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Sermon produces results
A pastor's sermon on stealing has produced some surprising returns with his Minneapolis suburb congregation. Last week, Derek Rust put up special "amnesty bins" in the aisles of the Hosanna Lutheran Church in Lakeville, encouraging sticky-fingered parishioners to return anything they had swiped, The Pioneer Press reported.

Prompted by his sermon on the eighth commandment, based on a series on the Ten Commandments, Rust was amazed at the response. In the vast 2,000-seat sanctuary, ersatz thieves have been coming in to return stolen loot-not during worship, but during the week, when they could slink in unnoticed.

Items left in the bins include men's shirts, a rubber toy eagle, a soldering iron, CDs, a broom, power drill, Bubble Yum gum, baby clothes, and towels pinched from hotels and motels. One woman gave Rust $30, payment for several years worth of snacks, pilfered from a convenience store where she worked.

Rust himself had to return something-a package of weed-blocking fabric used in gardens. He had borrowed it from a friend and never returned it. The sermon has drawn applause from Lakeville Police Chief Steve Strachan, who didn't hear the message.

"It's a great idea," he said, the Pioneer Press reported. He said churches can fight crime by getting to the root cause-the motivation of the violator. "If you look at the big picture, you have to ask: 'Why don't you commit crime all the time?'"

Rust believes the impact goes beyond the bins. "The Ten Commandments should be lived," he said. "That's what sermons should be about, applying truth to our lives."

The idea for the bins came from British evangelist J. John. Rust said when John put the bins in Coventry, England, local police marveled that the crime rate dropped. "Police had to rent a warehouse for everything they recovered," Rust said. "One lady had stolen jewelry from people in a hospice for 25 years."

Charisma News Service

Europe can be Christian 'mission field'
Europe-which in the 19th century sent missionaries to spread Christianity around the world-is now becoming one of the new "mission fields" where people do not even know basic information about the faith, according to the World Council of Churches' (WCC) chief executive.

"I fear we are faced with the loss, in all cultures, of fundamental information about the Christian faith as a viable option for men and women today," the Rev. Samuel Kobia told a gathering of theologians July 28 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. "In many places today, we can no longer assume the religious, much less Christian, awareness which existed 20 years ago."

Kobia, a Methodist theologian from Kenya, was making the opening address at a meeting of the WCC's Faith and Order Commission, which promotes dialogue to help resolve differences between the churches and promote church unity.

"Regions such as Europe, where we could count on at least a 'cultural awareness' of the faith, are now becoming mission fields full of persons who have never heard of the faith," he said in his speech.

By Stephen Brown. This article was
d istributed by Ecumenical News International.

Passion 9/11
BeautifulAtrocities.com posted the kinds of reactions that movie reviewers had in response to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Consider the following curious commentaries:

A.O. Scott, New York Times:
F9/11: Mr. Moore's populist instincts have never been sharper...he is a credit to the republic.

Passion: Gibson has exploited the popular appetite for terror and gore for what he and his allies see as a higher end.

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune:
F9/11: Received both the first prize and the longest continuous standing ovation in the history of the Cannes Film Festival and it wasn't because of some cliched French antipathy to America.

Passion: Lacks artistic and even spiritual balance.

William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
F9/11: A masterful job of ridiculing the personality, intellect, and employment resumé of George W. Bush...could well become the docu-equivalent of "The Passion of the Christ" and even affect the presidential election.

Passion: Despite Gibson's claim that he's finally telling "the true story," his movie strikes me as less faithful to the Gospels than the earlier Christ movies. Crammed full of scenes and dialogue and minor characters that he's completely made up.

Jami Bernard, NY Daily News:
F9/11: I was in tears after first seeing "Fahrenheit" at Cannes.

Passion: The most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II.

Ty Burr, Boston Globe:
F9/11: Should be seen because it takes off the gloves and wades into the fray, because it synthesizes the anti-Bush argument like no other work before it, and because it forces you to decide for yourself exactly where passion starts to warp point of view.

Passion: If you come seeking theological subtlety, let alone such modern inventions as psychological depth, you'll walk away battered and empty-handed.

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle:
F9/11: (Moore) is an indispensable treasure, and his imperfections are part of the reason, because they mark him as real.

Passion: It's awful because everything he knows about storytelling has been swept aside by proselytizing zeal.

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post:
F9/11: Moore exercises admirable forbearance ... his finest artistic moment.

Passion: Gibson has exhibited a startling lack of concern for historical context.

Mick LaSalle, SF Chronicle:
F9/11: What both exalts the experience and grounds the picture is Moore's essentially patriotic faith that a sincere, invested argument can get a hearing in America.

Passion: The story doesn't make Gibson bigger; he makes it smaller.

Tom Long, Detroit News:
F9/11: A film every citizen of voting age in America should see.

Passion: The feel-awful movie of a lifetime, a filmed bloodletting like no other on record.

Geoff Pevre, Toronto Star:
F9/11: A plea for America's deliverance...it may not be an argument one agrees with, and it may be unbalanced and propagandistic, but it is both convincingly argued and sincerely motivated.

Passion: A work of fundamentalist pornography.

Rex Reed, New York Observer:
F9/11: There are multitudes of shattering, seminal moments in his brilliant Bush-whacking documentary.

Passion: A movie that doesn't say much of anything new. Been there, done that, and you know how it all comes out already.

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer:
F9/11: A magnificent piece of filmmaking.

Passion: The first spiritual splatter film.

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times:
F9/11: Moore makes a persuasive and unrelenting case that there is another way to look at things beyond the version we've been given.

Passion: A film so narrowly focused as to be inaccessible for all but the devout.

James Verniere, Boston Herald:
F9/11: At a time when the film industry is turning out sugarcoated, content-free junk, Moore has given American viewers a renewed taste for raw meat.

Passion: An exercise in sadomasochistic bullying.

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