3 December 2014

Wednesday, December 3, 2014, 0:00

This news item was posted in Presbyterians Week category.

“But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.” [Ezekiel 33:6]

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” [Ephesians 6:12]

Presbyterians Week Headlines

[1] Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) Announces New Moderator-Designate

[2] Majority of Church of Scotland Presbyteries Said to Have Voted for Allowing Homosexual Ministers

[3] South African Dutch Reformed Church Minister and Two of His Children Killed by Taliban Attack in Afghanistan

[4] News from the Deepest Recesses of Hell

[5] Headlines from Christian Concern

[6] The Thinning Blue Line

[7] Raging Heathen and Vain Imagining

[8] The Religion of Peace

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[1] Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) Announces New Moderator-Designate

The Moderator Designate for the 2015 General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) is the Rev. Kenneth Macdonald (65), minister of the Free Church Continuing congregation in Scalpay.

Brought up on the Island of Lewis, in Bayble Point, Mr. Macdonald trained as a joiner and spent a number of years in the building trade and as a grocer.

His conversion in 1983 brought important changes in outlook and Mr. Macdonald went on to engage in short-term mission work in Bangladesh working for Tear Fund, leading a team of students doing voluntary work at a hospital complex. Nor did it stop there, because in 1989 he went to South Africa, with his family, as an artisan missionary, building new churches and renovating some of the older church buildings. There he also began to preach for the first time, out of necessity due to the shortage of preachers, and became conscious of being called by the Lord to serve as a minister. That call led to a return to Scotland to study for the ministry.

Ordained in 1997, he was minister in Snizort, on the Isle of Skye, for eleven years.

Since 2008 he has been minister on the Island of Scalpay.

Mr. Macdonald has represented the Church in Australia and in Zambia, preached at conferences in America and England and serves on the National Committee of the Scottish Reformation Society. He has also, on several occasions, led groups to visit Israel.

In such spare time as he has, he enjoys sea fishing, woodwork and reading political biographies.

Married to Coleen, he has two married sons: Mark (an operations officer with Scottish Natural Heritage) and Greg (Minister of the Free Church Continuing in Ness).

+ Free Church of Scotland (Continuing), Rev. John MacLeod, Free Church Manse, Portmahomack, Ross-shire, Scotland, principalclerk@fccontinuing.org

[2] Majority of Church of Scotland Presbyteries Said to Have Voted for Allowing Homosexual Ministers

A 29 November 2014 Press and Journal article by Cameron Brooks titled “Plans to Allow Gay People to Become Kirk Ministers Takes a Step Forward” reports that “unofficially, twenty-three of forty-five Kirk presbyteries have approved a proposal which would allow their congregations to appoint active homosexuals as ministers.

If true, the proposal will come before the Kirk’s 2015 General Assembly for approval or disapproval by the assembly commissioners.

+ Press and Journal, Lang Stracht, Mastrick, Aberdeen AB15 6DF, Scotland, 01224-343311, pj.newsdesk@ajl.co.uk

+ Church of Scotland, 121 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 4YN, Scotland, 0131-225-5722

[3] South African Dutch Reformed Church Minister and Two of His Children Killed by Taliban Attack in Afghanistan

A 1 December 2014 Christian News Network article by Mark Woods titled “Church Mourns Pastor and Children Killed by Taliban Suicide Bombing in Afghanistan” reports that the Rev. Werner Groenewald, his seventeen-year-old son Jean-Pierre and a fifteen-year-old daughter, Rodé, were killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan when Taliban fighters attacked a house used by foreign aid workers.

Mr. Groenewald served as pastor of the Moreleta Park Dutch Reformed Church in Pretoria, South Africa beginning in 1997 before going to Afghanistan in 2002 the American charity Partnership in Academics and Development, which helps educate poor and orphaned children in various countries in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The Groenwalds are survived by their wife and mother Dr. Hannelie Groenewald, who was serving in a nearby hospital when the attack began.

+ Christian News Network, Post Office Box 30000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103, Contact Page

+ Dutch Reformed Church, Posbus 13528, Hatfield 0028, Pretoria, South Africa, 27-0-12-342-0092, Fax: 27-0-12-342-0380, algemenesinode@ngkerk.org.za

[4] News from the Deepest Recesses of Hell

— In 2011, Seventy-Eight Percent of Abortions Were Black and Hispanic Babies

— Dutch Doctors Approve Plan to Harvest Organs from People Killed in Euthanasia

— Selling Suicide Like Coffee: Bioethicist Proposes Commercial Assisted Suicide Shops

— Obamacare Architect Jonathan Gruber: Killing Babies Makes Life Better for Survivors

— U.N. Report Promotes Children’s ‘Right’ to Abortion without Notifying Parents

— Scranton, Pennsylvania Family Starved Thirty-Two-Year-Old Man with Down Syndrome to Death, He Weighed Just Sixty-Nine Pounds

+ American Vision, Post Office Box 220, Powder Springs, Georgia 30127, 770-222-7266, Fax: 770-222-7269, mail@AmericanVision.org

+ LifeNews.com, Post Office Box 270841, Fort Collins, Colorado 80527, news@lifenews.com