Some Christians are turning over a new leaf with CBD oil

Those using the hemp-based product often find relief amid a lack of understanding and regulation.

Mandy Van Schyndel remembers May 16, 2018, as the day her daughter Emma laughed for the first time. A remarkable milestone for an 18-month-old who started her life on hospice at the Mayo Clinic, not expected to survive. Even more remarkable that Emma’s parents credit a compound from a plant banned for more than 80 years with calming the disquieting symptoms of Emma’s conditions.

Faced with severe brain damage after suffering a bilateral stroke in utero, Emma’s diagnoses mounted: microcephaly, porencephaly, spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy. When her uncontrollable seizures started three months later, a fourth diagnosis was added: Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS).

“It’s a beast,” Mandy explained. “It’s one of the worst forms of epilepsy.”

As Emma’s seizures intensified, she experienced up to 12 cluster seizures daily. “It was really sad,” Mandy said. “She was losing some of the skills she had. She wasn’t smiling anymore and she wasn’t cooing as much.”

The disruptive nature of LGS took its toll on the family of seven in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. “It was hard to go to church,” admitted Mandy, “because if she fell asleep I knew she would wake up and have a seizure. And it wasn’t like a few seconds. It would cluster for an hour.”

After trying “many different concoctions of medications,” including steroid injections and 10 months on a ketogenic diet—none of which provided relief—the family faced reality.

“We went from trying to find seizure freedom to just trying to find any kind of reduction—to increase her quality of life.”

That’s when Mandy brought up the topic of hemp-based ...

Continue reading...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/30XyLuF

One-on-One with Tuvya Zaretsky on Jewish Evangelism

“There is a much greater openness to the gospel among Jewish people in North America, Eastern Europe, and also in Israel today.”

Ed: How long have you been involved with the Lausanne Movement, and what is your current role?

Tuvya: I was at the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Switzerland, although I was just 27 years old. I’d come to faith in Christ just three years earlier from a background in Judaism. That was my first exposure to the idea of world evangelism.

In 1980, Lausanne sponsored a conference on unreached people groups in Pattaya, Thailand. I wasn’t at that meeting, but it’s where the Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism (LCJE) was initiated. It is now among the most mature Lausanne special interest networks and the only one today serving Jewish evangelism globally.

Since 1999, I have served as President of the LCJE International Coordinating Committee. I’m also a Lausanne Catalyst for Jewish evangelism as a bridge between the Lausanne Movement and the LCJE network.

Ed: Tell me about your current roll and what you do.

Tuvya: As a Lausanne Catalyst for Jewish evangelism, I’m one of the representatives of the Jewish evangelism network to the international Lausanne Movement. Membership in our network asks for substantial agreement in principle with the Lausanne Covenant. As President of the LCJE International Coordinating Committee, I’m providing network leadership and focus around the purposes of our network.

The primary work of that ICC is planning and hosting international consultations every four years. We do the same for our LCJE CEO conferences every two years. Our bulletin is now published three times a year, available in print and online. I also liaise our network with the larger Lausanne Movement

The Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism is a voluntary and elected position. My full-time ...

Continue reading...

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

Sermons Alone Don’t Make You a Teaching Church

It takes more than a pulpit to train up your people in the way they should go.

The woman was patient and gracious, but clearly concerned.

“Why are we showing this movie, and why aren’t we presenting the gospel as part of the event?”

This friend from our congregation was referring to what had recently become an annual tradition at our church to show the movie The Polar Express on a weekend before Christmas. Each year we welcomed hundreds of excited, pajama-clad children, their parents, and their grandparents into our auditorium for a family movie night. Dozens of volunteers dressed as conductors and engineers, strategically interrupting the movie with ice cream, hot chocolate, and jingle bells to create an evening to remember. The event was intended to be a simple welcome point for families in our community, who were invited to return to our church for Christmas services.

From my perspective, the movie night had a clear purpose. But as I listened to this godly woman voice her concerns, I realized the communication to our congregation had not been as clear as I thought. Our church prided itself on being a “teaching church,” but we had been neglecting numerous teaching opportunities on and off the platform.

Our church describes itself as a “teaching church” because we value the teaching and preaching of Scripture. And of course, churches should absolutely teach the Bible. But as we have discovered, we also need to teach values and behaviors—and that teaching needs to extend beyond the pulpit.

Every church develops a set of underlying, deeply held corporate values about how and why it exists and operates. These values are usually determined by the church’s senior leadership. However, if these values are not regularly and repeatedly taught throughout the ...

Continue reading...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/2HQQEE9

Franklin Graham Declared a Day of Prayer for President Trump. Christian Leaders Weigh In.

How is the church meant to heed Paul’s directive to pray for “those in authority”?

This Sunday, hundreds of Christian leaders and congregations across the US will join Franklin Graham in a special day of prayer for President Donald Trump.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association president, who prayed at Trump’s inauguration, said that the president needs prayer to “protect, strengthen, encourage, and guide” him in the face of political attacks.

He cited the call to pray for leaders from 1 Timothy 2:

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (v. 1–4)

Beyond a designated day of prayer, many congregations include political leaders in their weekly petitions during Sunday gatherings. As they pray, leaders often emphasize God’s sovereignty over earthly kingdoms, unity in the body of Christ, and our desire to see goodness and flourishing in our country.

Some US Christians have questioned whether national calls to prayer around certain issues or leaders “politicize” prayer to partisan ends. Each year around holidays such as Memorial Day and Independence Day, leaders caution against conflating patriotism and worship. (This year, the National Association of Evangelicals has focused on the Great Commandment [Matt. 22:37–39] for its “Pray Together Sunday” over the July 4 weekend.)

Many of the president’s evangelical advisers have signed on to Sunday’s day of prayer, including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Jack Graham, Robert Jeffress, and Paula White, who ...

Continue reading...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/2HOto9M

The Church is on the Move

Christianity is and always will be a mobile faith.

Often, we forget to consider the spread of Christianity across the globe from a geographical perspective. We read the New Testament with eyes and ears that are largely ignorant to the places Luke mentions in Acts or Paul writes about in the prison Epistles.

Most Christians have heard of Jerusalem—the place where Jesus was crucified and risen. The geographical center of the Christian faith was clearly, early on, in and around Israel.

But while the Ancient Near East was the birthplace of our faith, it didn’t just stay there. By God’s grace, the gospel began to spread all around the world. We read about the Ethiopian eunuch who first heard the gospel message from Philip. Some disciples went to Asia Minor, Thomas goes as far as India, Paul tries to get to Spain, etc. Places like Cyprus, Caesarea, Damascus, Greece, Rome, and Carthage are mentioned throughout the book of Acts as Paul and his followers embark on four long missionary journeys.

All that to say, the gospel has been moving and spreading for centuries. The Holy Spirit has compelled believers everywhere to share the message of Christ crucified and risen in places both near and far. As demonstrated by Paul and Christ’s own disciples, this was to include continents and people groups far from the place where the Christian faith was first founded.

Despite this, Christianity has for centuries been associated with the West. Going back just a century ago, Pew Research found that “about two-thirds of the world’s Christians lived in Europe.” This, according to historical estimates by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, is “where the bulk of Christians had been for a millennium.”

But today, these numbers have changed ...

Continue reading...

from Christianity Today Magazine http://bit.ly/2wq5fQj

Why ‘Follow Your Passions’ Is Bad Advice for Graduates

Four countercultural insights for outgoing students.

When the billionaire entrepreneur Steve Jobs gave Stanford University’s commencement address in June 2005, he rallied graduates to follow their hearts. “Your time is limited,” said Jobs. “So, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. … Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” Over time, the phrase “follow your heart” morphed into “follow your passion” and then spawned countless graduation speech sound-alikes.

And now?

It’s “garbage advice,” says startup expert Michal Bohanes. “One of the great lies of life,” says billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban. The computer scientist Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You, says Jobs’s blissful view of life “is “not particularly useful” and worse, it’s “tautological.” Hammering the nail in the coffin of Jobs’s wisdom, two Stanford University researchers conducted a 2018 study—not far from the stadium where Jobs gave his speech—and concluded that “following your passion” or your heart may lead to more failure than success.

Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at New York University whose subscription business L2 sold for $155 million, has for years called passion advice “bull----.” In a recent Time article titled “4 Pieces of Advice Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You,” Galloway argues instead that praxis follows passion. “Your job is to find something you’re good at,” and after practicing and refining it, to “get great at it,” he writes. “The emotional and economic rewards that accompany being great at something ...

Continue reading...

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

ECFA Faces Scrutiny Over Harvest Investigation

The delayed penalties for James MacDonald’s church have some evangelicals challenging the financial watchdog’s role and others defending it.

About five years ago, the Village Church of Barrington, a congregation northwest of Chicago with a $1.8 million annual budget and average weekly attendance of 600, decided to become accredited with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA).

ECFA—founded in 1979 to promote financial integrity in Christian ministries and avert heightened government regulation in the wake of televangelist scandals—claims nearly 2,400 members.

Those member churches and nonprofits receive more than $29 billion in annual charitable donations from 20 million donors, according to the Virginia-based ECFA.

The Village Church already allowed members to reviews its books and prided itself on having a transparent approach to finances. Joining ECFA would help cement its commitment to transparency.

“We thought it would give donors confidence to know that we were doing things by the book,” said David Jones, the Village Church’s senior pastor.

But now—amid scrutiny over ECFA’s years-long failure to identify financial misdeeds at Harvest Bible Chapel, a Chicago-area megachurch that fired its founder and senior pastor, James MacDonald, earlier this year—the Village Church is rethinking its relationship with the Christian watchdog group.

In December, ECFA issued a statement saying that Harvest was in compliance with its rules. Not long afterward, church officials admitted misleading ECFA.

Recently ECFA’s board terminated Harvest Bible Chapel’s membership.

“As we’ve watched this whole Harvest thing unfold, our deacons have been discussing whether to renew it or not,” said Jones, a former Harvest Bible Chapel staff member who left the megachurch nine years ago with concerns ...

Continue reading...

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