by | Aug 31, 2023 | Uncategorized
Interviews with 63 churches reveal an urgent need for greater mutuality in relationships.
When I (Wei-Hao) met with Matthew in a café in eastern Singapore to talk about generational divides in the church, he was very relaxed, jovial, and candid until the issue of church leadership came up. I knew I had touched a raw nerve when he leaned back, folded his arms, and sighed, saying, “This is a conversation that I often have with some friends. A lot of us are struggling to convince our leaders that the church needs to stop being so old-school and inward-looking.”
Matthew and a few friends had approached their church leaders to talk about creation care a few years ago. A big conference had just been held at their church, and they were appalled by the amount of plastic waste generated from the meals and refreshments.
“We suggested that this issue should be addressed over the pulpit and those who feel the same way could organize activities or, you know, maybe start some recycling initiatives in the church,” Matthew, a millennial, said.
“But you know what was my pastor’s reply? He said that the pulpit was meant to address spiritual stuff and most of the congregation probably wouldn’t be interested anyway,” Matthew said with a shrug of his shoulders and an even deeper sigh than before. “To his credit, he said he agreed with us that this is an issue, but it was definitely not going to be a focus for the church.”
Matthew’s experience of attempting to initiate positive change in his church and receiving pushback from his baby-boomer pastor is not an isolated one. There is a serious lack of understanding and empathy among different generations in Singapore churches. Each generation does not understand the other’s actions, as …
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by | Aug 31, 2023 | Uncategorized
Recent revival has brought Protestant churches more members. But what Mongolian Christian leaders want most is more disciples.
When Mongolia opened up in 1990 after seven decades of Communist rule, the country had only four known Christians.
Heavy religious suppression under the Mongolian People’s Republic had all but wiped out Christianity in the country, where the population was then about 2.1 million. But even before that, the faith had failed to secure a lasting foothold among the nomadic people.
Today, while most Mongolians are either Buddhist or nonreligious, the Protestant church has grown to 63,600, making up two percent of the population, according to the World Christian Database. Catholics, on the other hand, have seen more meager growth with a community of less than 1,500 people.
Yet on Thursday, Pope Francis arrived in the capital of Ulaanbaatar—the first time a pontiff has ever stepped foot on Mongolian soil—to visit “a Church that is small in numbers but vivacious in faith.” Last year, Francis named Archbishop Giorgio Marengo as the first cardinal based in Mongolia. The country only has two native Mongolian priests.
Mongolia is in a strategic position as it maintains close ties to China, with whom the Vatican has a tense relationship: Recently, the Communist government transferred bishops without consulting the Holy See, violating bilateral accords. To Mongolia’s north, the Vatican is walking a delicate tightrope in responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both countries will be watching his visit closely.
But beyond geopolitics, Mongolians are excited for the historic visit as the Vatican first made contact with leaders of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, said Bolortuya Damdinjav, head of the research department of Mongolia Evangelical Alliance.
“Finally, 800 years later the pope …
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by | Aug 31, 2023 | Uncategorized
A swath of energetic, charismatic ministry leaders fight for focus.
For years, Americans had an easy default when they thought of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): It was the stereotype of a distracted kid goofing off at a game or a fidgety student losing interest in class.
No one imagined a middle-aged pastor trying to finish his sermon draft late Saturday night.
But as rates of ADHD continue to rise—with an uptick in diagnoses among women and adults—the picture of the disorder has become nuanced, and more people are coming to terms with their ADHD, including in ministry.
The symptoms of ADHD can be particularly challenging for pastors, whose all-encompassing vocation often comes without the administrative help that they need.
When Chad Brooks sees a pastor with ADHD, he sees someone who will either burn out in ministry or become the future of the church.
Brooks is a pastor and coach who works with United Methodist Church (UMC) pastors through the UMC ministry Passion in Partnership. The UMC requires a midcareer strengths assessment for all pastors, and Brooks has noticed that when pastors come to him for coaching and have scored poorly in their preaching skills, they often have a clinical ADHD diagnosis.
He developed a course called “Preaching Through Distraction” to help pastors learn to work more efficiently during the week rather than using the adrenaline of procrastination to crank out a Saturday night sermon.
A growing number of pastors reach out to Brooks for one-on-one coaching because their ADHD makes paying attention in a classroom setting too difficult.
“These people are deeply passionate about people and ministry, and if we cannot figure out how to be alongside each other, we are going to miss out on things we desperately need right now,” …
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by | Aug 31, 2023 | Uncategorized
The German philosopher Hartmut Rosa’s concept of ‘resonance’ offers a way through the current malaise.
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
A friend told me about a mutual acquaintance who was always a happy, kind person, but who now—at least in some contexts—seems filled with anger and fear. “It’s like I’m hearing the same voice,” my friend said, “but now he seems so resentful that I sometimes wonder if I’m talking to the same person I always knew.” Almost everyone I know has experienced something like this—in churches, in workplaces, even at family dining room tables. The whole world seems to be seething with resentment.
Anyone who’s encountered someone in a fit of rage knows that one thing that usually doesn’t work is to say, “Calm down.” That’s like saying to an insomniac, “Go to sleep.” The more the person tries to fall asleep, the more likely he or she is to stay awake. That reality, though, might give us insight into why our culture seems driven with resentment, and how we can counter it.
Falling asleep is, as German philosopher Hartmut Rosa puts it, “non-engineerable.” The more you try to master it, the further away it becomes. Sleep requires a kind of surrender—a letting go of the frenetic whirl of the mind. Rosa compares the situation to the way a child feels when looking out the window at the first snow of winter. You can engineer that, Rosa concedes, in his book The Uncontrollability of the World. The child’s mom and dad could buy snow cannons and blast icy flakes outside the window of a house in Pasadena in July. But that’s not the same experience.
The experiences of looking out into a snowy field, standing on a mountain range or at the foot of …
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by | Aug 30, 2023 | Uncategorized
Vivek Ramaswamy’s right-wing satire of the popular progressive yard sign has the same flaws as its target.
Vivek Ramaswamy emails me, as does half the Republican presidential primary field, because I am on the mailing list of a GOP fundraising outfit that does not honor unsubscribe requests.
Ramaswamy’s latest email stood out from the daily deluge, though, for the simplicity of its conceit.
“I am not afraid to say these truths,” ran the subject line. Inside, the fundraising pitch was short and blunt: “TRUTH. There’s only one. Not yours, not mine. Just pure TRUTH,” read the brief note festooned with links to donate.
In the middle were the 10 affirmations Ramaswamy has increasingly placed at the center of his campaign messaging, rattling them off every chance he gets:
Set aside, for a minute, the question of whether the list is as true as Ramaswamy claims, and look instead at the form. It’s familiar—or it should be, for Christians. This is undeniably a creed, and that’s precisely the problem.
Ramaswamy isn’t unique in taking a creedal approach to politics. The best-known contemporary example is the “In this house we believe” sign, which has become ubiquitous in many progressive neighborhoods in recent years.
As creeds go, In this house is remarkably efficient, dogmatic, and magisterial. Each line requires substantial knowledge of the faith: “Science is real,” for instance, invokes a whole host of beliefs about evolution, vaccination, climate change, masking, and more.
There are a few variants on the text—some later manuscripts, which I suspect are more common in states where oil pipelines …
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