by | Jan 30, 2024 | Uncategorized
God designed weekly rest to be holy for all people, not just the economically stable.
Everywhere we look we see people pushing themselves—their bodies, their minds, and their capacity for faithfulness and fruitfulness—to the limit. In some ways, society incentivizes this “to the limit” way of life: If you want to get ahead, it’s the price to pay.
But in other ways, society demands this lifestyle. People at the bottom of our socioeconomic ladder feel this most acutely, yet no one is immune. No matter the reason, we are trapped by our systems of productivity, and we take as much as we can from ourselves, burning the proverbial candle at both ends.
If you’ve ever thought, Enough is enough!—quietly protesting demands your body cannot meet—you certainly aren’t alone. I regularly wrestle with these feelings, sorting through my values and priorities, wondering if I’m conceding a good and whole life to the superficial aspirations of an unrelenting consumer society.
This is why I find myself grateful for the gift of Sabbath. Sabbath is God’s way of saying, Enough is enough.
Sabbath is an invitation to orient our lives around a different rhythm of practice, one that recognizes the moral limit to what we should expect our bodies and our lives to produce, and to the profit potential we should extract from ourselves and others.
Walter Brueggemann reminds us that Sabbath is framed through the stories of both Creation and Exodus. The Scriptures first frame the seventh day as God resting from the work of creation (Gen. 1). Is this because God lacks the capacity to continue? Hardly! Instead, God models for all of creation the idea that there is a moral limit to the demands of production. God invites people to join in his rest as a way of taking delight in creation. …
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by | Jan 30, 2024 | Uncategorized
David E. Fitch’s Reckoning with Power offers Christians a purer model of power but misreads how power operates in the ministry of the church.
Imagine yourself at any church service you wish. Imagine the music, the preaching, the reading of Scripture. Hear the voices of others next to you in welcome or in questions or in laughter. Feel yourself bumping against strangers and friends. Observe the movements of others in this scene as they jostle, listen, squirm. Listen to the message proclaimed; watch the administration of the bread and the cup.
Now, some questions: Where was power in this picture? How did it work? What was power doing? From where was power coming? Did you even see power in this picture before now?
Asking about how power functions in unseen ways only highlights how, for many, power goes unnoticed until there has been an egregious breach of trust. And in recent years, there have been innumerable breaches in church contexts, both infamous and obscure, and frequently centered on the abuse of persons: the manipulative sermon, the self-serving or even predatory pastoral figure, the overreach of the pulpit into politics.
This is the context—of pastoral failures, political alliances, and confusion about what power means for the church—in which David E. Fitch offers his newest book, Reckoning with Power: Why the Church Fails When It’s on the Wrong Side of Power.
From the onset, Fitch has in view the various high-profile cases in which the wrong kind of power has been found operating within the church. His examples include Christian nationalism, moral failures, sexual abuse, and other forms of damage. In summing up the current situation, Fitch proposes that there are “really two kinds of power at work in the world”:
There is worldly power, which is exerted over persons, and there is godly power, which works …
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by | Jan 29, 2024 | Uncategorized
While a school supervisor called the case a “misunderstanding,” three directors have fled overseas.
A Christian organization working to rehabilitate drug addicts in Hong Kong said in a statement that it was “shocked” when authorities arrested four of its directors Jan. 18 for conspiracy to defraud donors of $6.4 million ($50 million HKD) in donations.
Three other directors—including the group’s founder, Jacob Hay-sing Lam, and the principal of the group’s high school, Alman Siu-cheuk Chan—have also been charged, but fled the country after the investigation began. Christian Zheng Sheng Association vowed to cooperate with the police investigation to “restore the institution’s reputation and innocence.”
Founded in 1985, Zheng Sheng seeks to build a “holistic and interactive Christian therapeutic community” for drug addicts of all ages and help them “re-establish their values in life.” They also opened Christian Zheng Sheng College, a high school that functions as a rehab center, according to its website. The Chinese characters of Zheng Sheng represent the biblical phrases “repent and redeem” and “from death unto life.”
Concerns about the group arose over a fundraiser that the school’s principal Chan ran between October and December 2020. Chan claimed the school needed funds in a year of record-low donations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The school ended up raising $5.7 million through the campaign.
However, police investigations found that less than 10 percent of the donations raised at the end of 2020 actually went to the school. Instead, there were more than 300 transactions to other bank accounts, including three personal accounts co-owned by Chan and other charity directors. The investigation also found that the charity …
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by | Jan 29, 2024 | Uncategorized
Caring for foster children can be difficult—even devastating. It is also a revelation of the love God gives and expects of his people.
“Let’s be honest,” my friend Joe told me, “I will probably never be a foster parent. I admire what you do, but that’s not for me.”
I had suggested foster care after hearing him describe his volunteer service as uninspiring. Joe’s response bothered me, but I understood. He had seen enough of my family life to know that it often wasn’t pleasant.
Over a decade ago, my husband and I welcomed three siblings, ages one, two, and three, as foster children. We later adopted them, feeling equipped for our “adoption journey” with specialized parenting methods and a strong support network. The children were sweet and smart, seemed to attach well, and hit their obvious developmental milestones.
Yet throughout their elementary years, there was a low rumble of troubles: extreme outbursts, surprising dishonesty, and atypical peer relationships. When they reached adolescence, the rumble became a roar.
We tried to fill “normal” parent roles while piling on more and more “extras” to help them adjust: sports, tutoring, therapy, individualized education programs, social worker visits, doctor’s appointments, and medications. Then we nearly drowned in a swell of psychiatric evaluations, police reports, hospital stays, insurance appeals, and out-of-state residential treatment for two of our three children. It was a mental health “tsunami” of the kind Julia Duin described in a 2022 Newsweek story about adoptive families who find out the hard way that children with early trauma often have overwhelming developmental needs and behaviors.
My friend Joe was in ministry at his church, and his definite No thank you made me sad and …
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by | Jan 26, 2024 | Uncategorized
Texas lawsuit claims that the minor was a victim of a serial predator as well as student leaders in the campus ministry Chi Alpha.
A church in a Texas college town, a chapter of the campus ministry Chi Alpha, and its sponsoring denomination, the Assemblies of God, are being sued by a father who alleges that the leaders he entrusted to disciple his teenage son instead got him naked in ministry settings and used their positions of authority to sexually abuse him.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, follows a tumultuous several months for Chi Alpha. Since last spring, a serial predator has gone to jail for child sex abuse, chapter leaders across a half-dozen Texas universities have been dismissed, and the organization’s national director resigned.
The majority of the departing leaders had ties to Daniel Savala, a registered sex offender who groomed and abused Chi Alpha students for decades at his home in Houston. He was indicted last year on child sexual abuse and trafficking charges.
Though Savala wasn’t officially a part of Chi Alpha or the Assemblies of God, the list of leaders who have left reflect the reach of his informal network across Chi Alpha in Texas.
The recent lawsuit alleges that Savala molested a 13-year-old in 2021 and that four Chi Alpha students continued to sexually violate the youth group member through naked and inappropriate games in ministry settings.
The teenage victim attended Mountain Valley Fellowship in College Station. The Assemblies of God church had been led by Eli Stewart, a longtime Chi Alpha leader who launched the chapter at nearby Texas A&M University.
The victim’s father, Stephen Holt, is suing the church and the local Chi Alpha chapter as well as the General Council and North Texas District Council of the Assemblies of God for “malice” and “gross negligence” for failing to warn parents …
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