Let the Little Children Come to ‘Big Church’

One lesson from COVID-19: Don’t underestimate the model set by worshiping alongside your kids.

Since last year, COVID-19 has asked all of us to adapt in myriad ways. As we begin to emerge from pandemic precautions, the pull to return to normalcy will be strong. Simultaneously, we will assess what we have learned: What practices do we want to maintain? For young Christian families, one pandemic practice in particular promises a huge discipleship yield.

Like other families, the Wilkins turned to jigsaw puzzles to fill our unexpected hours of togetherness. In March 2020, it wasn’t just toilet paper that ran scarce. There was also a shortage of—of all things—1,000-piece puzzles. With puzzle-hoarding running rampant on Amazon, I finally committed to ordering one from a print-on-demand website. When it arrived, it was indeed a 1,000-piece puzzle … but each piece was about the size of a dime. You know what you need in lockdown? More ways to be short-tempered and frustrated.

That being said, one habit I hope our family will preserve post-pandemic is working on (normal-sized) puzzles together. With regard to the continuous puzzle that is discipling our children, COVID-19 delivered a full-sized, clear picture of a key way to do so, through the unexpected means of Sunday services streamed into our living rooms.

For many young families, the coronavirus lockdown was their first time to worship together consistently through all elements of “big church,” rather than follow a common pattern of kids attending children’s programing while adults attend the weekly gathering.

At my own church, as soon as we began streaming services, kids began asking about baptism and the Lord’s Supper at unprecedented rates. Many had never seen them. In living rooms everywhere, children prayed communal prayers, ...

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20 Truths from 'Madness and Grace' by Matthew S. Stanford

"A Practical Guide for Pastoral Care and Serious Mental Illness."

1. Madness, or what today we call serious mental illness, has been part of the human experience throughout recorded history. (p. 1)
2. In the United States, one out of every five adults (48 million) will experience mental illness in a given year. Perhaps a more disturbing statistic is that almost 60% of adults diagnosed with a mental illness receive no treatment. (p. 3)
3. There are simply not enough mental health-care providers to meet the growing demand for care. . . . As a result of this lack, there are ten times more individuals with mental illness in our jails and prisons in psychiatric hospitals. Our emergency rooms have become de facto psychiatric crisis clinics. (p. 9)
4. Research over the last seven decades has consistently demonstrated the individuals in psychological distress are more likely to seek assistance from a member of the clergy before looking for help from a PCP or psychiatrist. This is especially true in minority groups. View through the eyes of faith, it is obvious that this is not an accident but rather a divine opportunity for the church to take the lead in caring for those affected by middle illness. (p. 10)
5. The primary purpose of this book is to equip pastors, ministry staff, and lay ministers to better serve and support those suffering with mental illness who won assistance from the church. (p. 11)
6. The scriptures teach us that we live in a fallen world. The presence of illness is simply one example of the creation's brokenness. Mental illness, like all illness, is not the result of personal sin or a weak faith; rather, it is evidence that we desperately need the Savior who can heal our brokenness and make us whole. (p. 21)
7. Research shows that recovery in remission or possible for those with mental illness. . . . As a faithful leader, your job is not to "fix" those struggling with mental illness but simply to relieve their psychological suffering when possible while revealing the unconditional love and limitless grace that is available only through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. (p. 30)

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How Seven Soldiers Carried One Bible into 11 Combat Tours

A gift from the Gideons was a good luck charm—and then something more.

Jesse Maple first carried the Bible because his mother taught him to respect the Holy Book. Then he saw the Scripture as a kind of good luck charm. But soon enough, Maple saw it as evidence that God loved him and was with him in the jungles of Vietnam.

In all, seven US soldiers have carried that same small book since 1967. By 2019, they had brought it with them through 11 combat tours in five countries. For each of the men, the Bible was a source of comfort, an assurance of protection, and the promise of a fuller relationship with God. They carried the Scripture to keep them safe, but they found a deeper security inside its pages.

Physically, this Bible isn’t much to look at. It’s about five inches long and three inches wide, Maple estimates. It’s the King James Version. It has a black leather cover, now well worn and torn at the edges, with the pages at risk of falling out.

“You wouldn’t believe what that Bible has been through,” Maple said.

He carried it through his tour in Vietnam. He was drafted into the Army at 19, a kid from West Lafayette, Ohio. He told CT he was living a wild and backslidden life at the time. But then a man with Gideons International gave him the Bible. His mother taught him to respect the Scripture, so he stuck it in his pocket and kept it there.

It was still with him during one intense firefight when bullets ripped through the pack on his back. They pierced a can of fruit but left him unharmed. Afterward, Maple was standing there, juice leaking on the ground, when a passing Catholic priest told him, “The Lord was with you today.”

Maple immediately thought of the little Bible in his pocket.

According to religious studies professor Jonathan Ebel, soldiers’ ...

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Wheaton Pulls Jim Elliot Missionary Plaque to Reword ‘Savage’ Description

The college plans to update the inscription to “reflect the full dignity” of the Waorani tribe.

More than 65 years after two of its alumni were killed in what became the most famous example of missionary martyrdom in the 20th century, Wheaton College wants to tell a better story to honor their work.

Wheaton president Philip Ryken announced this week that a plaque honoring alumni Jim Elliot and Ed McCully along with Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, and Pete Fleming has been taken down from the campus chapel while a task force meets to suggest new phrasing to remove the word “savage.”

Elliot and McCully graduated from Wheaton in 1949. The five men were killed in January 1956 after making peaceful contact with the isolated and hostile indigenous group in Ecuador. The following year, their classmates donated the plaque, which includes relief images of Elliot and McCully.

In describing the tribe, then called “Aucas” (“savage” in the lowland Quichua language), the plaque reads, “For generations all strangers were killed by these savage indians.” Contemporary accounts of the mission now refer to the tribe by the name they call themselves, Waorani.

In his emailed statement, Ryken said the term “savage” is a pejorative term that “has been used historically to dehumanize and mistreat indigenous peoples around the world. Any descriptions on our campus of people or people groups should reflect the full dignity of human beings made in the image of God.”

Ryken and other members of Wheaton leadership have received about a dozen comments about the plaque this school year from students and members of the campus community, said Joseph Moore, Wheaton’s director of marketing communications. He said the president released the statement because the plaque has been temporarily ...

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D.A. Horton: A Missiological Assessment of Critical Race Theory II

The second installment of CRT through a missiologist's eyes.

In part-one I laid out a brief history and basic heart (or themes) of CRT. In parts two and three I bring CRT’s themes to Scripture for an objective measurement of its claims.

A Biblical Assessment of CRT

“Race” is Man-Made that created Privilege for “Whiteness”

Claim: Race is man-made.

Biblical Response: God created every human in His image. Adam and Eve are humanity’s first parents (cf. Gen 1-2; Acts 17:26; Gen 3:20).[1] Genesis 3 records the fall of humanity into sin, which every descendant of Adam equally inherited (Rom 5:12-21).[2] Scripture does not label humans by the racial categories used today but instead by ethnicity, language, geographic proximity [3], and if they’re in a covenant relationship with God or not. Scripture says humanity is one race comprised by a gorgeous array of ethnicities God created from His genius for His glory (Acts 17:26).

This truth connects to the gospel. In the Garden of Eden, vertically God and humanity, and horizontally man and woman were conciled because of the absence of animosity, distrust, and hostility.[4] In the fall, every human from every ethnicity in Adam’s biological line were separated from God due to sin but can be reconciled (once again conciled) through the work of Jesus Christ alone (Eph 2:1-22; 2 Cor 5:17-21; Rev 7:9; 21:24-26). CRT’s claim ‘race is man-made’ holds up in light of Scripture and provides a clear pathway for global evangelism.

Claim: Whiteness is created and provides privileges for those who are “White”.

Biblical Response: First, Scripture is clear, God does not show partiality (cf. Deut 10:17; 2 Chron 19:7; Mal 2:1-9; Rom 2:1-11; 1 Pet 1:15-17) and His followers are commanded to imitate ...

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Homelessness Is Vexing American Cities. Do Christians Have a Solution?

How the church should help the rising number of people sleeping on the streets.

Across the country, American cities are unsuccessfully grappling with how best to address homelessness. This month, Austin criminalized sitting, lying, or camping in public. Sausalito, an upscale community in the Bay Area canceled its annual art festival when its location conflicted with the proposed place to relocate the homeless population that is currently living on the city’s waterfront. Los Angeles is considering moving forward with establishing a government-funded tent encampment.

Nationally, here’s how The New York Timessummed it up in March of this year.

"Homelessness in the United States rose for the fourth straight year, with about 580,000 people living on the streets or in temporary shelter at the start of 2020, according to an annual nationwide survey that was completed before the pandemic.

But the report, which was released on Thursday, almost certainly underestimates the spread, depth and urgency of the crisis, and not by a little, federal officials warned.

Beyond the myriad factors that leave people on streets, expiring COVID-19 moratoriums on evictions mean that millions may soon find themselves without housing.

For decades, Christian ministries have served food and offered temporary housing to people experiencing homelessness. Whose needs have these organizations traditionally met? And how successful have they been?

John Ashmen has served as the CEO of Citygate Network since 2007, previously known as the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions and is the author of Invisible Neighbors. Before he went to what’s now Citygate, he served in the COO role of the Christian Camp and Conference Association.

Ashmen joined global media manager Morgan Lee and executive editor Ted Olsen to talk about why ...

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Tulsa Church Ledger Preserves Stories of Faith After Historic Massacre

For 100th anniversary, the Museum of the Bible restored the “Book of Redemption.”

The book might look like it’s just a list of names and numbers, but Robert Richard Allen Turner, pastor of Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, knows it’s more than that.

“It’s a ledger of our history that we still need to know today,” Turner said. “It’s a story of faith and folks who had faith in God.”

The city of Tulsa will pause on June 1 to remember the 100th anniversary of a racial massacre. In 1921, white Oklahomans killed hundreds of Black people and completely destroyed a prosperous Black community. When the violence ebbed, Greenwood Avenue—the heart of what was then called America’s Black Wall Street—was rubble. The mob had destroyed four hotels, two newspapers, eight doctor’s offices, seven barbershops, half a dozen real estate agencies, and half a dozen churches. One of the Black houses of worship that was damaged was the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, located then at 307 N. Greenwood.

The only thing left of the AME was the basement, and it too had been badly damaged. But the church decided to rebuild, and it kept a ledger of all the people who pledged to help and the money they contributed to the cause.

When Turner looks at that book, he thinks of the biblical genealogies and the Book of Numbers, where God told Moses to write down the names of the people who assisted him and to count and record the names of the people who had escaped bondage in Egypt and the descendants who went through the wilderness to the Promised Land.

“It’s not considered to be one of the sexier, more quoted [parts] of the Bible,” Turner said, “but the history of the genealogy in the Book of Numbers shows you the ...

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