Ferrum, Virginia

I thought conservatives were concerned about people entering this country in an orderly and legal way. Unregulated numbers of immigrants result in too great a strain on our health-care and educational systems.
Kate Hendrix
Knoxville, Tennessee

Immigrants have contributed much to make this nation what it is today. But at the same time people need to know that we’re a nation of laws, not anarchy.

I’m not aware of any other country in the world that would allow millions of people to cross its borders illegally, settle and then expect all the benefits of a national citizen. We need to pray for a just resolution to the current immigration situation in our country.
Anne Sampson
Greensboro, North Carolina

The real issue is not immigration, prejudice or being liberal. The real problem is rooted in drugs, gangs, terrorists and other criminals. Fox News reports that there are 80,000 illegal immigrants in the United States right now who have active warrants out for their arrest. Their crimes range from murder to rape to shoplifting.
Samuel McKittrick
Braselton, Georgia

Can Worship Be Too Loud?

Thanks for your recent cover story on the David Crowder Band (“It’s a Worship Revolution” by Chad Bonham, July). I know there are people who are probably uncomfortable with Charisma’s focus on this group because the band’s music is loud and because the members look different from people we see on Christian television. But God is using them to reach a different generation for His glory.
Dee Johnson
New Orleans, Louisiana

A decibel meter will easily prove that today’s worship music is too loud. It damages our ears and prevents us from entering into worship with the congregation. Who will challenge the “worship leaders” and “musicians” to bring the sound level down to a respectable volume?
Elaine Hardt
Prescott Valley, Arizona

My heart has been grieved by the exploitation of music in the church. Many churches have become entertainment centers and include rock and rap music, fog on stage and colored lights. Is this not a bar scene?

I am sure there are talented individuals on the instruments. But is their talent glorifying God? Or is it showmanship?

Must the drums and rhythm guitars be so loud that we feel each beat in the center of our chests? I once asked a worship director why the music had to be so loud. He replied, “The people need to feel the beat in their bodies to get into the ‘presence.'”

What happened to getting on our knees and being quiet before the Lord?
Darlene Walker
Benbrook, Texas

Women and Domestic Violence

I am pleased Charisma tackled the subject of domestic violence (“The Sin We Hide From View” by Marcia Davis-Seale, August). However, the article presents a biased portrayal of this problem. Research consistently shows that women are as likely to instigate domestic violence as men are.

In the area of dating violence, the Centers for Disease Control shows that women are actually slightly more likely to engage in partner aggression. Ignoring the problem of female aggression will not help us solve the problem of partner abuse.
Edward E. Bartlett
Rockville, Maryland

Editor’s note: U.S. government studies and many other sources clearly indicate that 92 percent of domestic violence incidents are crimes committed by men against women. It is outrageous to claim that women are more violent. Also, many cases of female violence occur in lesbian relationships and are not, in fact, directed at men but rather at their female partners.

This certainly does not mean we should overlook the issue of domestic violence against men. But it is reprehensible to suggest that women are not the more vulnerable gender.

A Forgotten Pioneer

I enjoyed your recent profile of Matthew Ward and the music of the Jesus Movement (“The Jesus People: Where Are They Now?” August). But I wondered how you could have omitted Dallas Holm.

A true forerunner of Christian music, Dallas’ influence on the genre is legendary. He has won multiple Dove awards, received many Grammy nominations, and has gold records. But of infinitely greater importance is the reality that thousands have given their lives to Jesus at his concerts. My husband and I were greatly impacted by Dallas Holm and Praise when we were younger.
Rev. Teri Downs
Woodland Park, Colorado

Bush and Condoleezza

In your article about Condoleezza Rice (“The Quiet Faith of Condoleezza Rice” by Leslie Montgomery, June), you didn’t mention that as head of the State Department she was sent by President Bush to tell Israel to give up land given to them by God. The land for peace practice has never worked, and even now Israel is being pressured to give up the West Bank. Could this be the very reason the Bush administration seems to be cursed in everything it does?
Gary Greely
Cleveland, Tennessee

Let’s Get Real

In J. Lee Grady’s column called “Hurricane Warning” (Fire in My Bones, July), he asked why people don’t hold church leaders accountable for their moral actions. I think it’s because of greed on the part of church members and the abandonment of the true gospel. In a world where we’ve learned to build large congregations with marketing, we have reaped what we’ve sown.
Danny Thompson
Abilene, Texas

Jesus never told us that the church was to function as a hierarchy, an organization or an institution. He made us a family. Church was meant to be very simple. We’ve complicated it beyond recognition.
Dena Brehm
Dallas, Oregon

Grady’s questions are good and there are answers, but are church leaders ready to listen? The culture in charismatic churches is to have one man set the vision. There is really no understanding of teamwork. Until old mind-sets and lack of accountability are dealt with, we will continue to see the superstar pastors crash and burn.
Terri Routh
Midlothian, Virginia

11 million people have come to Christ, and 200,000 have reported healings during Harry Gomes’ crusades
Harry Gomes is convinced it was Jesus-in-the-flesh who appeared to him one desolate night in southern India more than 20 years ago. He doubts anything else could have transformed a poor and desperate Hindu-turned-atheist into one of India’s most prominent healing evangelists, who has seen millions come to Christ during crusades.

Since the mid-1990s, Gomes has held nearly 200 crusades throughout India, where he said more than 11 million have accepted Christ and 200,000 have been healed of migraines, asthma, paralysis, psoriasis, arthritis, blindness and other medical conditions. He said five people have been raised from the dead.

“I know it would sound weird in this age, but I don’t think anyone who has had miracles happen in their lives would be surprised,” he said.

Gomes said Yanam, a girl from a village in the southern Indian state of Pondicherry, had died of meningitis when she was brought to him. He said he prayed continuously for hours that she would be revived. “The girl woke up as if from a sleep and for many days people in my town kept talking about it,” he said.

Although Gomes is not shocked by the miraculous today, he once doubted God even existed. When Gomes was a child, his mother hoped her son would come to salvation. But her method of ensuring it was to scribble the name of the Hindu god Rama 10 million times in many notebooks.

When she completed the Hindu ritual, the 24-year-old mother swallowed poison and died right in front of 8-year-old Gomes, believing her son had been redeemed. Poor and unsupported, Gomes eventually adopted an atheistic worldview.

After attending college on an athletic scholarship, Gomes earned a master’s degree in business management and pursued various business ventures. But he was soon more than $3 million in debt.

He then contracted leukoderma, a skin disease that covers the body with white splotches, and began seriously contemplating suicide. In a state of pure desperation one night in 1983, Gomes suddenly saw a stranger sitting on his bed.

He said he slid under the blanket and lay there, praying. He thought Satan had come for him, the memory of his mother’s suicide fresh in his mind. “I just lay there without even the courage to raise my voice,” he said. “I hadn’t read the Bible before or even seen any paintings of Jesus.”

He said the man on his bed told him: ” ‘I am Jesus. I know your troubled heart. Don’t worry, I will restore you.'” The presence of Jesus, Gomes said, “made me cry like a child.”

After the experience, he said God told him to begin a chemical technology company, which quickly prospered and helped pay off his debt. In 1992 Gomes was filled with the Holy Spirit and completely healed of his skin disease.

In 1993 Gomes began his own ministry with some friends and relatives in the southern Indian city of Coimbatore. Funds came from donations and from selling off his business. Week after week, the outreach grew. “But I still was inside, a withdrawn person. I cried a lot in private. And I prayed to resolve [the pain],” he said.

During the 1990s, Gomes said, God brought him emotional healing and caused the small ministry to grow. Today it consists of a thriving church, a missionary-sending Bible school, an orphanage and healing crusades, which consist of five nights of 45-minute messages followed by intense prayer.

“It’s Jesus who does the healing,” he said. “We only need to believe and pray.”
During crusades, Gomes doesn’t touch anyone. He kneels down and prays, and within a half-hour people begin sharing testimonies of healing. Gomes said some people see miracle after miracle yet don’t believe, which can produce resentment.

“In Warangal [eastern India], a guy came to hit on my face while I was preaching,” Gomes recalled. “Angry organizers held him down, but I asked them to let him go at peace.”

Gomes said that night the man was plagued with guilt for his actions, and the next day he returned to the crusade to repent. He now helps organize Gomes’ crusades, traveling to cities beforehand to distribute pamphlets to homes within a six-mile radius of the venue.

In 2002, Gomes launched Harvest India Bible College (harrygomes.com). Two years later he opened up Home of Hope orphanage after he said God told him: “Every orphan child must be raised up as a missionary.” The orphanage now cares for 100 children who have no home or are from broken homes.

Gomes’ wife, Dillies, serves as a tutor at the Bible college and helps with the ministry’s administration. Their daughter, Tejasve, is a post-graduate business student and their son, Shaswi, is in high school.

A long-term vision of Gomes’ ministry is to see the once-hopeless orphans from Home of Hope eventually receive their three years of theology education at his Harvest Bible College and be sent out into ministry. Currently there are about 500 part-time and full-time students enrolled.

“Deep in their hearts people should enjoy health, peace and true joy of life through His Word,” Gomes said. “That’s the vision of my mission.”
Vidyadar Sreeprasad in Tamil Nadu, India

The president of Canada’s only fully charismatic television network recently resigned after admitting he committed adultery.

Dick Dewert, the 55-year-old founder of The Miracle Channel, is now focusing on restoration with his wife, Joan, according to network spokesman and recently appointed CEO Ray Block. Joan Dewert also resigned in a show of support for her husband. The couple, who have two grown children, were unavailable for comment.

“We’re just going ahead as usual with our programming and our day-to-day operations,” Block told Charisma. “Our partner base has been gracious. We’ve had overwhelming support from them after hearing the news. We don’t know yet what professional direction Dick will move in. But this ministry isn’t about one or two people—it’s God’s, and we expect Him to use it as He sees fit.”

Dewert, who was pastor of Victory Church in Lethbridge, Alberta, until 1997 when he became a full-time broadcaster, is well known for challenging Canada’s regulations regarding religious broadcasting. In 1986, he illegally rebroadcast Trinity Broadcasting Network in Canada, subsequently causing the Canadian Radio and Television Commission to re-examine its laws and allow religious broadcasters to start their own stations. The Miracle Channel in Lethbridge, Vision TV in Toronto and Crossroads Television Service (CTS) in Burlington, Ontario, were soon born.

Although Dewert received the first license for a Christian TV station in Canada in 1995, CTS founder David Mainse established the nation’s first Christian television show, Crossroads, in 1963. In 1977 he launched 100 Huntley Street, now Canada’s longest-running Christian TV program. CTS received its license 20 years later. “I think the very nature of someone who’d build a channel like The Miracle Channel—rugged and pioneering—might also have too little accountability,” Mainse said. “Accountability with a board of directors who don’t just rubberstamp things and a closely guarded prayer life are key when you’re in that type of position. Dick has done a great work, however—brave and bold. He’s been amazingly determined to establish Christian television here in Canada.”

Although The Miracle Channel recently applied for a license in Calgary and Edmonton, which are both located in Alberta, CTS received approval to broadcast in those areas. The Miracle Channel has signals in Lethbridge, where is it headquartered, and in Bow Island/Medicine Hat, Alberta. It is available on both of Canada’s major satellite providers and on some cable stations in western Canada. Until their resignations, the Dewerts hosted the flagship show, Lifeline, which featured interviews with charismatic and prophetic leaders from across North America.

The 24-hour station is commercial-free but frequently broadcasts fundraising drives. The Miracle Channel reported donations of close to $4 million in 2005 and is expected to raise $7.5 million this year, Block said.
Josie Newman in Toronto

‘Light the Highway’ is networking intercessors in churches and online
A worldwide prayer initiative officially launching this month is looking to establish a holiness movement across cities, regions and entire nations by networking houses of prayer along major interstates and national corridors.

Kicking off on Oct. 26, “I-35 Highway of Holiness” is a 35-day prayer initiative of Light the Highway, a new prayer project led by Mike and Cindy Jacobs, founders of the intercessory ministry Generals International. “2007 makes 40 years since Bible reading was taken out of the schools of America and since the Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love in San Francisco, which loosed every kind of evil sin,” Cindy Jacobs said. “We just feel that in this generation, we are going to reverse that.”

Since the Light the Highway Web site (lightthe highway.org) launched in May, thousands of Christians have signed on to participate in the 35-day prayer effort. The initiative is based on Isaiah 35, which talks about the establishment of a highway of holiness. “We believe that [Interstate] 35 symbolizes Isaiah 35,” Jacobs said.

As scores of believers focus their prayer efforts on I-35, a north-south interstate stretching from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minn., others are concentrating on major highways such as I-10, I-95 and I-90.

“I-35 is being used as the model for what other people around the world will be doing with their highways,” said Ryan Hennesy, project coordinator for Light the Highway.

Prayer leaders in Canada, South America and Europe also will be praying for major national corridors, he said.

A handful of events, as well as the networking of 24/7 houses of prayer along I-35, will lead up to Oct. 26. Evangelist Steve Hill and his Heartland School of Ministry will lead an effort called “Radical Evangelism” by driving the length of I-35 while interceding for the U.S. In another effort, Christian youth will participate in “purity sieges”—on-location prayer protests against issues such as pornography and abortion.

“We’re praying for our nation to be holy,” Jacobs said. “We want holiness in Hollywood. We want holiness in our schools and holiness in our churches. At the end of the 35 days of prayer, we’re going to ask God to establish a new holiness movement in the earth, not based on legalism, but on a right heart before God.”

Rick Heeren, the central regional vice president for Harvest Evangelism, is Minnesota’s prayer coordinator for the event. He said the bridge collapse along I-35 in August has made the team even more committed. “Our primary focus is the families who have lost loved ones and the people who are recovering from this tragedy,” he said. “We are not going to back down from any aspect of the I-35 strategy. We are going for it.”

Hill and charismatic ministers Bill Johnson, Ché Ahn and Sergio Scataglini will join Jacobs in Dallas at the end of the 35-day initiative for Five Nights of Miracles Nov. 27-Dec. 1.

After the 35 days of prayer, Light the Highway will continue to inform and network intercessors through its Web site, which features a Wikipedia-style encyclopedia that allows users to create and edit page content. It also provides community forums and information about local and global prayer efforts.

“This is a virtual tool to network intercessors all over the world,” Jacobs said. “There’s not a virtual [prayer] tool like it anywhere.”

Light the Highway, according to its Web site, is meant to create “something real, something tangible, something permanent.” By praying along the highways in their cities, Jacobs said, intercessors can help change the course of nations.
Suzy A. Richardson

Charles and Frances Hunter invite Christians worldwide to expect the miraculous
Thousands of churches from around the world were scheduled to participate in the Worldwide Day of Healing (WWDH) on Sept. 22.

“We’re really excited and we’re expecting tens of thousands of churches to be trained to lay hands on the sick and thousands upon thousands of healings that day,” said Joan Hunter, a spokeswoman for the Worldwide Day of Healing, which is based in Houston.

Originally launched last year as the National Day of Healing for All Nations, the successful global event was spearheaded by veteran healing evangelists Charles and Frances Hunter. Joan Hunter is their daughter and founder of Joan Hunter Ministries.

Her ministry’s Web site (joanhunter .org) will stream live reports throughout the three-hour Worldwide Day of Healing, which will be hosted in various locations around the globe. “This is a life-changing and church-changing event,” Hunter said. “Many churches have started having their own day of healing, once a month, after
we had the National Day of Healing [last year].”

The number of reports of miraculous healings and deliverances after the initial day of healing was overwhelming. Last year Hunter said a healing team of 150 people was dispatched to pray for hundreds of people in the parking lot of Dallas-based Daystar Television Network, which aired the prayer event worldwide. She said more than 500 people were reportedly healed.

“It was incredible beyond words,” Hunter said. “Daystar played it in the middle of the night and hundreds [more] were healed as it played. Around 1,000 called in or e-mailed with their testimony of their healing, as a result if it re-airing.”

At Marilyn Hickey Ministries in Englewood, Colo., Richard Patton, the ministry’s director of healing, also reported widespread healing as a result of last year’s event. “People came out of wheelchairs, backs were healed and major emotional healings took place among those who had been molested and abused. This was healing of the whole man.”

Robb Thompson, pastor of Family Harvest Church in Tinley Park, Ill., reported that 139 people attending last year’s day of healing were also healed of various ailments, including mental disease and chronic pain.

As a result of the thousands of healings that were reported worldwide, Charles and Frances Hunter published a 100-page book, What’s New? The Historic First National Day of Healing. The book is a compilation of the many miraculous testimonies recorded after the first day of healing.

In one account, Patton describes the healing of a man who had a massive stroke one year earlier. “The right side of his body was paralyzed, and his right fist clenched tight. He came in a wheelchair. The Lord grew out his legs [and] his arms and his shoulders straightened parallel.

“His clenched hand and his body muscles on the right side loosened, he moved his hand and his arm for the first time. He walked farther today than he has in a year.”

This year’s Worldwide Day of Healing kicked off in June with a pastors’ breakfast at pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston. Hundreds of ministers from across the U.S. attended the event, and a healing training seminar at Lakewood Church was scheduled for August.

The healing day was again to be taped at Daystar’s studios, where intercessors would be stationed in the parking lot to offer prayer for healing. “We’re seeing the healing power of God remain in the church for the ones that participated last year,” Joan Hunter said.

In addition to churches and ministries already involved in the WWDH event, she said many more have been signing up for the prayer initiative, including churches in countries such as Austria, Liberia, Nigeria, Scotland, Ireland, England and the Philippines.

But whether it’s Christians in the U.S. or in other parts of the world, according to Hunter, praying for people to be healed is every believer’s responsibility. “Healing and [prayer] for the sick has been left up to the pastors and the ‘Benny Hinns’ [and] the ‘Hunters,'” she said. “But it is for every believer. I am more of the [motivator and] activator, showing people it is their responsibility to pray for the sick. And they do get well.”
Leilani Haywood

Bishop Clifford and Pamela Frazier hope to strengthen families through their Battle for the Family conferences
A Missouri church is waging war on troubling statistics that show declining marriage rates among African-Americans and increasing out-of-wedlock births.
“We have more households in the [African-American] community headed by single moms than two-parent families,” said Pamela Frazier, co-pastor of the predominantly black City of Life Christian Church in St. Louis with her husband, Bishop Clifford L. Frazier.

According to U.S. Census reports, 42 percent of African-Americans are married, compared with 61 percent of whites and 59 percent of Hispanics. Roughly 68 percent of African-American births are to single mothers, compared with 10 percent of white births and 7 percent of Hispanic births. And single parents head 62 percent of African-American households, while 27 percent of white households and 35 percent of Hispanic homes are led by singles.

The Fraziers hope to curb those trends and strengthen existing families through their Battle for the Family conferences and seminars, which offer practical ministry addressing various aspects of family life. “We talk about issues that singles and single parents can relate to, divorced and separated individuals and families,” Clifford Frazier said of the annual family conference. “We cover finances and how to raise kids, especially for single parents.”

Through its Let’s Get Married outreach, the 1,100-member church has motivated 25 cohabiting couples to wed since 2004. “A lot of them are shacking up because that’s what they grew up with,” Frazier said. After the couples participate in a nine-week course, the church sponsors a mass wedding and reception for all the graduates.

According to the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study commissioned by Princeton and Columbia universities, churches have a significant impact on African-American marriages and families. Churchgoing African-American women are 73 percent more likely to be married at the birth of their child, the study found, and unmarried mothers who attend church are 148 times more likely to marry after the birth of their child than nonattenders.

“Religion functions for African Americans much like it does for other Americans when it comes to things like getting married and having a good quality relationship,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia who led the study’s research on religion and marriage.

“But there are other factors in the environment for African-Americans that tend to exert a negative influence [such as poverty and racism],” he said, “and those things help account for the distinctive marriage trends we see in the black community.”

Wilcox said the majority of respondents wanted their churches to offer more programs on relationship issues.

For the Fraziers, the emphasis on family ministry was unintended. “We started a church in Dallas and immediately were putting out fires among couples and families,” said Clifford Frazier, who has ministered in 48 nations with his wife, whom he and the church affectionately call “Mama.”

“Mama told me that we need to be proactive instead of reactive. That’s when our ministry started addressing the family.”

In 1997 the couple moved from the Dallas church, called Heartline Ministries, to pastor City of Life (thecityoflife.com).

Every February, the Fraziers devote a week to ministering on family issues, and for years in Dallas they hosted a live call-in radio show called Straight From the Heart that grew from 15 minutes to 30 minutes to an hour. The couple said hundreds of lives have been changed.

Ann Perry was so tired of her husband’s drug addiction, she once held a gun to his head, thinking she’d shoot him and herself. But instead of taking both their lives, she dropped the gun and later stumbled onto Straight From the Heart. “Mama would always say, ‘If it’s bothering you, it’s bothering God,'” Perry recalled.

Perry told her husband to listen to the show, and he eventually visited the Fraziers’ church. There, he accepted Christ and found complete deliverance. Today the Perrys lead a Celebrate Recovery ministry through Heartline Ministries in Dallas.

Johnny Gulley was a drug dealer and had been divorced for 12 years when his ex-wife, Linda, invited him to a Battle for the Family conference. After attending a series of classes for men, Gulley accepted Christ, abandoned his criminal lifestyle and eventually reconciled with his wife.

Gulley kept his commitment to Christ even after he was arrested on old charges of auto theft and sentenced to life in prison, where he started leading Bible studies and baptizing people. In time, Gulley’s sentence miraculously was commuted to time served and he was released. Today he is the president of the deacon board.

“There is nothing too hard for God to do on family issues and bedroom issues,” Clifford Frazier said. “We’ve seen God do the impossible.”
Leilani Haywood in St. Louis