by | Jan 11, 2024 | Uncategorized
Six Asian church leaders discuss whether it’s wise for congregations to set age limits for senior pastors.
In 2014, Christianity Today published a feature by Warren Bird, author of Next: Pastoral Succession That Works, about how 100 prominent US pastors successfully—and unsuccessfully—passed their role down to a new leader. Bird and co-author William Vanderbloemen found that half stepped down by age 65 and that the average age of American church leaders was 55.
This year, CT sought to explore the issue of pastoral succession from a different cultural perspective: churches in Asia. Hierarchy and respect for elders often make passing the baton more difficult for senior pastors in this region, and the aging population in some countries means more pastors are leading into their later years.
We asked six pastors in East and Southeast Asia—in China, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines—for their views on whether churches or denominations should set age limits for senior pastors and how they can prepare for a smooth succession. Responses are arranged from yes to no:
Freddy Lay, 68, former lead pastor and former chairman of Indonesia Chinese Church (GKI) in Jakarta, Indonesia:
It would be wise for a church or denomination to set age limits for pastors, since we all have limited lifespans and our bodies and minds deteriorate due to age. I chose to retire at 65, although I kept serving the Lord after my retirement in an advisory role, which is a less physically demanding task. Retired ministers can get involved in mentoring other leaders. [Lay successfully added a pastoral age limit of 65 into his denomination’s constitution.]
Although the Bible does not include specific age limits for a pastor, we can learn from the examples set in the Bible regarding succession. For example, …
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by | Jan 11, 2024 | Uncategorized
Jeymes Samuel’s anachronistic biblical epic nods to classics like “Ben-Hur” and “Life of Brian”—and ends with a surprisingly earnest view of Christ.
Out with the superhero movies, in with the biblical epic? From Journey to Bethlehem to The Chosen’s fourth season and Martin Scorsese’s recent announcement that he’ll start shooting a movie based on Shūsaku Endō’s A Life of Jesus later this year, Jesus movies are multiplying. Maybe, just maybe, 2024 will even be the year that Terrence Malick finally finishes editing his long-gestating Jesus project, The Way of the Wind.
In the middle of all this is The Book of Clarence, which—it seems safe to say—offers a perspective on the New Testament you won’t get from more devotional or high-concept films. Inspired by movies as different as Ben-Hur and Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and featuring a majority-Black cast, Clarence tells a sometimes epic, sometimes humorous story that is not quite about Jesus himself.
Focused on a fictitious character who lives just to the side of the greatest story ever told, the film is written and directed by Jeymes Samuel, also known as The Bullitts, the rapper turned filmmaker who made waves a few years ago with the Black Western The Harder They Fall. That film, as stylized as it was, was widely touted as a “corrective” to the Western genre and to popular perceptions of the past, drawing attention to real-life outlaws and lawmen who had largely been neglected by previous filmmakers.
The Book of Clarence, in American theaters Friday, has a somewhat different agenda. Here, Samuel is indulging his love of classic Bible epics while filtering the genre through his own experiences as someone who grew up in “the hood” (i.e., a mostly Black public housing development in London).
“Clarence is your everyman,” Samuel told Esquire. …
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by | Jan 10, 2024 | Uncategorized
The Indian evangelical leader sought a space in the hills where people “could commune with God without interruption.”
Chungthang Thiek, a revivalist and preacher who launched a prayer movement in the hills of Manipur, a northeastern state in India, died on January 4. He was 75 and had been battling vocal cord cancer for months.
Thiek obeyed the vision he received on July 11, 1986, the last day of a youth camp he was leading, instructing him to “Arise and rebuild,” words that first led him to build a discipleship and evangelistic ministry that soon evolved into something more specific.
Following a trip to South Korea, Thiek returned with a vision to provide a place for people to pray and started to pray for the same. In 1990, he established “Prayer Mountain” right outside Manipur’s second largest city of Churachandpur, which has welcomed hundreds of thousands of Christians from across the country since.
A former math teacher turned evangelist, Thiek had a heart for Manipur and learned all of the state’s languages and dialects. His life’s work became defined by that vision at youth camp. There, he later recalled, God spoke to him from the book of Nehemiah 2:17:
Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.”
“The situation in Manipur and especially in Churachandpur at that time (1986) was very bad. Alcoholism had gripped most of our young people, as well as drug abuse,” said Thiek’s former ministry partner Lalmanlien Mana, who at that time was one of the campers. “Their spiritual lives were way down in the pit.”
But the vision Thiek shared with these young people in his characteristic bluntness and passion stirred …
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by | Jan 10, 2024 | Uncategorized
He started Reformed University Fellowship with a vision of students ministering to students and learning to love the local church.
Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) founder Mark Lowrey choked back tears as he described the vision that inspired his ministry at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) in the early 1970s.
“We were gonna impact the world with the gospel, and people were gonna understand who Christ was, and they were gonna come to him, and they were gonna be part of his church,” he said in a 2023 video celebrating the 50th anniversary of RUF.
Lowrey died on Christmas Eve at age 78, but not before seeing RUF spread to 177 university campuses in 43 states, employing 160 ordained ministers, 57 women in staff roles, and 157 interns. Lowrey also spent more than 25 years with Great Commission Publications, a curriculum ministry jointly supported by the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC).
Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on September 27, 1945, Lowrey earned his undergraduate degree from USM and served one tour in Vietnam with the army before enrolling at Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) in Jackson, Mississippi.
In 1971 Lowrey was approached by leaders from three Presbyterian churches in Hattiesburg and asked to lead the college ministry at USM. Called “Westminster Fellowship,” the campus ministry had begun in the 1950s as a ministry supported jointly by the three churches and carried out by ordained ministers. But by the early 1970s, the ministry had stalled: It had no USM students. The churches hoped a first-year seminarian would revive the ministry.
“I had been deeply impressed by a speaker at RTS who drove home the church’s unique role in carrying out Christ’s commission to make disciples of all nations,” Lowrey later explained in an essay commemorating …
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by | Jan 10, 2024 | Uncategorized
Leaders reflect on what YouVersion’s list of the most-shared Scriptures in their nation includes—and misses.
Below are Singapore’s top verses of 2023 as determined by YouVersion. With the help of Langham Partnership, Christianity Today asked three local Bible scholars for their analyses on what the list conveys about Christianity in the Southeast Asian city-state.
Samuel Law, dean of advanced studies and associate professor of intercultural studies, Singapore Bible College:
What is your overall reaction to this list?
No surprises. In general, the verses are reflective responses to the worldview and issues of our context and subscribe to the theological frameworks of the megachurches/denominations representative of Singapore.
What might the verses more unique to the list convey about Singapore’s spiritual needs?
I’m actually more surprised that Proverbs 3:5–6 is unique to Singapore and would have thought that it would be mentioned in the other countries. I remember a Sunday School song based on those verses that we used to sing as I was growing up in the US. Perhaps the verses are a favorite in Singapore as they parallel the Asian/Confucian attitude in life’s journey and align with a Daoist worldview.
Given the events of this past year, is there a verse you wish were on this list instead?
Isaiah 55. The chapter reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways and, despite circumstances, he is still at work. Despite our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) 21st-century context, nothing impedes his power to transform situations in accordance to his mission of redeeming all creation.
Peter C. W. Ho, academic dean, School of Theology (English), Singapore Bible College:
What is your overall reaction to this list?
We are unsurprised but concerned! For instance, …
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