Author: Shalem John

The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) appointed Botrus Mansour as the global body’s new secretary general and CEO last week. It is the first time an Arab Christian will lead the WEA, a global organization of national and regional alliances representing 600 million evangelicals. The role has been open since former secretary general Thomas Schirrmacher resigned due to medical reasons in March last year. Peirong Lin, deputy secretary of the WEA, told CT in April that the organization was seeking a leader who could unite global evangelicals amid wars and political divisions. Meanwhile, the WEA has also faced critiques about its…

Chuck Girard wrote and sang and played from the time he was a kid—rhythm and blues, blue-eyed soul, doo-wop, pop, and even a top-ten radio hit about Honda motorcycles. When he experienced the love of Jesus at age 26, that didn’t change the way he felt about music.  “I want you to know I still love rock-and-roll music,” Girard wrote in a subsequent song, “but now I have something to say.” Girard and his band Love Song started to perform what they called “Jesus music” in Southern California in the early 1970s. They became one of the regular groups at…

A district court judge granted final approval last week to a partial settlement for clergy and staffers of the African Methodist Episcopal Church after a substantial percentage of funds from their retirement plan were discovered to be missing. The historically Black denomination has been accused of mishandling the retirement funds, leaving many plan participants with about 30 percent of what they had hoped to use for retirement. The denomination accused its former retirement department head of embezzlement after discovering in 2021 that he provided “deceptive, false and grossly inflated financial statements” about the retirement plan. On August 19, Judge S.…