BIBLE ENRICHED SPIRITUAL TRUTHS: December 2019

Tuesday, 31 December 2019

Texas Church Grieves Two Leaders Shot by Visitor in Disguise

Armed security guards protected the Fort Worth-area flock against “evil” in the pews.

The West Freeway Church of Christ, a close-knit congregation of about 280, didn’t get to finish its Sunday morning worship assembly.

So Monday night—roughly 30 hours after a gunman killed two beloved Christians during the Lord’s Supper before an armed member fatally shot him—the suburban Fort Worth church came together.

A standing-room-only crowd squeezed into the church fellowship hall, next door to the closed auditorium where the shooting occurred, to grieve, pray and sing “Amazing Grace,” “Precious Memories,” and “It Is Well With My Soul.”

“What happened yesterday is not something that we will ever be able to explain,” minister Britt Farmer told church members, who shared hugs and tears before the special gathering as canine officers made sure the building was secure.

“There is evil in this world, and evil took two of my dear friends yesterday,” Farmer added. “Not a bullet from a gun—evil. Not ideology—evil.”

But the preacher, occasionally overcome with emotion that made it difficult for him to speak, declared that he would not let evil win.

“The battle belongs to God!” he said to amens and applause.

Farmer praised his family—all four of his adult children traveled home after the shooting—and his spiritual family for the support they have shown him.

“You are incredible, and I love you, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart,” he said.

Mike Tinius, one of the church’s five elders, wrapped an arm around Farmer and led the church in prayer.

“With all of our hearts, we ache. And with all of our hearts, we love,” Tinius said to God. “What we feel as loss, we know ...

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The Most Life-Changing New Year’s Resolution Won’t Come Easy

Jesus warned his disciples that following him would cost them.

Every year at the end of December, people begin to consider the exciting possibilities for themselves in the new year ahead. Whether we’ve resolved to read more, run a marathon, eat healthier, keep a journal, or take up a new hobby, we’re surrounded by resources and tips that promise to make our goals easy and attainable.

Many Christians will set out to become more faithful followers of Jesus in 2020. It’s a worthy resolution. Jesus is Lord over everything in heaven and on earth, and he wants his followers to place everything under his lordship. He wants our gifts, talents, careers, money, time, health, thoughts, marriages, kids, singleness, aspirations, words, deeds, dreams, motives—everything.

In 2020 and in all years to come, the resolve of every Christian should be to follow Jesus on the narrow and difficult path of discipleship. However, Jesus’ words in Scripture and church history tell us the price of discipleship in 2020 will be costly.

In Matthew 8:19, a scribe approaches Jesus to tell him he would follow wherever Jesus would go. In the next verse, Jesus responds, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” This was Jesus’ way of asking: Have you considered the cost of following me wherever I go?

Since the earliest days of Christianity, many Christians have lost material possessions, status, connections, jobs, family relationships, and even their lives because of their obedience to Jesus. Even now, brothers and sisters face the daily risk of losing everything, including their lives, because of their commitment to Jesus Christ above all. The demands and risks of faithful discipleship cause many to choose the wide and easy path ...

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Top 20 CT News Headlines of the Decade

Eugene Peterson, R. C. Sproul pass on, LifeWay closes all 170 stores, and Acts 29 removes Mars Hill, asks Mark Driscoll to step down.

In the 2010s, evangelicals witnessed theological controversy, the fall of influential leaders and the death of powerhouse theologians and pastors. Yet in the midst of the tragedies, the church sought justice and fought for theological orthodoxy. These are headlines that you, our readers, clicked on the most throughout the past decade, in reverse order from lesser to more popular.

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Christianity Today’s Top 10 Articles for Pastors in 2019

Screens are changing the way we read Scripture, preaching against racism is not a distraction from the gospel, and the disturbing temptations of pastoring in obscurity.

This year’s top articles for pastors gather around a common question: What does spiritual health and wholeness look like for those in full-time ministry? “What unites me with a thousand other pastors who are both godly and dysfunctional?” asked Todd Wilson in the most-read CT Pastors piece of the year. “A lack of integration.” This humble confession represents the heart of most articles on this list. Pastors face unique challenges, but they will overcome their temptations in the same way as their congregants, through the steady formation of the Holy Spirit and God’s Word. Amy Simpson wrote in another article that pastors will be at their healthiest when they acknowledge their humanity. “There are no substitutes for inner work, humble transparency, open-handed leadership, and true relationship.” Here are the top articles for pastors our readers viewed this year, in reverse order of lesser read to most-read.

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Well-done Evangelism: Evangelism Lessons from Jesus’ Encounter with the Woman at the Well

We all have in our minds what we would deem bad evangelism or evangelistic tactics. So, what about good evangelism? What does good evangelism look like?

I think we’ve all seen bad evangelism. In fact, I’ve been a culprit of bad evangelism.

Back when I was a freshman in high school, I remember telling my cousin that he was going to die and go to hell. No, that didn’t come in the middle of a conversation, that was my conversation starter. Yep…I know, that wasn’t the most effective sentence to begin a conversation with.

We all have in our minds what we would deem bad evangelism or evangelistic tactics. So, what about good evangelism? What does good evangelism look like?

If we want to see what good evangelism looks like in practice, we should read about and watch the greatest evangelist who ever walked planet earth. Who is that you ask? Jesus!

One of my favorite passages that highlights good evangelism is John 4, where Jesus encounters the woman at the well. In that narrative, we learn at least five lessons from Jesus about what I will refer to as “well”-done evangelism.

CROSSOVER into the person’s territory

We learn in the narrative that Jesus crosses a couple of cultural boundaries.

Most know about the racial tension between the Jews and Samaritans during that time, and how many Jews avoided going through Samaria or engaging with Samaritans altogether. In addition, most know the cultural dynamics between men and women where men didn’t engage women in public. Moreover, most know that Jewish teachers or rabbis avoided “sinners.”

Jesus, however, crossed all the boundaries mentioned above as he went through Samaria and once there engaged an immoral Samaritan woman at the public well.

Why did he do this? We learn in verse 4, he “had” to go.

In other words, Jesus didn’t have a choice. Jesus knew the Father ...

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Monday, 30 December 2019

US Religion Census Maps Changing Churches, Declining Denominations

The 2020 project shows shifting complexity of organized religion.

Church historians, sociologists, and statisticians are going county by county, denomination by denomination, group of believers by group of believers, to compile the most complete record of organized religion in the country: the 2020 US Religion Census.

The official decennial census conducted by the United States government does not measure religious affiliation. Most data about religion in America comes from polling, but polling has its limits. So every 10 years, the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) counts and maps religious congregations in the US.

The project is a massive undertaking. In 2010, the organization counted 236 religious groups, with 344,894 congregations and 150,686,156 regular participants, releasing its results in a 726-page book with 31 color maps.

In 2020, they’re counting again: Southern Baptists and American Baptists, plus National, Progressive, Independent, Fundamental, Full Gospel, Free Will, and Original Free Will Baptists. They’re counting Grace Gospel Fellowships and Fellowships of Grace Brethren. Twelve types of Lutherans. Thirty affiliations of Amish. They’re counting churches without buildings and churches that meet in multiple locations, congregations with no denomination and congregations that belong to more than one.

In the process of coming up with the numbers, the census takers wrestle with the complexity of organized religion. They just want clean stats, but these data obsessives end up mapping denominational decline and transformation, migration, reorganization, and the seemingly endless shifts in the shape of church.

“There really is a feeling that maybe denominations have seen their day,” said Richard H. Taylor, a retired United ...

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The New Face of Medical Missions

The missionary physicians of the 21st century will be Africans— and US missions agencies couldn’t be happier.

As the rainy season nears an end in Africa’s Rift Valley, the boys harvesting avocados start falling out of trees. If a boy breaks a bone, he may go to Kibuye Hope, a rural mission hospital in the East African nation of Burundi. There, for the first time in the 73-year history of the hospital, he may receive care from a full-time, permanent missionary surgeon who is Burundian.

That surgeon, Alliance Niyukuri, joined the missionary staff of Kibuye Hope in 2018, moving his family to its residences after he completed his medical training in Gabon. He is one of the first 100 graduates from the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons (PAACS).

“I’m hoping that my presence here can encourage other Burundians and allow me to be a role model to students coming to the mission hospital,” Niyukuri said. “The Lord is [calling] more and more young graduates like me, calling us also to serve in the mission hospitals.”

Niyukuri is part of a long-hoped-for cohort of African missionary doctors serving in their native regions. It is the result of a larger shift in medical missions strategies that many organizations started making a few decades ago to train and empower Africans to practice medicine. The organizations recognized the potential of the Christians in Africa and sought new ways to deal with the continued shortage of doctors.

“The vision in the late 1990s was audacious,” said Mike Chupp, CEO of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, a US professional group that sponsors overseas medical missions and partnered with Loma Linda University to start PAACS in 2003. “It was, by 2020, to graduate 100 general surgeons in Africa for Africa.”

This is no small undertaking. It ...

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