BIBLE ENRICHED SPIRITUAL TRUTHS: April 2019

Tuesday, 30 April 2019

Terrorists in Burkina Faso Executed Six at Pentecostal Church

Assemblies of God pastor preferred to “die for his faith rather than leave the village” he served for decades.

Christians in Burkina Faso are mourning a deadly attack on a Protestant church as “a new turning point in terrorism” in the West African nation.

Sunday’s shooting at an Assemblies of God congregation in a northern village left six people dead, including the pastor, and represents the first church attack among the recent surge of Islamist violence.

A dozen gunmen on motorcycles stormed the courtyard of the Sirgadji church after worship, fatally shooting its longtime pastor as well as five other congregants after demanding they convert to Islam, according to the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God in Burkina Faso, Michel Ouédraogo. The attackers also stole from the church and burned its pulpit.

The church was one of the oldest Protestant congregations in the region, which borders Mali to the north, and pastor Pierre Ouedraogo had served there since its founding in the 1980s. The longtime pastor “said he prefers to die for his faith rather than leave the village where he has served for nearly 40 years,” Michel Ouédraogo recounted in a statement.

The victims include the pastor’s son and his brother-in-law, who served as a deacon in the church.

Burkina Faso declared a state of emergency in some of the northern providences last year, due to ongoing violence. The church attack comes days after another half-dozen people were killed by assailants elsewhere in the country. Islamists have been blamed for the abductions of a Spanish Catholic priest and a Canadian geologist earlier this year.

Afer 200 attacks over the past three years, the government considers Sunday’s shooting to be the first at a house of worship, a sign that the violence could be shifting from indiscriminate ...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/2PEmhD9

Terrorists in Burkina Faso Executed Six at Pentecostal Church

Assemblies of God pastor preferred to “die for his faith rather than leave the village” he served for decades.

Christians in Burkina Faso are mourning a deadly attack on a Protestant church as “a new turning point in terrorism” in the West African nation.

The victims include the pastor’s son and his brother-in-law, who served as a deacon in the church.

Afer 200 attacks over the past three years, the government considers Sunday’s shooting to be the first at a house of worship, a sign that the violence could be shifting from indiscriminate ...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/2IRzS9z

Many Europeans Happy to Pay Tax to Churches They Don’t Attend

Pew finds a majority in six Western European countries are content to pay their “church tax” to support the common good.

Despite pervasive secularization and widespread opposition to religion gaining a more prominent place in society, large majorities in six Western European countries still support the tradition of paying church taxes.

The practice may seem foreign to Americans, and particularly surprising in post-Christian Europe, but a new report from the Pew Research Center shows that most Europeans don’t oppose the tax. In each of the six countries surveyed—Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland—at least two-thirds of adult citizens, ranging from 68 percent in Sweden to 80 percent in Denmark, continue to pay the church tax.

This seems a remarkable reality as a third of Europeans, including 51 percent of Swedes, oppose a more important role for religion in their countries, according to another recent Pew study.

Typically entered into church rolls upon baptism, it can’t be denied that some Europeans are leaving the church tax system by deregistering from churches. Parties opposed to the tax have also led public campaigns and pushed legislation to inspire people to withdraw. Earlier this year, a German bishop proposed abolishing the tax to further separate church and state.

“But there doesn’t appear to be a mass exodus,” state Pew researchers. “The survey finds that between 8 percent of adults (in Switzerland) and 20 percent (in Finland) say they have left their church tax system.”

The tax employed in numerous European countries is used to fund religious organizations, covering costs such as clergy salaries, building upkeep, and “charitable services” like schools and hospitals. Despite the name, not all countries consider it a tax in the formal sense; nor is ...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/2vswsBr

My Prayer for Christianity Today

The ministry's president and CEO bids farewell.

On May 1, Harold Smith will retire as president and CEO of Christianity Today and assume the honorary title of president emeritus. In drawing his administration to a close, Smith addressed Christianity Today’s board of directors in Charlotte, North Carolina, on April 23 on both the need to remain vision focused and on the challenges seeking to redirect that vision in the days ahead. The following are his edited remarks.

These are truly exciting days for the ministry of Christianity Today. The selection and arrival of Tim Dalrymple as our next chief executive has brought me a sense of great joy even as it has excited the ministry as a whole. And I must again publically thank God that my timing in asking Tim to join CT back in 2013 was not God’s timing.

God’s timing is now!

And with that timing will come someone whose vision for CT is expansive, is media forward, is global, is beautifully orthodox. Everything that is needed for CT as it seeks to be a rallying point for thoughtful Christ-followers in the years to come.

But even as we look forward to all the new and exciting opportunities that Tim will unquestionably open up, my heartfelt prayer is that we will never lose sight of the threefold vision that the Spirit of God himself set upon this ministry through our founder Billy Graham all those years ago.

First, would we faithfully continue to maintain a tone of “conviction and love”—one of Graham’s favorite phrases—in everything we publish in print, pixels, over podcasts, on video, and across future media platforms unknown to us today. The depth of our biblical understanding and the irenic tone of its presentation are needed now more than ever.

Perhaps Graham himself said it best:

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/2VFyFrC

Who’s to Blame When the Shooter Is One of Our Own?

The latest synagogue attack has shaken fellow Orthodox Presbyterians—but it implicates all of us living in a fallen world and divisive culture.

Last weekend’s news of another synagogue attack was shocking but, sadly, not a shock. Mass shootings, while thankfully not routine weekly occurrences, have become a matter of “when” rather than “if” in modern America.

Yet, this attack at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California stirred particular interest and questions among Christians since the suspect, 19-year-old John Earnest, was reported to belong to a Presbyterian church. In fact, he was apparently a member of a nearby congregation in my own denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC).

In our response to such evil, we instinctually want to find an explanation or pinpoint a source to blame—in this case, some (even within the OPC) learned about his affiliation and speculated about hate preached from OPC pulpits. Faced with another’s tragedy, we are tempted to put our enemies at fault and score points for our side. But such tidy speculation loses sight of the complexity of such matters and casually commits the serious sin of slander.

A thoroughly Christian response cannot defensively eschew responsibility either—it should be informed by biblical teaching on life in this fallen world and the complicity of each and every one of us in it.

When we reflect a figure like John Earnest, we often think by default, “I thank you, Lord, that I am not like the other men who influenced this person”—be it the racists, the Leftists, the Rightists, the Nazis, the homophobes, the Jihadists, or another group. Perhaps it would be better to ask, “Is it I, Lord? Has anything I have said or done fueled the toxic culture in which such things are happening?”

When murder has become routine and mass shootings are ...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/2ZKPHnD

Some Great Evangelism Articles: My Judgmental Look at the 2019 EPA Higher Goals Contest

The top five pieces on evangelism in descending order.

I was asked to be a judge this year for the 2019 Evangelical Press Association Higher Goals Contest for the area of evangelism.

There were around 29 articles written by gifted men and women on various aspects of evangelism. In all honesty, I tend to like almost anything about reaching people, so picking 5 is a challenge. (Can I give everyone a participation trophy?)

While I applaud all those that competed, I want to highlight the top five in descending order. I will also attach the link to the article so that you can go and check them out.

#5 — "Salvation Bracelets in Africa? No, Thanks” by Melanie Clinton

Some people don’t see the need for good contextualization. They believe people need to stick with telling the truth and preaching the word. I’m all for telling the truth and preaching the word. Here’s the problem, though: I can speak the truth and preach the word in English all day long, but if I’m speaking to a group of French-speaking West Africans, it does me no good.

Melanie Clinton’s article gives us a reminder that, while salvation bracelets are an evangelistic hit at the local Vacation Bible School here in America, they aren’t, in West Africa. Based upon how Africans understand color and perceive “beads,” the use of a salvation bracelet is ineffective.

Just as in Africa, we in America need to engage in good contextualization for greater gospel impact. Melanie writes, “In order to share the gospel effectively, we have to forget what feels comfortable and natural in our own culture and embrace what works in the culture we’re serving in.”

In short, engaging in good contextualization leads to greater gospel impact.

#4 — "Four Practices ...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/2V7ELSg

Monday, 29 April 2019

Fundamentals for Pastoral Ministry

There needs to be a shift from pastor as resident-expert to pastor as player-coach.

Last week we discussed the necessity of certain missionary fundamentals for kingdom disciples. Much like the basic skills of any sport, those committed to living and loving like Jesus must return to the fundamentals of faith-fueled prayer, intentional relationships, and Jesus centrality. Repeated daily, these habits are the baseline for the work of church planters, missionaries, pastors, and everyday disciple-makers. Any hope of sustained movement in North America depends on the cultivation of these fundamentals among all of God’s people.

Much has been written about the role of pastors and church leaders in propelling the church outward into God’s great mission. Paul’s instructions to the Ephesian church help clarify a central leadership fundamental for pastors that must coincide with the missionary fundamentals of the church that we mentioned last week. Paul provides a job description of sorts when he says that these leaders exist “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph 4:12).

This equipping function is disorienting for many leaders who’ve been trained, or simply assumed, that the role of pastor amounted to being the resident expert on all things spiritual. In many cases these leaders have spent years thinking about refined theological ideas and engaging in intramural banter around these themes. Also, assuming the best about these leaders, many of them were elevated to a position of leadership because of deep convictions about God and His Word and consistent character derived from a vibrant intimacy with the Father.

There are expectations to this type of leader, of course. Some are unqualified, unprepared, or ungodly. Let’s leave ...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/2PD9ZL9