BIBLE ENRICHED SPIRITUAL TRUTHS: July 2019

Wednesday, 31 July 2019

Rural Youth Ministry: Are We Ready for the Next Wave?: Part 1

There is some spiritual energy starting to build in the youth of our rural communities.

In October of 2015, the movie “Woodlawn” was release and it is based on a true story about a school that was transformed through a move of God in the youth on the football team.

The transformation then moved to another school in town and eventually it impacted the entire community of Birmingham, Alabama, because of what was happening in the lives of these teenagers. It is a powerful movie that gives us a glimpse of how God has moved in and through teenagers to transform communities.

As I sat and watched this movie in the theater with my family, I was struck with the realization that the rural youth ministry I oversee started around the same time that this was happening in Birmingham. So how did this movement make it all the way to rural Kansas in the late 1960s and early 1970s?

I would have only been around 2-years-old at the time, but Lay Witness Mission meetings were happening in Phillipsburg, Kansas in the early 1970s and several teenagers accepted Jesus through these events.

This group of 15-20 teenagers decided to start a Bible study and they called themselves “Reach Out.” Randy and LeAnn Hunt were newly married young adults who had just moved back to Phillipsburg in 1971 and they were asked to come alongside this group to guide it.

The Reach Out group grew to the point that Randy and LeAnn were hosting around 75 teenagers in their home every week, which is pretty significant in a community of approximately 3,200 people at that time. In the Woodlawn movie, they reference the Explo ‘72 event that took place in Dallas. A group of young adults from Stockton, Kansas (a town of approximately 1,800 people 20 miles south of Phillipsburg) went to that event and came back “on fire” for God. ...

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Pete Buttigieg Brings Proverbs Into the Democratic Debate

Searches for the lesser-known verse tripled on Bible Gateway.

During the first of two Democratic presidential debates on CNN this week, candidate Pete Buttigieg quoted from the Old Testament in his remarks on the economy.

“Minimum wage is just too low,” the South Bend, Indiana, mayor said. “So-called conservative Christian senators right now in the Senate are blocking a bill to raise the minimum wage when Scripture says that whoever oppresses the poor taunts their Maker.”

Buttigieg, an Episcopalian, was referencing Proverbs 14:31 (NIV): “Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” Other translations such as the NASB use the wording “taunts their Maker.” Proverbs 17:5 has a similar line: “Whoever mocks the poor shows contempt for their Maker; whoever gloats over disaster will not go unpunished.”

Believers across the political spectrum pay attention when a candidate evokes Scripture, and searches for Proverbs 14:31 on Bible Gateway tripled after Buttigieg’s remarks. Even for Christians, the verse does not rank not among the most-quoted Proverbs (the top being Prov. 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart…”), and other passages (such as the Sermon on the Mount) tend to come up more regularly when discussing the Christian call to care for the poor.

Just over half of Americans (55%) support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, according to a survey by The Hill. Evangelicals watching this week’s debates are about as likely as voters overall (18% compared to 19%) to consider economic policies like wages as the top issue for candidates to address, per a Morning Consult-Politico poll.

Fellow Christians have evoked other passages as a biblical ...

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I Called Off My Engagement at the Spirit’s Prompting

Looking for the right fit in a spouse is often less important than praying for God's peace.

I gave the ring back on a warm night in November. My boyfriend and I had just returned from a weekend of camping with friends. I can’t remember what started our fight that night, but it had been simmering for a while. “Sometimes I think the only reason you want to marry me is because he didn’t want you,” my fiancé said. I wanted to hate him for those words, but the truth was, he was right. My interest in another man had been unrequited, and in the absence of hope, I let my feet wander and gave myself to someone I sinfully considered second best. After I recognized my selfishness, I gave his engagement ring back.

For months, I carried shame about my failure, especially as we continued our relationship and I tried to sort out my heart. He was an honorable man from a wonderful family, but by February, I knew a wedding was not in our future. I could not find the peace I needed, and the hitch in my spirit was too strong to ignore.

Prior to that engagement, I had spent a lot of time waxing eloquent about the decisiveness of love. I believed strongly that it was a choice. As a single female nearing her mid-30s, I also believed many men in the church saw themselves above that choice and were looking for some elusive “spark” that would never materialize. “Just commit!” I thought and said often. But when I came face to face with my own inability to cross the mountain of commitment in front of me, I also came face to face with my own inadequate counsel. There’s more to marriage than a “spark,” but there’s also more than simple commitment.

Less than a year later, I met the man I would marry. Neither of us felt a “spark,” at least at first, no ah-ha ...

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We’re Not from Here

In the same way Dorothy longs for Kansas, the Church longs for the New Jerusalem.

When people ask me where I’m from, I think to myself, That it’s a tricky question. Do I answer where I currently live, where I currently moved from, or where I was born? In all honesty, I think they are trying to locate the accent they hear from the words coming out of my mouth. So, I answer, “Memphis, Tennessee.”

Truthfully, I’m not from Memphis. I’m actually from Munford, Tennessee. But most people wouldn’t have a clue where Munford is located. It is a town about 30 miles north of Memphis.

Munford was a small town. Growing up, there was no McDonalds, Walmart, or BP Gas Station. Everything was mom and pop. It wasn’t until years later, after I had moved, that Munford began to commercialize. Munford was your typical small southern town—simple, conservative, religious, connected, and friendly (still to this day I tell my wife about the “index finger” wave). This was the cultural environment in which I was raised and in which I became a Christian.

At the age of 15, I sensed a call to vocational ministry and began to lay out my future plans; I planned to attend college, then seminary, and finally land at a church serving God in some capacity. Participating in several overseas mission trips as a teenager gave me a perspective of the world that was bigger than Tipton County. Thus, I never thought I would stay local.

At least my 40,000-foot plans panned out. I attended Union University, graduating with a degree in Biblical Studies. Prior to graduating, I met my wife. As newlyweds, we embarked on seminary at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Full disclosure, I was your typical Bible College, young seminarian. I was consuming so much Bible, theology, and Greek—in ...

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Carol Swain Felt Called to Hold Politicians Accountable. Then God Asked Her to Run for Mayor.

The former Vanderbilt political science professor is in the race to become the first conservative African American to lead Nashville.

Carol Swain said she would never run for mayor of Nashville, but then a friend called her on Easter last year and addressed each of her objections.

So the retired Vanderbilt University political science and law professor prayed about entering the race.

“I got down on my knees that night and prayed,” she said in an interview with Christianity Today. “When I awakened, my mind was flooded with policy ideas for Nashville. So I jumped out of bed and started writing what became my blueprint for Nashville.”

Swain called her friend the next morning and told him she had changed her mind. She was in.

For Swain, change has been a recurring theme in her life. She went from low-income single mother to Ivy League academic, from Democrat to Republican media commentator, and from Jehovah’s Witness turned non-churchgoer to committed follower of Christ.

Now in her second run for mayor in as many years, change is a hallmark of Swain’s campaign. In an August 1 election, she hopes to become Nashville’s first African American mayor and its first conservative mayor in decades. Still, she wonders whether the Southern city’s Christians see her as the change agent some have long prayed for.

From poverty to Princeton

Swain, 65, grew up amid rural poverty in Virginia, with no indoor plumbing and just two beds to share with her 11 siblings. When it snowed, they skipped school for lack of money to buy boots. One year, she missed 80 days, Swain said in a profile published by the Nashville Tennessean.

She dropped out of school in eighth grade, married at 16, and became a mother before she was 20. Eventually, she found herself a twice-divorced mother of two who reported abuse in both marriages. Her third ...

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I Called Off My Engagement. Thank God.

Looking for the right fit in a spouse is often less important than praying for the Spirit’s peace.

Less than a year later, I met the man I would marry. Neither of us felt a “spark,” at least at first, no ah-ha ...

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Interview: A New Recipe for Ending Hunger

We have a crisis too large for any one church, nonprofit, or government agency to handle on its own, says food policy expert Jeremy Everett.

Around 40 million Americans don’t have enough food to eat, and Jeremy Everett is on a mission to make that number zero. Everett, who has served on the National Commission on Hunger, is the founder and executive director of the Texas Hunger Initiative, based at Baylor University. In his new book, I Was Hungry: Cultivating Common Ground to End an American Crisis, Everett argues that hunger in the United States can be eliminated in our lifetime. Drawing upon the experience and expertise gained from decades of anti-hunger advocacy, Everett outlines why a collective and coordinated response to hunger is needed—and why, as Christians, this is a call we can’t ignore. Katie Thompson of the Center for Public Justice spoke with Everett about the causes of and solutions to hunger in America.

When most Americans think about the current crises facing our nation, I’d wager that food insecurity isn’t at the top of the list. Why do you describe it as a crisis?

Approximately 40 million Americans experience food insecurity. My view is that this particular group bears the weight of all the brokenness in our social systems. Often, we look at Americans experiencing hunger or food insecurity and place them in different categories than Americans who, say, lack access to healthcare, live in poverty, or struggle to find good jobs. But the reality, on the local level, is that these groups are all part of the same family. Their struggles are interconnected.

In my book, I refer to the “trade-offs” people confront each month. “Do I pay rent? Do I buy food? Do I pay for medication? Do I pay my car payment? Do I pay the electric bill?” They have to decide to prioritize specific expenses, because they ...

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