by | Nov 21, 2023 | Uncategorized
A tea date with a Middle Eastern stranger led to friendship with women from nearly 20 countries—and changed my perspective on the world.
It’s 5 a.m. and my house is quiet, but the world is loud. Here in the US, we’re preparing for Thanksgiving, and against the glistening backdrop of what we think the holiday ought to be—happy families gathered around abundant tables—is the sometime shabbiness of our ordinary lives: burned gravy, bickering siblings, and empty chairs. Fox News or MSNBC drones on and on in the background at grandma’s house, and anxiety simmers on the back burner of the stove.
We prepare our tables and imagine where everyone will sit. Can Uncle Bill, who loves to talk about Trump 2024, sit beside Sara from Seattle? Can they make it till the pumpkin pie? We check to see how much last-minute tickets to Honolulu cost and pause to ponder bears, mildly jealous of how hibernation helps them survive long, hard winters.
We want to gather, to welcome, to bless—but we are afraid. “Often, we Christians have no idea how to open our hearts and our homes to include people who need to be there,” Rosaria Butterfield says in her book The Gospel Comes with a House Key. “We love the miraculous stories of Jesus, his feeding of the five thousand, his divine healing, his contagious grace. And we miss the most obvious things about these stories: that we are meant to replicate them in ordinary, non-miraculous ways.”
Ten years ago, an Egyptian Muslim woman named Heba helped me (a white American Christian) rediscover how to practice the spiritual discipline of hospitality, especially when our differences make it difficult.
I met Heba at a park. She was with her two daughters, and she was looking for a friend. I was there with my two girls as well, but I was merely looking to pass the hours …
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by | Nov 20, 2023 | Uncategorized
Stories from the pandemic remind us that hope abounds even in the most difficult circumstances.
Without question, the pandemic was one of the most difficult seasons the modern church has ever faced. Even though COVID-19 brought an immeasurable amount of pain, grief, and anxiety to churches and pastors, there was beauty to be found. In the face of all that the church endured, the theme of beauty from ashes remained constant throughout our interviews with pastors and leaders. It was a tangible reminder that for people of faith, there is always hope, no matter the circumstances.
Across focus groups, interviews, community case studies, and survey responses, pastors pointed to a number of unexpected blessings that would not have occurred had they not endured the adversity of the pandemic. In addition to cultivating a new unity in many local congregations, the pandemic also revealed the character of many churches, either highlighting a beauty that is easily taken for granted or providing the refining fire that transformed their congregation into a more Christlike image. For some, the pandemic pause allowed for breathing room and for the Holy Spirit to take control.
Based on chapter 9 of the report, in this episode host Aaron Hill (editor of ChurchSalary) sits down with two researchers from the Arbor Research Group, Ebonie Davis and Jon Swanson, to talk about the theme of “beauty from ashes.” This episode also features an interview with two amazing pastors, Daniel Shmitz and Demetries Edwards, located in Oakland, California, who started a new partnership during the pandemic in order to reach and bring healing to their community.
Hosted by Aaron Hill, editor of ChurchSalary
“COVID and the Church” is produced in conjunction with the Arbor Research Group and funded by the Lilly Endowment Inc. through a grant …
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by | Nov 20, 2023 | Uncategorized
As a young mom, I tried to do everything right. The longer I parent, the less I seek “success” and the more I rely on God’s grace.
We did everything right. As Christian parents, we scan the checklists of steps to bring up a child in the Lord. We teach them right from wrong. We tell them about Jesus. We bring them to Sunday School. We make it to church.
Of course, none of us parent perfectly. But watching a child go through deep spiritual struggles can be disorienting when we’ve done everything in our power to prevent it—often with a fervor fueled by our own humbling spiritual history. We’ve learned painful lessons with God, and we want to keep our children from having to learn them too.
Except that’s not how it works. We can’t keep our children from struggling—and if we try, we risk instead keeping them from the full truth and beauty of the gospel.
I grew up in what’s often dubbed a “broken home”—though I would also call it happy. My mom worked hard, and my grandparents lived with us for some of those years. Still, with that background, when my husband and I first started having kids, we set out to do it perfectly, as many new parents do.
With a confidence on the scale of first-year seminary students, we proof-texted all the verses in the Bible about parenting, order, and discipline, and we plugged it into an equation for perfect parenting. Our kids were going to be awesome because we were going to be awesome parents. We were parenting by the Book.
There’s nothing like the arrogance of the young and inexperienced—though, in hindsight, our problem was more than youth and pride. We had taken a prosperity gospel view of family life, moving principles of “health and wealth” into the process of parenting. More than money or physical wellness, family was …
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by | Nov 20, 2023 | Uncategorized
The former COGIC leader and Oral Roberts mentee said he wore his “heretic” label “like a badge.”
When Carlton Pearson was a teenager, he cast out a demon in church. He was the son and grandson of Church of God in Christ (COGIC) ministers and knew what to do. He looked at the girl in front of him—his girlfriend at the time—and started rebuking the Devil in her and claiming the power of the blood of Jesus.
“The blood, the blood, the blood, the blood—come out!” he said. “You lying wonder, in the name of Jesus, I command you to cease and desist. Loose her.”
She seemed, to Pearson and the Black Pentecostals around him, to be loosed. She screamed and fell on the ground possessed, and then there was a release, like something let go. The church gathered around the girl, rejoicing, and they praised Pearson for his spiritual gifting and the way he had used it with such authority.
When Pearson was in his late 40s, he tried to cast hell out of church. That time, it didn’t go so well. He lost nearly everything he had and became a pariah among Pentecostals. He watched his megachurch collapse almost overnight, lost his relationship with his mentor, lost his respected status, lost his community, and ended up almost completely alone.
Whether there was peace or not—whether he was loosed from something—was, in the end, a matter of debate.
Pearson died Sunday, November 19 at the age of 70.
It was “a strange thing to go from a very popular, sort-of loved person that everybody seems to like, and everybody wants you, and then overnight, your name is a scandal,” he told the popular public radio show This American Life in 2005.
Yet he insisted he had made the right choice.
“I can handle my stuff, okay?” he said. “I know what God spoke to me. So I’m cool.” …
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by | Nov 20, 2023 | Uncategorized
Wheaton professor Karen Jobes becomes president a decade after a study found “hostile and unwelcoming” atmosphere.
The Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) has instated its first female president in 75 years. Karen Jobes, emeritus professor of New Testament and exegesis at Wheaton College, will lead the professional society of evangelical Bible scholars and theologians in 2024.
Her election marks a significant step for an association that has faced criticism over the years for the marginalization of women. In 2014 a qualitative study of women’s experiences at ETS gatherings, commissioned by Christians for Biblical Equality, found “an atmosphere that feels hostile and unwelcoming.”
Jobes, who joined in 1989, recalled uncomfortable experiences of her own at ETS.
“My earliest recollections of coming to ETS is that there were very, very few women. And most of the men who attended would ask, ‘Well, whose wife are you?’” Jobes told CT at ETS’s annual gathering, held this year in San Antonio. “A lot has happened in the church and in our world since the 1980s.”
Other women share similar stories.
“In some sessions, I was the only woman attending. Very few women presented papers,” said Carmen Joy Imes, an Old Testament professor at Biola University. “Men would ask me, ‘Where does your husband teach?’ assuming that I was there as a spouse rather than as a scholar.”
This year’s conference, held in San Antonio in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, saw some of the highest levels of women’s participation in the society’s history.
Two of the three plenary speakers were female, which has happened only once before at ETS. University of Notre Dame professor Abigale Favale’s …
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