Gospel Soundcheck

I love this interview that Underoath's vocalist Spencer Chamberlain gave to the San Antonio Express News, during which he gives a very clear Christian testimony.

You gotta love a band that is that popular and that bold about their faith in the mainstream press.

I got word this week that Focus on the Family will be ceasing publication of their teen magazines Brio, Brio and Beyond, and Breakaway. The last issues will be February 09.

A friend who works at one of the magazines told me that the Focus on the Family board approved a massive budget cut and the magazines were the victims. Focus is hoping that another ministry will pick up the magazines and keep them alive, either in print or online. But it'll probably be too late for employees, who are done in January.

I'm not surprised to hear they're folding. CCM Magazine ceased print publication earlier this year, and with the rising costs of printing and mailing, coupled with falling ad revenue and more online users, many print publications, from magazines to newspapers, are feeling the crunch. What is a shame is that Brio, Brio and Beyond, and Breakaway offered teens a high quality magazine with content relevent to a young Christian life. I don't know where they're going to find pop culture news, life stories and advice, and info about Christian music artists now. Tiger Beat? BOP? POPStar? TMZ.com?

From the comments I get when I post anything about the Jonas Brothers, I think they're already burning up those mags anyway.

Visit Beliefnet's Christian music blog, Gospel Soundcheck, daily for the latest news on your favorite Christian music artists as well as mainstream artists with ties to Christian music.

Christian music legend Steven Curtis Chapman's eldest daughter Emily wed Tanner Richards on October 4th in a private ceremony at the Chapman home in Franklin, TN.

Emily's brother Caleb Chapman performed Chapman's hit song, "Cinderella," while father and daughter dances. Steven also composed special music for the ceremony, including the music that played as Emily and her bridesmaids walked down the aisle.

It must have been a bittersweet event for the family, who suffered a tragic loss in May when youngest adopted daugher Maria was killed in an accident in the family driveway. Maria had been excited about the wedding, and was buried in her bridesmaid's dress.

Here are two more pictures:

MTV is set to air a behind-the-scenes documentary on pop star and tabloid sensation, Britney Spears on November 30, just days before release of her new album, Circus, on her 27th birthday.

The 90-minute documentary, titled 'For The Record," gives viewers a behind the scenes look at the last few years of the pop princess' bizarre and heartbreaking, and clearly unstable, behavior that has graced the supermarket tabloids.

Does anyone besides me just want to take the poor girl home, make her rest, and hide her away from the insane nuttiness that is her life?

In one of the preview clips for the film, the inerviewer asks Britney if she knows her life is weird. Her response, "It's all I've ever known."

You're not kidding. Britney's mother Lynne Spears recently released her "memoir" with Christian publisher Thomas Nelson and in it confirms what everyone already knows: that Britney Spears was abandoned emotionally by everyone in her life - despite any religious injection or "Gee, I didn't know any better" rationalizations her mother offers up.

But honestly, the book is such a mess it deserves it's own post, so stay tuned for that.

You can catch the MTV documentary on MTV on November 30.

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Visit the Gospel Soundcheck blog daily for the latest on your favorite Christian music artists as well as mainstream artists with ties to Christian music.

First she gushed to Ryan Seacrest, and now Miley Cyrus appeared this week on the Ellen DeGeneres show, where she gushed and giggled with the daytime talk show star about her new boyfriend ... er, just friend ... underwear model and aspiring musician Justin Gaston. Cyrus told DeGeneres that "he's a Christian and I really like that."

The 16-year-old pop star was so giddy talking about her 20-year-old beau that she couldn't even sit still, despite her assertions that the two are "friends." Ri-i-i-ight. Like we believe that. I don't get all the mystery, unless she just wants to milk the publicity that the speculation brings to both of them. His appearance on the Idol-esque "Nashville Star" didn't bring him nearly as much attention as this "friendship" with the Queen of Squeaky Clean Pop, and she's a star with a teenybopper, gossip-addicted fan base to excite on a daily basis.

Sounds like a match made in heaven.

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