by | Jun 26, 2024 | Uncategorized
Church attendance is down. Giving is iffy. Ministers are tired. But God is with us in lean times too.
There are many reasons to expect that the Western church, at least, is heading into a long season of scarcity. Much of the European church is already there, and here in the States, we aren’t so far behind: Attendance is down, though there is reason to suspect this trend line may have plateaued. Giving to church ministries was up in recent years, but the group giving the most is aging quickly, and it’s not yet clear that younger cohorts will fill the gap. Ministers, reporting more anxiety and less support, find themselves with fewer relationships and resources to support their work.
This abundance of scarcity will have a long-term impact on the character, health, and ministry of many congregations. Its effects are already familiar to smaller and more rural churches, but this is increasingly a reality shared by large and urban congregations too.
That may seem like a grim vision, but scarcity of time, energy, and resources can be a mixed blessing. For, while long periods of abundance are to be appreciated, they can be deceiving: We anticipate that the good times will not end, and when they inevitably do, it shakes our very foundations. Churchgoing rates in America, for example, have been discussed for years now as a sign of crisis. But these numbers are arguably nothing special in global and historical contexts. The downturn feels like a catastrophe only in light of 80 years of historically high membership.
So, what if we organized our church lives around an expectation of scarcity instead of an assumption of plenty? Behavioral science researchers Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir have examined how scarcity affects the way we make decisions. Summarized in their 2013 book Scarcity: Why …
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by | Jun 26, 2024 | Uncategorized
Four leaders weigh in on whether a woman president will change gender dynamics in the church.
Earlier this month, Mexico elected its first female president when Claudia Sheinbaum won 59.7 percent of the vote. The former mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum also previously served as an engineer and a university professor.
In recent years, Mexico has been hailed internationally as a model for female political leadership. In the 1990s, the government introduced policies promoting female participation as political candidates. Currently, 13 of Mexico’s 32 states are governed by women; Ana Lilia Rivera serves as president of the senate, and Guadalupe Taddei Zavala leads the National Electoral Institute, which organizes the country’s elections.
As women have advanced politically in Mexico, have women gained similar ground within the church? CT asked four Mexican evangelical women to weigh in (responses have been edited for length and clarity):
Alejandra Ortiz, co-coordinator of the Logos and Cosmos Initiative in Latin America in the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES):
The Mexican church is highly diverse in its political stances. Pastors and religious leaders often campaign for evangelical candidates who promote pro-family values, while others encourage voting from a neoconservative perspective. In this election, no evangelical leaders or institutions formally supported any candidate.
In political campaigns, candidates often view women as objects or puppets, something easy to manipulate. In a sense, this perception extends to the church as well. Women serve God actively but rarely occupy leadership positions in churches, as the new neoconservative wave seeks to further limit the spaces of influence for women. Those who are aligned with this vision use biblical passages like Genesis 3 and passages …
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by | Jun 25, 2024 | Uncategorized
With tens of thousands displaced from the northern border with Lebanon, believers balance their Palestinian and Israeli identities in pursuit of peace with all.
One Friday evening, a young woman sat her toddler on her lap at Christ the King Evangelical Episcopal Church in Ma’alot-Tarshiha, a mixed Arab-Jewish town in northern Israel five miles from the border with Lebanon. Like mothers everywhere, she clapped her hands and beckoned a response.
What does the cow say? “Moo,” the child replied.
What does the dog say? “Woof,” came the answer.
What does the bomb say? “Boom,” and they both laughed.
Only a few hours earlier, with Hezbollah rockets flying overhead, intercepted sometimes by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, church elders had debated meeting at all. When the siren sounded during the service, members wondered if they should enter the concrete basement shelter.
The playful mimicry belies the seriousness of the less reported conflict in the Galilee region, but it also reveals its everyday normalcy.
“By now the bombs have faded into the background,” said Talita Jiryis, the 28-year-old volunteer youth leader at Christ the King. “Dark humor is our mechanism to cope with fear and the uncertainty of tomorrow.”
That is, for the northern citizens who remain near the border. But a different uncertainty pains the tens of thousands evacuated from their homes. Arab Israeli Christians offered different assessments to CT, but all pray for peace in the land of their citizenship. The war in Gaza affects them too.
On October 8, one day after Hamas crossed the border into southern Israel and killed 1,200 Israelis, Hezbollah—the Shiite Muslim militia similarly aligned with Iran—launched its “support front” from Lebanon.
Daily exchange of rocket strikes and retaliatory fire has continued since.
But compared …
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by | Jun 25, 2024 | Uncategorized
For all their faults, our marriage rituals present family and promise-keeping as beautiful, desirable, and worth the effort.
It’s summer, and for a professor at a Christian college—an evangelical school in the South, no less—that means it’s wedding season. On my campus, jokes about “ring by spring” still abound.
Talk about a counterculture. Few things are less in tune with the zeitgeist. Americans are marrying and having children later than ever. And even in evangelical contexts, many young people’s parents, pastors, and professors are advising delayed marriage: Focus first on a degree, on establishing a career, on saving some money. Worry about a mate closer to 30 than to 20—and certainly don’t get pregnant! These things will take care of themselves.
This advice is well-intended, perhaps autobiographical. Many Christians in older generations remember and reject the old stigma of singleness into one’s 30s. They may have married young themselves, then come to regret it—or they may worry that young people, especially young women, will follow the script of early marriage and childbearing to their own regrets.
There’s also some real wisdom here: Don’t get married just because it seems like the next step on a checklist. Moreover, don’t make promises you can’t keep. Take marriage seriously, even if that means waiting for a few years.
The risk, though, is that a spouse may not be waiting for you. Marriage and children aren’t just arriving later; increasingly, they aren’t arriving at all. From my vantage point, the problem is not that too many of my students want to get married too young. It’s the opposite. They’ve gotten the memo from their families, churches, and secular culture alike. They know about the likelihood …
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by | Jun 25, 2024 | Uncategorized
Preaching on sex and gender led to local uproar and national headlines. Here are seven things I learned.
October 13, 2019, seemed like every other Sunday. And it was—until it wasn’t.
My sermon that day on Genesis 1:27 unexpectedly made national headlines, changing my life, our church, and the relationship our church had built with our community.
Since then, I’ve reflected on what transpired and how the things that we learned might help other churches as they prepare to teach on sexuality and gender.
In the fall of 2019, we started a yearlong preaching series through Genesis. We take a team approach to preaching, so we discussed how we wanted to handle Genesis 1:26–28—an incredibly important passage with profound implications. Dave Cover, who cofounded The Crossing church with me, preached on the image of God, and the plan was that I would preach the next week on what it means that humans are created male and female.
Knowing the sensitivity of the topic, I asked Dave and other pastors to read the sermon ahead of time and give me feedback. The final version was a team effort to speak truth in love. And the truth is that Genesis clearly teaches that God created people male or female. What people often derisively call the “gender binary” isn’t rooted in the patriarchy or Victorian ethics. It’s rooted in God’s design. Sex and gender aren’t social constructs.
It’s also true that transgender people will always be welcome to attend The Crossing. In the sermon, I told parents that if your child comes to you and says they are trans, the right response is to hug your child, tell them you love them, and assure them you will work through it together. I said that if someone visited the church, I’d use the name they shared with me. I want to build a relationship with …
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