Violin-and-flute duo Bruce & Lisa, in their new “Christmas Peace” CD, pared back to the violin, flute and piano (featuring Jason Webb) to symbolize the simplicity of Mary, Joseph and Jesus in the manger. Bruce and Lisa Wethey stepped away from classical music careers in Miami five years ago, relocating to Nashville to focus on uplifting others through Christian music. Their venture once drained their savings to $12 but, as Bruce puts it, “God has been so faithful in providing financially, in creating opportunities for our ministry. … We just totally believe in God taking us where he’s going to take us. We go to churches, small and large, wherever he can use us.”

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The Talking Walls speak with the voices of a young black pastor and father of four, Chris Williamson, and a white grandmother of 12, Kim Napier. Encompassing nearly 100 paintings in a time line of racial understanding — from pre-slavery life in Africa to the civil rights movement and its current remnants — the Talking Walls can be seen inside the Natchez Community Center near downtown Franklin. The paintings also form the basis of a DVD and booklet titled “Hard-Pressed Coal,” produced by Williamson, Napier and several other members of the congregation Williamson leads, Strong Tower Bible Church.

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St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Franklin is providing funds to feed 160 children at a Lutheran elementary school in southeastern Haiti through Trinity/HOPE, a ministry based in the Nashville area that has organized noontime feeding programs for more than 7,000 Haitian children in 48 schools. St. Andrew, to meet its commitment, held a lively auction of quilts, pro football and hockey tickets and other donations during its “Thrivent’s Thanksgiving Night in the Hunger Fight.” Peace Lutheran Church in Spring Hill cosponsored the event, with a pledge for supplemental funds from Wisconsin-based Thrivent Financial Services for Lutherans.

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E.M. Bounds is best-known as an author whose writings on prayer – Power Through Prayer being the foremost – are still on bookstore shelves nearly 100 years after his death. But on Nov. 30, 1864, at the Battle of Franklin, he was a Confederate chaplain who, though wounded, cared for the dying and wounded. He later returned to Franklin several months later as a Methodist pastor intent on praying for revival.

 

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Jeff Brown is the morning co-host of WAY-FM’s aptly named “Jeff and Stace” show with Stace Whitmire. And as operations director of the listener-supported contemporary Christian radio station, he is involved in “everything that comes out of the speakers,” helping shape “what we’re about musically” – whether “we have the right songs on the air” – as well as “what goes on between the songs, what’s called ‘imaging.’ … We strive to find that ‘sweet spot’ where faith and culture mix.”

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“A lot of people will say, ‘This guy knows the whole Bible.’ Well, I really don’t,” Rollin DeLap, 71, admits. “The reason they say that is because most people have memorized so little” of “the Word of God.” DeLap was first challenged to memorize Scripture as a college sophomore more than 50 years ago, and it led to a career of exhorting college students across the country to do the same.

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St. Matthew Catholic Church, for a second year, has hosted an extraordinary display of humanity through its “Art for Inspiration” art show of paintings, photographs, mosaics and even rosaries. “It raises our minds and hearts to God to see this beautiful work,” Sister Lauren Cole, director of religious education at the Franklin parish, said of the works displayed by 40-plus artists from the greater Nashville area.

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“No, no, no, no. I’ve got other plans.” But it appears that a higher power wouldn’t take “no” for an answer from Tim Henschel. Mercy Children’s Clinic now is the evidence of Henschel’s disrupted plans – a pediatric facility in a renovated carpet showroom and warehouse with a readiness to care for uninsured and underinsured children. More than 7,500 children along with youth up to age 18 have traveled from 24 counties to receive medical care at the clinic since it opened in November 1999.

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