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A vacancy occurs within a church (as in the pastoral position), and let's say an interim pastor steps in for a certain amount of time until a replacement pastor is voted in. Let's say 4-5/6 licensed/ordained ministers within that denomination apply for the open position and thus for a chance to preach before the church - and the church members who will later hear those ministers will pray about which one they desire to be their pastor and eventually vote one in. Should the board get to toss any of those names from consideration, if those licensed/ordained ministers are in...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (October 15, 2012)--A poll of 1,000 Protestant pastors fond that the pastors favor Republican candidate Mitt Romney over President Barack Obama by a more than 3-1 margin, even though Romney is a Mormon and Mr. Obama has attended Protestant churches. The Southern Baptist Convention's Lifeway Research found that 57 percent of the Protestant pastors surveyed said they'll vote for Romney compared to only 17 percent who plan to vote for Mr. Obama and 22 percent who were undecided. Among those who don't support Romney, 82 percent said their decision was not because of his Mormon faith. Lifeway Research...

One WORLD subscriber, Thomas Sandlin, describes himself as “just an old retiree living in the backwater small town of Liberty Hill, Texas.” But any community with Liberty in its name is not a backwater. Liberty is not a backwater concept. It’s the high-water mark for politics in America, where our Liberty Bell exhorts us, in the words of Leviticus 25:10, to “proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.” Sandlin continued, “My pastor cannot get up and tell the congregation how to vote, but he certainly can point out the duty of Christians to participate in the...

Unhappy with President Barack Obama‘s support of same-sex marriage, a group of African-American faith leaders have announced a campaign aimed at stripping 25 percent of the black vote that went to Obama in 2008 (95 percent). The newly formed nonprofit group, God Said, will begin targeting voters in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Florida with television and radio advertising, as well as a grassroots campaign to encourage people to consider the gospel when they enter the voting booth. “The black community is among the most religious in America and we are offended that President Obama has announced his support...

Americans United for Separation of Church and State evidently sent copies of this letter to 60,000 pastors recently. It’s important to remember that Americans United is not an official agency of any governmental entity. This letter has no force of law and is just their opinion. Our local AU affiliate here in Oklahoma has sent similar letters to pastors in my House district in the past. The pastors I talked to about it tell me they threw it in the trash.

Black Pastor says there is no such thing as Gay Marriage.

Since February 3, 1870, when a Republican Congress ratified the 15th Amendment to insure African Americans had the right to vote, Black pastors have always encouraged their congregations to vote. Until 1908 they had advised voting for Republicans since they considered the GOP their natural home. In 1912 Woodrow Wilson and W,E.B. Dubois tricked African Americans into believing that Blacks were not making progress and it was the Republican’s fault. For 100 hundred year s to a greater and greater degree Blacks have voted Democrat. This year, in the oddest of twists, Barack Obama a Black man is on his...

More than 1,000 pastors are planning to challenge the IRS next month by deliberately preaching politics ahead of the presidential election despite a federal ban on endorsements from the pulpit. The defiant move, they hope, will prompt the IRS to enforce a 1954 tax code amendment that prohibits tax-exempt organizations, such as churches, from making political endorsements. Alliance Defending Freedom, which is holding the October summit, said it wants the IRS to press the matter so it can be decided in court. The group believes the law violates the First Amendment by “muzzling” preachers. “The purpose is to make sure...

Preaching magazine editor Michael Duduit takes on the challenging task of naming the most important preachers from the recent past. When Preaching magazine was launched in 1985, a look at our list of contributing editors gave you a sense of who would be listed among the most influential preachers in America. That original group included Stuart Briscoe, Maxie Dunnam, Jim Henry, David Allan Hubbard, John Huffman, D.E. King, James Earl Massey, Calvin Miller, Lloyd John Ogilvie, Stephen F. Olford, Haddon Robinson, J. Alfred Smith, John Wesley White and William Willimon, along with several more.Thankfully, many of those preachers are still...

...[Rev. Jamal-Harrison] Bryant [of Baltimore] last month told The Washington Informer, an African-American newsweekly, "This is the first time in black church history that I'm aware of that black pastors have encouraged their parishioners not to vote." Bryant, who opposes gay marriage, said the president's position on marriage is "at the heart" of the problem. ...The circumstances of the 2012 campaign have led to complex conversations about faith, politics and voting. The Rev. George Nelson Jr., senior pastor of Grace Fellowship Baptist Church in Brenham, Texas, participated in a conference call with other African-American pastors the day after Obama's announcement...

A group of black pastors in Virginia held a meeting to discuss how to encourage their congregations to vote for President Barack Obama. Around two dozen clergy from various churches in the area met for two hours on Saturday in Chesapeake, discussing possible ideas for motivating support for Obama among their congregations. "We are concerned that many of our congregants are developing an aversion to supporting the president at the polls," read the invite email, which was sent out last month. The major concern among the clergy was that Obama's support for same-sex marriage would prompt many African Americans to...

If you are even slightly awake about the world news today, it is no surprise that Christians are being killed, raped, and brutalized throughout the Islamic world. However, there is a place where you can go to escape the dreadful and relentless details of Christian annihilation by Islam. You can just go to church. For example, Christians were killed this week in Nigeria. Nothing out of the ordinary -- indeed, in the world of Christian persecution, this is routine. And so the response found in nearly every church to the murder of Christians is...wait for it...complete silence. Not a mention...

Chick-fil-A reported record sales last Wednesday as thousands showed support for owner Dan Cathy and his stance on Biblical marriage. However, while individual believers stood in long lines to publicly endorse God’s plan for the family and vent their frustration at the media’s criticism of Dan Cathy’s Biblical stance, a number of churches seemed to opt out of the conflict. While the mayors of three large cities and a few University administrators were publicly threatening to ban Chick-fil-A, and while the discussion was the hot news topic of the week, there were many ministers who said little or nothing at...

Support for same sex marriage is now in the Democratic Party preliminary platform. Once approved by the full platform committee and voted on at the convention, same sex marriage will have the formal support of the Democratic Party. But as Democrats institutionalize their support for same sex marriage, their relationship with the Party’s most loyal constituency, black Americans, becomes increasingly uneasy. A new survey just released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows 65 percent of Democrats supporting same sex marriage compared to just 40 percent of blacks. A group of 3,700 plus black pastors, the Coalition...

I heartily commend a group called The Coalition of African-American Pastors, for the public stand it is taking against President Obama’s support for “homosexual marriage”, and for marriage as defined biblically. The Rev. William Owens, Jr., head of the “Mandate for Marriage” initiative and son of the Rev. William Owens, Sr., the founder and president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP), told The Christian Post about the growing importance of the issue at an event on Tuesday.“It’s only going to increase because the very core of America is founded upon Judeo-Christian beliefs. That’s debatable to some people but you...

Washington (CNN) – A group of conservative black pastors are responding to President Barack Obama’s support of same-sex marriage with what they say will be a national campaign aimed at rallying black Americans to rethink their overwhelming support of the President, though the group’s leader is offering few specifics about the effort. The Rev. Williams Owens, who is president and founder of the Coalition of African-Americans Pastors and the leader of the campaign, has highlighted opposition to same-sex marriage among African-Americans. He calls this campaign “an effort to save the family.”

Last week two Christian pastors were jailed in the United States for violation of court orders involving two different types of property cases. In Phoenix, Arizona, Pastor Michael Salman of the Harvest Christian Fellowship Community Church (not affiliated with the Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, CA) is serving a 60-day prison sentence for violating building, fire, and zoning codes. In 2008 Salman received a permit to build a 2,000 square foot “game room” which expressly prohibited its use as a church, business or assembly because it did not meet the physical requirements that such structures were required to meet. Large...

Minister, theologian, speaker, and author John Piper “came out against gay marriage during a sermon Sunday but did not explicitly urge members of his Minneapolis church to vote for the amendment. Leith Anderson, President of the National Association of Evangelicals and who served as senior pastor of Wooddale Church, in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, from 1977 to 2011 “also said this week he does not plan to take a public side on the amendment, which would change the state Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.” Religious observers say the lack of formal backing from...

Influential African-American pastors have requested Attorney General Eric Holder to grant them a meeting with President Barack Obama, saying he broke their hearts by endorsing gay marriage – "something that is simply wrong" – as a civil right."We pray for the President ... President Obama is the fulfillment of our dreams for our sons -- and he has broken our hearts by using his power and position to endorse as a civil right something that is simply wrong," the Rev. William Owens, founder and president of the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP), wrote in a letter to Holder late...

Dual initiatives partnering the Obama administration with leading African-American ministries emerged yesterday that appear designed to work around IRS restrictions on church political campaigning, and to create pressure against proceeding with a contempt of Congress citation against Attorney General Eric Holder for failure to comply with Operation Fast and Furious “gunwalking” scandal-related subpoenas. “Holder, the IRS, and the liberal lawyers at the ACLU will brief several hundred pastors in the African American community on how to participate in the presidential election -- which the Congressional Black Caucus chair expects will help President Obama's campaign,” The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday. On...