A Priest Overcomes India’s Anti-Christian Violence to Lead Interfaith Dialogue

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March 7, 2022

Vikas Nayak Interfaith — Father Vikas Nayak offers Holy Communion to his aunt following his ordination ceremony at the Church of the Ascension of the Lord in Buxar, India, in Nov. 2021. Photo by Abhijeet Nayak

NEW DELHI (RNS) — When riots engulfed Tiangia, a village in remote Kandhamal in eastern India, in 2008, Vikas Nayak was 15 years old.

Nayak sought refuge in the area’s dense tropical forests as marauding mobs of Hindu fanatics set fire to hundreds of Christian homes in his village. He heard the mobs chanting slogans as they killed Christians, attacked churches and torched properties using rods, swords, tridents, guns and kerosene crude bombs.

“Those images haunt me every day,” said Nayak, now 29, who spent three years in the tattered canvas tents of relief camps after the riots.

“Even though the camps were guarded by army personnel,” he remembered, “we were living in perpetual fear of more attacks and practiced our faith behind closed doors.”

After the savagery of the riots subsided, Nayak went to Varanasi to begin training as a priest. He immersed himself in spiritual discourses, meditation and Indian classical music.

The next few years of his formation were spent in different cities learning philosophy and theology. He visited families, organized youth prayer meets and spent time in prayer.

Last November, Nayak was ordained by the archbishop of Patna Diocese in the neighboring state of Bihar, becoming the first Catholic priest to emerge from a relief camp in Tiangia.

The Kandhamal riots of 2008 stand out as a watershed moment in India’s history of mass violence against minorities.

The flashpoint for the riots was the murder of a Hindu nationalist leader who is alleged to have been campaigning against missionaries and working to reconvert low-caste and poor Christians who had turned away from Hinduism to escape caste oppression.

Hindu extremists blamed the murder on Christians, even though it was widely believed to be the result of an attack by leftist insurgents. Christians were named “conversion terrorists.”

In the riots, more than 100 low-caste and Indigenous Christians were hacked to death or burned alive; more than 300 churches were demolished. Women were raped, religious texts were destroyed and Christians were forced to convert to Hinduism.

“Those memories can’t be washed away, but we mustn’t allow our ties to break further,” Nayak told a roomful of congregants who had turned up in colorful attire for his first Eucharist after his ordination.

In Kandhamal, where 59% of inhabitants live below the poverty line and depend on daily wage labor in agriculture, construction and domestic work, many families were expelled from their villages permanently.

Remains of a Christian church property burned down during violence in Orissa, India, in August 2008. Photo courtesy of All India Christian Council/Creative Commons

The riots not only devastated the Christian community — particularly economically marginalized Indigenous and low-caste Christians — but accelerated Hindu majoritarian movements and hate crimes against minorities.

Last year, the United Christian Forum for Human Rights reported 505 incidents of violence against Christians in the country, and the Evangelical Fellowship of India said anti-Christian hate crimes have doubled since 2014, when Narendra Modi became the prime minister.

Under Modi, minorities are increasingly being targeted and threatened, and attacks on pastors by Hindu extremists have become common. Not only are they prevented from holding religious services; they are regularly beaten up and charged with criminal conspiracy.

Nayak’s example has bolstered his former community during this difficult time for Christians.

After the 2008 riots, Nayak fled his village but had no idea whether his family had been captured by the rioters. After hiding in a forest for a fortnight, he walked miles to find shelter at a village school. A month later, he found his way to a relief camp for survivors in a neighboring district.

There, Nayak immersed himself in prayer and tried to stitch his life back together amid other displaced families that had been evicted from their villages and farmlands by irate Hindu mobs. He wrote about living like a refugee in his own land.

Among Russian Orthodox, Glimmers of Dissent Against the Invasion of Ukraine

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Jack Jenkins

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March 7, 2022

(RNS) — More than 275 Russian Orthodox priests and deacons from around the world have signed an open letter expressing their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, challenging the Russian government and breaking with the tacit support of the military action by church leadership in Moscow.

The letter called for “the cessation of the fratricidal war” against Ukraine, insisted the “people of Ukraine should make their choice on their own” and lamented the “trial that our brothers and sisters in Ukraine were undeservedly subjected to.”

“The Last Judgment awaits every person,” reads an automated translation of the letter. “No earthly authority, no doctors, no guards will protect from this judgment. … We remind you that the Blood of Christ, shed by the Savior for the life of the world, will be received in the sacrament of Communion by those people who give murderous orders, not into life, but into eternal torment.”

The Russian Orthodox Church has long lent its considerable influence, within Russia and abroad, to the geopolitical aims of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president, in turn, has enjoyed close personal support from Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, who once characterized Putin’s leadership as “a miracle of God.”

While Kirill called on military leaders to minimize casualties when Putin’s assault on Ukraine began last week, he seemed to support Putin’s disputed argument that Ukrainians and Russians are one people and notably made no appeal for a cessation of hostilities. A few days later, Kirill referred to Russia’s opponents in Ukraine as “evil forces.”

The Russian church has a long history in Ukraine, but in 2019 Patriarch Bartholomew I, the Greek Orthodox primate, defied Kirill and recognized a new, independent Orthodox body in Ukraine that broke away from the Moscow-based church. In an interview this week with CNN Turk, Bartholomew said recognizing the new branch made him a “target” of the Russian Patriarchate.

But the priests’ letter showed Russia’s invasion has further challenged Moscow’s leadership. While their protest is qualified and the number of signers tiny compared to the total number of clerics (church authorities estimated roughly 40,000 operated within the church as of 2009), it points to a broader trend of dissent within the church regarding the Ukraine invasion, and could signal important shifts for a tradition that has in recent years operated in lockstep with the Kremlin.

“We are transmitting the message that there’s no way for a Christian to enter eternal life without forgiving — but also without being forgiven,” The Very Rev. Andrey Kordochkin, dean of the Cathedral of St. Mary Magdalene in Madrid and one of priests who initiated the letter, told Religion News Service in a phone interview.

“Entering into (eternal) life being cursed by thousands of mothers, Russian mothers and Ukrainian mothers, is not really the most appropriate way for a Christian — especially if he’s getting older — to prepare for the end of his earthly life,” Kordochkin said.

Andrew Young, at 90, Views His Civic, Political Roles ‘As a Pastorate’

By

Adelle M Banks

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March 7, 2022

(RNS) — Andrew Young, a former civil rights leader, Georgia congressman and United Nations ambassador, doesn’t use “the Rev.” before his name much.

But the man who directed Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s said every stage of his adult life has been a form of ministry.

“I have viewed everything I’ve done as a pastorate,” Young, a onetime small-church pastor, said in a Wednesday (March 2) interview. “I really thought of Congress as my 500-member church.”

Likewise, he recalled making “pastoral calls” and praying with ambassadors representing some of the 150 countries that were then U.N. members.

“My model for almost every job I’ve had has been the model of a pastor servicing a congregation,” Young said. “As the mayor of Atlanta, I just had a million-member church.”

Born into, raised in and ordained by the Congregational Church — now known as the United Church of Christ — he has been a member of Atlanta’s First Congregational Church, a predominantly Black house of worship, since 1961. As he prepares to turn 90 on March 12, he continues to preach there on the third Sunday of each month.

“The Many Lives of Andrew Young” by Ernie Suggs. Courtesy image

“The Many Lives of Andrew Young” by Ernie Suggs. Cover courtesy of NewSouth Books/Getty Images

Young is marking his birthday with a four-day celebration from March 9–12, starting with a livestreamed “Global Prayer for Peace” worship service at the Atlanta church, followed by a peace walk, debut of the book “The Many Lives of Andrew Young” and a sold-out gala.

The graduate of what was then called Hartford Theological Seminary spoke to Religion News Service about voting rights battles then and now, religious aspects of the civil rights movement and his memories of working with King.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You intend to preach on peace and reconciliation to mark your 90th birthday. Has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed your planned message?

Andrew Young, top left, during his ordination at Central Congregational Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1955. Courtesy photo

Andrew Young, top left, during his ordination at Central Congregational Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1955. Photo courtesy Daisy Fuller Young Papers, Amistad Research Center

No, it hasn’t. Russia’s invasion has made my message even more central to the problems we’re having around the world. And Russia’s invasion is tragic and it’s even more tragic because it’s televised. But there are similar situations in many, many countries — in Latin America, Africa and other parts of Europe. And in these United States, we’re having a battle to protect the right to vote here in 2022.

You originally had plans to pursue dental school instead of seminary. What made you change your mind and do you ever regret the route you ended up taking?

My father chose dentistry. I never chose dentistry. Even as a 12-year-old, though I might have been working in a dental laboratory that my father wanted me to learn the business, I knew I didn’t want to do anything that confined me to an office. I’ve always been too full of energy and too rambunctious to stay in one place.

Hungarian Pastor Steps Up to Help Large Roma Refugee Family

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AP News

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March 7, 2022

refugee — Edgar Kovacs pastor of the local Free Christian Church is surrounded by Roma children fleeing from Ukraine, inside a room of a Church in Didova Hora, Hungary, Friday, March 4, 2022. Edgar Kovacs, who leads the Free Christian Church in the Hungarian village of Uszka, offered up the only room in his church to house the entire family, which had fled from the western Ukrainian village of Didova Hora. (AP Photo/Anna Szilagyi)

USZKA, Hungary (AP) — It took two days and sheer determination for the family of 27 women and children from Ukraine’s Roma minority to escape the violence of Russia’s invasion and reach neighboring Hungary. Then they faced the next challenge: not being split up by aid groups trying to help.

That all changed when the pastor of a village church took them in.

Edgar Kovacs, who leads the Free Christian Church in the Hungarian village of Uszka, on the border with Ukraine, offered up the only room in his church to house the large family, which had fled from the western Ukrainian village of Didova Hora as Russian attacks intensified.

Kovacs, who is also Roma, said as both a Christian and a Roma, he felt it was his duty to help the family.

“I have a big family, so when we heard on the news what happened next door, our hearts began beating faster, and my whole family and I tried to help,” Kovacs said.

Upon crossing Hungary’s border on Wednesday, the Hungarian-speaking family — 20 children and seven women — was offered accommodation by local volunteers. But, determined to stay together, they turned down offers that would have separated them until Kovacs offered space to them all.

“We’re one family and very concerned about each other. We agreed, whatever happens, not to separate, and we’ve stuck to this,” said Ildiko Kulcsar, who led the family to safety in Hungary. “We’re all in the same place together, thank God!”

Ukraine’s westernmost regions, which border Hungary, are home to some 150,000 ethnic Hungarians, many of whom are Roma who share Hungarian language and culture. While Russia’s invasion has not yet extended to Transcarpathia, which is separated from the rest of Ukraine by the Carpathian Mountains, many have decided not to wait for the situation to get worse.

According to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, more than 1.2 million people have left Ukraine since the fighting began on Feb. 24, an exodus without precedent in Europe this century for its speed. The agency says over 144,000 of those refugees have fled to Hungary.

Kovacs said in addition to providing accommodation and food to the refugee family, he aimed to offer them spiritual assistance as well — adding they can stay as long as they want.

“Ordinary people are the losers when leaders can’t agree. They’re the ones who really lose a lot,” he said. “That’s why here we try to help people, not only financially, physically, but also mentally.”

Kulcsar, the mother of four, said she left Ukraine to ensure the safety of her 9-year-old daughter, Klara, who suffers from a chronic heart valve disease.

“I had to make a decision to keep my daughter safe because I was afraid that if she got worse, I wouldn’t be able to find a doctor,” she said.

In a huge policy shift, Hungary’s government, which has been strongly anti-immigration for years, has said it will allow all citizens and legal residents of Ukraine to enter the country.

Ukraine’s government has prohibited men aged 18 to 60 from leaving, but two of the men from the Roma family were already working in Hungary when the war began. Now they have joined their relatives at the church in Uszka, swelling the family to 29.

While it was good to be all together, Kulcsar said the decision to flee was wrenching.

“It was very difficult to leave our home. After we left, I looked back and saw that some people had not yet left. But I have children, I feared for them more than anyone,” she said.

By JUSTIN SPIKE and BELA SZANDELSZKY Associated Press

This article originally appeared here.

‘If You Build It They Will Come’ No Longer Works for Baseball — Or Organized Religion

By

Bob Smietana

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March 7, 2022

baseball organized religion — Locked gates are shown at Truist Park, home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Wednesday, March 2, 2022, in Atlanta. With owners and players unable to agree on a labor contract to replace the collective bargaining agreement that expired Dec. 1, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred followed through with his threat on Tuesday and canceled the first two series for each of the 30 major league teams. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

(RNS) — Tom Johnson loves baseball.

And he loves the church.

Both, said Johnson, a former Minnesota Twins pitcher turned pastor, are in trouble.

They’ve lost touch with their past and with ordinary people. They’ve become too much of a show, their leaders too disconnected from their audience, he said. Both religion and baseball see the people in the pews and the fans in the seats as sources of revenue rather than valued partners or supporters. They’ve betrayed the people’s trust, he said, and trust is hard to regain.

He worries about the recent lockout in Major League Baseball, which led to the news that opening day of the 2022 season would be cancelled and concerns that games may not return until May.

“It is hard to take something away and then say, we really care about you and come back,” he said. “And by the way, we are going to charge you more when you get back.”

Johnson also worries about the decline of churches and other forms of organized religion in the United States. He knows younger Americans are looking for something to believe in and want to change the world. But they often find that churches lack a compelling vision that would attract them.

Pitcher Tom Johnson in 1978. Photo courtesy of Minnesota Twins/Wikipedia/Creative Commons

“The church has shot itself in the foot by not adhering to the values that have attracted it to people down through the centuries — that is, caring about the poor and those who are on the margins,” said Johnson, missions pastor at Church of the Open Door in Maple Grove, Minnesota.

Johnson pitched for parts of five seasons in the major leagues in the 1970s before an injury cut his career short, leading to a second career in ministry and as director of GoodSports International, a nonprofit that runs sports camps and youth centers in Slovakia.

Baseball’s feud has also taken a personal toll on Johnson. He is one of about 500 older former players who did not have enough service time to get a pension but get a small stipend in their retirement. Those payments have been cut off during the labor dispute.

Baseball’s cancellation of Opening Day happened the same week leaders of the United Methodist Church announced plans to delay the denomination’s General Convention till 2024 —the third time the meeting has been delayed by COVID-19. That meeting was supposed to resolve a long-running dispute over sexuality in the denomination by allowing more conservative churches to leave.

Instead, any resolution has been put off. Churches may leave without knowing whether they will be able to keep their buildings, and internal feuds will likely continue. All the while, the denomination’s membership is in free-fall. In 1970, the UMC numbered more than 10.5 million. By 2019, there were 6.47 million United Methodists, and the decline shows no sign of stopping.

Pro-life Christians Urged To Remain Hopeful at ERLC Event

By

Tom Strode

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March 7, 2022

ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP)—Church and pro-life ministry leaders were encouraged during a Southern Baptist-sponsored event Thursday night (March 3) not to become weary at this point in America’s nearly 50-year history of legal abortion.

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) held “Stand for Life: Road to Roe50” at the headquarters of the North American Mission Board. The ERLC brought together pastors, Southern Baptist Convention leaders, heads of pro-life organizations and others to consider how Christians can serve women and their unborn children, particularly if the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide is overturned.

“[W]e especially can’t lose hope now – not now in the moment where abortion numbers have been reduced, where more people are affirming the dignity of preborn lives and not now as we stand at the precipice of what may be a new era for the legal environment of this nation,” ERLC Acting President Brent Leatherwood told the audience, according to his prepared remarks.

“No, if anything, now is the time to lean in and double down on our efforts. . . . [T]hat recommitment to this effort is what we are doing at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission,” he said. “This work is foundational for us.”

Abortion, Leatherwood said, “is an injustice. It must continue to be confronted with the truth that appeals to the consciences of those who might be tempted to look the other way. But it must be done so in a way that offers love, compassion, support and hope.”

Many pro-life and abortion-rights advocates believe the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to use a case this term out of Mississippi to reverse the Roe ruling and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey opinion. The Casey decision affirmed Roe but permitted some state regulation of abortion. The ERLC and multiple other pro-life organizations asked the high court to overrule Roe and Casey, a move that would return abortion policy to the states.

The Road to Roe50 is a collaborative, church-engagement effort in which the ERLC is playing a leading role. The initiative will include aged-based curriculum, a multi-stop tour in the fall of 2022, a Washington, D.C., event in January 2023 and a digital campaign to affirm the value of human life, as well as train and mobilize Christians to serve mothers, unborn children and families. The Roe50 page is available here.

“As we use this season to lament the lives that have been lost as a consequence of [Roe], our hope is that Southern Baptists and any Christian who cares about the dignity of the preborn would join us on the Road to Roe50,” said Elizabeth Graham, the ERLC’s vice president of operations and life initiatives, in written comments for Baptist Press Friday (March 4).

“We have several initiatives that we will be rolling out in the coming months to serve and equip the church,” she said. “The events are designed to help the church to thrive and minister in a post-Roe world.

Jesus, Unexpected. How He Gets Us Is Presenting a Fresh Take on Jesus’ Life and Experiences to Connect With Faith Skeptics

By

He Gets Us

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March 7, 2022

jesus story — Photo courtesy of He Gets Us

If you’re among those living in some of the most populated cities in the U.S. and happen to have caught a few NFL games in the last few months, you may have seen some surprising commercials. Or, perhaps you did a double take on a few odd banner headlines as you searched for concert tickets online or passed by some interesting billboards on your way to work…but it’s just as likely you didn’t.

After all, these ads aren’t intended for you.

The creators of the He Gets Us campaign, which concluded a hefty 10-market, $10 million advertising test last month and is gearing up to roll out the effort nationally, had a different target audience in mind—those who don’t think Christianity is for them.

You see, extensive audience research conducted last fall uncovered that a vast swath of the American public isn’t sure what they believe. Many associate Christianity with hate, bigotry, and hypocrisy and see Christians as being against them. They hear political candidates weaponizing Jesus and protestors taking to the streets with signs that say, “God Hates You.” As a result, they’re skeptical about faith. With almost 50 percent of these “skeptics” falling between the ages of 18 and 34 (a group for whom Jesus’ message of love has been lost in their dialogue), they experience feelings of distrust and being outcast.

For the team behind He Gets Us, reaching them meant meeting them where they are, turning their notion of a “Christian message” on its head with surprising and relatable moments—Jesus’ moments—that skeptics find relevant and personally relatable. Backed by a coalition of Christians who seek to take Jesus’ story out of self-serving agendas, present it for relevant consideration and encourage all to live out his example of radical compassion and love for others, the campaign makes no attempt to recruit or convert to a particular denomination or belief. Funds are governed by Servant Foundation, and donors choose not to be identified. Multiple agencies, including research, strategy, creative, media, interactive, public relations, and others, are engaged to expand the impact and efficacy of He Gets Us initiatives.

The initial 10-week test campaign exposed roughly 10 percent of the population to ads designed to expand the understanding of who Jesus is beyond the usual focus on his birth, death, and resurrection. By highlighting the events of his life, the challenging situations he found himself in, and ultimately the love and compassion he showed for all, the campaign’s goal is to connect in unexpected, arresting ways.

Also unexpected, however, is just how resonant the messages in the test would prove to be. In the initial run, more than 31 million people watched the ads on YouTube, and nearly half a million visited hegetsus.com, a website where people can learn and engage in whatever way they are comfortable. In addition, more than 17 thousand so far have participated in live chats, texted for prayers, made connections to local volunteers, and/or pursued YouVersion Bible reading plans. By contrast the campaign had set a goal of 2.2 million engagements only to see it eclipsed by 15 times the expected results.

The campaign’s premise is to bring to light stories from the Bible that are often overlooked or ignored, common situations from our daily lives. He Gets Us is taking a different tack by showing compassion related to these situations and what Jesus experienced, as evidenced by a plain reading of Scripture:

Born to an unwed teenage mother. (Spot here.)

Matthew 1

18 Now, the birth of Jesus the Messiah was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit.

24 And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, 25 but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son, and he named Him Jesus.

Suffered from anxiety. (Spot here.)

Matthew 26

38 Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.”

Was tired of divisiveness among people. (Spot here.)

Mark 12

13 Then, they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Him in order to trap Him in a statement.

14 They came and said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are truthful and [do not care what anyone thinks; for You are not partial to anyone, but You teach the way of God in truth. Is it permissible to pay a poll tax to Caesar, or not?

15 Are we to pay, or not pay?” But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why are you testing Me? Bring Me a denarius to look at.”

16 And they brought one. And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” And they said to Him, “Caesar’s.”

17 And Jesus said to them, “Pay to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were utterly amazed at Him.

Jesus welcomed outcasts, stood up for women, hung out with troublemakers, even befriended enemies. Although Jesus lived more than 2,000 years ago, he experienced the same feelings that most of us have daily. Jesus understood what life was like for people in his day—especially for the marginalized.

What’s next?

The He Gets Us advertising campaign will launch nationally with a significant media campaign that will place it among the leading advertisers in the U.S. There will be a slew of additional TV commercials, more digital and social media, and a number of engaging activations in mid-March (think March Madness!).

However, He Gets Us is more than a series of television ads and billboard campaigns. There are numerous opportunities for people to interact on the website to ask questions, including the difficult ones. There are options for live chat, text for prayer, and local connection on the website. He Gets Us actively responds to questions, comments, and needs from website visitors—and at the end of each interaction, they provide an opportunity to connect with someone locally (volunteers and church partners) to continue the conversation.

As a result of these conversations, we’re confident people will meet the “real” Jesus—the Jesus who experienced every problem we’ve encountered and every emotion we’ve felt.

How You and Your Church Can Get Involved

He Gets Us is already working with YouVersion, Luis Palau Association, OneHope, the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, Alpha, and Gloo.

While not connected to any denomination or ministry, He Gets Us invites churches to join the conversation and engage people when they reach out to chat with someone in their local communities.

Church partnership kits that include television ads to use for Bible Study programs, sermons guides, Sunday school classes, and small group discussions will be available at HeGetsUsPartners.com.

Learning by Doing in Groups

By

Allen White

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March 7, 2022

What does it mean to learn? Is it merely an acquisition of more facts? Or is it taking those facts and putting them into practice? Meetings are not the only place for groups to learn. Often lessons are better when learning by doing.

Learning by Doing at Our Church

At New Life Christian Center where I served in California, we challenged our groups to prepare and serve a hot meal every Friday night at an emergency homeless shelter which ran five months of the year. We asked for groups to volunteer together instead of individuals, because the positive peer pressure of the group would guarantee 10 out of 10 group members participating, whereas individual recruitment might have netted 4 or 5 out of 10.

Our groups took this project to heart. Even on the year when both Christmas Eve and New Years Eve were on a Friday, the signup sheet was completely filled up by our groups within an hour of placing it at our information center. My group didn’t even get a chance to sign up!

One group member told me he was very reluctant to participate. His attitude toward the homeless had always been “I started with nothing and pulled myself up by the bootstraps and built a successful construction company. Why couldn’t the homeless work hard and do the same.”

He was part of a small group of middle aged adults who had about 40 years of Sunday school under their belts. There wasn’t much of the Bible they hadn’t studied. Yet, all of this Bible study had done little to change this man’s attitude toward the poor.

He went with his group to serve the meal at the shelter. He later admitted that as he stood in line serving those men and looking them in the eye, he realized if circumstances had been different in his life, then he might be standing on the other side of that line receiving the meal.

Six months later, he was sending his construction crews over to San Francisco every Friday to renovate a building which would be used as a homeless shelter in the Tenderloin. Talk about a change of heart. Not only did he see the homeless differently, he was compelled to do something about it. Instead of his crews building multimillion dollar homes on Fridays, they were renovating a homeless shelter. The positive peer pressure of a small group serving together made a difference not only in his life, but in the lives of many homeless people he might never meet.

In making disciples, Jesus instructed us to “teach them to obey what I have commanded” (Matthew 28:20). In Matthew 25, Jesus tells His disciples, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (Matthew 25:45). The words must lead to doing in order to make disciples in the way Jesus directed us. By simply inviting groups to serve together during the Christmas holidays or during Summer break, we can help them apply what they’ve learned and become more Christ-like in the process.

This article about learning by doing originally appeared here.

6 Ways to Make Time to Read

By

Chelsea Patterson Sobolik

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March 7, 2022

Reading is one of my favorite pastimes and has been for as long as I can remember. I have fond memories from my childhood of staying up into the wee hours of the night, devouring books. My mom read aloud to us as children and did an excellent job instilling a love of reading into me.

I wanted to share some tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way to help build reading into my regular rhythms. (If you need some reading recommendations, here are the books I read in 2018 and 2019) Before we dive in, I thought I’d share some of my favorite quotes about reading.

“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” – C.S. Lewis
“If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.” – J.K. Rowling
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” – C.S. Lewis
“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” – Victor Hugo

I hope you find these suggestions helpful and that they give you an appetite for the written word.

6 Ways to Make Time to Read

1. Develop a rhythm of reading

If you want reading to be a regular part of your life, you need to make it a priority. Duh, right? But seriously, block off time on your schedule, and develop the habit of reaching regularly for a book, instead of defaulting to reaching for your phone or the TV remote.

Below are a few suggestions for habit building:

Read in the morning before you get ready for the day.
Read before bedtime.
Read 10 pages a day.
Set a timer, and read for a certain amount of time without touching your phone.

Personally, I read a few pages of a book in the morning after my quiet time and read before bed at night a few times a week.

2. Always carry a book

I always carry a book with me. Whenever I have a few spare minutes, I’ll take out a book and read a few pages. A few pages here and there really add up. Try it for a week. You’d be surprised how often you’ll be able to read.

I try to be selective about the book I carry with me. I aim for one that’s easy to pick up and jump into without taking a ton of time to reorient myself back into the book. I recommend a biography or a personal development type of book.

3. Read books that are interesting

Life is too short to read books that don’t capture your attention. If a book just isn’t interesting to you, quit the book. Your time is precious, and you shouldn’t waste it on bad books. Give yourself permission to quit books.

4. Use the library

I’m such a fan of the library. I love it for checking out novels and books I know I likely won’t reread. Also, if you haven’t heard of the app “OverDrive,” you’re missing out. It’s your local public library’s free access to thousands of e-books and audiobooks.

5. Put your phone on “Do not Disturb”

How often have you started doing a task only to be interrupted five minutes later with a notification on your phone? I’ve been there more times than I can tell you. That’s why I regularly use the “Do not Disturb” feature on my phone. Or better yet, put your phone in the other room so you’re not even tempted to pick it up.

Sometimes it takes me a while to get into a book, but it’s easier if I’m not constantly distracted by my phone. You’d be surprised how much you can read if your focus is entirely engrossed in the task at hand.

6. “Read” on your commute

Halfway through this year, I decided to purchase an Audible subscription, and I’ve loved it. Oftentimes, I’ll pop on an audiobook and listen on my commute. A few other creative ways I find time to “listen” to books is while I’m cleaning, folding laundry, cleaning out my inbox, etc. (I don’t usually listen to anything while I’m walking outside. I like to be able to fully engage in nature when I’m outside.) Audible is $15 a month, but well worth the investment.

It’s important to remember that reading looks different in the changing seasons of life, and that’s okay. If you’re a mom of small children, chances are it’s going to be a lot more difficult to make time to read. Give yourself grace, and don’t compare your reading pace with someone else’s. I’m currently in a season of life that allows me to read more, but I know that it won’t always be this way.

Reading is worth the effort. I hope these suggestions encourage you to at least give it a try. Reading is a pleasure and a privilege, and I want to equip you to deeply enjoy it. I challenge you to take these suggestions and put your own personal spin on them as you begin a new year.

This article originally appeared here.

Pastoring in Hard Places: Bearing Burdens, Believing in the Call, and Other Lessons From Pastors in Contexts of Poverty, Conflict, and Isolation

By

Matthew Spandler-Davison

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March 7, 2022

“If it was ever necessary to feel the loss, pain, or risk of helping others, then it is today. If ever there was a time for the word of the gospel to shine in the context of acts of love, then today is the time.”

This is what Bohuš, a pastor in Slovakia, recently shared with fellow church leaders in the Acts 29 network. His wife, Natalia, is Ukrainian and has family trapped in Ukraine. In their heartfelt plea to follow the call of Christ laid out in Galatians 6:2 to carry one another’s burdens, the couple reflect what so many pastors and church planters in hard places have known for years—that the call of shepherd actually does mean pouring your life out for others. “Carrying a burden is not taking it and throwing it away,” Bohuš reminds us. “Instead, it means to impose the burden on ourselves. Christ did not cast our burdens away. He put them on his own back.”

As so many of us watch from thousands of miles away the courage, resolve, and sacrifice of the churches and Christians in Ukraine and surrounding nations, we may think we are seeing something rare. But the truth is that pastors and church planters all over the world who are serving in hard places demonstrate a spirit of humility and generosity that ought to serve as a model for our own ministry.

When Open Doors published its 2022 World Watch List only a few months ago, few of us could anticipate that a war was imminent. And yet the stories of churches and pastors bearing the burdens of others replicates what we have known to be true through our Church in Hard Places Initiative at Acts 29—namely, that church leaders who serve in difficult contexts and situations can be our greatest teachers. Their example reminds us that the call to serve Christ has always been a call to sacrifice our comfort and our security in order to make Christ known in such a dark world.

A “hard place” can mean many things—a place of economic insecurity and poverty, contexts of war and violence, urban areas with high rates of crime and marginalization, rural communities with a lack of resources, and of course, places where persecution is a reality. In fact, 1 in 5 global church leaders serve in a context of persecution. Sometimes at personal risk to themselves and their families, they step into leadership roles with a strong conviction that the call is greater than the sacrifice.

Pastoring in a hard place means bearing the burdens of that place and people. This may seem overwhelming as emotional, physical, social, and spiritual needs often far surpass the capacity pastors have to meet these same needs. But what we have found is that even when it seems the odds are stacked against them, pastors and church planters are making a way to shepherd well even in the hardest of places. I’d like to share some of their wisdom in the hopes that the lessons they have learned will prepare us to serve well even as our world gets increasingly complex.

On pastoring (From Pastor K, Turkey): What I’ve found is that there are two types of leaders who struggle the most in my context: those who have fear because of the environment they are in and those who trust in their own knowledge and wisdom. Without full faith in God and realizing his omnipotence, it is very hard to keep doing ministry in hard places. Your heart will always tremble. Additionally, when we are prideful and lean into only our own understanding of the Bible, culture, and methodology, eventually people will start to see our weaknesses. I regularly and often pray for a teachable heart and search for wise friends.

On witness (From Pastor S, India): Every context of church planting has its own joys and challenges. India is home to one of the largest unreached people groups in the world. There are 1.3 billion people who collectively speak about 19,500 dialects. Urban and rural Indian contexts are vastly different with an equal number of adherents to both the nationalistic Hindutva movement and secular liberalism. Church planting here requires contextualization, patience, and embracing the posture of a learner. Relationally connecting with your community requires both patience and also learning to develop an ear and heart open to the direction of the Holy Spirit. Committing to a spiritual discipline of sabbath and study has proven to be extremely difficult, but absolutely necessary.

When Bible Knowledge Isn’t Enough

By

Tamara Chamberlain

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March 7, 2022

Knowledge is power.

I can’t remember the first time I heard this phrase, but I most certainly believed it. Coming from a low-income family, living in some rough neighborhoods, I longed for life to be different. It’s likely because of the area I grew up in that education was pushed as the path to unlocking a better future and life than the one I was raised in. And I most certainly bought into what was being sold.

Because of that, I joined the after school program designed to help students prepare for college. This program was a large part of my life from middle school on through high school, and I can honestly say without this program college wouldn’t have been possible. Throughout my college career, the idea that knowledge can solve much of our world’s problems was subtly ingrained in my worldview. But it wasn’t only in college I was hearing this message. It was in my church, too.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. The temptation to trust in the power of knowledge rather than the power of God is sprinkled throughout the Bible.

In western culture, we’ve become more sophisticated in our lack of trust in God. Instead of fashioning our graven images out of wood and gold, we place an emphasis on education. No, we can’t relate to the Israelites’ outlandish ways of idol making. We are more sophisticated like the Greeks, who turned to philosophy.

Regardless of the way our lack of trust takes shape in our daily lives, we have to admit it’s presence. Even in our most noble efforts to educate ourselves and others for the sake of the Gospel, our desire is often to maintain control rather than truly trust that God can redeem this world.

Just like a fish, it’s hard to see clearly when the water you’re swimming in is all you’ve ever known. I’m not suggesting we throw out the use of knowledge and education, but we have to see the way we rely on it to do the work only God can do. What may seem harmless has a far greater impact than we can imagine.

‘If People Would Just Know Their Bible…’

I know this idea will make some a bit squeamish, but simply knowing your Bible better isn’t the answer to the world’s problems.

There are many Christians who look down on other believers because they don’t know their bible well enough or they attend a church that isn’t “preaching the word.” I think these statements are used far more than they ought to. They are often wielded at other Christians and churches carelessly. With that being said, the simple knowledge of Scripture is not the solution to the many struggles we face in our world.

After Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, He went to the wilderness. It was during this time of prayer and fasting, Satan tempted Jesus to walk away from His mission. This scene reveals Satan’s knowledge of Scripture. He quotes Psalm 91:11-12 and Deuteronomy 6:16 to Jesus.

There are many reasons for Matthew highlighting this part of Jesus’ life, but what we can see is that simply knowing the Bible and memorizing Scripture isn’t what transforms lives. It’s the Holy Spirit working through the word of God in the hearts of people that brings about redemption and transformation.

To place a greater faith in the knowledge of scripture than the power of God to change lives is the opposite of what God intended his word to be.

Is Joy an Emotion (And Do Pastors Need It)?

By

Clara Salter

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March 7, 2022

Is joy an emotion? You’ve probably heard people say that joy and happiness are not the same thing. They’ll say that happiness is circumstantial and joy is not. Yet when we talk about joy, it’s more often than not a conversation about our emotions. When someone says joy, maybe you think of bright colors, spring bouquets, a feast, sparklers, champagne and laughter. I think of these things, too. But recently I’ve also been thinking about the fulness of joy, and it’s a more dimly lit experience. I used to have pretty severe panic attacks. Although I don’t get them very often anymore, they still happen occasionally. They’re not nearly as bad now because, through counselling, I’ve learned how to better manage my anxiety and practice techniques to work through a panic episode should one occur.

In particular, I’ve learned to pray during them. Not nice prayers—more ‘why have you forsaken me’ type prayers. I figure that saying something to God, even if it’s not pretty, is better than not talking to Him at all. While praying during my last panic attack, I experienced an awareness of the joy God offers us through His presence. In the midst of an intense physiological and emotionally painful experience, I did not feel joy. But I knew it was there nonetheless. It was a knowledge that ran deeper than my emotions could go; knowledge of the resurrection and ever-present help in trouble.

Is Joy an Emotion (and do pastors need it)?

It is this type of experience that makes me say that joy is more than a feeling. Of course, joy manifests emotionally at times. There are those moments where a thick and full joy rises up in us and seems as if it can only seep out of our mouths. This is complete joy. I hope God gives you these moments frequently.

But we also go through seasons where the emotional uprisings of joy seldom occur. When this happens, God is no less the God of joy than he was when the wise men “rejoiced exceedingly, with great joy” at the messiah’s birth. He is no less the God of joy than when David cried, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” He is no less the God of joy than when His only son endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him.”

Is joy an emotion? When we limit joy to a feeling, we devalue it. When we think of it as solely emotional, we rob ourselves of the full experience of joy. I want to be clear—I do think it has an emotional component. And in the fulness of joy, we will experience those blissful feelings.

But the joy of salvation is more than a feeling (queue that Boston song). It is an understanding, a disposition. The fulness of joy is a posture we find ourselves in when we praise the God who is with us—the risen savior who defied death to be our advocate.

If joy were only a feeling, commandments such as ‘rejoice always’ would appear ludicrous. God created our capacity for emotions. He knows the ways they bend and sway to and from the emotional manifestation of joy. When he commands us to rejoice, he knows that we don’t always feel like it. He knows that there are moments when feeling joy seems impossible, inappropriate, even offensive, in the face of the brokenness of the world. But because joy runs deeper than what we feel at any given moment, we can still have the joy of salvation in these times. Joy that is rooted in the reality of the resurrection transcends brokenness.

Sometimes I feel resentful when people tell me to be joyful. It feels patronizing. A teen spirit lingers in me that says, “Don’t tell me what to feel.” This is partly because it can seem like there’s something wrong with your faith when you’re told to be joyful while you feel so far from it. It can feel like there’s something wrong with you when you see the biblical commandments to dance, to sing loudly, to shout for joy—yet it takes so much energy just to muster up a fake smile.

Whatever it is that hinders your ability to express the emotional aspect of joy, the problem isn’t always with your faith. This is why I believe it’s important to define joy as more than just an emotion. It can be isolating to those for whom the feeling of joy is evasive when we speak of it exclusively as a feeling.

If you suspect that the emotional experience of joy is faint in your life due to mental illness—even if you’re not 100 percent sure—please reach out. There are people at St. Peter’s who would love to listen to you and can point you to resources that are right for you. Subjects of joy, anxiety and depression can be confusing for those of us in the church who struggle with mental illness. Know that you are not alone and there are compassionate people and a compassionate God to surround you.

Just like there are techniques I’ve practiced to better manage my anxiety, there are also things we can do to cultivate healthier soil for the joy that God gives us. Joy is always a gift from God. But that doesn’t mean it can’t become clouded at times. Joy is also a labor; joy is a fight.

Is joy an emotion? When you do not feel the fulness of joy, hold fast to the knowledge that it exists nonetheless. Ask for joy. Cling to the presence of the risen Christ, our great comforter and the truest source of joy.

This article asking is joy an emotion originally appeared here.

Are Christians Totally Depraved?

By

Nicholas Batzig

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March 5, 2022

John Newton once famously summarized the believer’s experience with regard to his sin:

I am not what I ought to be. Ah! How imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be. I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good. I am not what I hope to be. Soon, soon, I shall put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was—a slave to sin and Satan. And I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, “By the grace of God, I am what I am.

This is a beautiful sentiment about the way true believers are to view themselves in light of the regenerating grace of God in the gospel. We are no longer what we were (totally depraved), yet we are not what we will one day be (fully delivered from remaining corruption). Understanding these truths is vital if we are to advance in the Christian life.

The Westminster Confession of Faith explains the nature of the total depravity of all mankind: “We are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil” (WCF 6.4). Reflecting on the doctrine of total depravity in the Calvinistic backronym TULIP, John Gerstner stated, “Total depravity is our one original contribution to TULIP. We are the dirty soil in which God plants His flower, and from our filth, produces a thing of divine beauty.” To see your need for the redeeming grace of God, you must first come to terms with the teaching of Scripture about what you are by nature—pervasively corrupt and evil.

Isaiah summarized the extent of depravity in an accusation against old covenant Israel: “From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness” (Isa. 1:6). Jeremiah set out the fraudulence of man’s sinful heart when he wrote: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Quoting the psalmist, the Apostle Paul testified, “None is righteous, no, not one” (Pss. 14:1; 53:1; Rom. 3:10). All who have descended from Adam by ordinary generation are “dead in . . . trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1). Our minds, wills, emotions, affections, and consciences are thoroughly defiled by sin (Eph. 4:17; Titus 1:15–16). By nature, all our faculties are instruments of unrighteousness (Rom. 6:19).

Since all mankind (our Lord Jesus excepted) is fallen in Adam and pervasively depraved, all people need the last Adam to justify them freely by His death and resurrection (Rom. 5:12–21; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:10–14). In Christ, God has delivered His people from “the domain of darkness and transferred [them] to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). He has graciously transformed believers through the working of His Spirit, based on the redemption secured by His Son. In his book Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, Thomas Boston explained the extent of the regenerating work of God:

Original sin infects the whole man; and regenerating grace, which is the cure, goes as far as the disease. . . . He gets not only a new head, to know and understand true religion; or a new tongue, to talk of it; but a new heart, to love and embrace it, in the whole of his life.

Far from continuing in a state of being “wholly inclined to all evil,” believers have been renewed by the Spirit of God to do what is “pleasing in his sight” (Heb. 13:21). We can now “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord” (Col. 1:10) and can now “please God” (1 Thess. 4:1). In his letter to Titus, the Apostle Paul explained how the grace of God enables those who have been redeemed to live uprightly:

The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (Titus 2:11–14)

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