Seattle-based Mars Hill Church is taking its record label that features an eclectic brand of worship music to the next level by partnering with two renowned record label and recording studio companies that have featured such Christian favorites as Jeremy Camp, KJ-52, Kutless, and Falling Up.

Mars Hill Music announced on Tuesday that it will be partnering with Tooth & Nail Records and BEC Recordings to share the variety of worship bands coming from Mars Hill Church. Both companies work closely with EMI Records, one of the largest music distribution companies in the world.

"We have already been incredibly blessed with the number of people we've been able to reach with our music so far," Mars Hill communications director Justin Dean told The Christian Post. "For Mars Hill Music this partnership with Tooth & Nail means taking our record label from previously being able to reach thousands to possibly reaching millions through Tooth & Nails' distribution channels." more >>

ST. LOUIS – How do you make sure 16,000 students attending a five-day missions conference have the best opportunity to engage in what God has planned for them? You "overlay" the event with social media, more specifically with Twitter, says Adam Jeske, who is leading a 14-member social media team during Urbana '12.

While perhaps breaking new ground with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's triennial Student Missions Conference held through New Year's Eve, Jeske and his "squad," as they like to be called, do more than tweet announcements or post photos on Facebook or Instagram. They engage in real-time dialogue about matters of faith. Additionally, groups of similar interest and focus can connect with each other by simply following specific Twitter feeds. The conference hashtag (#u12) is just the beginning.

"We want to be a conduit for participants to connect with one another, with the program content, and with exhibitors more than they've ever been able to before," said Jeske, who is InterVarsity's director of New Media. "Social media overlays all of the conference programming. For example, if I'm interested in church planting in India, they can tweet to that affect hashtag U12 conference (#u12), hashtag India (#India), and hashtag church planting (#churchplanting) and you can connect with people around areas of interest and areas of calling at a much more focused level than has ever been possible before." more >>

ST. LOUIS – Author and pastor David Platt gave an impassioned plea to thousands of mostly college-age students to commit their lives to Jesus Christ regardless of the cost to their lives while preaching during Urbana 2012, a triennial student missions conference. Platt warned that many Christians have reduced the eternal significance of Jesus.

"Jesus is the alpha and the omega. He is the beginning and the end. He is the first and the last. He is the final amen … Christ our Creator, our deliverer, our everlasting father, He is God," said Platt from the stage inside the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis before an estimated 16,000. "Jesus is the very word of God made flesh … Jesus is all of these things and [yet] we have reduced Him to a poor, puny savior who is just begging for us to accept Him into our hearts."

Platt, who is the lead pastor at The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala., made the point that people (believers and nonbelievers) need Jesus more than they realize. more >>

Christian radio talk show host Frank Pastore, who was described by his colleagues and friends as "larger than life," died Monday, one month after a motorcycle accident on a Southern California freeway left him in a coma. He was 55. In perhaps prophetic words on the same night as the accident, the former Major League Baseball pitcher had talked about a strikingly similar scenario in which he said his soul would leave his body.

In a discussion about life after death, Pastore said, "I mean look, you guys know I ride a motorcycle don't you? So, at any moment … I could be spread out all over the 210 (Freeway), but that's not me, that's my body parts."

His pastor, David Rosales of Calvary Chapel Chino Valley, released a statement in the afternoon. more >>

A nationwide atheist organization has purchased and put up 10 ads on the buses that service the largest city in Alaska.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation posted the ads on Anchorage's "People Movers" bus system on Monday. The ads on display for two of the buses depict a cartoon Santa Claus with the statement "Yes, Virginia...There Is No God."

The phrase for the ad parodies the famous editorial by Francis P. Church in an 1897 New York Sun newspaper edition. more >>

Popular Christian radio talk show host Frank Pastore remains in a coma while in critical, but stable condition three weeks after a motorcycle accident on a Southern California freeway. However, Pastor Greg Laurie gave an optimistic update about his good friend at the beginning of his sermon at Harvest Christian Fellowship Church in Riverside Sunday morning.

Laurie, who also enjoys riding motorcycles and sometimes did so with Pastore, visited him at the hospital with another pastor from his church during the week.

"At one point I said to Frank, 'Frank if you can hear me, twitch your eye.' The moment I said it his eye twitched," Laurie told his congregation. "So, we were all very excited. We're just praying that God would wake him up." more >>