A crop duster was recently used in Louisiana to spray 100 gallons of “holy water” over the town of Cow Island.
The community-wide blessing was thought up by L’Eryn Detraz, a native of Cow Island and a missionary currently stationed in Ohio, the diocese said.
Parishioners of St. Anne Church brought water from home to be blessed by Fr. Matthew Barzare before it was loaded onto a plane and distributed by a cropduster pilot.
A nice thought, perhaps, but Read more
Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s MRFF recently had a case of the vapors when they read the Southern Baptist Convention’s chaplaincy website, which includes the 1941 quote from Alfred Carpenter that
Every chaplain is a missionary in uniform, and an evangelist at large…
Weinstein’s group let loose the vitriol:
MRFF’s Constitutional [sic] civil-rights [sic] battle for separation of church and state in the U.S [sic] military faces vicious opposition from fundamentalist evangelical Christian dominionists hell-bent on ensuring military chaplains function as “government paid missionaries”…
As previously discussed, every Christian Read more
An article out of Mountain Home AFB assures the world that the time honored tradition of the roof stomp (literally) is alive and well. The article talks about a commander moving on from command, and the way he was received by his unit two years ago:
Lt. Col Gary Marlowe, 389th Fighter Squadron commander is initiated as the new commander with a roof stomp June 2015, at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho.
That’s LtCol Gary “Ziggy” Marlowe, a name which carries on another tradition, for those old Read more
David Plummer, a chaplain-endorser with the liberal leaning Coalition of Spirit-Filled Churches, responded to the DoD’s decision to publish a new “Faith and Belief” list by making an aside that the
military chaplaincy is NOT about being a “government-paid pastor or missionary in uniform.”
Plummer is making a reference to a phrase made famous by Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s MRFF, which copied (and slightly edited) a video from a 2004 chapel assembly at Dallas Theological Seminary by US Army Chaplain (Maj) Douglas Duerksen*. Chaplain Duerksen described the military society as “amoral” and “unchurched” — making it a “magnificent mission field.” He followed Read more
Christianity Today recently had a piece on Justin Wren, one-time aspiring Olympic wrestler turned drug addict and eventual missionary to the Mbuti in Africa.
The story is interesting if you like the wrestling/MMA scene or bad-boy-turned-missionary stories. More relevant, though, was the picture Wren used at the top of his article:
For the uninitiated, that’s the interior of the US Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in Colorado Springs, Read more
Major Andrew Thornley spent four years as an Airman in the Security Forces — a beginning to a career in which he said he had difficulty finding a “spiritual mentor.” That challenge was something he would ultimately seek to help others overcome:
After completing his enlistment, Thornley began his theological studies, eventually becoming a pastor in the civilian world. After 10 years as a pastor, he began to feel that there might be more he could do with his newfound knowledge…
“I left the Air Force, but the Air Force never really left me,” Thornley said. “I’ve always had the blue blood running through my veins.”
Chaplain Thornley re-entered the Air Force in October 2001 and spent the next several years trying to help troops and their families cope with the hardships of war.
In 2003 he was featured on Good Morning America, where he Read more
Alan Clyne recently retired from the US Marine Corps after a long career. Clyne was in Iraq in 2005 when he was tasked with driving an armored bulldozer to clear a path for engaged fellow Marines:
It was there, at a tiny forward operating base called Camp Gannon in November 2005, that Chief Warrant Officer 4 Clyne and a fellow Marine, Master Sgt. Scott Witmer, hopped aboard an armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozer that neither man had been trained to operate and drove into a high-risk rescue mission in an active combat zone.
A tank accompanied them — from Read more
An article from the Kentucky Gleaner (published at the Stars and Stripes) notes that some missionaries in Afghanistan will continue to serve there even as US forces withdraw:
Four missionaries from Henderson and Evansville just returned from a visit there, where Uncharted International, a nonprofit mission agency based in Evansville, sponsors a school for Afghan children.
They represent just a portion of local missionaries… — many of whom are members at One Life Church in Henderson and other churches — who have made repeated trips Afghanistan, Myanmar and China in recent years through Uncharted.