Since 2010, Bless Friday® has provided an alternative to frenzied Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. Churches in Houston, The Woodlands and Trinity, Texas and Seattle, Washington are preparing service projects that honor Christ at Christmas on Friday, November 25. These churches ask families and individuals to celebrate Bless Friday® as an alternative to Black Friday.

Trinity Church of God, located in a small town of 2700 in rural east Texas joins Bless Friday® this year. Members will prepare and deliver comfort baskets for residents at the local nursing home. Pastors Jack and Debbie Black state, “We want to begin our Christmas celebration by serving others just as Jesus did. Placing the focus on Jesus at the beginning of Christmas transforms how we experience the whole season.”

Houston area churches’ efforts will include blessing a local medical clinic ministry, Casa el Buen Samaritano, by supporting its annual Christmas tradition of delivering cookies to patients and their families; sending congregants to The Beacon, a homeless shelter established by Christ Church Cathedral; providing crafts and Christmas decorations at Vita-Living homes for the intellectually challenged; cleaning up parks and public spaces and walking door-to-door to spread God’s love and pass out produce in an economically challenged community. At-home activities include packing rice and beans for the Fuentes Food Pantry and making no-sew pillows for the Seafarer’s Mission at the Port of Houston. Participating churches include Memorial Drive and The Woodlands Community Presbyterian churches, St. John the Divine and St. Francis Episcopal churches, the West University Baptist and Crosspoint churches and the Beacon of Light Christian Center.

Parishioners at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Seattle will help the homeless at St. Vincent de Paul of Seattle food bank.

Chuck Fox, founder of Bless Friday®, states, “At a time when fault lines in our country have been exposed, Christians across the political spectrum are uniting in Christ by serving our communities. You don’t have to be a member of these churches to participate. Just pick an activity that honors Christ, gather together your family and friends, and start your Christmas celebration with service.”

Bless Friday® was founded in 2010 in Houston to change the way Americans celebrate Christmas.

(Source: Christian Newswire)

Cleveland, TN–Lee University’s Department of Theology recently announced the School of Religion will be sponsoring a special worship service on the topic of Christian Joy. This celebration will take place at 7:00 pm on November 17 in Pangle Hall on the south end of Lee’s campus.

During the 109th Holy Convocation, in St. Louis, the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) once again chose Bishop Charles E. Blake, Sr. as Presiding Bishop.

Cliff Barrows, 93, of Marvin, N.C., music and program director of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), passed away today at Carolinas Medical Center – Pineville, following a brief illness.

The 2016 National Bible Bee will be broadcast on Facebook LIVE beginning November 17th. Viewers will watch the Scripture knowledge phenomenon of the year, from the Opening Ceremony to the Competition Finals, through Facebook Live and BibleBee.org.

On November 4, 2016, the Pew Research Center released an article entitled, “The Most and Least Educated U.S. Religious Groups.” The article articulates the percentage of adults in each religious group who completed the following: college degree; some college; high school degree; and less than high school. The report states, “These groups are among the top of a list of 30 U.S. religious groups ranked by educational attainment based on data from our 2014 Religious Landscape Study.”

Through a new partnership with Disney Publishing, Feed the Children has more than 1,000,000 books available to help churches provide brand new books for children and schools in their communities this Christmas.

Christian online retailer SonGear (SonGear.com) has launched a platform that allows customers to support the cause of their choice while shopping. SonGear Effect provides shoppers with the ability to choose from nine different Christian causes as they shop. The customer’s cause of choice will then be given a charitable donation of 2.5 percent of the purchase price – directly from SonGear, without increasing purchase price. This is on top of 10 percent of profits, which SonGear donates annually toward Christian charities around the world.

In commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of National Bible Week, a bi-partisan event will be held on the floor of the US House of Representatives and will include readings from the Bible. Led by U.S. Congressmen, Doug Lamborn of Colorado Spring, CO., the event will be held in the afternoon hours of Tuesday November 15th, 2016 and will include the reading of passages from three different Bibles: