Religion, like marketing, has its funnel. And many evangelical megachurches have spent the past quarter-century focusing on the rim, attempting to get spiritual “seekers” just to sample a service — and hoping that they will at some point join the faith. These churches have grown by staying away from hard-core biblical teaching and instead have lured the curious with slick multimedia presentations and skits, sermons with the cultural relevance of “Saturday Night Live,” and maybe an iced cappuccino for the trip home.

But now the leading exponent of this approach, Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago, has plunged its Sunday-morning services much deeper into the faith funnel. More music is provided for worship, not just ambience; and more messages target “mature” believers, not just new ones. One recent sermon challenged listeners to publicly show their commitment as Christians, an appeal that would have seemed strange a year ago. For a business owner, that might mean talking about Christ with employees, it was suggested; for a teenager, it might involve risking status with peers.

“We can start at the top of the hour saying, ‘Here’s the deal,’ and get right at it — as opposed to having to demonstrate the fact that we’re conversant with the culture,” explained William Hybels, Willow Creek’s founding and senior pastor.

Also now, Sunday-morning visitors are more likely to be greeted than to be allowed to slouch in anonymity. On Memorial Day weekend, for example, Mr. Hybels invited those who were struggling with some life circumstance to stand up where they were. Then believers nearby placed hands on them while Pastor Hybels prayed.

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Churches usually don’t have to pay property taxes. The IRS consider a house of worship a nonprofit cause. But some congregations don’t meet in church buildings these days. So, guess what? The IRS is reexamining this. Ashley Milne-Tyte reports.

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No one here, whether communion conservative or federal, wants the week to end with an innocuous communiqué and, I think, there is a very good chance that that danger has been averted…Creating a new global structure based on this paradigm, is, at this point, the consensus hope, the common ground. Some sort of articulation of this New Paradigm is where I think the communiqué will eventually settle. I am a fed-con but not a separatist. I am federal because do not think that any historic see is essential to Anglicanism and would be willing to break ties to Canterbury if necessary. At the same time I think there is still hope for the Communion as a whole. That hope, however, does not rest within the present structures of Communion. It rests here in Jerusalem. If a disciplined, ordered, faithful, global body is birthed here (or at least conceived), bounded by a firm corporate confessional commitment and governed by conciliar adjudication, then, though Canterbury dithers and fails, global Anglicanism does indeed have hope and a future.

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If Christian conservatives stay on the sidelines during the fall campaign, presidential hopeful John McCain probably stays in the Senate.

Christian conservatives provided much of the on-the-ground, door-to-door activity for President Bush’s 2004 re-election in Ohio and in other swing states. Without them, the less organized and lower-profile McCain campaign is likely to struggle to replicate Bush’s success. And so far, there’s been scant sign that the Republican nominee-in-waiting is making inroads among these fervent believers.

“I don’t know that McCain’s campaign realizes they cannot win without evangelicals,” said David Domke, a professor of communication at the University of Washington who studies religion and politics. “What you see with McCain is just a real struggle to find his footing with evangelicals.”

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Orthodox Anglicans who are creating a new movement at a breakaway summit in Jerusalem have said they feel “betrayal and abandonment” at the current church structure.

The 1,000 conservatives at the Gafcon conference say they feel “profound sadness” that the worldwide Anglican Communion has been driven to the brink of schism by liberals in America and Canada departing from traditional church teaching, particularly over sexuality.

They are working on a statement which shows how they think the church must proceed, which involves faithfulness to the Scripture and an end to “innovations” such as the ordination of homosexual clergy.

They are also developing a “church within a church” which will cater for Anglicans who do not want to be under the leadership of liberal bishops.

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THE most liberal-sounding speaker at GAFCON by the end of Tuesday was the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali.

Dr Nazir-Ali surprised participants on Tuesday by speaking up for inculturation, change, and diversity. But each of these had its limits, he said. The gospel had to be adapted to different cultures, but “capitulation to culture” must be avoided; change and development must be principled; diversity had to be legitimate.

He made few explicit references to existing Anglican polity, beyond saying that the things that bound it together ”” the Lambeth Quadrilateral, the Instruments of Communion, and “English good manners” ”” had not proved strong enough to hold it together.

His desire was for a conciliar Church. “We have to have councils that are authoritative, that can make decisions that stick. In the last few years, I’ve been frustrated by decision after decision after decision that have not stuck, and we cannot have this in the future for a healthy Church.”

He also wanted the Church to be clear “that we are a confessing Church. Some people have the mistaken idea that Anglicans can believe anything.”

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“Toss-up” states Minnesota and Wisconsin were re-designated to “Lean-Obama” Friday, giving the presumptive Democratic nominee another 20 electoral votes in CNN’s current estimate. The Illinois senator now has 231 electoral votes ”” 39 shy of winning the nomination.

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GAFCON is the first pan-Anglican congress that is African-led and internationally funded, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria told participants earlier this week.

Archbishop Akinola said that $5 million to cover the costs of the June 22-29 conference had been raised in five months, with $2.4 million coming from the Church of Nigeria. Two individuals contributed the bulk of the Nigerian funding, he said, providing enough to pay the costs of the American bishops of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a missionary outreach of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, to attend the gathering.

Bishop-elect AkinTunde Popoola, the Church of Nigeria’s press spokesman, told The Living Church the Nigerian donations were given anonymously, but he confirmed that the donors are Nigerian nationals resident in the country, and were not American supporters of CANA.

“Nigeria has been self-supporting” in its obligations within the Anglican Communion, Bishop-elect Popoola said. He noted that CANA had been granted a dispensation from Nigerian canon law requiring dioceses to contribute to the support of the national church. “CANA does not pay a dime to Nigeria,” he said.

The final costs of the conference will be released on Friday, conference treasurer Hugh Pratt said. He said that GAFCON appeared on track to be a financial success. Given the short time to prepare for the conference, Mr. Pratt said, the financial stability of the gathering was evidence of God’s hand at work.

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Maybe it is because we have so many pets and our youngest daughter has a special love of animals, but this one really got to me–watch it all.

The American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to sue the U.S. Naval Academy unless it abolishes its daily lunchtime prayer, saying that some midshipmen have felt pressured to participate.

In a letter to the Naval Academy, Deborah Jeon, legal director for the ACLU of Maryland, said it was “long past time” for the academy to discontinue the tradition. She said the practice violates midshipmen’s freedom to practice religion as their conscience leads them.

The Naval Academy rejected the ACLU’s request that the prayer be eliminated.

“The academy does not intend to change its practice of offering midshipmen an opportunity for prayer or devotional thought during noon meal announcements,” the university said in a statement. It said that some form of prayer has been offered for midshipmen at meals since the school’s founding, in 1845, and that it is “consistent with other practices throughout the Navy.”

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The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index plunged 38.82, or 2.9 percent, to 1,283.15, its biggest drop in three weeks. The Dow decreased 358.41, or 3 percent, to 11,453.42, its lowest since September 2006. The Nasdaq Composite Index sank 79.89, or 3.3 percent, to 2,321.37, its worst loss since January. Almost nine stocks fell for each that rose on the New York Stock Exchange.

“Most investors are going to sit on the sidelines until they’re more certain the sharks have left the waters and it’s safe to go back in,” said Bruce McCain, the Cleveland-based head of investment strategy at Key Private Bank, which oversees about $30 billion. “The write-offs have been far worse than anyone would have imagined.”

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GAFCON consists of Anglicans from very different churchmanship and theological and liturgical styles.

And yet already some common themes are emerging.

There is a common horror of the extent that some churches in the Communion have wandered from not simply Anglican, but Christian truth and discipline.

There is the conviction that GAFCON must not be a conference, but the beginning of something that will continue on. And that whatever ”˜this’ is that continues, it will aim to renew and restore Anglican churches throughout the world to Biblical and apostolic goals.

There is a common enthusiasm for the central authority of Scripture in our churches, and the classic Anglican formularies like the Articles of Religion and the Creeds.

And, most wonderfully, there is a refusal to countenance bitterness of spirit or self-righteousness in relation to the rest of the Communion. I think that we are aware of the great danger that faces every reform and renewal movement in the church, of becoming factious and self-serving, judgmental. I pray that the tone of this conference will be the tone of the movement is emerging, whatever form it takes.

Tomorrow (Friday) the first draft of the crucial conference will be released for discussion.

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The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania has received the news of Bishop Bennison’s conviction and shares in the grief of the victims and all whose lives have been impacted by these events. Our prayers and thoughts are with those affected by the trial and now the verdict. We pray for healing for all. The canonical process is long and far from over. The Standing Committee will be continuing its responsibilities as the Ecclesiastical Authority in the diocese until the matter is finally concluded.

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An Episcopal bishop was found guilty by a church panel of covering up his brother’s assaults of a teenage girl in the 1970s.

Charles E. Bennison Jr., 64, was convicted of two counts of engaging in conduct unbecoming of a member of the clergy, according to his attorneys and the church verdict, dated Tuesday and released Thursday. He could be reprimanded, suspended or ousted from the church.

“We are proud of the Episcopal Church for holding Bishop Bennison accountable, and for using an open and transparent process that allowed the truth to come to light,” church attorney Lawrence White said in a statement Thursday.

It was not immediately clear when the sentence would be handed down for Bennison, bishop of the nation’s fifth-largest Episcopal diocese. The special Court for the Trial of a Bishop must wait at least 30 days before handing down a sentence, and Bennison’s attorneys said they will request a hearing before sentencing.

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Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, of the Anglican Church of Kenya, spoke to the press on Thursday, June 28 about the progress and content of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) Statement.

While not in final form, there is already general agreement among pilgrims about a number of points. At GAFCON, there is a determination to maintain the authority of scripture in the life of the Church, a profound sadness about the current state of the Anglican Communion. Pilgrims also want to see GAFCON develop into a long term movement instead of a one-time conference, agree that more permanent structures need to be established for faithful Anglicans who live in serve in provinces that have left the traditional teachings of scripture, and desire to continue to reach out to other Anglicans.

Every pilgrim has had multiple opportunities to provide concerns, hopes, and suggestions to the statement committee throughout the week. The first draft of the statement will be read to all pilgrims on Friday, June 27. The statement will be finalized before GAFCON ends on June 29.

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But the media are not the only ones who are misunderstanding GAFCON. Among conservatives, no surprise, I am coming across three different kinds of Anglicans here who often don’t understand each other very well. Let me describe them this way:

* The separationists. These individuals wish to create a new Anglican Communion that is global, not centered in Canterbury.

* The reformers. These folks are not yet ready to give up on the existing Anglican Communion and have a movement strategy for redeeming and restoring the Communion.

* The new paradigm. This is the trickiest one to understand. Under a new paradigm, Anglicanism becomes a global network, locally distinctive, church or community-based, and centered on the biblical mission of evangelism and discipleship.

One new reality of GAFCON is that the discussions here across the Anglican food chain from the Primates to the small groups of lay and parish clergy have moved beyond “The American Problem,” which is The Episcopal Church, its bitterly hostile actions against conservatives, and the advent of homosexual clergy and same-sex unions. Bishop Bob Duncan, the American conservative leader from Pittsburgh, isn’t even here.

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Gun-control advocates across the country reacted with shock and outrage at the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns today, saying the ruling would threaten gun-control measures in other states.

If there was any doubt that other bans would be in peril, the National Rifle Association quickly put those questions to rest when it announced shortly after the ruling that it would file a flurry of lawsuits challenging restrictions in San Francisco, Chicago and several Chicago suburbs. The law in Washington, which spelled out rules for the storage of weapons and made it extremely difficult for most people in the district to legally possess a handgun, was among the strictest in the nation.

“I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of freedom,” Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the N.R.A., said in a statement.

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As cars surged steadily down the road in Toledo, Ohio, a familiar melody rose from the circle of people gathered beside the gas pumps at the Exxon-Mobil station on the corner.

“He’s got the gas prices, in his hands. He’s got the gas prices, in his hands. . . ”

Heads bowed and hands clasped, Rocky Twyman and the congregants of his small worship session hoped to do what the country’s leaders haven’t: Put an end to the steep increase in national fuel prices.

“God is telling us to stop depending on ourselves so much and trust in him,” said Twyman, founder of Pray at the Pump. “Bush can’t solve this. McCain and Obama are not going to be able to solve this.”

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At least one Church of England bishop will defect to Rome soon after the Lambeth Conference, I gather from Anglo-Catholic sources. And there could be more to follow.

I can’t tell you much more than that at the moment, because the negotiations with Rome are so sensitive – and the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, who distrust Anglican traditionalists, are quite capable of throwing a spanner in the works.

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They are up 3-0 on Russia and are headed to the final against Germany.