And other news briefs from Christians around the world.
Contemporary Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman has joined the ranks of George Strait and Madonna as one of the few musicians who have topped radio charts 50 times. Chapman’s song “Don’t Lose Heart,” written about the struggle to hang on to faith in a time of crisis, was the most-played song on adult contemporary formats of American Christian radio in early March. His first No. 1 song was “His Eyes” in 1988. Chapman has sold 11 million albums.
United States: Mennonites repent of anti-music ‘sins of the fathers’
The children of a Mennonite revivalist apologized for a 1927 ban on musical instruments that forced a neighbor family to get rid of two pianos, destroy an organ, and hide a violin. At the time, the Virginia Mennonite Conference mandated a cappella singing in worship services, since there is no record of musical instruments in New Testament churches. Bishop George R. Brunk and his son revivalist George R. Brunk II also believed using instruments outside of church was a slippery slope to improper worship. The Brunks successfully pushed the conference to enact additional prohibitions. It had an immediate effect on their neighbors, Chester and Myra Lehman, who were forced to choose between their church and their music. Five Brunk siblings apologized 93 years later. They noted in the public letter, “It is often later generations upon whom the responsibility falls to apologize for ‘the sins of the fathers.’”
Jamaica: First woman leads island’s Christians
Elaine McCarthy, elder of the Pentecostal Gospel Temple Family of Churches and chair of the Jamaica Pentecostal Union, is the first woman named to lead the Jamaica Umbrella Groups of Churches. …
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