by | Jun 28, 2024 | Uncategorized
It’s been two years since its former pastor resigned and was arrested, but The Meeting House continues to feel the impact of its past.
The Meeting House was one of the largest megachurches in Canada, but this Sunday, each of its locations will be empty. Its home church gatherings won’t meet during the week. Kids won’t get together for youth programs. Members can’t see their pastors for counsel.
In the aftermath of an abuse scandal that shook the congregation and its leadership, the Ontario-area multisite church announced that it had lost a portion of its insurance coverage and would have to pause its ministry activities.
“Our current insurer has advised us that they will not be renewing our Abuse Liability (AL) and Employment Practices Liability (EPL) coverage as of June 30, 2024,” according to an email sent to congregants, explaining that the Anabaptist megachurch has struggled to get an extension from its insurer or to find another option for replacement coverage.
“In light of this development, we feel led to pause our normal ministry for the month of July to dedicate time to continue discerning what form God is inviting us to take into the future as a network of churches,” the Transition Board of Overseers and Network Leadership Team wrote.
The scenario at The Meeting House showcases the lasting damage that churches can face as a result of abuse by leaders and their response.
It’s been over two years since pastor Bruxy Cavey resigned from The Meeting House and was charged with sexual assault. Since then, further allegations have emerged. The church lost leaders and members, shuttering at least one of its sites, and has scrambled to recover. With the insurance status in question, ministry activities will be shut down at least through July.
“When I heard that news, I was just flabbergasted,” said interim …
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by | Jun 28, 2024 | Uncategorized
As Russia’s invasion fades from Western interest, daily musings from an evangelical seminary leader remind readers of the war’s ongoing reality for Ukrainian Christians who stay and serve.
Editor’s note: Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Taras Dyatlik, an evangelical Ukrainian theological educator, has shared his daily reflections in a WhatsApp group. The following are two recent journal entries from June (edited for style and clarity).
In an old carriage with shabby walls and faded curtains, I am traveling on a train from Kharkiv to Uzhhorod in the same cabin as a soldier returning home for a short but longed-for vacation. His wife and children have found temporary shelter in a land saturated with pain and fear.
Yesterday, this soldier bought his daughter a small puppy. Now, he plays with it like a child, hugging and kissing it as if he has found a ray of light in this tiny creature. In a few days, he will return to the hell of war, and the puppy will remind his daughter of her father’s love.
The soldier is about 30, with a weathered, tanned face. He has scars on his arms and legs and deep wrinkles near his eyes. He naps nervously, anxiously, like almost everyone who has returned from the frontline.
Sometimes, he falls into a deep sleep and starts snoring loudly as if trying to drown out the memories of explosions and cries of pain. And when he is not snoring yet still asleep, he shouts orders as if he were back in the middle of a battle.
At one of the stations, when the rattle of the wheels and the squeaks of the worn-out railway car have subsided for a moment, an elegant woman of medium height in a blue tracksuit flies out of the neighboring cabin. She’s about 35, and once upon a time, she must have driven men crazy with her beauty. But now her face is haggard, with deep shadows under her eyes.
Bursting into our compartment, she cries out to me, “Tell …
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by | Jun 28, 2024 | Uncategorized
Character matters more than talking points in choosing a leader. And it’s hard to know what questions to ask about it.
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
It used to be that watching two 80-year-old men argue about what to do in the Middle East might happen accidentally at McDonald’s at seven on a Saturday morning. Now, the whole world is watching because one of those two men will get the nuclear codes.
The presidential debates this year will have all sorts of implications for the country, but Christians should especially pay attention to what these events don’t do. The most important factors in choosing a leader aren’t the ones being debated.
The problem is not simply that presidential debates—and, increasingly, debates for lower offices—are entertainment driven, in ways that Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman warned us about. The moments most people look for in a debate are more like pro wrestling than rational discussion of qualifications and issues.
Plenty of people—from all over the political spectrum—are nervous about this year’s debates, but they’re not nervous that their candidate won’t have the right policy response. They are nervous that one candidate or the other might walk to the microphone and order the value meal with extra fries or fall down the steps of the platform. But there’s a deeper reason why debates—even in the best of situations—don’t help us as much as we think.
Debates tend to reinforce a fundamental problem with what we think we’re doing when we choose leaders. The problem is not that the debates aren’t focused enough on issues; it’s that we are choosing a leader to deal with issues that can’t possibly be asked about in a debate. That’s because …
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by | Jun 28, 2024 | Uncategorized
Second only to Carnival, festivals for St. Anthony, St. John, and St. Peter pack the June calendar. Pastors debate if the Festas Juninas are folk celebrations or idol worship.
When it comes to festivals, the world knows Brazil best for Carnival, its raucous celebration of Mardi Gras, full of elaborate costumes, dancing on the street, and revelry.
But ask many Brazilians, and they’ll tell you they enjoy their June festivals even more. Originating from European pagans to celebrate the arrival of summer and call for a bountiful harvest (hence the fact that they fall during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer), these fests were later co-opted by the Catholic church under Festa Junina, or a set of holidays celebrating saints Anthony, John the Baptist, and Peter. Later, Portugal exported the holiday to colonial Brazil, which has since transformed the festivities into a multiweek celebration marked by eating canjica (a dessert made from corn that has the consistency of a thicker porridge) and pamonha (creamed corn cooked inside corn husks), decorating streets with colorful flags, and streaming forró and baião songs from speakers.
Traditionally, those street parties were part of broader Catholic celebrations that included Masses and processions accompanied by images of the saints. Devotees followed, and many used this time to pay off promises made to the saints, which included walking on their knees as a penance or making donations to the parish.
Despite its Christian heritage, like Carnival, many evangelicals have similarly scorned Festa Junina, deeming Roman Catholic devotion to saints as idolatry. While some say that the word Junina comes simply from the name of the month, Junho (June), others say it stems from Joanina and is a nod to Saint John the Baptist, consequently making it a form of hagiolatry (worship of saints). In fact, the most celebrated festival is named after him, …
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by | Jun 28, 2024 | Uncategorized
In a rapidly urbanizing China, some houses of worship are taking inspiration from the Bible while rethinking local architectural tradition.
A scroll-shaped steeple. An imposing ark-shaped atrium. A pipe organ feature reminiscent of 19th-century North American Methodist churches.
These are some of the more striking elements in the Three-Self churches that Brazilian German architect Dirk U. Moench has designed in China. The Lutheran founded the design firm INUCE in 2011 and has offices in Fuzhou, China, and Münsterlingen, Switzerland, where he is currently based.
Moench has designed four churches in China. Two churches in Fuzhou and Luoyuan were completed in 2018 and 2021, respectively, while one in Julong was finished this year. Another ongoing project in Jinshan has garnered nationwide attention and received tens of thousands of likes on social media platforms like Weibo and Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), according to Moench.
CT interviewed Moench on how Chinese church design interfaces with Western architectural principles and the ways a church’s physical building can interact with and participate in China’s swiftly evolving urban landscape.
When you were asked to design a church in Fuzhou’s Jinshan district, Chinese officials and politicians told you that they wanted “a modern church for a modern China.” How did you interpret this?
In many ways, this is a political sentence. You have to fill it with meaning as an architect and as a Christian.
Architects like to refer to the term genius loci, or “spirit of the place” in Latin, in that a building is a reaction to its immediate built environment, like historic buildings, specific roads, landscape features, and also built tradition—an architect’s filtered and amplified perception of a place’s essence.
Since Chinese Communist leader Deng Xiaoping’s …
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