by | Jun 26, 2023 | Uncategorized
Proposal to secularize the civic calendar prompts controversy.
Debates about the place of Christianity in public life regularly resurface in Europe. Recently, after the Pentecost Monday holiday, the mayor of Grenoble, France, sparked controversy when he argued French society has evolved beyond religious days off. Pointing to the large number of secular people who don’t follow the church calendar and Muslims who celebrate different religious days, Éric Piolle proposed removing Christian holidays from the civic calendar.
The French currently celebrate Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Pentecost Monday, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, All Saint’s Day, and Christmas. Those days off could be replaced, Piolle said, by days to commemorate key moments in French history.
We asked five evangelical leaders from French-speaking Europe: Should Christians embrace proposals to replace public religious holidays with secular ones?
Pierre-Sovann Chauny, systematic theology professor at the Faculté Jean Calvin, Aix-en-Provence:
No. Removing Christian religious feasts from the civil calendar should be rejected. We need to maintain an awareness of what French history owes to Christianity and should continue to emphasize the public character of the spiritual life of Christians. These holidays also provide Christians with opportunities to bear witness throughout the year to the life, death, resurrection, and reign of Christ. Finally, the existence of these holidays consolidates our religious freedom. Their removal could, on the contrary, be a step toward persecution.
Fabien Fourcasse, pastor of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Amiens:
I’d say no. It’s our tradition. Besides that, the presence of religious holidays on the calendar expresses something of God’s plan for society. …
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by | Jun 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
Self-centered testimonies have been abused. But not sharing our story can be equally selfish.
I miss the word I.
Some have sworn off saying “I” because we’ve abused it. Instead of listening, we’ve spoken for others as if our personal experience is universal. The word I can be shamed and scrutinized: Who are you to center yourself? and What makes your personal anecdotes relevant or reliable? In other circles, Christians overreacted to the extreme of a hyper-individualistic faith by leaning toward a hyper-collectivized vision of religious belief.
Yet the reality is that healthy faith communities are made up of a diverse array of individuals who each have unique, distinct, and personal experiences of God. And perhaps what people crave most today is the language we often keep to ourselves—our stories of direct encounter with God.
Eugene Peterson says that the “language of personal intimacy and relationship” is “our primary language,” which we “use to express and develop our human condition.” Thus “we must become proficient” in “the speech of love and response and intimacy.”
While the language of information and motivation “are no less important in the life of faith,” he says, they become “thin and gaunt” if not embedded in personal language. Informative talk can be “reduced to list making,” while motivational talk can be “reduced to crass manipulations”—both of which keep us from actual shared life with God and one another.
While it might seem selfless to avoid using I, there’s a surprising kind of ego in never sharing our own experience. To withhold our own stories is to withhold intimacy and opportunities for deeper interpersonal connection. In fact, sharing our individual …
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by | Jun 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
Spiritual abuse survivors who join a new congregation still need to heal from their hurt.
People are leaving the church today for numerous reasons—from spiritual or sexual abuse by leaders, church division, legalism, or hyper-politicization. A recent Barna survey found that two of the top sources of doubt for most believers are negative past experiences with a religious institution and the hypocrisy of religious people.
But not all who’ve had a bad experience with a faith community choose to leave church or Christianity altogether. Some remain in the congregation that wounded them, often held there by treasured relationships or a sense of loyalty to the institution. Others attempt to hit the reset button by starting afresh in a new church, denomination, or tradition.
In any case, those past wounds don’t disappear. In fact, new church experiences layered on top of old may exacerbate the pain for some of those who stay. Today’s pews are full of people who bear scars—or still-oozing wounds—from church hurt. We often talk about why people should stay in church, but sometimes that’s the wrong question. Instead, I think we need to talk more about how we stay in church.
I’ve had to answer this question for myself as a survivor of church hurt. I’m now attending a different congregation, but the journey to stay connected to the local church in the wake of the abuse hasn’t been easy.
I’m also learning from how others have navigated their relationship with the local church after being wounded by their brothers and sisters in Christ. And what I’ve found is that those who choose to stay connected to a local faith community despite their trauma have wise insights about trust, forgiveness, and discernment—which are valuable not just for those who’ve …
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by | Jun 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
Group seeks to open the eyes of Arab hearts through oriental quarter-note melodies.
The captivating music emanates from a humble room in a quiet suburb of Beirut. Music made uniquely “oriental” by its use of quarter notes, the sounds created by the musicians practicing inside are different from ones a Western ear would be used to.
Well suited to stringed instruments such as the oud and violin, the melody is surprising to hear emanate from an organ and piano. With the mere roll of a dial, modern electronics can recreate the notes—but not without the skill testifying to the musicians’ talent.
The quality draws in neighbors occasionally peering through the door.
Boutros Wehbe, a warm, cheerful man in his 50s, is one of the founders of I Can See, a music group set up two years ago with the aim of preserving the traditional forms and styles of Lebanese music.
“It was a dream for me,” he said, “to find musicians like these guys to play oriental music within the churches.”
“These guys” are not only professionally trained—they are also legally blind.
Wehbe, however, is fully sighted but a self-confessed untrained singer. Despite being the composer of two evangelical worship CDs, he is unable to read music. The words and notes he weaves together are all created in his head. But this only amplifies the professionalism and expertise of the others, displayed in their ability to quickly pick up on his ideas and make his creations a reality.
Each musician comes from a background of music training mostly within the context of Lebanon’s schools for the blind.
The group includes Milios Awad (“The Maestro” on piano), Ziad Pawli (double organ), Fadi Homsy (drums), Mohamad Rammal (darbuka), and Gabi Khalil (violin). Among them are many years of musical …
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by | Jun 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
In evangelical churches, Gen Z is forcing a discussion on LGBT hospitality.
With transgender identity continuing to rise in the US, evangelical pastors are challenged to think through how they might welcome a trans person attending their church. For many conservative pastors, this scenario may still be a hypothetical. But odds are, for the youth in their congregation, the question of how to relate to their transgender peers is already a reality.
Nearly 20 percent of those who identify as transgender in the United States are between the ages of 13 and 17, which means that most teens today go to school alongside students who identify as trans.
High school and college students have ushered in an influx of questions and scenarios that their church leaders and mentors hadn’t faced growing up. They’re considering their witness in contexts where some can see it as hateful or discriminatory to believe gender remains tied to biological sex.
Northview Church in Carmel, Indiana, holds a biblically orthodox view on gender and sexuality, and high school pastor Jude Wright knows how sensitive the topic can be. He encourages students to lead with relationships with their friends and classmates, citing the example of Jesus meeting people where they were.
“There was a generation where they just tried to pound truth and pound Bible without having relationship,” said Wright. “And that’s just not the culture we live in nowadays.”
Among the youth group of about 150, students regularly ask questions about sexuality and gender. In response, Wright first points to the love and compassion in God’s character, emphasizing his goodness in the midst of identity struggles and confusion.
“They’re asking … if God is good, can you prove it to me? How can I experience …
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