Billy Graham had a special exhortation for his son, Franklin Graham, 50 years ago in Lausanne, Switzerland, when Franklin turned 22. In a video posted to social media July 1, the president of Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association said that his father’s challenge angered him at first.

“Fifty years ago I was right here on the shores of Lake Geneva, here in Lausanne, working for my father,” said Franklin, indicating the body of water to his left as he sat on a concrete wall with a boulevard to his right. “We were doing a conference. It was my birthday, and he said, ‘Franklin, let me take you to a restaurant.’”

50 years ago my father @BillyGraham and I took a walk together right here along this pathway. He told me that he and my mother felt there was a battle going on for the soul of my life. Take a minute to listen to what else he said… pic.twitter.com/5yjIvvz9KW

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) July 1, 2024

Franklin Graham: ‘I Knew He Was Right’ 

Franklin Graham said his father took him to a now-closed pizza joint and then suggested that they take a walk down the very boulevard where Franklin was filming his video. At first, what Billy Graham had to say was what any son might hope to hear from his father: “Franklin, I want you to know your mother and I are proud of you and we love you.”

Franklin thanked his father, after which Billy said, “Franklin, your mother and I want you to know you can always come home. Whatever you do in life, you’re always welcome home.”

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Franklin told his viewers that he had “never doubted that,” but said he thanked his father for those words as well. Then Billy said, “Franklin, your mother and I sense there’s a battle for the soul of your life, and you’re going to have to make a choice. You’re going to have to choose to accept Jesus Christ or reject him.”

“There’s no middle ground,” Billy Graham continued. “There’s no riding the fence. Either you’re going to live for him or not. And we’re praying that you make the right choice.”

“When he said that, it made me angry,” said Franklin. “It really did.” The Samaritan’s Purse president said he didn’t reveal those feelings to his father, but “in my heart, I was just, I was mad. Because I knew he was right.”

A week later, Franklin was in the Middle East, and decided to commit himself entirely to Jesus. “I got down on my knees by my bed,” he said, and then he prayed, “God, I’ve sinned against you, and I’m sorry. Forgive me. I believe Jesus Christ is your Son. I believe that he died for my sins and that he was buried. He shed his blood and…you raised him to life. I ask that you forgive me. I surrender my life to you tonight.”

As the Los Angeles Rams’ wide receiver and Super Bowl 2022 MVP, Cooper Kupp’s accolades keep rolling in. But that’s not what he wants to talk about. In fact, Daily Grind—a podcast started by Cooper and his wife, Anna—focuses on their adventures in parenting, their new coffee shop, and a few behind-the-scenes football stories.

“It’s not about getting through today. It’s making the most of today,” said Cooper.

Cooper Kupp Disagrees That You Need To ‘Sacrifice Your Soul for Success’

A third-generation NFL player, Cooper Kupp began dating his now-wife, Anna, while in high school. He has been outspoken about his faith on and off the football field as the couple raises their three boys. The couple just launched a podcast where they are authentic and transparent in their celebrations and struggles.

“We’re trying to thrive. We want to be there for our boys and not feel like we’re just kind of surviving with our boys,” Cooper said. “But we’re giving them an opportunity to grow into what they’re going to be—men of God.”

Cooper said with a laugh, “We live in the midst—among the midst—of craziness.”

The couple shared appreciation for their boys. “We have great boys. Our boys are incredible,” Cooper said. “In the middle of the day, we’ll be like, ‘Wow, we just feel so incredibly blessed by our family and the love that we get to share in our home.'”

Cooper recognized that the parenting load falls to Anna during the football season. “The times that it gets really wild is really during the season when you’re going ‘solo-dolo,'” he said. It’s in those times that they focus on “finding balance” and attempt to avoid “burning out.”

Whether on or off the field, Cooper attempts to “keep the priorities just where they need to be.” He said, “I put faith, family, friends, football,” in that order.

Anna explained that during the football season, priorities do get out of balance. “There’s such a huge focus on football—which it needs to be because that is your job,” she said. So the couple allows “room and flexibility and grace” for each other.

“I think finding stillness is an important thing,” offered Cooper. “Stillness to me is very different than being stagnant.” Being stagnant, the couple explained, is when there is a lack of intent, focus and movement. Stillness, on the other hand, is a purposeful rest.

Cooper referenced and summarized football coach Bill Walsh’s philosophy. He offered quite a bit of respect for the coach who contributed so much to his team and to the overall game. Walsh’s argument is that if players are not in a bad place, at odds with their families and losing sleep—then they’re not committed enough to the goal.

“Players are taught…you need to sacrifice your soul for success,” Cooper said. “I couldn’t disagree more…I know that as a football player, when everything else is in alignment, when my priorities go: faith, family, friends and football, I’m in such a better place.”

In 2018, Cooper tore his ACL, prematurely ending his football season. The injury ended up being one more opportunity for the couple to work together. “You were in pain. There were so many external emotions that you’re working through,” Anna said. “And then just to watch football on Sunday as if nothing had happened and our world is completely turned upside down.”

Cooper mentioned, “I would never sacrifice being the best husband, being the best dad” to achieve more success on the field.

He described a job and marriage as accessories to a relationship with God. “They all exist together, and it’s not that one can’t exist without the other, but those all need to be in harmony with each other,” he said.

Cooper and Anna parent their three sons together while they navigate the many demands on their time. “There are frustrating times where we’re both exhausted at 3:00 in the morning trying to figure out how to get this child to close his eyes and just sleep,” described Cooper.

“We get to go through this together,” he reflected. Even in the trying times of parenting, Cooper and Anna rely on each other. And because of the teamwork with Anna, Cooper feels free to be fully present at work on the football field.

“As soon as I’m done here, I get to go home, and I can be right there and be 100% the best dad I can be, the best husband I can be.”

A group of protesters demanding justice for Mica Miller say a member of Solid Rock Church assaulted them Sunday (June 30) by spraying them with a lawn sprinkler. As they have each Sunday since June 2, some vocal residents gathered outside the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, church before worship in support of Miller, who died April 27.

Mica Miller, 30, was the wife of Solid Rock Pastor John-Paul Miller, who has denied any role in her death and has threatened to sue over “false accusations.” Solid Rock Church reportedly relieved John-Paul Miller of “ministerial functions” but has not said he’s been fired.

As ChurchLeaders has reported, local officials ruled Mica Miller’s death a suicide, but the FBI is now investigating. Her family and true-crime devotees allege that John-Paul Miller, 44, was abusive. The pastor has a criminal record, with multiple counts of aggravated assault and battery.

Church Member Appears To Aim Sprinkler at Protesters

In video posted to social media, a man who seemed to be connected to Solid Rock Church approached protesters who were standing on a sidewalk chanting Sunday. He picked up a hose with a sprinkler attachment and walked toward the group.

RELATED: FBI Assisting With Investigation Into Mica Miller’s Death; SC Pastor Tried To ‘Raise Her From the Dead’

Water appeared to hit a few people, including a figure dressed in biblical garb. A woman who flinched after getting sprayed yelled back, “That’s assault!”

After the church member set the sprinkler back on the lawn, a police officer moved it away from the protesters. Police have not confirmed a report that several people filed assault charges as a result of the incident.

According to the Sun News, John-Paul Miller set out the sprinklers before worship on Sunday. Protesters weren’t deterred. Before getting sprayed with water, they had been shouting, “No people, no church!”

John-Paul Miller: Protesters ‘Make a Mockery of the Christian Faith’

In an email to the Sun News, John-Paul Miller expressed displeasure with the weekly contingent gathering outside the church. He wrote:

These people are not protesting. Solid Rock believes in the right to protest. These people are pagans who are trying to stop Christian’s [sic] from worshipping. They slander, they speak evil lies, they take pictures of children, and they wear masks while standing in front of parishioners who try to enter and leave the house of the Lord. These vicious pagans stand in the streets, use illegal blow horns, and laugh at the city police because the city is doing nothing to stop them from harassing Christians who simply want to worship together for one hour.

Miller added, “They make a mockery of the Christian faith having a man dressed up like Jesus walk around scaring innocent parishioners as they enter church.”

Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, California, is urging congregants to attend a political event called “Comeback California,” which will be hosted at the church on July 9. 

Hibbs, known for being a strong advocate of Republican politics, has organized a series of events to rally together Christians who are “committed to defending Biblical values within our communities.”

In the past, Hibbs has indicated his belief that Christians are morally obligated to support former President Donald Trump, saying that Trump “understands our situation better than most pastors and Christians.”

Hibbs began service at Calvary Chapel on Sunday, June 23, by announcing that the church would be hosting an event featuring United States Representative Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey, a former baseball star who is running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Dianne Feinstein. Schiff is running for the seat as a Democrat. 

In February, Hibbs endorsed Garvey from the pulpit, apparently flouting U.S. tax code, which states 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations are not allowed to endorse or oppose political candidates. 

The event will be moderated by Fox News host Steve Hilton. In the past, Hilton has accused Schiff of being one of the “real agents of Putin.”

“We are going to be hosting, right here, because it’s so critical—you know, Dianne Feinstein vacated her office as senator,” Hibbs said to scattered applause. “And you know how she vacated the office is that she went into eternity.” 

In a promotional video for the event played during service, Hibbs can be heard saying that “the hour has come upon us—it’s been thrust upon us—to stand for righteousness.”

Following the video, Hibbs continued to announce various events at the church and commented on the recent law passed in Louisiana requiring public schools to feature a display of the 10 Commandments in every classroom. 

The law is already being challenged as unconstitutional. For his part, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, has said that he “can’t wait to be sued.” 

RELATED: Freethought Democrats Object to Pastor Jack Hibbs as Guest Chaplain, Say He’s Christian Nationalist

“It’s so great, the fallout has been awesome,” Hibbs said. “It’s been more entertaining than any reality show to watch what’s going on. It’s so beautiful.”

(RNS) — Mother Mary P. Patterson, who was the widow of a Church of God in Christ presiding bishop and became known for her efforts to preserve the history of the historically Black Pentecostal denomination, died on Monday (June 24).

Patterson, 83, died in Memphis, Tennessee.

“Mother Patterson was a tireless crusader for preserving the Church Of God In Christ Heritage and that of Pentecostal-Holiness around the world,” reads a Wednesday (June 26) announcement on the Facebook page of the Church of God in Christ. “Our History is much richer because of her life’s work. May we never forget.”

Patterson had been diagnosed with cancer and had been under hospice care, said Darrin Rodgers, director of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center in Springfield, Missouri.

In 2012, Patterson presented the papers of her late husband, Bishop J.O. Patterson Sr., the first elected COGIC presiding bishop, to the center, which is located at the national offices of the Assemblies of God and is the world’s largest Pentecostal archive.

Patterson, a retired real estate agent who headed her own travel agency, founded the Pentecostal Heritage Connection, dedicated to planting historical markers honoring COGIC leaders across the South. In 2021, a ceremony unveiling an 8-foot aluminum sign on a corner in Little Rock, Arkansas, was attended by regional religious leaders, a representative of the governor and scholars who traveled to the state for the occasion.

The marker noted the spot where Bishop Charles H. Mason, the founder of COGIC, had said he was inspired by God to name his denomination the Church of God in Christ.

Mother Mary Patterson, seated center, with a COGIC Heritage Celebration and Tour in Lexington, Mississippi, in 2008. (Photo courtesy Calvin Robinson)

“She was big into building bridges,” said Rodgers. “That was extremely important to her. She did not want to have something narrowly white or narrowly Black or narrowly COGIC. She said that this history belongs to everybody.”

In 1999, Patterson was an unsuccessful candidate for vice chairman of COGIC General Assembly.

“I believe that as a woman of God, I am especially capable of fulfilling these requirements,” she wrote in a campaign brochure. “God created woman, first of all, to help and to assist man. Therefore, my efforts have biblical support.”

Patterson, whose denomination traditionally only recognizes men as ordained ministers or bishops, said she decided to form her own ministry for her historical pursuits.

She told Religion News Service in 2021: “It shows other young women that you don’t have to be behind the pulpit in order to do a work for the Lord.”

In addition to getting state-designated historical markers erected in Mississippi and Arkansas, Patterson enhanced the telling of Church of God in Christ history in Memphis museums, organized summits about COGIC heritage and worked to get a bust of Mason erected outside Mason Temple, COGIC’s world headquarters.

Mother Mary Patterson poses at her dining room table in her Memphis, Tenn., home, Dec. 1, 2021. The material on the table was used by Patterson in her campaign to post historical markers about Church of God in Christ leaders. (AP Photo/Karen Pulfer Focht)

Pastor Calvin Robinson, leader of a COGIC church in Quincy, Florida, and the historian for COGIC in western Florida, said Patterson was more interested in getting that bust in place than having her name attached to it.

ISTANBUL (RNS)—On Sunday, leaders of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church will gather in Sofia to decide on their new spiritual head — the Patriarch of All Bulgaria.

The Bulgarian Church’s last patriarch, Neophyte I, died in March, and according to church law, his successor must be elected in four months. The election will be held by a 140-member council of church leaders on June 30.

Coming just a few weeks after Bulgaria held national parliamentary elections, the choice for a new patriarch has been the subject of national attention.

Though the church is fully separate from the state, its constitution names Eastern Orthodoxy as the “Traditional religion of the Republic of Bulgaria,” and 85% of Bulgaria’s 6.5 million citizens identify as Orthodox Christians.

The new patriarch will be elected by a council made up of clergy and lay leaders coming from each of the church’s 14 eparchies, two of which represent the church’s diaspora (one serving in Europe with a metropolitan, or provincial leader, based in Berlin, and the other covering North America and Australia with its metropolitan based in New York City).

Church law dictates that candidates must be over 50 and have served as metropolitans for at least five years. Of the 14 metropolitans, nine meet the qualifications, and after 42 rounds of voting, three were finalized as candidates for Sunday’s elections.

They are metropolitans Grigorii of Vratsa, Daniil of Vidin and Gabriel of Lovech.

“They have many, many different views on many, many things,” Smilen Markov, a Bulgarian scholar of Orthodox Christianity at Oxford University, told RNS.

Markov stressed that the election was not a single-issue vote, but that the electors would be making their choices on many factors, from debates over liturgical language to monastic issues.

However, he noted that in the Bulgarian Church, much of the patriarch’s role is as an outward-facing leader and that the next patriarch will likely be remembered for how he addresses modernity and the wider Orthodox world.

According to Markov, among Orthodox scholars, the Bulgarian Church is known to have far less of an international or social presence than other major churches in Southeastern Europe, such as the Romanian and Serbian churches.

“One of the challenges is to overcome this self-imposed isolation,” explained Markov. “We live in a pluralistic society, in a liberal society, and we have to learn how to work within the two. (The church) has to learn the grammar of talking to the European institutions, it has to learn the grammar of talking to global institutions, it has to start talking about environmental problems and about human rights because these matters are very pertinent to the mission of the Orthodox Church.”