by | Aug 8, 2023 | Uncategorized
With her Southern accent, self-deprecation, and funny family stories, the 57-year-old mom and grandmother wants to use standup to bless audiences.
After 22 years in standup comedy, Leanne Morgan is having a breakout year. She completed a 100-city comedy tour, her first Netflix special ranked in the platform’s top 10, and she landed a part in her first movie (a forthcoming Amazon release starring Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell), fitting this interview into her Atlanta filming schedule.
But just a few years ago, the 57-year-old mother and grandmother was on the brink of quitting comedy altogether. “I told my husband, ‘Should I just bow out and start a mercantile business?’”
Morgan, with her trademark Tennessee drawl and shock of long blond hair (“yesterday’s set hair”), had come close to several sitcom deals and was on the verge of a 50-city tour in 2020 when the pandemic shut everything down. But she felt called to persevere.
“I prayed about it and God never shut the door,” she told CT. “He knew so much better than I did.”
Instead, Morgan began offering “porch talks” on Facebook during the early months of COVID-19, wearing no makeup and relaying anecdotes about living in close quarters with her husband, running down the garbage man, and making Jell-O salads for her elderly parents.
She signed off each porch talk by saying, “Don’t worry—everything’s going to be alright!” Followers found comfort in her relatable pandemic struggles, zingy humor, and funny comedy clips.
Morgan’s mostly-PG material fits in with clean comedy circles and is featured in Dry Bar Comedy, the popular platform launched by Angel Studios (then VidAngel) in 2017. Andrew Stanley, son of Atlanta megachurch pastor Andy Stanley, often opens for her.
As a Christian, Morgan sees her comedy …
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by | Aug 7, 2023 | Uncategorized
How Florida’s Brenda Carter decided to spend 30 years of her life serving the Hakka people in Taiwan.
Deep in the countryside of Miaoli County, Taiwan, Brenda Carter has lived among the Hakka people for more than 30 years. Part of the Chinese Han population, the Hakka trace their lineage back to northern China. Their name is a nod to their migration south and can be translated as “guest worker” or “sojourner.” The four million Hakka in Taiwan make up about 15 percent of the country’s population.
A native of Florida, Carter describes her role in the community as a “matchmaker,” a title she uses intentionally—as well as non-traditionally.
“I am not here as a preacher. I am here as a matchmaker. The job of a matchmaker is to introduce two people, giving them a chance to get to know each other and build a relationship. But the matchmaker cannot force them,” said Carter. “I came to give people the opportunity to get to know the God who created and loves them, to build a beautiful relationship with God.”
In the past, some Hakka people traditionally lived in tulou, which are large, circular residences often three to four stories high. Multiple generations lived within a unit and the largest could hold up to 800 people.
“The Hakka community is like their tulou buildings. To protect themselves, there are very few windows facing outward, and it is difficult for outsiders to fight their way in,” she said. “But rather than saying the Hakka community is hard soil for the gospel, perhaps we ought to say that they are a neglected community.”
A love of the people
Carter first came to Taiwan in 1986 and spent two years teaching alongside numerous foreign missionaries at Christ ’s College Taipei. But her heart was for those the school was not already …
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by | Aug 7, 2023 | Uncategorized
The threat of gang violence around Port-au-Prince continues to disrupt ministry.
Pastor Samson Doreliens ministers “right in the middle of the violence in Port-au-Prince,” the site of the July 27th kidnapping of an American nurse and her daughter who remain missing.
The 600 active congregants of the Evangelical Baptist Mission of South Haiti (MEBSH) Church of Cote Plage are torn by the gang violence that has overtaken the city, Doreliens told Baptist Press.
“Some are drawn closer to God because they believe it is God only who can do something to take the pain away,” he said of the congregation. “Others are discouraged, questioning why God is letting all kinds of things happen to the country: violence, natural disasters, etc.”
Florida Baptist Haitian Fellowship President Jackson Voltaire helped organize the Baptist Missionary Confraternity of Haiti (Confraternitè Missionaire Baptiste d’Haiti) (CMBH), a convention of hundreds of churches spread across six regions there.
Those in the Western Region including Port-au-Prince worship under tremendous safety risks, he said, while those in rural communities can minister more freely.
“They hold worship services with a great deal of difficulty,” he said. “But thank God that’s happening mainly in the metropolitan areas where Port-au-Prince is. In that region, the Western Region, we have hundreds of churches operating, but again … with great difficulty.”
Attendance has dropped at the MEBSH Church of Cote Plage, Doreliens said, where many members have lost their jobs or simply can’t travel to work amid the violence. Sunday offerings are donated to the poor and widows.
Churches have reduced the frequency of worship services and Bible study and have cancelled evening events. Community …
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by | Aug 4, 2023 | Uncategorized
Amid an investigation, Christians are wondering: Did a popular youth leader’s “vulnerability and self-deprecation” avert skepticism and accountability?
The last Soul Survivor festival, led by popular British evangelist Mike Pilavachi, marked the end of an era.
What began as a gathering of around 2,000 young people at a campsite in southwest England had grown into a movement of tens of thousands, with 32,500 people—mostly teens—attending the final event in 2019.
Pilavachi was the founder and figurehead of Soul Survivor and the driving force behind a movement that had embraced charismatic gifts and inspired a generation of young Brits to pursue Christianity in an age when the country’s churches struggled to retain teenage worshippers.
Before this year, the first line in a recent statement from the youth ministry charity Youthscape would have read as a tribute to his legacy: “Mike Pilavachi’s influence is such that a significant proportion of Christians in the UK and beyond will feel some connection to the ministry of Soul Survivor.”
Instead, it was a warning. As the Church of England conducts a safeguarding investigation into allegations against Pilavachi, Youthscape issued a 2,600-word guide to help leaders respond.
“This news is likely to be disorientating,” the charity wrote. “It could be causing us to question memories or experiences of the festivals we hold dear. We might feel disappointed, angry, or betrayed hearing that someone we trust is under investigation in this way.”
Pilavachi’s case comes as the church faces growing scrutiny over its safeguarding policies and response to abuse, with a string of leaders facing accusations spanning decades.
The claims against Pilavachi first became public in May, when British media publishedaccounts from men who said Pilavachi massaged, straddled, and wrestled with them …
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by | Aug 4, 2023 | Uncategorized
Jake Meador has a provocative proposal for reversing dechurching. But it may not be that simple.
More than 1 in 10 Americans—around 40 million of us—stopped attending church in the last 25 years.
New research using cell phone location data suggests weekly church attendance (defined as 36 weeks of the 47 studied) is at just 3 percent. And even where church attendance has rebounded since pandemic shutdowns, congregational involvement still lags.
A shift of this scale is impossible to ignore, but it’s certainly possible to misunderstand.
What if there’s an explanation we’ve overlooked, asked author and Mere Orthodoxy editor Jake Meador at The Atlantic last week—a reason apart from the usual headline-making factors like church corruption, abuse, and theological differences?
Drawing on The Great Dechurching, a forthcoming book from pastors Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge, Meador argues that “the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century.”
Everyone is busy. Job hours are long and unpredictable. Finances are precarious. The kids have soccer. The baby’s not sleeping through the night. The grandparents need more help around the house. A friend is visiting. I’m tired.
“Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life,” Meador summarizes, so we’re “lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people.” Forever in the red on time and energy, we don’t spare any of our resources for church.
If that’s true, a church’s first impulse might be to make membership easier, to demand less of overbusy congregants so they’ll still show up. But maybe “the problem isn’t that churches …
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