by | Sep 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
The first thing you notice about Brenna Blain is probably her tattoos, a patchwork of ink stretching from her shoulders to her hands. A death’s-head hawkmoth spreads its wings around her neck, with a marking at its center that resembles a human skull.
For this 28-year-old Christian speaker and teacher in the Pacific Northwest, her brazen ink isn’t a liability—it’s an invitation. The neck tattoo opens unlikely conversations with those she says “would never choose to talk to a Christian willingly.”
“It’s one of the best outreach tools I’ve ever had,” Blain told CT. “I’ve been invited into spaces I wouldn’t typically expect to be invited into because people have been more willing to hear me out just simply based on my physical appearance.”
Her look is bold and trendy: combat boots with shorts, soft knit hats, oversized glasses. But her voice and daring message are what have grabbed the attention of young millennial and Gen Z Christians, as she shares hard and beautiful stories of trusting in God.
On her podcast and Instagram feed, Blain’s discussions of issues like eating disorders, sexuality, and mental illness have shaken up a polished evangelical online space. She describes herself as “gnarly” and admits to hating things like “overly mushy and emotional moments at women’s conferences,” so her style draws a certain kind of seeker—those tired of Christian platitudes and ripe for honest wrestling.
This raw vulnerability evolved out of a traumatic childhood that led Blain to question God’s love. After her parents divorced when she was 12, Blain was molested, discovered she was same-sex attracted, developed an eating disorder, began self-harming, and was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Unlike Christian teachers who share lessons from difficult seasons long ago, Blain is young enough that these struggles are still with her—she was hospitalized just last year for suicidal ideation—and yet she continues to open up and point to God amid them.
Blain began her podcast in 2019, the start of a modest public career as a self-proclaimed contemporary theologian. Blain’s reach has grown steadily with speaking engagements, podcast invitations (she recently appeared on With the Perrys with Preston and Jackie Hill Perry), and conference keynotes (she was a featured speaker at Preston Sprinkle’s 2024 Exiles in Babylon conference). Her debut book, Can I Say That?, released last month.
Blain has become an unofficial spokeswoman for Christian women who have struggled with same-sex attraction and want to remain obedient to the biblical call for sexual morality. She didn’t want to be pigeonholed or make that her whole persona.
As she gained a following, she felt led to share how God was moving during the painful parts of her life. Instead of waiting for healing from depression or peace about her childhood sexual abuse, she wondered if she could simply share her brokenness and utter dependence on God right now with her audience. She felt God affirm that conviction, and her witness grew.
Jackie Hill Perry called her “the kind of theologian this generation has been asking for,” saying that through her stories and spiritual insights, “we may not find every question answered but at the very least, we will have important truths to carry us when everything is confusing.”
Gen Z suffers from distinctively poor rates of mental health, and Blain speaks to those circumstances. She has over 44,000 Instagram followers—many say they see her authenticity and honesty as a refreshing reprieve from polished leaders who seem to have it all together.
Blain embraces a tough theology that doesn’t always, or often, have closure here on earth. Complete healing is possible, but for many people, it comes only in the New Jerusalem. “If you are wrestling or trying to decide if you will wrestle or walk away, my encouragement is that you wrestle and that you wrestle well,” she wrote in an Instagram post.
She goes where God calls, despite the imperfect circumstances of mental illness, a lingering eating disorder, and occasional suicidal ideation. In the past five years, he’s called her to the microphone, the stage, the altar, the delivery room, and the book publishing house.
None of this was the plan back when she was a closeted 14-year-old reeling from the pain of abuse.
Even though Blain attended a conservative church and was homeschooled by a mom who made dinner every night, her upbringing wasn’t strict. Her parents gave her autonomy, like when they allowed her to dye her hair blue.
As a teen, though, Blain felt rudderless. She began sharing her attractions in secret online. She was terrified of others knowing, thinking of the hateful signs and slogans from Westboro Baptist Church, whose protests were in the news. The anxiety and depression pushed her toward despair.
When she opened up to her youth pastor, he thanked her for sharing and told her many people struggle with same-sex attraction. Despite her church’s biblically orthodox stance on sexuality, the condemnation she expected never came. This compassionate response was deeply formative.
After high school, Blain signed up for a trip with Youth with a Mission (YWAM), mostly as a way to get to Hawaii, where the team would be training for six months. She knew how to “play a Christian,” and the trip was merely a ticket out of her hometown.
She started off “so bored out of my gourd from listening to typical church kids’ stories that I might as well have been on Ambien.” But halfway through that trip, Blain had what she said was an undeniable encounter with God after witnessing a supernatural moment with a friend. After that, she felt called to become a wholehearted servant on a mission for the kingdom.
The transition was “rough.” As she continued to struggle with an eating disorder that nearly toppled her ability to finish the trip, Blain learned to trust God in uncertainty. “I told myself, even if I do get sent home … he has been faithful in all these things,” she said. “Even in this brokenness, he’s still here.”
Her struggle with same-sex attraction remained as well. She thought she’d remain celibate for life.
While on mission, she received a six-page letter from Austin Blain, a friend she barely knew from back home. She saw the connection as God’s perfect timing, changing her heart, drawing Austin near, and ultimately setting her up for what would come next—which was marriage, ministry, and motherhood.
The two remained platonic friends, exchanging long letters and phone calls for more than a year as they each completed their missions with YWAM (Austin went on his own trip just as Brenna returned). “By the time I got back, I think we already knew we wanted to get married before we even started dating,” Austin said in an interview with CT.
Despite still feeling same-sex attraction, Brenna believed God had orchestrated their relationship. Her sexual orientation was a “non-issue” for Austin.
“I felt like, if the Lord was who the Lord was, that he could do anything,” Austin told CT. “From my point of view, it was like, this is not bigger than the Lord.”
The two were soon married and now have two little boys, with whom Blain stays home while managing her ministry responsibilities in early mornings, naptimes, stolen moments, and evenings when Austin is home. Blain said staying “wildly scheduled” (she wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to run, sans headphones) keeps her mental health in check, but her days can range from writing sermons to “washing my 3-year-old’s poop off the back patio.”
Even among evangelicals who uphold a traditional view of marriage, there’s a range of approaches to same-sex attraction and identity, and Blain doesn’t fall neatly into one particular camp. She said she resonates with aspects of both Side B (which says same-sex orientation is not a sin but acting on it is) and Side Y (which says people shouldn’t identify themselves by their sexual orientation), but doesn’t label herself as either.
Blain believes she’ll always be same-sex attracted, which clashes with some Christian viewpoints that say such attraction is itself sinful. Blain sees same-sex attraction as a result of the Fall and, therefore, unwanted.
“While I do not believe it is sinful to have the temptation, I am not comfortable with the idea of ‘being okay with the temptation’ either,” she said. “James 1:14–15 is very clear on the implications of being apathetic towards our currently existing temptations.”
Abiding by Scripture, Blain said she works to put temptation “to death” through confession and accountability. Same-sex attraction, she said, should not disqualify believers from leadership or Christian commitment, even if it never subsides.
Blain leads a small group for high school girls at her church and stays in touch with her mentor from when she was around that age. The two women text daily, meet monthly, and practice confession regularly; her mentor even comes along on speaking trips when her husband can’t.
Blain counts veteran theologian and pastor Gerry Breshears as a mentor, calling him a “pastor to pastors”; she meets with him quarterly for prayer and consultation. Beyond that, Blain sees a Christian counselor monthly and names female teachers Phylicia Masonheimer, Lisa Bevere, and Jackie Hill Perry as role models and mentors of wisdom and encouragement over the past four years of her public ministry.
Blain also calls out churches that expect people to “live by the standards of Christ before getting to know the person of Christ” as homophobic. Blain referenced 1 Corinthians 2:14, which says those without the Spirit “cannot understand” or “discern” the truth.
She might use someone’s preferred pronouns as a modicum of respect since others aren’t yet in a relationship with God as she is—a controversial take for a theologically conservative believer.
On an episode of the Theology in the Raw podcast, Blain said she’s often been told that she’s “the reason LGBTQ teens commit suicide” and that her mixed-orientation marriage is destined for divorce. She takes it in stride, saying she’s confident in the truth of the Bible and convictions of her heart.
“When I get comments like that, I remember that most people are just responding out of fear and that is a very real thing, especially if they don’t know the peace of Jesus,” she said.
And not everyone loves her image. Blain said, for example, that some Christians find her skull tattoos “demonic” or “evil.” But she said they help others feel more comfortable opening up and sharing their stories with her.
“God created a moth out of nature that has a design that looks like a skull on it. Witches didn’t create it; God did,” Blain said in response to her critics. “The skull is a reminder that all face death, and what will it serve as a doorway for?”
This kind of sobering question is regular fodder for Blain’s platform. Small talk isn’t really in her wheelhouse. She’s here for the real thing, nobly serious about ideas that lead people in her community to say they “feel seen”—maybe for the first time—by her work.
“I feel everything [Blain] was saying as someone who has too attempted suicide many times,” said one commenter after seeing her story online.
She has also shared some of her darkest moments with her audience. In 2023, Blain posted a photo of herself in a hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and monitors, huddled beneath a blanket in the aftermath of an earlier suicide attempt.
“Suffering has clarified my theology,” she wrote in her new book. Blain claims saving grace in Jesus while living through sometimes debilitating mental illness, and she thinks Christians should be open and honest about that.
“People are starving to see real testimonies of what it means to live in the ‘now and not yet’ of this broken world,” she said.
“As someone struggling with an incurable disease and a history of mental illness, I feel seen and encouraged,” said one commentor on Instagram.
Nearly two years out from her last hospitalization, Blain is publicly discussing the harsh realities of mental illness, bucking stereotypical Christian talking points that advocate assured healing. “God is here with us, but He doesn’t always heal, He doesn’t always intervene, and He doesn’t always promise earthly rescue,” she wrote. “For most of us we live life by managing it. Remission isn’t a term used in regards to mental health.”
When well-known pastor John MacArthur recently claimed there is “no such thing” as mental illnesses like PTSD, OCD, or ADHD, calling them “noble lies” that “give the excuse to … medicate people,” Blain had harsh words in response.
“It’s as harmful as telling someone that their brain cancer does not exist,” Blain said. “Approximately 8 million deaths each year are attributable to mental disorders, whereas 17,200 people die from a malignant brain tumor.”
Blain knows some will be wary of her ministry considering her publicly known suicide attempt, but she doesn’t believe a mental illness should disqualify one from ministry. Such a condition, she said, shows others how to live out a process of surrender, suffering, and doubt while still clinging to God.
“The Bible is not a list of rules,” she wrote in Can I Say That? “It is a shovel that uncovers the sinful condition of our hearts, uproots us from our sinful selves, and replants us within God’s will and safety.”
The post Brenna Blain: ‘Suffering Clarified My Theology’ appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Sep 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
If you tried to design an ideal setting for learning how to be a good neighbor, it would look a lot like a college campus.
As the president of a campus ministry, I might be a little biased in that assessment. But imagine the reality that a brand-new college student faces when they come to campus for the first time. Thousands are already there from every walk of life: athletes, musicians, activists, artists, people of different cultures and ethnicities, introverts and extroverts, people who like to party and stay out late, people who like to stay in and get up early.
All of them chose this school, but none of them chose each other. All at once, they’re thrust into a community, stuck together in dorms and classes and social clubs.
These college students have no choice but to learn to coexist. To share space and navigate conflict. To be neighbors.
There’s a durable public stereotype that members of Gen Z can’t live in neighborly ways—that they’re too anxious and fearful, too conflict avoidant and entitled. Frankly, I see something different. What I see on campus, in the students that InterVarsity and our fellow campus ministries serve, is a generation for whom neighborliness is the essence of day-to-day life, vital to navigating the tensions we’ve seen at universities in the past year.
Today’s college students have important lessons for the broader church about how to live alongside neighbors who may misunderstand them, disagree with them, or disdain them. Here are three.
First, neighborliness requires creativity of witness. Each day, Christian students at secular universities interact with countless complicated people and circumstances in which God calls them to be Christlike, seeking not “their own good, but the good of others” (1 Cor. 10:24). And, in the power of the Spirit, I see time and again how students respond with creative acts of gospel witness—fresh outreach ideas, innovative responses to injustice, bold prayers for physical healing, exciting calls to faith, authentic acts of relational generosity, and on and on.
One example comes from the College of William & Mary. For many years, the college had a problem with excessive drinking and partying on the last day of classes. To serve their classmates, InterVarsity students set up griddles in the center of campus and made pancakes for students who wanted a free meal and a safe alternative place to hang out. Today, “Pancake House” is a bi-annual event that creatively blesses over 2,000 people every semester, easily making it the largest student event on campus.
Much of the polarization we experience in today’s culture comes down to a lack of creative witness—a dull defaulting to the same staid talking points, stale arguments, and predictable reactions. But Christian students, like those at William & Mary, are learning something different. In their dynamic and diverse campus environment, they’re learning to follow the Spirit into fresh forms of neighborliness that the rest of the American church can learn from.
Second, being a good neighbor requires authenticity of witness. It’s a well-established truism that Gen Z values authenticity. They see how a holistically virtuous life can bring beauty out of the world’s ugliness, and how hypocrisy can corrupt people and institutions. This clarity of vision is one of the things I most admire about the students I meet.
Authenticity of witness is fundamentally a neighborly way of life. It is how we ensure that our interior life with Christ stays congruent with our public personas, resulting in lives that overflow with faithful obedience to our friends and communities. “Let love be sincere,” Paul says in Romans 12:9–10. “Honor one another above yourselves” (italics mine).
Today’s prevailing culture (even on campus, and sometimes in Christian circles) places a special premium on winning and on looking out for number one, honoring oneself above others. Practicing genuine love and authentic witness that sees the beauty of serving others, even those who disagree with you, is deeply countercultural.
Several years ago, the InterVarsity chapter at Sonoma State University was temporarily forced to move off-campus because they required their student leaders to be Christians. They were unable to advertise for events, hold meetings, or organize public outreaches. But rather than growing bitter or compromising their convictions, the chapter stood firm and responded with authentic witness. They reinvented how they did campus ministry, gathering unofficially and carrying portable backpack banners to advertise their chapter. During that year, that chapter saw a record number of conversions!
This is the kind of witness that Gen Z longs for, and that campus ministries are helping students grow into. It is a sensitivity to authentic discipleship that is a powerful example for the rest of the American church.
And finally, being a good neighbor requires humility of witness—serving and loving each other in small, common ways. It’s what the apostle Paul seems to call for in Philippians 2:3–4 when he says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”
When I was a student in my InterVarsity undergraduate chapter, one of the ways we served our campus was going door-to-door offering to clean people’s dorm rooms. There was no grand strategic purpose. We didn’t run a focus group and discover that people were 61 percent more likely to come to Bible study if their rooms were clean. We just knew that it was a small part of our fellow students’ lives where they might need help, and where we could serve. It was a humble, ordinary act of love to the people in our community, regardless of how much or little we had in common with them—which typifies neighborliness.
Today’s students are just as eager to care for and serve one another in the common and the ordinary. At Trinity University in San Antonio, the InterVarsity chapter has a unique way of making meaningful connections with new students who may feel lost and lonely on campus. The chapter offers to sit with those who have no one to eat with in the cafeteria—sometimes even holding a sign reading “Dine with us!” They show Jesus’ love through the ordinary gifts of invitation and friendship.
In these dimensions of neighborly witness—creativity, authenticity, and humility—today’s college students are an example of a redemptive path forward for the church in our culture. My prayer is that the church will take note of all that God is doing in them, welcome their gifts with neighborly love, and learn from them.
Tom Lin is the president and CEO of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA.
Learn more about Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy.
The post Give Gen-Z Students Some Credit appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Sep 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
A drug abuse crisis is raging in Zimbabwe, with experts and medics warning that a staggering 57 percent of Zimbabwe’s youth are involved with illicit drugs, from cocaine and ecstasy to tainted cough syrup and illegally brewed beers.
The church hasn’t been spared, and many leaders say they’re unsure how to respond.
“At first, ten years ago, we would suspend church youths dabbling in cocaine or ecstasy pills or illicit whiskies, intimidating them with Bible verses,” said Benny Guyo, a pastor with the United Baptist Church of Zimbabwe in Harare. “Now, we try to dialogue with them and get them help. If not, we will lose half the congregation.”
There’s a sense of hopelessness among Zimbabwe’s young people. They struggle to see prospects in a country with the highest inflation in the world and staggering unemployment.
Most of the population is under 25, and 41 percent of them are looking for a job, according to an Afrobarometer survey released in late 2023. Trade unionists say this is a conservative figure; real unemployment could be double that.
In this cultural climate, drugs have taken off. Transnational networks, shipping contraband from Asia or South America, are supplying Zimbabwe’s streets, taking with them lucrative profits but leaving behind public health issues and societal devastation.
“It’s mayhem: illicit powders, drinks, pills, or cigarettes,” said Tynos Magombedze, a retired Adventist pastor and now an anti-corruption activist in Bulawayo, the country’s second-largest city.
When the illicit drugs problem began around 2013, schools and prisons tried to suppress it. “Headmasters were empowered to beat errant youths as some sort of discipline,” said Magombedze. “Prison officers would round up street dealers and users of cannabis or ecstasy.”
Churches in Zimbabwe tend to be quite conservative, so they watched from the sidelines, deferring the drug abuse issue to other institutions. In a few circumstances when drug users were identified in churches, the default option was to rebuke, suspend, or expel worshipers who were battling addictions.
“We were acting holier-than-thou, closing our eyes, pretending drugs don’t exist in churches,” said Guyo.
But over the past decade, the crisis has overpowered police, prisons, and schools and has overflowed into churches.
“The drug menace has landed at our pulpits,” said church elder Josini Moyo.
It may have been there all along. Churches had largely failed to see that their youth, and in some instances their pastors too, had been battling addictions.
In townships and affluent suburbs, churches from large denominations, such as Anglican and Catholic churches, typically displayed inspirational Christian verses or Sunday service times. Now, they have signs on or near their churches with messages like “Drugs Kill All Dreams,” “Resist the Scourge of Drugs,” and even “Drugs Are the Antichrist.”
“A new urgency has arrived,” said Moyo, who serves at Zion Christian Church (ZCC) in Zimbabwe. The biggest African-initiated church in the country, ZCC doesn’t belong to the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe or the Zimbabwe Council of Churches.
Across traditions and denominations, Zimbabwe’s churches have been thrust into unfamiliar territory by the drug crisis.
In addition to erecting antidrug billboards on church gates, they’re tweaking some youth worship meetings and repurposing them as drug counseling workshops, introducing drug messaging in Sunday services, and welcoming back suspended members who are battling addictions or have undergone recovery.
“I thank the church for making a U-turn,” said Ashlee Gutu, 33, pastor of the Jekenisheni Church in Zimbabwe.
Five years ago, Gutu lost his marriage, finances, and job as a pastor when his addiction to ecstasy pills and crystal methamphetamine (called mutoriro in Zimbabwe) threw him off course. The church suspended him for one year.
Jekenisheni Church began informally in the 1920s and is one of the oldest indigenous Apostolic churches across the country and in neighboring Mozambique. It has been largely detached from older Western denominations as well as Zimbabwe’s urban, post-colonial evangelicals.
But while battling addiction on the sidelines, Gutu says he met several elders of his church and other denominations who secretly confided in him that they too were fighting addictions to cannabis or alcohol.
“They were Anglicans, Adventists, Pentecostals, Methodists, everyone you can think of,” he added.
When Gutu agreed to go to a trial rehab program that the Jekenisheni Church had established in alliance with private medical counselors and therapists, Gutu’s life improved.
His church started refer congregants and pastors who were battling addictions to therapy, with the church paying the participating counselors and doctors. The in-house therapy program has worked with 40 congregants battling addictions in the past two years, and 25 of them have beat their problems, he said.
Other Christian networks are also active against the country’s drug abuse epidemic. For example, in May in Chitungwiza (the most populous township of the capital), the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ), together with Teen Rescue Mission (TRM), hosted community outreach meetings and anti-drug prayer weeks as a way of confronting the pandemic.
“We have instructed pastors in our networks to visit schools and public markets and teach teenagers about the linked troubles of drug abuse, teen pregnancies, and school dropout. We are meeting troubled youths who want to be directed to accessible rehabilitation programs. In a few years, our efforts should bear fruit in the antidrug fight,” said Dino Matsika, a youth outreach coordinator with the EFZ.
Despite the surge in illicit drug abuse, the country’s struggling public health care system simply has no money for therapy. Compared to urgent issues of infectious diseases (tuberculosis, HIV, malaria), the illicit drug abuse menace is seen as a lesser priority. It doesn’t help that, according to a Lancet medical survey, Zimbabwe only has 17 registered psychiatrists in a country with a population of 15 million.
“A realistic way to beat this is for churches to stand loud on the pulpit and band together with police, schools, NGOs, government, and parents, and steer youths from drugs,” said Guyo. “We must not work in silos.”
The post With Drug Abuse Raging, Zimbabwe’s Churches Turn from Punishment to Mercy appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Sep 23, 2024 | Uncategorized
It’s Saturday night, and you’re looking for jazz in Germany’s capital. You could catch an after-midnight jam session at A-Trane in Charlottenburg, get cozy in the stylish, intimate ambience of the Zig Zag Club in Friedenau, or catch a solo saxophonist serenading the crowd at Berlin’s oldest jazz club, Quasimodo.
And there’s one more option: You could wait until morning and go to church in the Wedding district.
One part church plant, one part jazz project, Kiez Church (Neighborhood Church), in the multiethnic district of Wedding is led by Ali and Rich Maegraith, Australian missionaries who say they want to bring the gospel to the cosmopolitan city’s art scene.
Berlin is a magnet for musicians—a place to connect and prove your chops. The German capital is a hub for many different European music scenes, from electronic dance to Afropop, classical to klezmer, and attracts creative people from all over.
The Maegraiths, who moved to Berlin in 2015, say that’s their in. The city’s music scene provides them with evangelistic opportunities. Rich, a professional jazz musician, and Ali, a vocalist and songwriter, moved to the city to serve with the European Christian Mission agency.
“We’ve met many people through jam sessions, performances, or just busking on the streets,” Ali told CT.
When they first arrived, Rich would go to jam sessions every night, all over the city.
“In Berlin, the jazz scene is already a community, where people will play and hang out together until the early hours of the morning,” he said. “They even call it ‘jazz church.’”
Berlin’s nightlife is more readily associated with techno and punk, but it also has a long historical relationship with jazz. The improvisational, syncopated music first came to the German capital at the end of World War I, when it was warmly received by the post-war population of the Weimar Republic.
When the American-born French singer and dancer Josephine Baker visited Berlin in 1925, she found the city dazzling with a vibrant jazz scene. Her performances were received with warm adulation. And popular performers like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington took the city by storm at a time when it was the third largest metropolitan area in the world by population.
Nazis put an end to jazz when they took control, but it came back with the Allied victory in World War II. Soldiers stationed in the city brought the music of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Miles Davis with them. This time, jazz stuck.
Today, Berlin is one of the best places in Europe to hear a live jazz show. And one of the places you can do that is at Kiez Church Wedding.
The Sunday morning set-up is laid back, with a homey feel: There’s a Turkish rug on the floor, a map of Berlin’s neighborhoods on the wall, a smattering of musical equipment on stage, and a bunch of house plants. The music is a mix of contemporary Christian worship songs and a worship-themed jazz jam session with Ali, Rich, and other musicians they have met along the way.
The Maegraiths call it “dual thing.” They want to offer a biblically grounded community for young people living in Wedding and use their musical gifts to create improvisational forms of church music.
Celebrating its fourth anniversary in September 2024, the church offers bilingual German and English worship. Leadership is shared between Germans and Australians, and the staff includes international interns, students, and immigrants.
About 30 people regularly attend Kiez Church. A lot of them are artists, musicians, and students, or young professions.
Rich, who preaches most Sundays, shared his own experience of being a professional musician.
“Anyone coming to visit can hear how their pastor knows what it’s like to be living in the world,” he said. “He’s not in some Christian bubble, doing churchy stuff, he’s part of the city’s day-to-day experience.”
The church plant has been pretty successful—which is hard to do in Europe. Rich and Ali, however, said they didn’t start with much of a plan. They are, by their account, “accidental church planters.”
“We weren’t well-versed with the models when we started; it just kind of happened,” said Ali.
Ever the jazz musicians, they have improvised their way through church planting. At their fourth anniversary service, for example, Ali and Rich put together the set list the night before, without the chance to rehearse before going “live” in worship the next day. It worked.
“We are just doing our thing,” Ali said. “We pray, wait on the lord, see what happens, what he does.
“I still have moments wondering, ‘Is this really a church?’” Ali said.
Now, after four years, the “dual thing” jazz church has turned into an LP to share with the city and others who are interested in a record of jazz grounded in the life of a church.
The album the Berlin Psalm Project released with a special concert in March 2024 is a collection of psalms set to modern jazz, written and performed by Ali and a group of international, Berlin-based performers. Ali said the album reflects the way the Psalms “speak to the deepest inner longings of all human beings” and give “a modern voice to ancient conversations with the Creator.”
Some songs emphasize lament and others joy and adoration, including renditions of Psalm 8 (“Oh Lord our God”), Psalm 46 (“Gott ist unsere Zuflucht und Stärke”), and Psalm 27 (“Der Herr ist mein Licht”), preformed on trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, bass, piano, and drums, with Rich on tenor sax and bass clarinet.
Above all else, Ali believes, Berliners just want you to be honest.
“They want to hear authentic expressions, to know what you really feel and where you’re coming from,” she said, “and that’s what the Psalms are all about—they are some of the most honest parts of the Bible.”
And jazz, Ali has found, shares that deep commitment to authenticity, pairing well with biblical texts. Improvisation captures the emotion and essence of a moment and provides “the perfect setting to explore deeply into what it means to pour out our hearts in vulnerability before God,” she said.
Katya Sourikova, a pianist and composer who has worked with the Maegraiths on other recordings, said the project impressed her with its breadth of bold, dramatic, and theatrical musical expressions. The spectrum of modern jazz on the album is “not what one would immediately associate with the setting of religious texts,” she said, but it “sets this project apart from many others working in this genre.”
The project has also impressed church leaders who appreciate the crossover between the arts and faith. In a rave review, Mark Lau, director of worship arts at Redeemer Downtown in New York City, called the project “a sublime work of art, vision, and energy.”
Lau said the Berlin Psalm Project is “a beautifully nuanced combination of uplifting lyrics, majestic ensemble writing, telepathic improvisation, bubbling textures and infectious groove. Instantly accessible yet driven by a subtle complexity that keeps the listener engaged throughout.”
Franz Weidauer, a mathematician and electric guitarist in Leipzig, a city in Germany’s east known for its connection to Johann Sebastian Bach, also loves the album. He said it’s a fresh expression of art and faith in Europe.
“People might see the Psalms as ‘old-fashioned,’” Weidauer said, “but they are, in many ways, a modern songbook, a voice for what we are feeling today.”
Weidauer works with Crescendo, a network of Christian artists and musicians founded in Basel, Switzerland, which now has locations across Europe. He has played in various praise bands, jazz combos, and indie groups over the years. When he listens to the Maegraiths’ album, he said he is reminded of how jazz music has the power to speak to people on a deep level.
“There’s a sense of transcendence through jazz,” Weidauer said, “the power to connect us to a creative force—even those who are hesitant to talk about ‘God.’”
That’s the kind of innovation and improvisation that creates evangelical opportunities in urban centers like Berlin. Weidauer said he hopes others embrace the idea of jazz in church. Kiez Church could be a model for other “accidental” church planters to follow.
“What the Maegraiths have done is provide people a broader perspective on what ‘church music’ can be,” Weidauer said. “Urban people, who might not otherwise be interested in classical church settings, are open to spiritual connection. … Jazz music can open that connection.”
The post Berlin Church Plant Embraces All That Jazz appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Sep 23, 2024 | Uncategorized
It’s Saturday night, and you’re looking for jazz in Germany’s capital. You could catch an after-midnight jam session at A-Trane in Charlottenburg, get cozy in the stylish, intimate ambience of the Zig Zag Club in Friedenau, or catch a solo saxophonist serenading the crowd at Berlin’s oldest jazz club, Quasimodo.
And there’s one more option: You could wait until morning and go to church in the Wedding district.
One part church plant, one part jazz project, Kiez Church (Neighborhood Church), in the multiethnic district of Wedding is led by Ali and Rich Maegraith, Australian missionaries who say they want to bring the gospel to the cosmopolitan city’s art scene.
Berlin is a magnet for musicians—a place to connect and prove your chops. The German capital is a hub for many different European music scenes, from electronic dance to Afropop, classical to klezmer, and attracts creative people from all over.
The Maegraiths, who moved to Berlin in 2015, say that’s their in. The city’s music scene provides them with evangelistic opportunities. Rich, a professional jazz musician, and Ali, a vocalist and songwriter, moved to the city to serve with the European Christian Mission agency.
“We’ve met many people through jam sessions, performances, or just busking on the streets,” Ali told CT.
When they first arrived, Rich would go to jam sessions every night, all over the city.
“In Berlin, the jazz scene is already a community, where people will play and hang out together until the early hours of the morning,” he said. “They even call it ‘jazz church.’”
Berlin’s nightlife is more readily associated with techno and punk, but it also has a long historical relationship with jazz. The improvisational, syncopated music first came to the German capital at the end of World War I, when it was warmly received by the post-war population of the Weimar Republic.
When the American-born French singer and dancer Josephine Baker visited Berlin in 1925, she found the city dazzling with a vibrant jazz scene. Her performances were received with warm adulation. And popular performers like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington took the city by storm at a time when it was the third largest metropolitan area in the world by population.
Nazis put an end to jazz when they took control, but it came back with the Allied victory in World War II. Soldiers stationed in the city brought the music of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Miles Davis with them. This time, jazz stuck.
Today, Berlin is one of the best places in Europe to hear a live jazz show. And one of the places you can do that is at Kiez Church Wedding.
The Sunday morning set-up is laid back, with a homey feel: There’s a Turkish rug on the floor, a map of Berlin’s neighborhoods on the wall, a smattering of musical equipment on stage, and a bunch of house plants. The music is a mix of contemporary Christian worship songs and a worship-themed jazz jam session with Ali, Rich, and other musicians they have met along the way.
The Maegraiths call it “dual thing.” They want to offer a biblically grounded community for young people living in Wedding and use their musical gifts to create improvisational forms of church music.
Celebrating its fourth anniversary in September 2024, the church offers bilingual German and English worship. Leadership is shared between Germans and Australians, and the staff includes international interns, students, and immigrants.
About 30 people regularly attend Kiez Church. A lot of them are artists, musicians, and students, or young professions.
Rich, who preaches most Sundays, shared his own experience of being a professional musician.
“Anyone coming to visit can hear how their pastor knows what it’s like to be living in the world,” he said. “He’s not in some Christian bubble, doing churchy stuff, he’s part of the city’s day-to-day experience.”
The church plant has been pretty successful—which is hard to do in Europe. Rich and Ali, however, said they didn’t start with much of a plan. They are, by their account, “accidental church planters.”
“We weren’t well-versed with the models when we started; it just kind of happened,” said Ali.
Ever the jazz musicians, they have improvised their way through church planting. At their fourth anniversary service, for example, Ali and Rich put together the set list the night before, without the chance to rehearse before going “live” in worship the next day. It worked.
“We are just doing our thing,” Ali said. “We pray, wait on the lord, see what happens, what he does.
“I still have moments wondering, ‘Is this really a church?’” Ali said.
Now, after four years, the “dual thing” jazz church has turned into an LP to share with the city and others who are interested in a record of jazz grounded in the life of a church.
The album the Berlin Psalm Project released with a special concert in March 2024 is a collection of psalms set to modern jazz, written and performed by Ali and a group of international, Berlin-based performers. Ali said the album reflects the way the Psalms “speak to the deepest inner longings of all human beings” and give “a modern voice to ancient conversations with the Creator.”
Some songs emphasize lament and others joy and adoration, including renditions of Psalm 8 (“Oh Lord our God”), Psalm 46 (“Gott ist unsere Zuflucht und Stärke”), and Psalm 27 (“Der Herr ist mein Licht”), preformed on trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, bass, piano, and drums, with Rich on tenor sax and bass clarinet.
Above all else, Ali believes, Berliners just want you to be honest.
“They want to hear authentic expressions, to know what you really feel and where you’re coming from,” she said, “and that’s what the Psalms are all about—they are some of the most honest parts of the Bible.”
And jazz, Ali has found, shares that deep commitment to authenticity, pairing well with biblical texts. Improvisation captures the emotion and essence of a moment and provides “the perfect setting to explore deeply into what it means to pour out our hearts in vulnerability before God,” she said.
Katya Sourikova, a pianist and composer who has worked with the Maegraiths on other recordings, said the project impressed her with its breadth of bold, dramatic, and theatrical musical expressions. The spectrum of modern jazz on the album is “not what one would immediately associate with the setting of religious texts,” she said, but it “sets this project apart from many others working in this genre.”
The project has also impressed church leaders who appreciate the crossover between the arts and faith. In a rave review, Mark Lau, director of worship arts at Redeemer Downtown in New York City, called the project “a sublime work of art, vision, and energy.”
Lau said the Berlin Psalm Project is “a beautifully nuanced combination of uplifting lyrics, majestic ensemble writing, telepathic improvisation, bubbling textures and infectious groove. Instantly accessible yet driven by a subtle complexity that keeps the listener engaged throughout.”
Franz Weidauer, a mathematician and electric guitarist in Leipzig, a city in Germany’s east known for its connection to Johann Sebastian Bach, also loves the album. He said it’s a fresh expression of art and faith in Europe.
“People might see the Psalms as ‘old-fashioned,’” Weidauer said, “but they are, in many ways, a modern songbook, a voice for what we are feeling today.”
Weidauer works with Crescendo, a network of Christian artists and musicians founded in Basel, Switzerland, which now has locations across Europe. He has played in various praise bands, jazz combos, and indie groups over the years. When he listens to the Maegraiths’ album, he said he is reminded of how jazz music has the power to speak to people on a deep level.
“There’s a sense of transcendence through jazz,” Weidauer said, “the power to connect us to a creative force—even those who are hesitant to talk about ‘God.’”
That’s the kind of innovation and improvisation that creates evangelical opportunities in urban centers like Berlin. Weidauer said he hopes others embrace the idea of jazz in church. Kiez Church could be a model for other “accidental” church planters to follow.
“What the Maegraiths have done is provide people a broader perspective on what ‘church music’ can be,” Weidauer said. “Urban people, who might not otherwise be interested in classical church settings, are open to spiritual connection. … Jazz music can open that connection.”
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