Every year Minnesota hosts the world’s largest ice fishing competition, offering the chance to win a pick-up truck… when it comes to winter, Minnesota people pretty much think the west of us are wimps. With a daytime high of two degree this past Saturday, almost 10,000 people showed up for the annual Brainerd (Minnesotae) event.

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With news bulletins popping up on my phone and airport TV monitors reporting the breaking news, I called my office and we decided to send a Rapid Response Team of crisis-trained chaplains who had years of fire, police and emergency management experience to assess the need for emotional and spiritual care.

As God would have it, these specially-trained chaplains were already in the New Jersey and New York region as part of our response to Hurricane Sandy.

As the chaplains arrived just a few hours later at a police checkpoint near the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, the police immediately invited the chaplains in and directed them to the Incident Command Center to offer support to the first responders who were first on the scene at the school.

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A long-retired first grade teacher who died a couple of years ago in Simsbury, Connecticut, lived very simply and wasn’t aware of how many riches she had ”“ not until her lawyer discovered she was actually quite wealthy. NBC’s Harry Smith reports that she gave it away to the institutions that mattered to her the most in the community.

There are two videos and they are both well worth your time: The first may be foundhereand the second there.

“This case is about Christians aggressively imposing themselves upon their fellow citizens with the power of government,” says plaintiff lawyer Douglas Laycock. But defense attorney Tom Hungar warned that the case could lead to “government regulating the theological content of prayers, prescribing what is orthodox and what is not in religion.”

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The most recent meeting of the Town Board here had typical local fare: a new sidewalk proposal, permitting issues and a failed attempt to get a bid on some surplus soil.

Before all of those mundane matters, however, there was one considerably more controversial item on the agenda: a moment of prayer, a practice that has been a religious aperitif to the town’s civic business for more than a decade.

But that could soon change. On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether those prayers ”” almost always delivered by Christian clergy members to the assembled audience ”” violate the First Amendment clause that prohibits the establishment of religion. The court’s ruling, expected next June, could be one of the most significant church-state decisions in 30 years, and could affect the nature of such invocations in municipal meetings nationwide.

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The local option sales tax proposal was defeated again Tuesday in Dorchester County, ending a bruising campaign marked by short tempers and personal attacks.

More than 65 percent of voters cast ballots against the proposal, according to unofficial election results.

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The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled for the plaintiffs. While prayers before legislative sessions do not necessarily violate the Constitution, the court said, the “overwhelming predominance” of the prayers was explicitly Christian, leading a reasonable observer to understand the town to be endorsing that religion over others, regardless of the town’s intent. (After the suit was filed, the board invited representatives of other religions, including Judaism, the Baha’i faith and Wicca, to deliver the prayer, but after four months the prayers were almost exclusively Christian again.)

Defenders of the board’s practice rely on a 1983 Supreme Court case that upheld prayers before legislative sessions ”” including those of Congress ”” because they are “deeply embedded” in American history. The prayers in Greece are constitutional, the defenders say, because they may be delivered by anyone, and the town does not compel citizens to pray.

But compulsion is not the only issue. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in a 1984 case, when a government appears to endorse one religion, it “sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community.” After the Greece lawsuit was filed, one of the plaintiffs received a letter, signed “666,” that read, “If you feel ”˜unwanted’ at the Town of Greece meetings, it’s probably because you are.”

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Lyles estimates about 22,000 students graduate from medical school in the U.S. each year. He said there are 28,000 residency positions available, and the extra spots are filled by students who have attended international medical schools, many of them U.S. citizens returning home to practice.

But as the number of medical schools across the country increases and the number of medical students in each graduating class increases too, the number of students who are unmatched every year will continue to grow.

“The number of residency spots is absolutely not keeping pace,” said Dr. Chris Pelic, who counsels MUSC medical students during the interview process. “It’s setting it up for a very difficult situation.”

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It would be nice if more Christians understood that our faith always has local implications, including our life in public, which is in the polis, and therefore our faith has local political ramifications. The are derivative, yes, they are always penultimate, but they do matter.

County Leaders should be ashamed of themselves (especially since this is the fourth time they have tried this)–KSH.

Larry Hargett might be right: Dorchester County residents might not know enough about a local option sales tax yet to vote on it.

If the county councilman is, that’s not good news for leaders pushing the Nov. 5 referendum.

Earlier this year, County Council unanimously approved a referendum for the local election Nov. 5. Now they are visibly frustrated by the sometimes hostile opposition.

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Herewith the question as it will read on the ballot November 5.

America’s first great theologian, Jonathan Edwards, spent much of his life serving in a single small parish. Presbyterian theologian B. B. Warfield spent nearly his entire adult life in Princeton, New Jersey, where he taught at the university and cared for his sick wife. The late Dallas Willard taught and ministered in the same philosophy department for nearly five decades. Just recently, my pastor interviewed a dozen fellow pastors who have served in Lincoln, Nebraska, for over a decade. All of them are committed to staying at their churches indefinitely.

But, like so many Westerners, we don’t always practice the virtues of the little way in our communities. Evangelicals are a people of megachurches, national conferences, city-centric thinking (which often comes with derision for small-town life), and ever-expanding religious empires, be they church-planting networks or the Twitter feeds of celebrity pastors. Consider just one example: the rise of video preaching and podcasting, and the cultlike following they have generated around certain leaders.

The point is not to demonize cities or the prominent ministries that grow out of them. God does work through these and other large endeavors.

But what happens when our ambitions and fondness for big run amok?

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“I was really attracted to this place. I felt like I was being called to come to Block Island,” said [Eileen] Lindeman, who moved here from near San Francisco in late August and now works part-time as vicar, also known as the priest, of St. Ann’s.

Lindeman’s duties involve leading the Sunday worship services, which begin at 9 a.m. each week and last about an hour. At the service, she leads the prayers, “consecrates the elements” (preparing for the holy communion, Lindeman explained) and she also delivers a sermon. She helps lead a monthly Taizé prayer service, which happens the fourth Wednesday of each month. She also performs weddings, funerals and baptisms ”” the first Saturday of her job she said she performed renewals of marriage vows for two couples.

Aside from these roles, Lindeman said she really wants to be there for her congregation, and for the community as a whole, regardless of a person’s religious denomination. She said that often people call or visit with specific situations or concerns ”” sometimes they just want to talk, she said ”” and she wants to have enough flexible time to be there to accommodate each person. According to Lindeman and Parish Administrator Erica Tonner, for a little over a year, St. Ann’s has had an interim priest who has not lived on the island year-round.

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One family with several generations of businesses on the Jersey shore wonders how it will rebuild yet again after a fire devastates the boardwalk. NBC’s Brian Williams reports

A great father and son portrait amidst real suffering, the Lord bless them and their community. Watch it all–KSH.

The old church, built in 1894, has been a centre of controversy in the town for several years. The Anglican diocese wants to tear down the building, but the Town of Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s has passed motions to have it preserved due to its heritage.

In March 2010, the issue made national headlines when an unknown person, or persons, sawed through the church’s steeple, sending it toppling to the ground, where it remains.

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….we went looking for…towns [that] seemingly custom-designed for soaking in the sights, with charming main streets, a variety of activities and beautiful vistas. Whether it’s the fresh air, authenticity or lack of skyscrapers, these enchanting locales deserve a spot on your travel to-do list. To designate Breckenridge and the rest of America’s most picturesque towns, we called on travel experts from Frommer’s, National Geographic, Fodor’s, and Midwest Living magazine, all of whom shared with us selections of what they consider to be among America’s prettiest towns.

Of course, “prettiest” is subjective, and there are many other towns around the country that would fit the bill ”“ but we chose 15 that we think would not only stand out in a beauty pageant, but also provide great options for your next getaway.

Check out the slideshow and see what you make of the list.

Heroin use in the U.S. is soaring, especially in rural areas, amid ample supply and a shift away from costlier prescription narcotics that are becoming tougher to acquire. The number of people who say they have used heroin in the past year jumped 53.5% to 620,000 between 2002 to 2011, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. There were 3,094 overdose deaths in 2010, a 55% increase from 2000, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Much of the heroin that reaches smaller towns such as Ellensburg, [Washington,] comes from Mexico, where producers have ramped up production in recent years, drug officials say. Heroin seizures at the Southwest border, from Texas to California, ballooned to 1,989 kilograms in fiscal 2012 from 487 kilograms in 2008, according to figures from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The heroin scourge has been driven largely by a law-enforcement crackdown on illicit use of prescription painkillers such as oxycodone and drug-company reformulations that make the pills harder to crush and snort, drug officials say.

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In the worldwide battle to get dog owners to clean up after their pets, enter Brunete, a middle-class suburb of Madrid fed up with dirty parks and sidewalks.

ome cities hand out steep fines. But in these tough economic times, the mayor here, Borja Gutiérrez, did not much like that idea. Instead, this town engaged a small army of volunteers to bag it, box it and send it back to its owners.

“It’s your dog, it’s your dog poop,” Mr. Gutiérrez said. “We are just returning it to you.”

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My hometown ”” Port Clinton, Ohio, population 6,050 ”” was in the 1950s a passable embodiment of the American dream, a place that offered decent opportunity for the children of bankers and factory workers alike.

But a half-century later, wealthy kids park BMW convertibles in the Port Clinton High School lot next to decrepit “junkers” in which homeless classmates live. The American dream has morphed into a split-screen American nightmare. And the story of this small town, and the divergent destinies of its children, turns out to be sadly representative of America.

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Tourism officials in both Carolinas are working to get visitors down roads less traveled this summer.

A $2.5 million spring advertising campaign touting “Undiscovered South Carolina,” is already showing positive results, and Duane Parrish, director of the state’s tourism department.

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The future home of six Ribble Valley Anglican parishes is hanging in the balance due to a row over Church of England reorganisation in Yorkshire.

Blackburn Diocese unanimously voted ”˜yes’ at the April synod meeting to accept the parishes of Hurst Green; Mitton; Waddington; Grindleton; Bolton by Bowland, and Gisburn within its boundaries.

It is otherwise unaffected by the plans to reorganise the church structure in Yorkshire.

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ELKADER, Iowa–Amid an expanse of undulating farmland, deep in the steep valley carved by the Turkey River, the town of Elkader sits most of the year in remote obscurity. Population 1,200 and gradually shrinking, it is the seat of a county without a single traffic light.

Improbably enough, this community settled by Germans and Scandinavians, its religious life built around Catholic and Lutheran churches, bears the name of a Muslim hero. Abd el-Kader was renowned in the 19th century for leading Algeria’s fight for independence and protecting non-Muslims from persecution. Even Abraham Lincoln extolled him.

This weekend, for the fifth year in a row, Elkader will welcome a delegation of Arab dignitaries to celebrate this rare lifeline of tolerance, spanning continents and centuries. Coming less than three weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings, which the authorities say were committed by two Muslim brothers, the Abdelkader Education Project’s forum stands more than ever for an affirming encounter between the United States and Islam.

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While [Dr. Gregory] McGriff says he is forced to do things most other doctors wouldn’t necessarily do, he also notes that the disparity ”” while seeming unfair ”” has served up a bit of sweet irony: It has helped make him a better doctor. At a time when cost-cutting and understaffing place pressure on physicians to move swiftly through their rounds, McGriff adopted a bedside manner to earn a patient’s trust that has now become his signature at Rutherford Regional hospital.

“I make a point to do something that many of my partners don’t do ”” most physicians don’t do anymore. I sit,” McGriff says. “I sit in the room, and I ask the patient to tell me their story. I’m really interested in these stories, by the way, and every client I meet has a very interesting story.

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magine two teams with more than a thousand competitors on each side. Imagine a playing field that stretches three miles from goal to goal. And imagine a single ball that both sides are fighting over.

That is Shrovetide Football, which is played each year over two days in Ashbourne, England between members of the town. In his documentary Wild In The Streets, Peter Baxter tells the story of the game that has been played for centuries.

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Check out this resource for your awareness and prayers.

The crowd that had gathered ”” lighting candles, offering prayers, crying as they tightly embraced family and friends ”” had streamed from the dimly lighted sanctuary of Assumption Catholic Church, but Kelly Nelson lingered behind.

“The people who we lost, these are people I know, I see on a daily basis,” Nelson said. “Knowing that I’m never going to see these people on the Earth again is very difficult for me to handle.”

On Wednesday night, a blast at a fertilizer plant rocked this small east-central Texas town. A day later Nelson and hundreds of others gathered in the red brick Assumption church. Nelson wasn’t the only one to stay behind after the service concluded. A pair of young men sobbed as they knelt before the altar. Others stared blankly forward as they sat in the pews. In a time when residents of West sought hard-to-find clarity, they are relying on faith.

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St. Matthias Episcopal Church property, including two buildings and a half-acre lot, has been offered to the town for free.

The church’s dwindling congregation voted last May to cease holding services at the church at 15 Spruce St., according to a spokeswoman for the Episcopal Diocese of Maine.

Church officials said they offered the church and another building on the same lot to the town, hoping the property could continue to serve the community. One possibility might be as a food pantry, for which it has been used previously, said Heidi Shott, a diocese spokeswoman.

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Could it not be ”” maybe? conceivably? ”” that politics and consolatory speeches and clever laws need a foundation of realism, one which acknowledges human affairs as the huge mess they are: too big, too inexplicable for the combined power of president and Congress to “change”?

Just a few days lie between Christmas and us. It was around this time, we hear, that the Son of God came to our rescue ”” not to perfect everything at that precise moment, but to invite repentance and amendment of life, before offering his own life as a sacrifice. Don’t believe a word of it? The alternative is to believe another act of Congress will bring us finally to that gun-controlled paradise where the evil, the murderous and the frankly loony embrace the pure of heart. It might happen in heaven. I wouldn’t count too much on watching as politicians throw open the gates.

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