Joel C. Hunter Named to Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations

WINCHESTER, Va. – Fifteen members have been named to the Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations, ECFA (Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability) has announced.

This commission was formed following a staff report issued in January by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley that focused on the financial practices of high-profile religious organizations. After releasing the findings of his three-year inquiry of six media-based Christian ministries, the senator asked ECFA to spearhead an independent national effort to review and provide input on major accountability and policy issues affecting such organizations.

“These 14 individuals are proven and highly respected leaders with great wisdom and insight,” said Michael Batts, the commission’s chair. “It is our hope and prayer that the tremendous leadership experience they bring will allow us to develop recommendations that are good for the religious sector and good for our country. Robust and meaningful input from a variety of faith groups and others in the nonprofit sector will be critically important in achieving that result.”

Batts, a CPA, is the managing shareholder of Batts, Morrison, Wales & Lee of Orlando, Fla. He is a member of the ECFA board, former board chair and current chair of ECFA’s Standards Committee.

Other commission members are as follows:

Dan Busby, president of ECFA, is a noted author and speaker on church and nonprofit issues.

Rev. Luis Cortes, founder of Esperanza, Philadelphia, Pa., one of the largest Hispanic evangelical networks in the nation. Esperanza has provided technical assistance and training to over 450 Hispanic nonprofits. Cortes is a national leader of Hispanic concerns and community development.

Rev. Mark Davis, chief financial officer of Calvary Chapel, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., one of the 10 largest churches in America. The church has grown to more than 25,000 people worshiping at the main campus in Ft. Lauderdale and satellite locations in Boca Raton, Plantation, Hollywood and the Keys.

Dr. Stephen Douglass, president, Campus Crusade for Christ, Orlando, Fla. Crusade is an evangelism ministry with a presence in 191 countries founded in 1951 by Bill and Vonette Bright on the UCLA campus.

Richard Hammar, attorney and CPA, general counsel for the Assemblies of God, Springfield, Mo., recognized among top church attorneys in the U.S. and is a noted speaker and author.

Mark Holbrook, president and CEO of Evangelical Christian Credit Union (ECCU), Brea, Calif. ECCU serves ministry members across the country from its headquarters and regional office in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Dr. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland, A Church Distributed, Longwood, Fla. Northland is an interdenominational congregation of 12,000 that worships at several physical sites throughout Central Florida and hundreds of virtual sites worldwide via the Internet.

Lauren Libby, president, TWR, Cary, N.C. TWR is the world’s most far-reaching Christian radio network, with broadcasts reaching millions in over 160 countries each day.

Dr. Jo Anne Lyon, general superintendent in The Wesleyan Church, Indianapolis, Ind. She previously was the founder and CEO of World Hope International, Alexandria, Va.

Dr. Mark Rutland, president, Oral Roberts University (ORU), Tulsa, Okla. The third president of ORU, he is a distinguished educator, leader, business man and a nationally recognized figure in Christian higher education.

Rev. William Townes Jr., CPA, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) convention finance executive committee. The SBC executive committee is comprised of representatives chosen from states and regions, and acts on behalf of the SBC between sessions.

Bishop Kenneth Ulmer, senior pastor-teacher of Faithful Central Bible Church, Inglewood, Calif. Faithful Central is a congregation of 13,000 that worships at the Great Western Forum. Ulmer is a nationally recognized speaker and author.

Dr. Dolphus Weary, president of the Rural Education and Leadership (R.E.A.L.) Christian Foundation, Jackson, Miss. A noted author and speaker, the foundation he leads supports rural Christian ministries in Mississippi with technical assistance and capacity-building.

David Wills, president, National Christian Foundation (NCF), Alpharetta, Ga. NCF has helped thousands of givers send more than $2 billion to over 18,000 charities.

Commission work began with a teleconference on April 11. Its first meeting, May 19, will be followed by quarterly meetings for up to three years.

Issues the commission will address include whether churches should file the same highly detailed annual information return that other nonprofits must file (Form 990); whether legislation is needed to curb abuses of the clergy housing allowance exclusion; whether the current prohibition against political campaign intervention by churches and other nonprofits should be repealed or modified; and whether legislation is needed to clarify tax rules covering “love offerings” received by some clergy.

The commission’s members, ECFA staff and retained legal counsel will receive input from Grassley’s staff; the IRS and Treasury Department; panels of legal experts; religious and nonprofit sector representatives; position papers; and an ECFA member survey. The commission, in turn, will give periodic updates to Grassley, the ECFA board and the public.

The panel of religious sector representatives will include individuals who represent various religious faiths, including, but not necessarily limited to, Protestant Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Judaism and Islam. Special emphasis will be placed on engaging leaders who represent large segments of their respective faith groups.

ECFA, founded in 1979, provides accreditation to over 1,500 leading Christian nonprofit organizations with budgets in excess of $15 billion that faithfully demonstrate compliance with the ECFA standards pertaining to financial accountability, fundraising and board governance. For more information about ECFA, including information about accreditation and a listing of ECFA-accredited members, visit www.ecfa.org or call 1-800-323-9473.

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To schedule an interview with Michael Batts or Dan Busby, please contact Ty Mays at 770-256-8710 or tmays@inchristcommunications.com.

Pastor Joel C. Hunter Reacts to Quran Burning (BBC "Sunday" Program)

PBS Features Northland Church in Piece “Religion and Social Media”

Many religious groups are using social media to connect with their members and reach out to new audiences. Some question what the impact may be on beliefs, practices, and religious leadership, but many say there’s no going back.

GOP Leaders Affirm Obama is Christian, U.S. Citizen

Republican leaders became unlikely defenders of President Barack Obama’s citizenship and religion against skeptics who still question both.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin denounced accusations that Obama is a secret Muslim who was born outside of the United States at a New York forum on Thursday, supporting GOP strategist Karl Rove’s call to rebuff conspiracy theorists within the party.

Palin responded to questions of the president’s birth and religion as “annoying” and a distraction.

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She ended discussion on the questions concluding, “Let’s just stick with what really matters.”

A 2011 Public Policy Polling survey revealed that 51 percent of respondents who said they planned to vote in the Republican primary next year also expressed absolute certainty that the president was born in the United States. Another 21 percent said they were unsure of Obama’s birth place.

Additionally, a 2010 Pew Forum survey showed that the number of Americans who believe that Obama is a Christian decreased from 48 percent the previous year to 34 percent the year of the survey.

Rove denounced the PPP poll’s finding as lousy during a Wednesday appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s television show. He also told conservative viewers to shut down “birthers” who claim that Obama was born outside of the United State and is therefore ineligible to hold the office of president.

“Within our party, we’ve got to be very careful about allowing these people who are the birthers and the 9/11-deniers to get too high a profile and say too much without setting the record straight,” he urged.

Of late, GOP lawmakers have skirted opportunities to set birthers straight.

In a Thursday morning interview with “Good Morning America,” Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) answered questions on the president’s birthplace and religion saying, “That isn’t for me to state.”

Last Sunday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “it’s not my job to tell the American people what to think.”

But Rove contended it was important that party leaders talk to the party about those issues.

“We need the leaders of our party to say, ‘look, stop falling into the trap of the White House and focus on the real issues,’” he related.

Both Bachmann and Boehner conveyed in their interviews a personal belief that Obama is an American and a Christian.

“The State of Hawaii has said he was born there. That’s good enough for me. The president says he’s a Christian, I accept him at his word,” Boehner responded.

Many evangelical leaders are also taking Obama at his word when it comes to his faith.

Florida megachurch Pastor Joel Hunter said of birthers’ doubts, “Those of us who've spent time with him and have had a part of forming his spiritual life can testify with certainty of his commitment to Christ."

Hunter is one of the president's spiritual advisers.

President Obama has expressed his religious beliefs during the 2008 campaign trail. In recent months, he has tried to increased favorable perceptions of his faith by attending church services with his family more frequently and expressing his faith more at speaking events.

During his speech at the Feb. 3 Prayer breakfast, Obama shared stories of a prayer circle created by his daughters’ godmother Kaye Wilson. He also shared his personal prayer routine.

"When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to give me the strength to do right by our country and its people. And when I go to bed at night I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to forgive me my sins, and look after my family and the American people, and make me an instrument of His will,” he testified.

Stephanie Samuel
Christian Post Reporter

http://www.christianpost.com/news/gop-leaders-affirm-obama-is-christian-us-citizen-49057/

President Obama: "I'm Not Alone in My Prayers"

The president spoke about his prayer life during the 2011 National Prayer Breakfast.

“As I travel across the country, folks often ask me, what is it that I pray for? And like most of you, my prayers sometimes are general. Lord, give me the strength to meet the challenges of my office. Sometimes they’re specific. Lord, give me patience as I watch Malia go to her first dance, where there will be boys.”

Turning more serious, he listed ministers he prays with such as pastor Joel Hunter. Read more...

Obama Calls His Christian Faith 'A Sustaining Force' in Prayer Breakfast Speech

President Obama called his Christian faith "a sustaining force" in his life in an unusual speech Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, where he acknowledged persistent questions about his religion and offered perhaps his most detailed comments about his spiritual beliefs and practices.

Obama, who has faced a persistent number of Americans who mistakenly believe that he is a Muslim as well as questions about why he only occasionally attends church, described how he "came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace him as my Lord and savior."

He acknowledged questions about his faith.

"My Christian faith, then, has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years, all the more so when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time," he said to a crowd of about 4,000 at the Washington Hilton hotel. "We are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us, but whether we're being true to our conscience and true to our God. 'Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you, as well.' "

NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), seriously injured during the Tucson shooting rampage last month, also spoke briefly at the breakfast and gave the closing prayer.

The National Prayer Breakfast is a decades-old Washington event attended by members of Congress who are in prayer groups, as well as faith activists and professionals from across the spectrum. Presidents have been addressing the largely evangelical group each year since 1953.

Obama spoke frequently of his Christianity as both a candidate and a senator, but since becoming president his lack of public worship service attendance has become a matter of some attention.

Some high-profile religious conservatives have raised the question, while some religious progressives have criticized Obama for not framing his policy priorities through a religious lens. The president's supporters have noted that President Bush did not attend church regularly while in office either.

It's unclear whether - or how - Obama's handling of the subject affects his political standing, as the last several elections have shown a strong divide on voting regardless of the candidates: people who attend church more frequently, particularly evangelical Christians, tend to back Republicans, while Democrats have more support among voters who rarely attend services.

Meanwhile, many other Americans have bristled at the idea that America's leader needs to have a religious faith, or a faith of a particular kind. They question why the president and Congress would gather at such a high-profile religious event. Obama made clear Thursday he's not in that camp.

"For almost 60 years, going back to President Eisenhower, this gathering has been attended by our president. It's a tradition that I'm proud to uphold, not only as a fellow believer, but as an elected leader whose entry into public service was actually through the church."

The president spoke Thursday about his prayers.

"As I travel across the country, folks often ask me, what is it that I pray for? And like most of you, my prayers sometimes are general. Lord, give me the strength to meet the challenges of my office. Sometimes they're specific. Lord, give me patience as I watch Malia go to her first dance, where there will be boys."

Turning more serious, he listed ministers he prays with such as Joel Hunter, the pastor of a megachurch in Florida.

Obama had been largely private about his beliefs and religious practices, following controversies during the campaign about his Chicago minister.

He and his wife have been to church services in Washington only a handful of times in the past two years, though they attend the private Evergreen Chapel when they are at Camp David. White House officials have issued statement after statement about the private nature of his Christian faith.

In his speech Thursday, he detailed what he prays for in a way he rarely has as a candidate or as president, and used meatier spiritual language of the type typically heard in evangelical churches

"When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, and I ask him to give me the strength to do right by our country and its people," he said.

"And when I go to bed at night, I wait on the Lord, and I ask him to forgive me my sins and look after my family and the American people and make me an instrument of his will."

He distanced himself from his father - who was born Muslim - saying he "only met him once for a month in my entire life" but said his mother, while skeptical of organized religion, "was one of the most spiritual people I ever knew." The president characterized this spirituality not as one about a personal relationship with God, or about ideas about salvation or the Bible, but rather about basic ethics.

"She was somebody who was instinctively guided by the golden rule and who nagged me constantly about the homespun values of her Kansas upbringing, values like honesty, and hard work, and kindness, and fair play."

The president remains relatively unpopular among white evangelicals, 68 percent of whom in the most recent Post-ABC poll said they disapprove of how he is doing his job. That's about what his rating was on average in 2010 and significantly worse than it was at the start of his term. Seventy-three percent of white evangelicals voted for John McCain in 2008.

However Obama's approval rating among white Catholics - a key swing group - topped 50 percent for the first time in a year in the recent poll. After reading a career low of 39 percent approval among this group in September, he is now at 51 percent positive.

In his brief remarks, Kelly said he used to be someone who didn't believe in fate and just thought the universe was random. Since the shooting, Kelly said, he thinks what happened to his wife was part of some larger spiritual plan.

According to the Associated Press, he said he told his wife that "this event, horrible and tragic, was not merely random, that maybe something good can come from this."

Kelly said his wife's health continues to improve. She was recently moved to a rehabilitation center in Houston.

Unrest in Egypt Stirs Fear and Hope

With attacks on Christians already increasing in the Middle East, the populist uprising in Egypt has triggered fears among some that the region's largest non-Muslim population - Egypt's 7 million Coptic Christians - could be at risk.

Copt leaders in the United States said they are terrified that a new Egyptian government with a strong Islamic fundamentalist bent would persecute Christians. They are quietly lobbying the Obama administration to do more to protect Christians in Muslim countries and are holding prayer vigils and fasts such as one that ends Wednesday evening at Copt churches around the country, including four in the Washington area.

"The current situation for the Copts stinks, but [longtime Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak is the best of the worst for us," said the Rev. Paul Girguis of St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Fairfax County, which has about 3,000 members. "If Muslim extremists take over, the focus will be extreme persecution against Copts. Some people even predict genocide."

Some major U.S. Christian figures, including well-known evangelical leaders and representatives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, declined to publicly discuss the situation in Egypt, saying they wanted to avoid bringing dangerous attention to the country's Christians by appearing to complain or to advocate for some particular political outcome.

Their trepidation stems from repeated attacks on churches in Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled in recent years, and from the New Year's Day bombing of a Coptic church in Egypt that killed almost two dozen worshipers and wounded nearly 100. The Coptic church is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world and is based in Egypt.

"Egypt is the bellwether because its Christian community is so large and is the strongest in the Middle East," said Paul Marshall, a global religious freedom expert and a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. "What happens to Christians in Egypt is very significant. Everyone is watching."

But not all American faith leaders are bracing for the worst. Joel Hunter, an evangelical pastor of a Florida megachurch and a frequent adviser to President Obama, said he's hearing a lot of optimism from Egyptian Christians who believe the uprising will lead to more freedom and religious liberty.

Many younger Christians in the United States also see the protests as something to celebrate, Hunter said, and older, more politically conservative Christians tend to be more skeptical of Islam generally and are worried about how a new Egyptian government will treat Israel.

So far, the protests have focused on jobs, free speech and democratic elections, not religion, so it's unclear what the end of Mubarak's rule would mean for religious minorities. But in recent years, Iraq has lost about half its historical Christian population because of persecution, and Christians have been leaving Iran and Lebanon in lesser numbers.

After last month's bombing of the Coptic church in Alexandria, Pope Benedict XVI publicly urged the Egyptian government and other leaders in the region to protect religious minorities. Egypt's foreign ministry spokesman said the pope's comments were "an unacceptable interference" in the country's internal affairs, and Egypt withdrew its ambassador to the Vatican in response.

Some U.S. Christian leaders said the situation in Egypt might put the issue of religious persecution abroad back on the radar of American Christians. A decade ago the freedom of Christians to worship in places such as Sudan was a top agenda item for American Christians, evangelicals in particular. But experts said this week that wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have absorbed people's attention.

At a congressional hearing last month about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, Christian leaders urged the administration to lean harder on Egypt's leaders to investigate violence against religious minorities and to lay out a clear strategy in Iraq for their protection.

A 2009 survey by the nonprofit Pew Forum measured governmental and societal restrictions on religion and found that a number of the world's least tolerant countries are Muslim-majority. The list included Iran, Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan, as well as India, which is majority Hindu. Concerns include bans on public preaching and conversion and the lack of prosecution for religion-based violence.

Some advocates for religious freedom note that moderate Muslims and non-majority Muslims also suffer attacks and that the problem is extremism, not Islam.

Bridges Built Or Burned Between Christianity, Islam Will Profoundly Affect Its Expression Globally

The Muslim population in the United States is projected to more than double by 2030, according to a new Pew Forum report.

There are about 2.6 million Muslim adults and children in the United States (0.8 percent of the U.S. population) in 2010. That figure is expected to rise to 6.2 million (1.7 percent) in 2030, predicted the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life report released Thursday.

Most of the growth will be due to immigration and higher birth rates among Muslims. Christians are, however, expected to still make up by far the majority of the population. But by 2030, Muslims are predicted to be as numerous as Jews or Episcopalians are in the United States today.

“The Muslim population will double in the U.S., but the report cannot indicate what portion of the spectrum of Islam will be practiced by American Muslims,” pointed out Pastor Joel C. Hunter of Northland, A Church Distributed in Central Florida, to The Christian Post.

“Muslims, like Christians, are not a uniform block of believers. The bridges built or burned between Christianity, Islam, and other religions are likely to profoundly affect its expression in this nation and around the world.”

Hunter was a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and served on the Inter-Religious Cooperation taskforce. He is also on the board of the National Association of Evangelicals.

“The Future of the Global Muslim Population” report also predicts that the Muslim population worldwide will increase by 35 percent, or from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030.

This means that the worldwide Muslim population would be growing about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population. Based on this prediction, Muslims would make up slightly more than a quarter (26.4 percent) of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030. In 2010, Muslims make up 23.4 percent of the world’s population of 6.9 billion.

Notably, the report predicts that Pakistan will surpass Indonesia as the country that is home to the largest Muslim population by 2030. Most of the world’s Muslims (about 60 percent) will still be located in the Asia-Pacific region, while about 20 percent will live in the Middle East and North Africa, which are similar proportions to today.

Although the population of Muslims will grow in Europe and the Americas, they are predicted to remain small minorities in the two regions. The United States is projected to have a larger Muslim population by 2030 than any European countries with the exception of Russia and France, although other European countries may have higher percentages of Muslims. Russia is projected to have the largest Muslim population in 2030 with 18.6 million of the religion's followers.

Overall, Muslims are expected to make up about eight percent of Europe’s total population by 2030, up from six percent in 2010. In the United Kingdom, Muslims are projected to comprise 8.2 percent of the population in 2030, up from 4.5 percent today. And in Austria, 9.3 percent of the population is projected to be Muslims, a rise from 5.7 percent in 2010; in France, 10.3 percent from 7.5 percent, and in Belgium 10.2 percent from 6 percent.

Interestingly, nearly a quarter (23.2 percent) of Israel’s population is expected to be Muslims by 2030, up from 17.7 percent in 2010 and 14.1 percent in 1990. During the past two decades, the Muslim population in Israel has more than doubled, increasing from 0.6 million in 1990 to 1.3 million in 2010.

“[This] report will give fodder to the alarmists and will be underplayed by those who just think sociological patterns are interesting,” commented Pastor Joel C. Hunter. “The call for Christians to evangelize the world remains the same no matter what other religious populations are doing, but this development will likely stimulate attention to our growth or lack thereof.”

The Florida megachurch pastor predicted that with the growing effort to expunge religion from society, evangelicals and the growing Muslim population will find themselves partnering on many moral issues in the public square.

The comprehensive 209-page report contains details of different factors that are predicted to contribute to the changes expected in the Muslim population around the world.

On the web:  The Future of the Global Muslim Population

Michelle A. Vu Christian Post Reporter

FAITH IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE: BECOMING COMPLETELY PRO-LIFE

Part 7 in a series of teachings from Dr. Joel C. Hunter about how to approach today’s issues biblically, respectfully and effectively.

FAITH IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE: CREATION CARE

Part 6 in a series of teachings from Dr. Joel C. Hunter about how to approach today’s issues biblically, respectfully and effectively.