by | Jul 2, 2024 | Uncategorized
Why the church so often (erroneously) predicts our own demise.
The signs are escalating every day. The world is in turmoil. We are on the cusp—right now—of the end of the age.” So reads the disclaimer for an upcoming eschatological conference featuring some prominent American evangelical leaders.
Across the Atlantic, as a pastor in Belgium, I’ve also regularly heard from people in evangelical circles convinced or worried about current events revealing the fact that Christ is coming not just soon, as he put it, but very soon. I sympathize with them: Apart from global concerns, our continent faces many challenges that make me yearn for God’s kingdom.
Still, I’m often surprised: Why does this high level of immediate eschatological expectation continue when Jesus told us explicitly that we can’t know when the end will come (Matt. 24:36; Acts 1:7)? Have we Christians baptized pessimism? Perhaps we might consider the works of a 20th-century world-renowned science fiction writer and skeptic who envisioned the continuation of human life for tens of thousands of years—and then read our Bibles again. When it comes to where we’re headed, Scripture calls us to realism.
Around the time many young evangelicals found themselves reading premillennialist literature like Left Behind, I was absorbed in another series: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.
Asimov, a Russian native who emigrated to the United States as a toddler, wrote or edited more than 500 books. From 1942 to 1950, he published a collection of short stories and novels dedicated to the fall and rebuilding of a galactic empire in the distant future—approximately A.D. 24000. The Foundation trilogy became so influential that it is often considered to have inspired elements of other …
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by | Jul 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
Twenty years after a trusted counselor used faith to groom him for abuse, a Colorado man says he is trying to reclaim part of his life and take a stand for fellow victims.
Andrew Summersett felt his world shatter twice.
The first time was in 2009, when the Christian camp counselor he idolized was convicted of child abuse. It was then that Summersett saw though years of manipulation, trauma, and teenage confusion and realized he also was a victim.
The second time came in 2021, when he read reports that leaders at Kanakuk Kamps had known about Pete Newman’s predatory behavior against boys like him, and they covered it up.
After years under the weight of shame and secrecy, Summersett, 37, came forward last week in a lawsuit filed against Kanakuk, a number of its current and former leaders, and its insurer, alleging they fraudulently concealed Newman’s abuse from him.
He said the legal action was his way to regain control over part of his life “because I didn’t control what happened to me as a kid.”
Summersett says Newman—who is currently serving a double life sentence for child enticement and sodomy—abused him at his family’s home in Texas during a camp recruitment trip and again at Kanakuk’s K-Kamp in Branson, Missouri. He was 14 and 15 years old.
The same year that the former camper says his abuse began, Newman was warned by Kanakuk leadership “to stop sleeping alone with children, among other ‘healthy boundaries,’” the suit claims, citing a years-long pattern of Newman being promoted despite concerns about his nudity and other boundary-crossing behavior with children.
When Newman was arrested, Summersett turned to two camp directors, the daughter and then–son-in-law of Kanakuk CEO Joe White, to ask if they had known about Newman’s behavior and to share what happened to him.
The filing states that they told Summersett …
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by | Jul 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
Fifty years ago, the Lausanne Covenant’s solution to rampant division in evangelical ranks wasn’t uniformity.
In the 2000 movie Memento, protagonist Leonard Shelby has a specific brain injury that prevents him from forming new long-term memories. He can remember information for 30 seconds to a minute at most, but then he forgets everything.
Leonard’s disconnect from his past leaves him in a perpetual state of bewilderment about how he got into his present predicament: What enemy am I running from—and why? Why am I holding a gun? His confusion is a consequence of amnesia, an inability to remember one’s own history. If Leonard could just relearn and remember the salient parts of his past, he could finally return to a stable existence, with a sane understanding of himself and the people around him.
Being an evangelical today is much like this. We too are disconnected from our past, albeit for more reversible reasons than a brain injury. As a result, evangelicals are more divided now than ever, with many of us combating enemies who were once friends.
But what if we paused to remember our history? Not only would we recall who we are and how we got here, but we might even rediscover the best that evangelicalism has been, is, and can be once again.
Of course, one of the biggest problems today is that there seems to be almost no consensus on what the word evangelical even means. If only evangelicals from around the world could agree upon the baseline parameters for evangelicalism—something minimal enough to encourage healthy diversity but substantial enough to ensure doctrinal integrity.
What if something like this already exists?
Fifty years ago, in July 1974, around 2,700 Christian leaders from 150 countries traveled to Lausanne, Switzerland, at the behest of American evangelist Billy Graham and British theologian John …
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by | Jul 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
How the look and feel of the magazine have changed with the times.
Christianity Today has changed a bit since the first issue was published in October 1956. The look is different. The feel is different. We’ve chosen a different font.
One of the first editors of Christianity Today noted (with a hint of despair) that no one cares about fonts. He wasn’t wrong. Design elements—the font, or the width of the margin, the quality of the printer’s ink, and a million other near-invisible things—are meant not to be noticed directly but to give the magazine a “feel.”
If you do notice, and dig in to the history of Christianity Today’s design, one constant becomes clear: The magazine has been carefully updated, adjusted, and redesigned, time and again, to fulfill the promise of Today. CT strives to speak to this present moment, and that means sometimes changing how things look. It means, sometimes, caring more than normal about fonts.
1956 – Editor Carl F. H. Henry, planning the first issue of Christianity Today, complains that people think fonts are boring. The first issue uses Deepdene and Fairfield, which Henry considers modern typefaces.
1963 – CT’s first redesign is done by ad man Harvey Gabor, who will go on to direct the iconic commercial “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” Gabor says CT requires something “intangible” and “a style and momentum all its own.”
1966 – CT prints its first image on the cover—a globe surrounded by flames, all in grayscale. Inside, the only editorial image is a cartoon. Later the same year, the magazine experiments with covers in color.
1976 – Color photos begin to appear semiregularly on CT covers. The 20th anniversary issue features Billy Graham in …
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by | Jul 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
Jesus asked if we want to get well. But do we?
At 24, I was a recent Bible college graduate and married a whopping six days when I began my first ministry as a hospital chaplain. I had never seen a dead body before. I had no experience with grief. I was way out of my depth.
After I arrived, there was a brief meet and greet with the hospital staff, who handed me four beepers and began a tour of the facility. A few minutes later, one beeper flashed brightly and I soon found myself in a small room filled with unhinged, screaming people. They had just been told their mother died on the surgery table. I had no idea what to do. That is where I first met my anxiety.
The next several weeks were similar. There is nothing like sudden death, bone marrow tests, bald children, and emergency surgeries to generate anxiety. My surprise was how much it generated in me.
Chaplains walk into dozens of anxious rooms every day. We deeply connect to strangers in the worst and most intimate moments of their lives. We bear witness to the presence of Christ in the midst of it. How do we do it day after day without catching all the anxiety flying around? How do we not infect the room with our own? Those early weeks revealed so much unrest bubbling underneath my awareness. It infected my ability to be connected and present with God and people in their worst moments.
The year I served as a chaplain, I was introduced to systems theory, which specifically helps identify anxiety—first in ourselves and then in the people around us. I studied it further in graduate school and have been studying and teaching it ever since. I now travel the world and help leaders learn the tools to notice their own triggers, notice when they are reactive instead of connected, and notice the anxious patterns that develop …
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