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 ) 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 ().

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

Celebrating 10 years since the original event drew 1 million men to the National Mall, Stand in the Gap 2007 is one of several diverse tools ministries are using to reach men
Ten years after the history-making Promise Keepers conference that drew more than 1 million men to the nation’s capitol, men are again being summoned to Washington, D.C., for Stand in the Gap 2007.

Organizers are preparing for 250,000 men to convene on the lawn of the Washington Monument for the Oct. 6 event, which is being hosted by the National Coalition of Men’s Ministries, a network of more than 80 Christian men’s organizations. Speakers include Joseph Garlington, David Jeremiah, Samuel Rodriguez Jr. and Erwin McManus.

“We are urging men to return, remember, renew and rebuild their commitment to God, their families, churches, neighborhoods, communities and the nation,” said Marty Granger, chairman and executive director of the event.

Stand in the Gap (standinthegap2007 .org) comes at a time when men’s ministry events rarely pack out stadiums. Promise Keepers (PK), which is supportive of but not involved in Stand in the Gap, hosts seven national conferences each year. But recent studies show that only about 35 percent of U.S. men attend church regularly.

“The church has taken the pressure off men—in a bad way,” said Brian Doyle, president of Iron Sharpens Iron (ISI), a fast-growing men’s ministry that holds conferences in 24 cities every year. “If we can get our families to church, then we think we’ve done our job spiritually. We give the spiritual responsibility over to ‘the professionals.'”

Jim Weidmann, PK’s senior vice president, said his organization is developing more community-based resources for men. In addition to enhancing its Web site, the group plans to launch PK Adventure, a 90-minute multimedia series that combines the experiences of men’s conferences, moviegoing and corporate training events. Hosted in movie theaters by local men’s ministries, the resource will debut in November with a football-themed program featuring Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy.

Similarly, Men’s Fraternity provides a series of courses on “authentic manhood” that are held in 6,000 locations nationwide—up from 1,000 locations three years ago.

“We’re seeing people spontaneously conduct the courses in boardrooms, places of business, on campuses, in the military and even in prisons,” global director Rick Caldwell said.

Although the courses aren’t designed to appeal to “macho values,” Caldwell said the meetings are tailor-made for men. “We don’t have the guys hold hands or sing ‘Kumbaya,'” he said. “We dispense with a lot of church trappings.”

In Daytona Beach, Fla., roughly 100 men gather for the Church for Men, which meets one Saturday evening each month in a Salvation Army gym. Founded by Mike Ellis, the outreach event discusses issues men more often grapple with, such as anger and lust, and offers a one-hour in-and-out guarantee—even displaying a shot clock to time the message.

Ellis said rather than being a literal congregation, the Church for Men is meant to complement local ministries. “Not only are [attendees] coming into a steppingstone church experience that they feel comfortable in,” he said, “but what’s happening is they’re meeting men and pastors from area churches, and these guys are—after 48 years, nine years, 11 years of not going to church—are finding home churches for the first time. And that is one of our goals.”

Other men’s ministry leaders echo that sentiment. “The men’s movement isolated itself, and the dialogue needs to continue to grow,” said Kenny Luck, founder of Every Man Ministries. “Instead of competing with the local church, it needs to complement it.”

Originally established as an independent organization, Every Man Ministries (EMM) is now an outreach of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. And though based in a local church, EMM hosts conferences across the U.S. “We’re getting flooded with calls from churches,” Luck said. “I’m excited about training churches. I don’t work for Every Man Ministries. I work for local pastors.”

To help train and empower men’s ministry leaders, Florida-based Man in the Mirror recently launched the Web site . Patrick Morley, founder of Man in the Mirror, which partners with about a dozen other men’s ministries including PK, describes the site as “a single, online, neutral location for leadership resources.”

Man in the Mirror President David Delk believes the site provides an essential ingredient that has been missing from the men’s movement. “Right now there’s an incredible inefficiency in men’s ministry,” he said. “There are a lot of good-hearted men who want to help other men, but they’re too busy. … This will multiply their success exponentially.”

At Stand in the Gap 2007, participants will be challenged to leave a legacy of spiritual strength to the next generation. And like the original event, which draws its name from Ezekiel 22:30, it will call men to accountability. “Men today tend to be isolated,” said National Coalition of Men’s Ministries President Rick Kingham. “If you can get them together to stand for God, it’s a grand success.”

Kingham, who will be emceeing at Stand in the Gap 2007, said he anticipates big things for the men’s movement. “The next phase will be a massive mobilization of men empowered to be a credible witness of Jesus Christ to the entire world,” he said.
Rachael Cox and Drew Dyck