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DIR Return to: EVANGELISM & THEOLOGY
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#Post#: 14649--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: June 29, 2020, 8:59 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/118003.jpg?w=940[/img]
HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/june-web-only/rebecca-manley-pippert-stay-salt-evangelism.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+christianitytoday%2Fctmag+%28CT+Magazine%29
I’m a Professional Evangelist. This Book Made Me Fall in Love
with the Gospel All Over Again.
After reading Rebecca Manley Pippert’s follow-up to “Out of the
Saltshaker,” I’ve never been more excited to talk about Jesus.
As a preacher and evangelist, I like to say that the application
for any sermon—no matter the Bible passage—should be: “Tell your
friends about Jesus.” It’s a joke, of course. Because that’s a
lazy application—one guaranteed to get guilty looks from the
congregation.
But why are we so bad at telling our friends about Jesus? In
part, because in today’s post-Christian Western world, we’re
told to keep our beliefs to ourselves. Our faith is supposed to
be private, not public. In this environment, talking about Jesus
is seen as judgmental, intolerant, and oppressive.
Last year, an article in Christianity Today carried a revealing
headline: “Half of Millennial Christians Say It’s Wrong to
Evangelize.” Evidently, evangelism is hated by significant
numbers of both Christians and non-Christians! Who would have
thought that a mutual dislike for evangelism would unite us all?
And yet, a desire to share the gospel with friends runs—or at
least should run—through the DNA of every Christian. So how can
we start talking about Jesus again?
This is the question at the heart of Rebecca Manley Pippert’s
latest book , Stay Salt. Pippert, of course, is best known for
her classic book on evangelism, Out of the Saltshaker and Into
the World: Evangelism as a Way of Life. First published in 1979,
Out of the Saltshaker was written to equip believers for
evangelism in a culture that was drifting in post-Christian
directions. Four decades later, those forces have only
accelerated, but Pippert hasn’t lost any confidence that the
gospel message can break through walls of hostility and
indifference, even in the context of everyday conversations. As
the subtitle of Stay Salt puts it, “The World Has Changed: Our
Message Must Not.”
A Multi-Pronged Approach
There are three sections in Stay Salt. In the first, Pippert
looks at what she calls the means of evangelism—in other words,
you and me, the “evangelists.” None of us feels adequate when
confronted with the juggernaut of hostile Western secularism.
But Pippert reassures us that this is precisely how God works
our circumstances. God uses us not despite but because of our
smallness, weaknesses, and inadequacies. We are supposed to
depend upon God for the courage and strength to evangelize.
In the second section, Pippert takes us through the message of
evangelism—the gospel. Here we might roll our eyes. Don’t we
already know this stuff? But Pippert got me excited about the
gospel with the fresh language she uses. She skillfully presents
the gospel as both a rebuttal to the accepted doctrines of
secularism and a positive message our friends will want to hear.
In the final section, Pippert outlines the method of evangelism.
This might seem like another occasion for eye-rolling. Surely
not another formulaic technique! But Pippert instead motivates
us to love our friends and to “proclaim” the message through
questions and conversations rather than a pre-rehearsed
monologue.
Stay Salt got me genuinely excited to tell my friends about the
gospel and its many glories. There are three main reasons for
this. First, the book preached the gospel at me so that I
rediscovered my first love. It’s worth reading Stay Salt just to
enjoy the wonder and beauty of the gospel message. This is
exactly what will get us talking about Jesus again.
Second, I appreciated hearing stories from Pippert’s life of
evangelism. These stories are both instructional and
inspirational. But more importantly, Pippert has stories of
conversations with strangers on a plane and family members
alike. As a public evangelist myself, I know it’s far easier to
have conversations with strangers I’ll never see again than with
family members I’ll encounter every Thanksgiving!
Third, the book takes a helpful, multi-pronged approach. There
are instructions on one-to-one conversations, group Bible
readings, and proclamation evangelism. This shows we all have a
part to play. Just like a football team needs both a running and
a passing game to move down the field with any success,
evangelism works best when it draws on a variety of methods.
If I could push this book to go further, I would offer just a
few observations. First, I think Pippert is somewhat mistaken in
how she categorizes contemporary culture. The book’s guiding
assumption is that the West, having lurched toward a
post-Christian extreme, is functionally pre-Christian. I too
used to believe this. But the Australian writer Mark Sayers had
a brilliant response on his podcast, This Cultural Moment. In
pre-Christendom, he says, people converted into Christianity.
But in post-Christendom, Christians are the “bad guys.” People
are de-converting from Christianity. And they don’t think they
need Christians to save them from famines or plagues. In fact,
amid the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City expelled the Christian
humanitarian group Samaritan’s Purse because of its views on
marriage and sexuality.
Second, and relatedly, the book underestimates just how
“post-Christian” we really are. When Billy Graham preached the
gospel message in the 20th century, he liked to invite
non-believers to come up front for the altar call. He reassured
them with his famous saying, “The buses will wait.” What does
that mean? It means that these non-believers were, in some
sense, churched non-believers. After all, they had come to hear
Graham preach on a church bus, as part of a community of
believers . He was only asking them to believe what their
friends believed .
But most of today’s non-believers have minimal connections, if
any, to the church. They are not just agnostic about the God of
the Bible but about any god. Many have no Christian friends at
all. In certain ways, this is an unprecedented situation.
To evangelize effectively in such a context, we need to
acknowledge how the presence of Christian community can make all
the difference. Until we can connect non-believers with a
community of believers, our efforts at one-to-one evangelism
will only go so far. It was Nathan Campbell, the Australian
pastor and blogger, who told me that evangelism is a team game .
He pointed out that in 1 Thessalonians 1:5, Paul says, “Our
gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power.
…You know how we lived among you for your sake” [emphasis
added].
Getting Excited
Even if Pippert sometimes fails to grasp the full extent of
post-Christian drift in the Western world, she deserves credit
for welcoming it as an opportunity for the church. Rather than
seeing the secular climate as a threat to the gospel, she
embraces it as a spur toward new and better ways of
evangelizing. Why? Because people will be even hungrier for
purpose, hope, identity, and someone who loves them. This is
what I love most about Pippert’s approach. Instead of treating
secularists as culture-war opponents, she welcomes them as
neighbors to love afresh with the news of Jesus.
Stay Salt made me fall in love with the gospel all over again. I
am a professional evangelist. I tell people about Jesus for a
living. But this book renewed my commitment to pray for my
family members, friends, and neighbors who don’t know Jesus yet.
And it made me look for more opportunities to tell them about
Jesus. It got me more excited about evangelism than I’ve ever
been before.
Please read this book, and pray that God would use you—not
despite but because of your smallness, weaknesses, and
inadequacies—to tell your friends about Jesus.
Sam Chan is a public evangelist for City Bible Forum in
Australia. He is the author of Evangelism in a Skeptical World:
How to Make the Unbelievable News About Jesus More Believable
(Zondervan Academic) as well as a forthcoming book, How To Talk
About Jesus (Without Being That Guy): Personal Evangelism in a
Skeptical World (Zondervan), which releases in October.
#Post#: 14683--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: Billy Evmur Date: June 29, 2020, 9:08 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT-3wQkmp38
#Post#: 14690--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: guest8 Date: June 29, 2020, 10:21 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Billy Evmur link=topic=889.msg14683#msg14683
date=1593482923]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT-3wQkmp38
[/quote]
not too sure about him yet...will have to watch more....
Blade
#Post#: 14691--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: Billy Evmur Date: June 30, 2020, 7:28 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Bladerunner link=topic=889.msg14690#msg14690
date=1593487267]
[quote author=Billy Evmur link=topic=889.msg14683#msg14683
date=1593482923]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT-3wQkmp38
[/quote]
not too sure about him yet...will have to watch more....
Blade
[/quote]
The more you listen to him the more you understand he is a
holiness preacher in the line of Martin Lloyd Jones and
C.H.Spurgeon. I have come to love him to pieces. Of COURSE that
does not mean I agree 100% with everything. But he is lovely.
And I am a lifelong C.H.Spurgeon devotee.
As a lad he had a horrible speech impediment so that everybody
laughed at him. When he was saved he was healed immediately and
started preaching.
#Post#: 14707--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: June 30, 2020, 4:57 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Despite the ongoing debates over gender roles, surveys show
significant agreement in favor of female Sunday school teachers,
worship leaders, speakers, and preachers.
In evangelical discourse, there are several issues that you can
count on to stir up a heated debate. One is the role of women in
the life of the church.
Take last year’s spat over Beth Moore speaking at a church on
Mother’s Day, which came up again months later with John
MacArthur’s viral “go home” line. Or the more recent discussion
around author Aimee Byrd and Reformed complementarians’ pushback
on social media.
Yet for all the debates around gender and leadership roles, for
years researchers have found less of a divide on the topic among
the people in the pews. The results of a recent survey once
again indicate that most evangelical Protestants are in favor of
seeing women take on more prominent positions in the church.
In a survey I fielded along with political scientists Paul Djupe
and Hannah Smothers back in March, 8 in 10 self-identified
evangelicals said they agree with women teaching Sunday school,
leading worship at church services, and preaching during women’s
conferences or retreats.
Slightly fewer endorsed women preaching during church services,
but 7 in 10 were in favor, according to the research, conducted
by a team of political scientists in March 2020.
This new research follows an analysis of 2011 survey data I
published last year, which showed that significant majorities of
major Christian traditions—including Southern Baptists—would
support women as pastors.
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/118116.png?h=750&w=1200[/img]
Some commentators pushed back saying both that the 2011 data was
dated and that the questions weren’t explicit enough about the
types of roles for women in the church. The March 2020 survey
was designed to allow respondents to indicate what kinds of
leadership roles they are comfortable with women taking on.
A strong majority of evangelicals, men and women alike,
supported women’s involvement in each of the roles queried,
though women were slightly more in favor of each.
The most universally supported role was having women teach
Sunday school, with 86.9 percent in favor. The debate over
whether women can lead over mixed-gender Sunday school classes
has gone on for years in certain evangelical traditions,
including Baptist and Presbyterian denominations. It comes up on
sites like 9Marks, Reformation21, and Desiring God, often
hinging on whether the Sunday school setting is analogous to a
church service or not.
Women preaching on Sunday morning got the least support, with
72.8 percent. Even some churches that do not permit women to
serve as lead pastors and elders at times allow women to share
on Sundays as guest speakers or preachers—making a distinction
to between the “special teaching” they believe to be restricted
to qualified male leaders and the “general teaching,” which can
be presented by any church member, male or female.
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/118119.png?h=857&w=1200[/img]
What is also surprising is how little this support for women in
leadership is impacted by church attendance. A natural
assumption is that more frequent attendance at an evangelical
church that only permits male pastors is a sign of support for
the doctrine of that faith tradition, but that’s not the case.
In fact, in each of the four scenarios that were offered in the
survey there was no statistical difference in support for women
leaders between evangelicals who never attend services and those
who indicate that they go to church multiple times a week. Three
quarters of the most devout evangelicals believe that women
should have a place behind the pulpit.
This finding continues to persist even when theology is taken
into account. When the sample is restricted to just those who
believe that the Bible is literally true, three-quarters of
those who attend services multiple times a week agree with women
preaching during weekend services.
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/118118.png?h=675&w=1200[/img]
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/118122.png?h=317&w=300[/img]
However, there is an interesting pattern when age is considered.
There is not a clear relationship between older evangelicals and
resistance to women preaching. For instance, while 20 percent of
evangelicals who are 65 or older disagree with women preaching,
that drops to just 10 percent among those between the ages of 55
and 64. Another notable result is that the youngest evangelicals
(those between 18 and 35) are just as likely to oppose women
preaching as those in the oldest age group.
There has been evidence that support for women in leadership
roles has led to some evangelical churches hiring female
pastors. Barna Research found that the share of pastors that are
women was 9 percent in 2017, up significantly from 3 percent in
1992. But, clearly the vast majority of evangelicals would be
comfortable with this number increasing more rapidly.
The findings here are not out of step with results from the
Faith Matters Survey from 2011 that found that 65 percent of
Southern Baptists are supportive of women being allowed to serve
as clergy. And a Barna survey of pastors found significant
support among non-mainline traditions. Two-thirds of
non-mainline pastors were in favor of women being deacons and
nearly 40 percent supported women preaching.
Taken together, these results indicate that evangelical support
for women preaching and leading is robust across gender, church
attendance, theological position, and age.
Ryan P. Burge is an instructor of political science at Eastern
Illinois University. His research appears on the site Religion
in Public, and he tweets at @ryanburge.
#Post#: 14712--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: guest8 Date: June 30, 2020, 7:24 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=patrick jane link=topic=889.msg14707#msg14707
date=1593554276]
Despite the ongoing debates over gender roles, surveys show
significant agreement in favor of female Sunday school teachers,
worship leaders, speakers, and preachers.
In evangelical discourse, there are several issues that you can
count on to stir up a heated debate. One is the role of women in
the life of the church.
Take last year’s spat over Beth Moore speaking at a church on
Mother’s Day, which came up again months later with John
MacArthur’s viral “go home” line. Or the more recent discussion
around author Aimee Byrd and Reformed complementarians’ pushback
on social media.
Yet for all the debates around gender and leadership roles, for
years researchers have found less of a divide on the topic among
the people in the pews. The results of a recent survey once
again indicate that most evangelical Protestants are in favor of
seeing women take on more prominent positions in the church.
In a survey I fielded along with political scientists Paul Djupe
and Hannah Smothers back in March, 8 in 10 self-identified
evangelicals said they agree with women teaching Sunday school,
leading worship at church services, and preaching during women’s
conferences or retreats.
Slightly fewer endorsed women preaching during church services,
but 7 in 10 were in favor, according to the research, conducted
by a team of political scientists in March 2020.
This new research follows an analysis of 2011 survey data I
published last year, which showed that significant majorities of
major Christian traditions—including Southern Baptists—would
support women as pastors.
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/118116.png?h=750&w=1200[/img]
Some commentators pushed back saying both that the 2011 data was
dated and that the questions weren’t explicit enough about the
types of roles for women in the church. The March 2020 survey
was designed to allow respondents to indicate what kinds of
leadership roles they are comfortable with women taking on.
A strong majority of evangelicals, men and women alike,
supported women’s involvement in each of the roles queried,
though women were slightly more in favor of each.
The most universally supported role was having women teach
Sunday school, with 86.9 percent in favor. The debate over
whether women can lead over mixed-gender Sunday school classes
has gone on for years in certain evangelical traditions,
including Baptist and Presbyterian denominations. It comes up on
sites like 9Marks, Reformation21, and Desiring God, often
hinging on whether the Sunday school setting is analogous to a
church service or not.
Women preaching on Sunday morning got the least support, with
72.8 percent. Even some churches that do not permit women to
serve as lead pastors and elders at times allow women to share
on Sundays as guest speakers or preachers—making a distinction
to between the “special teaching” they believe to be restricted
to qualified male leaders and the “general teaching,” which can
be presented by any church member, male or female.
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/118119.png?h=857&w=1200[/img]
What is also surprising is how little this support for women in
leadership is impacted by church attendance. A natural
assumption is that more frequent attendance at an evangelical
church that only permits male pastors is a sign of support for
the doctrine of that faith tradition, but that’s not the case.
In fact, in each of the four scenarios that were offered in the
survey there was no statistical difference in support for women
leaders between evangelicals who never attend services and those
who indicate that they go to church multiple times a week. Three
quarters of the most devout evangelicals believe that women
should have a place behind the pulpit.
This finding continues to persist even when theology is taken
into account. When the sample is restricted to just those who
believe that the Bible is literally true, three-quarters of
those who attend services multiple times a week agree with women
preaching during weekend services.
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/118118.png?h=675&w=1200[/img]
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/118122.png?h=317&w=300[/img]
However, there is an interesting pattern when age is considered.
There is not a clear relationship between older evangelicals and
resistance to women preaching. For instance, while 20 percent of
evangelicals who are 65 or older disagree with women preaching,
that drops to just 10 percent among those between the ages of 55
and 64. Another notable result is that the youngest evangelicals
(those between 18 and 35) are just as likely to oppose women
preaching as those in the oldest age group.
There has been evidence that support for women in leadership
roles has led to some evangelical churches hiring female
pastors. Barna Research found that the share of pastors that are
women was 9 percent in 2017, up significantly from 3 percent in
1992. But, clearly the vast majority of evangelicals would be
comfortable with this number increasing more rapidly.
The findings here are not out of step with results from the
Faith Matters Survey from 2011 that found that 65 percent of
Southern Baptists are supportive of women being allowed to serve
as clergy. And a Barna survey of pastors found significant
support among non-mainline traditions. Two-thirds of
non-mainline pastors were in favor of women being deacons and
nearly 40 percent supported women preaching.
Taken together, these results indicate that evangelical support
for women preaching and leading is robust across gender, church
attendance, theological position, and age.
Ryan P. Burge is an instructor of political science at Eastern
Illinois University. His research appears on the site Religion
in Public, and he tweets at @ryanburge.
[/quote]
The instructor above said: The results of a recent survey once
again indicate that most evangelical Protestants are in favor of
seeing women take on more prominent positions in the church."
the majority of evangelical Protestants? REALLY? where is GODs
WORD? They have either forgotten it or are not obeying it on
purpose.
Today, I saw a survey that asked if Christianity was ve3ry
important. Some 56% answered YES. The another question was ask:
Do yo believe Homosexuality should be accepted within this
nation. OOPS! 76% of those answering said YES: OK< How many
of this 76% was Christiants,,,There had to be at least 56%.but
WHERE NOT!......REALLY?
We as a Nation are well on our way of being like those in (Lev
18:21; 2Kings 17:31; 2Chron 28:3; 2Chron 33:6) who murdered
their children 50 million since 1967), accepting homosexuality
as in the days of Sodom and Gamorrah and with the Priest (men
and women) of our present day churches accepting this and
spreading it around.
According to His WORDs, Judgement for all is coming soon! If I
were one of those that believed in anyone of the three above, I
would be very afraid.
Blade
#Post#: 14771--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: July 2, 2020, 10:31 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/118172.jpg?w=940[/img]
HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/july-web-only/pandemic-lessons-eurasia-churches-coronavirus-covid-russia.html
5 Pandemic Lessons from Eurasia’s Evangelical Churches
How congregations in the former Soviet Union are responding to
the coronavirus challenge can help the global church think
better about buildings, young professionals, and persecution.
For many Western Christians, Eurasia is uncharted territory, and
no less so amid this pandemic. In the midst of troubling
COVID-19 tallies from the US and Europe, little is heard about
what is happening in this strategically important region,
situated with Europe to its west, China to its southeast, and
the Muslim world to its south.
Yet the way local evangelical churches are responding to
coronavirus challenges speaks volumes about their way of life
and ministry, as well as their future missions potential.
National church leaders testify that the situation in
Russia—with more than 640,000 confirmed cases, the third-worst
reported outbreak in the world after the US and Brazil—and other
Eurasian nations is alarming. Health systems, economies,
transportation, and security systems are on the verge of
collapse. Mass testing for COVID-19 is not happening.
Governments deny access to reliable information. And all the
while the war in Ukraine continues, and restrictions on
religious freedom and human rights increase in Russia, Belarus,
and Central Asia.
The former Soviet Union is a gray zone where hybrid systems have
emerged which imitate the developed world while using talk of
democracy, free markets, rule of law, independent media,
freedom, and human rights to mask their absence. Given these
circumstances, evangelical churches are under constant pressure
both from government authorities and wider society, which are
dominated by either aggressive Orthodoxy, Islamism, or a secular
Soviet mindset.
However, the challenge of the pandemic has lit a spark which
casts light on the little-noticed but active and essential role
of evangelical churches in this gray zone. Based on my extensive
conversations with local leaders, here are five lessons that
Christians worldwide can learn from their brothers and sisters
in Eurasia:
Lesson 1: When the government is helpless and public
institutions are paralyzed, the church is on the front lines.
Under the circumstances, people have no one to turn to other
than the church and volunteers. And this creates unprecedented
opportunities for sharing the gospel beyond church walls.
Regular church members serve as agents or angels of hope for
thousands of people paralyzed by fear and poverty. When regular
church activities come to a halt, it prompts many young
Christians to begin thinking about what they can do for others.
For example, Sergey, a young Russian pastor from Buryatia (a
region of Siberia bordering Mongolia), shares his experience:
“Jesus said, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations,’ and our
government said, ‘Stay home.’ We were faced with the question of
how to help people without breaking the law. Our team registered
as volunteers and received special volunteer movement permits.
Some of us sewed masks, others collected and distributed food
donations to those in need, and others answered calls to a
hotline, offering much-needed counseling and encouragement.
“One day we were asked to visit a woman who had been severely
beaten by her husband. She had gone blind and was alone. We
expected her to have a lot of questions about how God could have
allowed this to happen to her, but instead she eagerly listened
as we told her about Jesus and she prayed to accept Him as her
Lord and Savior. We prayed for her, for healing for her soul,
spirit, and, of course, her eyes. She is very lonely and would
like us to visit more often to tell her about God. After
encounters like that, you begin to appreciate things you almost
didn’t notice before and took for granted: your ability to see,
hear, walk, and live.”
These positive examples serve to introduce many people to the
church and change their attitude towards it. “All non-Orthodox
churches are considered illegitimate in Russia,” said Sergey.
“However, now a lot of good things are being written about us
online and on TV. While before the evangelical church was
considered a sect, now we are practically heroes!”
Lesson 2: In addition to formal church structures, it is
important to have parallel networks of informal leaders.
In critical moments when church structures are paralyzed, these
leaders in the field—not the office—can take the lead. For
example, Mission Eurasia began training young leaders in 2004
from 14 countries through its School Without Walls program,
which emphasizes serving beyond the church building. It is an
invaluable resource for local churches to have
relationship-based regional networks of young leaders with
experience working together, especially during a crisis of large
institutions and structures.
Another important group is young professionals. Normally
churches overlook them; however, now churches are praying
specifically for doctors and teachers. Now that churches are
closed, everyone understands that it is Christian professionals
out on the front lines. They have become more visible. And this
experience should change us forever.
We should not wait for the next crisis; we should mobilize
churches now to strengthen ministry to young professionals,
through training, caring for, and supporting them. If they are
the front-line workers of the church, then they deserve better
treatment and better resources. In the coming years, we should
focus on helping those professional communities which are
critically important to the life of our whole society—that could
be called to the front lines at any moment. At Mission Eurasia,
we call this movement “Mission in Profession.” It is a new,
fresh initiative which could change our way of thinking about
missions, vocation, the church, and young professionals’ place
within it.
Lesson 3: Christian communities need to develop their own
internal culture of generosity.
When the whole world is in crisis—when borders are closed, and
giving to global missions declines—we need to count, first and
foremost, on local resources.
I remember back in 2005 when the Russian government refused to
recognize Samaritan’s Purse’s Operation Christmas Child gifts as
humanitarian aid. Authorities claimed, “Russia is rich and can
take care of its own children.” That same year, Russian
evangelical churches began their own Christmas gift distribution
project called Gift of Hope. It turned out that churches were
glad to put together gifts for orphans and children from needy
families. Since then, the ministry has continued to grow. It is
not well known in the West but is well known in Eurasia, and
many churches have even developed their own local
initiatives—the idea has become contagious. Today, as the
lockdown continues, instead of Gifts of Hope for children,
churches are putting together “iCare” grocery packages for
hungry families.
All this is not to say that churches in Eurasia do not need
help. Help is needed more than ever, especially in the dark
corners of Eurasia such as the Russian-controlled separatist
regions of Ukraine or the far-flung regions of the Caucasus and
Central Asia. However I am convinced that when we in the West
know the extent of local generosity, we will be happier to
support churches in Eurasia—adding our international assistance
to their sacrificial giving, thereby sharing in their needs and
blessings.
Lesson 4: Churches without comfortable, well-equipped buildings
are more flexible and creative in missions outreach.
In Russia and many other countries of Eurasia, the government
can easily confiscate, bulldoze, or shut down an evangelical
church’s building. Therefore a majority of churches have faced
difficult choices, weighing the risks of continuing to actively
reach out to their community or calmly enjoy a comfortable
church life in a well-equipped location with no external
outreach activity. During the pandemic, churches without
buildings responded more quickly, because they lost less. They
were able to mobilize to serve others instead of grieving over
their empty building.
Media attention has been fixated on the Orthodox churches, which
continued public services during lockdown in defiance of
government restrictions. In the Orthodox tradition, the temple
is everything, and without the temple and sacraments there is no
church. In contrast, evangelical churches which have learned to
live and serve “without walls” are in a much better position.
While Orthodox churches fight for their traditional liturgy
formats, evangelical churches are reaching new missions
fields—online and in homes.
Many call themselves “Church Without Walls,” putting an accent
on their flexible format and missional nature. For example,
pastor Igor says that the quarantine has not in any way limited
his congregation’s activity: “We were not tied to a particular
location or ministry format, therefore we do not feel that we
have less work or fellowship. In fact, the opposite has
occurred, because during lockdown everyone wants to hear about
God and no one refuses assistance or prayer.”
Lesson 5: Ministry during lockdown serves as a valuable lesson
for future periods of repression and persecution.
This is not the first time the church in post–Soviet Eurasia has
been in lockdown. It survived 70 years of aggressive atheism,
when almost all churches were closed. While Soviet communism
feels like the distant past, the lessons of that history—learned
through underground ministry, personal evangelism, and a battle
for freedom—are still relevant today.
For example, pastor Sergey serves in a Russian-controlled area
of Ukraine, and he said when church services were forbidden, he
wasn’t discouraged—because he still remembered church services
in Soviet times:
“I realized that now was the time for individual meetings and
family visits, for speaking without a pulpit or microphone but
rather heart to heart. In the very first week of lockdown, two
people confessed their sin and made peace with God. They had
never attended church before the lockdown. But God found them. I
am grateful for the new opportunities created by this
situation.”
The church of post–Soviet Eurasia was cleansed through trial by
fire, and the current challenges are unlikely to limit its
ministry but instead serve as a powerful stimulus to renew its
mission and to grow in leadership, generosity, and creativity.
These lessons from evangelical churches in Eurasia during this
pandemic serve as a reminder that in times of external
difficulties and limitations, God renews the church, activating
its young and creative powers for ministry “without walls.”
Michael Cherenkov is executive director of Mission Eurasia’s
field ministries.
#Post#: 15315--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: July 16, 2020, 5:40 pm
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ9_2OK7Rx8
#Post#: 15342--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: July 16, 2020, 11:54 pm
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HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/july/archaeology-swbts-lipsomb-ortiz-davis-patterson-lanier.html
Largest Evangelical Archaeology Program Finds New Home in
Nashville
Southwestern’s former president Paige Patterson connected
outgoing professors to Lipscomb University.
After they were dismissed from Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary (SBTWS) within a few minutes of each other in March,
Steve Ortiz and Tom Davis put their heads together to pray and
figure out what they were going to do.
Ortiz and Davis were both seasoned directors of archaeological
projects in Israel and across the Middle East. While at SWBTS,
the third-largest seminary in the United States, they saw the
Tandy Institute for Archaeology contribute to the school’s
growth and vision. The institute had about two dozen MA and PhD
students, making it the largest archeological program at an
evangelical school.
The two professors expected cutbacks in 2020 because of COVID-19
and ongoing financial challenges facing higher education. But
they had no idea their jobs were on the line.
It didn’t seem right to them. As Ortiz and Davis reviewed their
accomplishments of the preceding decade, they came up with a
growing list of accomplishments. They’d done an amazing amount
of research since Ortiz started as director.
“We saw how God had been growing the Tandy and providing us
projects that were already funded and just needed our staff
members and our students,” Ortiz told Christianity Today. “So we
said, ‘Let's see if somebody will hire both of us.’”
One of the first people they called was former SWBTS president
Paige Patterson, who had been a strong Tandy supporter.
Patterson suggested they talk with Mark Lanier, a Houston
attorney and the founder of the Lanier Theological Library.
Lanier was in touch almost immediately and said he would like to
see them hired at his alma mater, Lipscomb University, a
129-year old, Churches of Christ-affiliated school in Nashville.
Ortiz and Davis didn’t know anything about Lipscomb, except that
Lanier was on the board of trustees.
“God is amazing,” Ortiz said. “On the day we got our
notification that we were being fired, we already had somebody
talking about a potential job offer that evening.”
Lanier didn’t waste any time taking his vision to Lipscomb
president Randy Lowry and the rest of the trustees. “I think
within two weeks we had the entire deal put together,” Lanier
said.
Classes start in Janurary
The new Lanier Center for Archaeology was announced on the
college’s website Wednesday. Ortiz and Davis will join the
faculty in the fall, and the school will start offering
archaeology classes in January, when it expects to complete the
accreditation process. There will be a graduate-level program as
well as undergraduate courses.
Ortiz was the principal investigator and co-director of the Tel
Gezer Excavation Project and is also participating in a dig at
Tel Burna, both in Israel. Davis directs the Kourion Urban Space
Project at the early Christian site in Cyprus and is part of an
ongoing project documenting findings in a temple in Egypt.
Lipscomb provost W. Craig Bledsoe said the center for
archaeology “will provide our faculty with new opportunities to
collaborate as well as to share and apply their knowledge and
expertise. We look forward to the impact this program will have
not only on Lipscomb but also on the field of archaeological
research on the whole.”
Lipscomb faces the same economy and the same coronavirus-caused
disruptions as other Christian schools and universities,
according to Lanier, but the administration and trustees were
excited about the new opportunities.
“Lipscomb is looking at this as a wise use of our opportunities,
resources, talents, and gifts,” Lanier said. “We want this
program to grow and thrive and become a world-recognized program
both within Christianity and even outside the Christian
circles.”
The program is funded for five years, after which it will be
reevaluated.
“Because of Steve Ortiz and Tom Davis, we will go from zero to
60 faster than a Tesla,” Lanier said.
Graduate students transferring
Many of the graduate students from SWBTS are transferring to
Lipscomb and will not have to restart their degree programs. Two
international students are tied to Texas seminary by the terms
of their student visas and will not be transferring to
Nashville.
Some of the students have filed a complaint against SWBTS with
the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), the
regional accrediting agency. The complaint says that when a
graduate-level academic program is canceled “SACS standards call
for the need for teach-out plans to offer students a chance to
continue their degree with 1) minimal disruption, 2) be
reasonable, and 3) offer a chance to transfer to comparable
programs.”
Like fellow professors, Oritz and Davis are not sure at this
point how much of their teaching will be in person and how much
will be online this fall. But they are eager to get started and
pleased to have found a new home at Lipscomb.
“At SWBTS, we thought that was the end of archaeology,” Ortiz
said. “And now all of a sudden we're at Lipscomb and we have a
bigger footprint and an institute that wants us there, that’s a
big difference.”
#Post#: 16661--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: August 26, 2020, 4:58 pm
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HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/august/christian-criminal-justice-police-reform-and-campaign-race.html
Evangelicals Call for Police and Criminal Justice Reform
New initiative challenges churches and believers: “Scripture
makes the pursuit of justice for our neighbors a mandatory part
of the Christian life.”
A coalition of Christian groups including the Church of God in
Christ and the National Association of Evangelicals is launching
a new criminal justice reform push that seeks to rally believers
behind policing changes grounded in biblical principles.
Set to be announced Wednesday, the Prayer & Action Justice
Initiative has its roots in a campaign started in the aftermath
of the coronavirus to help save small churches at risk of
closing, with top contributors to that work now channeling their
energy toward the criminal justice project. It is expected to
include prayer gatherings, nonviolent protests, and policy
advocacy—all aimed at advancing the cause of racial equity in
the justice system.
“This initiative is confronting the fact that some parts of the
church have failed on this, that the church hasn’t been clear,”
Justin Giboney, president of the And Campaign, a Christian
social justice advocacy group that is leading the initiative,
told the Associated Press.
Nationwide protests that flared for weeks after the police
killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and
other black Americans galvanized engagement by faith leaders
from multiple denominations to press for criminal justice
reform.
But the issue has faded from public view somewhat as the
coronavirus continues to spread, and Giboney described the new
project’s mission as, in part, ensuring “that when it’s not on
the front page, that we’re still working on it like it is.”
Other groups participating in the new coalition include the
Center for Public Justice, Prison Fellowship, the American Bible
Society, the Asian American Christian Collaborative, the
National Day of Prayer, and World Relief. Former pro football
player and outspoken Christian Benjamin Watson also is part of
the coalition. Giboney predicted that its numbers would grow as
other Christian organizations and congregations sign on.
At the heart of the nonpartisan effort are a set of broad
priorities that include some specific policy changes. For
example, the initiative is calling for greater public disclosure
of reports on use of force by law enforcement agents, deaths in
custody, and other metrics.
Other elements of its agenda include easing sentencing laws and
limits on parole releases, as well as the use of faith-based
prison programs and other infrastructure to help inmates prepare
for life after release.
The project comes two years after President Donald Trump signed
a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill into law that moved
ahead thanks in part to the support of some leading Christians,
including evangelicals and black ministry leaders. However, the
changes that measure made were widely seen as only a beginning
of work on the issue.
Among the Christian leaders backing the initiative are Samuel
Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian
Leadership Conference as well as a past faith adviser to Trump,
and Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino
Evangelical Coalition, a speaker at this week's Democratic
National Convention.
Federal criminal justice reform legislation remains stalled in
Congress despite broad public support for action, though several
state legislatures have made progress on policing overhauls
following Floyd’s killing and the resulting unrest.
Giboney said the new initiative will largely emphasize state and
local progress even as it keeps a nationwide focus, with
organizing efforts already underway in New York, Atlanta,
Chicago, and Philadelphia.
Despite the partisan heat of the impending election, Giboney—an
attorney and political strategist who served as a Democratic
National Convention delegate in 2012 and 2016—vowed to separate
its work from ideological divisions.
“Put that to the side right now and really focus on people, on
human dignity,” he said.
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