The Church of God Chaplains Commission will be presenting its Community Service Chaplaincy Basic Training Seminar in four locations in January, February, March and April 2009. These four courses are in addition to the annual summer term training seminar presented at the Church of God Theological Seminary each June. These chaplaincy training seminars are the first to be scheduled for the upcoming year.

Continuing a longstanding tradition of a Christ-centered celebration of Christmas, the next Billy Graham TV Special, airing in cities across the U.S. December 6-14, will speak straight to the heart to reach people in every walk of life. “The Billy Graham Christmas Special with Franklin Graham” will air in 150 markets in the U.S. and Canada, and on seven national networks. Local listings can be found at www.billygraham.org/TV.

A Kentucky lawmaker believes God is the state’s first line of defense against terrorism.

By Allie Martin – OneNewsNow

A well-known Christian activist says it’s outrageous that the founder of the world’s largest online dating site has bowed to the pressure of homosexuals.

By J. Lee Grady

It has been four months since Canadian evangelist Todd Bentley fled the scene of Florida’s Lakeland Revival amid rumors of a moral failure. When Bentley vanished in August, the crowds thinned, God TV stopped broadcasting services, the meetings eventually shut down and Bentley’s worship leader took the popular music of the revival on the road.

(The following is excerpts from correspondence received from Rev. Carl Richardson regarding the death of Church of God missionary Paul van Zyl):

Missionary Paul van Zyl of South Africa, was killed in a traffic accident on Monday, December 1, 2008, about two miles from his mission station where he lived near Barberton. He was pronounced dead at the accident site by medical authorities. He was en-route from an ongoing project of installing a roof on a new construction site for a growing African Full Gospel Church of God at Emjindini, also near Barberton.

While waiting in line at the bank yesterday, all around were cell phones ringing non-inspiration, meaningless noise. It made me think that Jesus would not like these lyrics that seem not appropriate to be broadcast by cell phones, especially at the Christian credit union. It seems that all around us now a days, there are cell phones ringing ungodly, intrusive, or satanic ring tones that misdirect people who are in need of hope and faith? Just look around and one can come to the realization that, Satan is taking over the world using cell phones. With that in mind, we must fight fire with fire, and use the cell phones as modern Christian armor. A cell phone in the hands of a good Christian is a powerful weapon against Satan. Knowing that the spiritual battle has now come down to using the cell phone to spread God’s word, it made perfect sense that the next stop after the bank was the Sprint store. It was time to upgrade to a high-bred cell phone. After testing a bunch of phones, the Motorola V950 was definitely the best sounding. Now it was time to go home and start searching the web for some Christian and Christmas ring tones. Right away I landed the mother load of quality Christian ringers, www.ChristmasRingtunes.com.

Just in time for Christmas, a new Catholic toy company has launched a line of authentic Catholic toys that educate, entertain, and enrich the faith lives of children. Wee Believers(TM) ( www.weebelievers.com) is teaching and sharing the Catholic Faith with children and families around the world through innovative and creative toys.

Dr. Tim Hill, first assistant general overseer to the Church of God, arrived in Romania and had the opportunity to speak at several churches. He literally drove from one end of the country to the other, and arrived in Oradea at 3:30 in the morning on Wednesday, October 22.