Bridges of God: The Church and the Rural-Urban Divide

Since the dawn of Christianity, God's people have been called to be a bridge across the barriers constructed by any given society.

In 1954, Donald McGavran, a third-generation missionary in India who would go on to found Fuller Seminary’s School of World Mission, published Bridges of God: A Study in the Strategy of Missions.

In the book, McGavran offered western missionaries a new paradigm for ministry that cut against the dominant mission-station approach that catered to Western individualism by pulling converts out of their relational networks.

McGavran’s proposal emphasized the evangelistic power of interconnectedness. He witnessed entire “people movements” when new converts were encouraged to return to their social networks and families rather than take up residence in a walled-off missionary compound.

In the years since, there have been many justified critiques of the church growth movement that McGavran’s work eventually helped launch, but the principle that God uses relational bridges in the work of his kingdom is something that in retrospect looks so obvious that one wonders how missionary organizations could have ever missed it. Yet they did.

We still do.

Although the correlation between the current state of the church in America and McGavran’s work is hardly one-to-one, the reality today is that we in the church in America still need to be extremely intentional about cultivating relational bridges, especially as our nation approaches what is sure to be another divisive election season.

As a pastor of a small, rural church, I feel this need keenly. If history is any indicator, one of the most polarizing divides heading into the 2020 election cycle may again be the divide between those—Christian and non-Christian alike—who live in the nation’s rural regions and those who live in more urban areas. ...

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Our Modern Ephesian Moment

Four markers of meaningful ethnic belonging in multiethnic congregations.

Today, North America is seeing the multiethnic church movement go beyond just rhetoric and percentage-based diversity to actual sophisticated models and expressions.

Multiethnic churches have in a way become incubators for ethnogenesis, providing an avenue where Americans are encouraged to explore and negotiate their racial and ethnic identity through theological formation and biblical community.

Our Ephesian Moment

The essence of the oneness of God’s people amid diversity is a biblical theme expressed throughout both the Old and New Testaments, but the ecclesiological and eschatological vision is perhaps made most explicit in the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians. Andrew Walls writes,

The Ephesian letter is not about cultural homogeneity; cultural diversity had already been built into the church by the decision not to enforce the Torah. It is a celebration of the union of irreconcilable entities, the breaking down of the wall of partition, brought about by Christ’s death (Eph. 2:13-18). Believers from the different communities are different bricks being used for the construction of a single building—a temple where the One God would live. (Eph. 2:19-22)[1]

Paul’s revelation to the Ephesians was that embedded in their local churches was the revealed mystery that Christ is known to a greater extent, and even perhaps to the fullest stature, when displayed by both Jew and Greek living in unity for the gospel.

The eschatological vision of the true Israel had now been made complete in Christ by uniting Jew and Gentile, where congregations like the ones in Ephesus were an instance and an embodiment of this vision.

Each member came from a culture that needed to be converted to Christ where, “Each ...

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Mexican Pastor and Priest Murdered at Their Churches

Cartel violence and threats escalated in August, and a Christian leader who ran a refugee shelter remains kidnapped.

A Roman Catholic priest and an evangelical pastor in Mexico were killed this month, and another pastor was kidnapped, according to published reports.

José Martín Guzmán Vega was killed on August 22 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, in northeast Mexico, according to the Catholic Multimedia Center (CCM). The priest of the Cristo Rey parish in the San Adelaida area of Matamoros was stabbed several times at about 10 p.m. inside his parish building, according to CCM, citing neighbors who heard cries within. He was 55.

His death brings to 27 the number of priests killed in Mexico since 2012, according to CCM. The state attorney general’s Investigative Police officers were still looking for a motive and the assailant(s) at this writing. In recent years drug rings have targeted both Protestant and Catholic leaders for their opposition to trafficking in illegal substances.

“So far this year, various incidents against priests and other clergy have been recorded, such as the case of a priest wounded by gunfire in Cuernavaca, Morelos [state], and the death threats against various priests in various areas of Veracruz,” CCM reported.

On the other side of the country, in southwest Mexico’s Oaxaca state, pastor Alfrery Líctor Cruz Canseco was shot to death in Tlalixtac de Cabrera on August 18, shortly after leading a worship service at his Fraternidad Cristiana (Christian Brotherhood) church, according to local news reports. Authorities were reportedly still investigating a motive for the gunman approaching the Protestant pastor and shooting him in his car outside the church site.

Church members reportedly managed to apprehend the suspect and turn him over to police. Pastor Cruz Canseco died ...

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Lose Your Faith at an Evangelical College? That’s Part of the Process

Research shows that students at CCCU schools are more likely to face a religious crisis than their secular counterparts.

It was quiet in the morning chapel when a Bethel University student took a pen and paper and put words to the fear: “Does God really love me?”

Then another student at the small evangelical school in Mishawaka, Indiana, took another piece of paper and wrote, “Am I good enough?”

Three students wrote, “Can a loving God send unbelievers to hell? Six asked, “Why does God answer some prayers and not others? Twelve, “Is Christianity the only way?” Twenty, “Is God really real?”

Shawn Holtgren, Bethel’s vice president for student development, was not surprised at the questions and doubts, which come up for students every year.

“In youth group they were surrounded by likeminded kids, and then they come to a place like Bethel, and they enter into a more searching phase,” Holtgren told CT. “It’s a process of beginning to question.”

A new two-part study published in Christian Higher Educationshows how common it is for students at evangelical colleges and universities to struggle with their faith. In fact, they are more likely to feel unsettled about spiritual matters, unsure of their beliefs, disillusioned with their religious upbringing, distant from God, or angry with God than their peers at secular schools as well as those at mainline Protestant and Catholic institutions.

Jennifer Carter, an assistant professor of leadership at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, analyzed surveys of more than 14,000 students at 136 colleges and universities, looking for patterns and predictors of religious struggle.

Carter found that students at evangelical schools experience “unique patterns of religious struggle.” At most institutions, ...

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In the Face of Sexual Temptation, Repression Is a Sure-Fire Failure

How do we solve the problem of desire? Christian asceticism offers an alternative way.

My first relationship to desire was to give in to it. As a teenager in the early aughts, I believed that life was found by identifying my desires and rushing toward their satisfaction. I played this out in academics and especially in sexuality. My life beat to the pulse of Ariana Grande’s chant, “I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it.” The right response to desire was indulgence.

Unbeknownst to me as a nonChristian, the purity movement was running in parallel. Those who experienced that movement from the inside have spent recent months breaking down its excesses and missteps. Their conclusion (and mine) is that repression and avoidance are unbiblical responses to desire, no more Christian, perhaps, than my teenage, atheistic abandonment to it.

In the midst of these reoccurring public square discussions, the tension between libertinism on one side and repression on the other leaves most of us yearning for the reasonable via media, the middle way between failed extremes. In that space, is there a scripturally sound theology of desire?

Yes. I want to suggest that Christian asceticism, ancient though it is, offers a way forward. It uniquely treats God as the end, not the means, of desire.

It also circumvents the shortcomings of repression and avoidance. Here, I’m not talking about biblically wise avoidance. It is stupid and unsafe to put ourselves in places where we know we will be strongly tempted to lust or sin. Temptation, while not sin, is not safe for us; Jesus commands us to pray that we would be kept from it. Similarly, Paul’s admonition to “flee sexual immorality” (1 Cor. 6:18) can’t mean any less than this.

Instead, I want to point out that repression and avoidance have ...

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Big Daddy Weave Frontman ‘Blown Away’ that His Song Led to Murder Confession

The Christian chart-topper “Redeemed” brought spiritual freedom for a man now serving a life sentence.

A Tennessee man was recently dealt two sentences: freedom in Christ and life in prison.

In a murder trial last Friday, defendant Danny Holmes opened with a 20-minute testimony where he confessed to killing a man three years ago and then he recounted his spiritual transformation in prison since then, the Murfreesboro Daily News Journal reported.

Instrumental to his confession was the song “Redeemed” by Christian rock band Big Daddy Weave. He brought the lyrics in a notebook to court.

Mike Weaver, the band’s eponymous lead singer, told CT he was “blown away” when he learned how God used his band’s music in Holmes’ life.

“Over the last handful of years, so many stories have come from God using that song,” said Weaver, who lives north of Nashville in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, just 33 miles from the site of Holmes’ crime in Murfreesboro. “It is a message that is so dear to [God’s] heart.”

The song emphasizes redemption and Christ’s work to free us from our past sins and past selves. The line that sealed the deal for Holmes came from the first verse: “Then you look at this prisoner and say to me, Son, stop fighting a fight that's already been won.’”

Holmes accepted his life sentence and vowed to serve the Lord and spread the gospel while behind bars. “I’m 30 years old, and I’ve been fighting for nothing all my life. I’ve been fighting for gangs,” Holmes said in court. “I ain’t never fought for anything that made sense. But I knew the Lord was telling me to fight for him this time. I just knew he was stirring on my spirit."

Weaver said he and “Redeemed” co-writer Benji Cowart ...

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Expanding the Digital Footprint of Our Churches

We have an opportunity to provide countless people with the hope of the gospel.

Two thousand years ago, the gospel spread from nation to nation via roads built by the Roman Empire. You could begin in Jerusalem and follow the road all the way to Rome. This is what people did, and the gospel could continue to spread from Rome to Spain, and then all throughout Europe.

The gospel was spread via these roads, but so was the Roman Empire, which often meant the persecution of Christians along the way. There was as much conflict as there was peace.

In some ways, social media mirrors the roads that weaved through the Roman Empire. While an opportune place to spread gospel witness, social media is tricky. Isaiah 5:20 talks about woe being brought down on those who call evil “good” and good “evil.” We can easily find ourselves in this state when we use social media without meticulous intentionality.

When it comes to social media, how can we be certain that we are spreading the good news of Jesus? How can we build our social media accounts to be places that offer digital highways to hope?

Most churches today only use social media to announce service times and sermon links. This is completely fine, but there’s potential to do so much more than that; you just have to use the digital connection to find new pathways of engagement.

The biggest challenge is figuring out exactly how to use social media as a tool to build and communicate with your community.

Here are a few simple ways to do this:

First, share the good news

Many churches in the Chicagoland area use Explore God, a program that offers resources to people as they come to know Christ. In January of this year, Explore God launched an initiative in Chicago with a goal to grow attendance and participation in churches. They utilized a dedicated ...

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