by | Feb 21, 2024 | Uncategorized
A clash over leadership at the landmark evangelical church in Boston is testing the strength of democratic governance.
A years-long fight over leadership styles and decision-making processes at historic Park Street Church in Boston has boiled over into accusations of abusing spiritual authority and authoritarianism.
There are petitions calling for a congregational review of the leadership’s decision to fire a popular former minister, an open letter defending the current senior minister, public statements about “escalating difficulties,” and overt campaigning for rival slates of elder candidates ahead of the church’s annual meeting. People on both sides of the division say the congregation is besieged by spiritual warfare.
The conflict will come to a head on Sunday with the regularly scheduled vote on elders and budgets, which has become a “referendum” on the current leadership, according to a letter that the chair of the board of elders sent to the congregation on February 11.
At the 220-year-old church, once led by a founding father of modern evangelicalism, members are being asked to end the turmoil by voting to affirm the calling of its current senior minister, Mark Booker.
“We are a church in conflict,” Booker said in a video message to the church. “A yes vote on this would not mean that somehow I am a perfect leader or that I am doing everything just right. … But it is a way to say, I believe this church will be better off, Park Street will be better off, with Mark in the role of senior minister in the future.”
CT spoke to 15 current and former church leaders and members about the turmoil at Park Street. Most spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were afraid of being fired or otherwise punished—even kicked out of the church—if their names appeared in print. …
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by | Feb 21, 2024 | Uncategorized
Her faith and sacrifices have inspired many Chinese Christians to devote their lives to mission in the Muslim region.
In the 1940s, following a missiological vision of “Back to Jerusalem,” a group of visionary Chinese Christians set out with a heart for evangelizing Muslims, aspiring to traverse China’s northwestern provinces and neighboring countries.
He Enzheng and her future husband Zhao Maijia (Mecca Zhao) were among this group of pioneers. Their goal was to bring the gospel to Xinjiang, the autonomous region in China where the Uyghurs are the dominant ethnic group. Their efforts planted seeds that continue to shape the spiritual heritage of the Chinese church, motivating Christians to carry on their mission.
Born in rural Hebei province in October 1917, He grew up in the church in Tianjin and experienced spiritual rebirth at a revival meeting at age 15. At 17, she felt called to distant mission fields and pursued this vision at a Bible college. After she graduated in 1937, no opportunity for mission to unreached areas materialized, leading her to serve locally while seeking God’s direction.
In time, He joined the mission of the Northwest Bible College in Fengxiang, Shaanxi, teaching the Bible while caring for female students. The school was established in 1940 by Dai Yongmian (the Chinese name of James Hudson Taylor II, grandson of Hudson Taylor), with a focus on evangelizing the Muslim regions of northwest China. The college played a key role in training preachers and evangelists who served in that area.
On Easter 1943, Ma Ke, the vice president of the college, along with He and 13 others, received a vision to evangelize Xinjiang, a large region in the northwest. They formed the “Chinese Back to Jerusalem Evangelistic Band,” a groundbreaking, interdenominational Chinese organization free from foreign …
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by | Feb 20, 2024 | Uncategorized
Following in the footsteps of South Korea, the most-Christian country in Asia opens its own fundraising office.
Three years ago, a group of nearly 48 former Compassion International–sponsored children in the Philippines decided it was time for them to start investing in kids in their own country.
“Because we believe in the power of Christ and the strategies of Compassion in changing lives, we came together and decided that it is now our turn to do the same,” said Glendy Obahib, one of the core leaders of the Compassion Alumni Sponsorship Movement (CASM). “We were blessed with the gift of sponsorship and now we want to become a blessing to others through the same sponsorship.”
A new initiative from Compassion International will make this work even easier. Filipino nationals will now be able to sponsor children within the country and fund community development programs thanks to the establishment of Compassion Philippines Inc., an in-country support office.
The sole focus of Compassion Philippines will be fundraising, unlike Compassion International, which runs the programs. Compassion Australia is helping the new organization set up a legal identity and consulting on registration, insurance, and hiring so that Compassion Philippines can operate as a separate legal entity from Compassion International in the Philippines.
Currently, according to Precious Amor Tulay of Compassion Philippines, the new organization is pursuing bank account approval and securing government permits that will allow them to raise funds and enable donors to claim tax deductions.
Compassion’s staff hopes that this transition will increase support to the Philippines. Today, most of the funding for sponsored children in the Philippines comes from the US, Australia, and South Korea.
“By equipping local fundraising teams, we’re …
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by | Feb 20, 2024 | Uncategorized
After years of holdups, a task force says the work of abuse reform is too much for volunteers alone.
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention’s abuse reform task force announced plans Monday to launch a new, independent nonprofit to host a database of abuse pastors and to implement other reforms.
They still need the money to run it.
The new nonprofit will oversee a proposed Ministry Check website listing abusive pastors, which has stalled since a website for the abuse reforms was launched last year. Currently, no names of pastors are included on the website, sbcabuseprevention.com.
Josh Wester, a North Carolina pastor who chairs the SBC’s abuse reform implementation task force, said the new nonprofit, which he called an abuse response commission, will be independent of the SBC’s current structure.
He said the job of abuse reform was too big for a task force of volunteers to accomplish on their own. That led to the plan to launch a new organization.
“Given the current legal and financial challenges facing the SBC and the Executive Committee, the formation of a new independent organization is the only viable path that will allow progress toward abuse reform to continue unencumbered and without delay,” Wester told members of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee during a regularly scheduled meeting on Monday night. “To do this, we have to do this together.”
Wester said the Ministry Check website will include the names of Southern Baptists convicted of abuse and those who have had civil judgments against them. The task force has run into legal and financial delays in getting those names published, Wester said in his report.
The commission will also create an expanded “Ministry Toolkit” designed to help churches prevent abuse and …
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by | Feb 20, 2024 | Uncategorized
Churches should welcome questions. That doesn’t require embracing perpetual doubt.
What makes Christianity hard?
There are many possible answers to this question. How you answer it reveals a great deal not only about yourself—your temperament, your station in life, your mind and heart—but also about the context in which you live. Christians in different times and places would answer quite differently.
Suppose, for example, you live in Jerusalem just a few decades after the crucifixion of Jesus. What makes Christianity hard is not belief in the divine or the great distance separating you from “Bible times.” You’re in Bible times, and everyone believes in the divine. No, what makes it hard is the suffocating heat of legal persecution and social rejection. Confessing Christ’s name likely makes your life worse in tangible ways: Your family might disown you; your master might abuse you; your friends might ridicule you. The authorities might haul you in for questioning if you strike them as a troublemaker.
Or suppose you’re a nun in a medieval convent. You’ll live your whole life here, never marrying or bearing children or having a home of your own. You are pledged to God until death. You’re what people will later call a “mystic,” though that’s a rather dry term for having visions you often experience as suffering: ecstatic glimpses of the consuming fire that is the living Lord. What makes Christianity hard? You certainly don’t wonder about the existence of God—you’ve seen God with your own eyes. Nor are fame and wealth a source of temptation; your life is hidden away from the world. But your life is not easy. Faith remains hard.
Or imagine you’re someone else, somewhere else: a priest at a rural parish in early modern …
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