Aaron Ivey, Worship Pastor at Austin Stone, Fired Over Explicit Texts

Roxanne Stone – Religion News Service

The author, musician, and husband of podcaster Jamie Ivey showed “a very clear pattern of predatory manipulation” in messages to multiple males, according to church elders.

Aaron Ivey

Austin Stone Worship / YouTube screengrab

The Austin Stone Community Church, a multicampus evangelical church in Austin, Texas, announced on Sunday that it had dismissed its head worship pastor after discovering he had engaged in “inappropriate and explicit ongoing text messages with an adult male,” according to a statement from the church’s elders.

Aaron Ivey, the pastor of worship and creativity and an elder at the megachurch, was fired last Monday for what the statement called a “disqualifying situation,” which the elders said they became aware of the previous day.

“Several elders were made aware of this situation on the evening of Sunday, February 4th and after reviewing the explicit nature of these messages, it was clear that termination of Aaron’s eldership and employment was necessary in accordance with the clear biblical standards outlined in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and 1 Timothy 5:19-20,” according to the statement. The first passage, from the Apostle Paul’s Letter to Timothy, urges church leaders to be faithful in marriage; the second says church elders “who are sinning” should be reproved before everyone.

After firing Ivey, the elders said, they then discovered that Ivey, the husband of bestselling author and popular podcaster Jamie Ivey, had a history of texting with men, including one who had been underage at the time of the explicit texts, according to the statement.

“Since then, we have uncovered multiple similar instances with different individuals dating back to 2011 that show a very clear pattern of predatory manipulation, sexual exploitation, and abuse of influence,” the statement said.

The elders detailed a timeline of texts they had discovered, alleging that they began in 2011 with the exchanges with a minor, which they said they had reported to the “appropriate authorities.”

“The first known instance, which took place with a teenage male victim and continued over time, involved inappropriate and explicit communications, indecent exposure, and the use of alcohol and illegal substances,” read the statement.

A spokesperson for the church, which has been affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, declined to offer additional comment on the allegations and Ivey’s termination.

The elder statement said MinistrySafe, which trains the church’s staff to prevent child abuse, has been alerted about the situation.

“As elders, we are heartbroken for the victims and their families. Knowing the Lord’s sheep are worth our protection and our love, we are committed to loving this body and rooting out evil. We know this may affect your trust because we know it certainly has rattled ours,” read the statement.

Jamie Ivey, host of the popular podcast The Happy Hour, appeared on Good Morning America on Friday to promote her new book, Why Can’t I Get It Together? Afterward, she posted on her Instagram that she was “off to China Town with my man for some epic Chinese food for lunch!” It’s unclear whether she knew at the time of her husband’s firing.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3OjXm1AHVq/

In 2021, the Iveys wrote Complement, a book and accompanying Bible study about marriage. The couple subscribed to a complementarian theology of marriage, which emphasizes male leadership, and spoke on it often. Aaron Ivey appeared on a 2019 panel hosted by the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, titled “Faithful Husband, Strong Father: Embracing God’s Design for Manhood in Marriage,” that focused on the role of biblical manhood in marriage.

The couple, who have four children, including three adopted Black children, have also publicly talked about the challenges of living as a multiracial family in a majority white community and church.

Aaron Ivey did not respond to requests for comment.

- More from Roxanne Stone – Religion News Service

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Wire Story

What Research Says About the Five Love Languages

Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

Even Gary Chapman clarifies it’s not about picking just one.

RgStudio / Getty Images

When Katie Frugé and her husband, Lafayette, decided to get married in 2007, they were 21 and did not know what they did not know.

“We were too young to get married and too young really to care,” said Frugé, who is now director of the Center for Cultural Engagement for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

For guidance, the young couple turned to The Five Love Languages, a popular book by North Carolina author and pastor Gary Chapman. First published in 1992, the book explores different ways people express love—words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time, acts of service and giving gifts—in hopes of helping couples find happiness.

The book claims understanding each other’s love language can help create healthy marriages. Frugé recalls thinking the book held the key to a bright future.

“We thought, we’ll just learn each other’s love languages and everything’s going be hunky-dory,” she said. “We’re not going to ever have any fights and we’re both going to feel fully satisfied all the time.”

Married life proved more complicated.

Frugé said she and her husband are still happily married 17 years later but there were a lot of bumps, including several health crises—“We had the sickness and health part,” she said. And they needed more love along the way than a formula could provide.

“When I’m diagnosed with cancer, I don’t need my husband to go out and buy me a gift at that moment,” she said.

Once popular mostly in evangelical Christian circles, the Five Love Languages have exploded into a pop culture phenomenon. The dating app Bumble offers a Five Love Languages quiz, the concept has been featured on The Bachelorette and in major media outlets, while the Five Love Languages channel on TikTok has attracted tens of millions of views. Chapman has sold more than 20 million copies of his books and launched a cottage industry of conferences, related books and an online quiz taken tens of millions of times.

All of that attention has led researchers such as Emily Impett, a psychology professor and director of the Relationships and Well-Being Laboratory at the University of Toronto Mississauga, to ask if the claims of the Five Love Languages stand up to scientific scrutiny, and perhaps nearly as important—what can scholars learn from the popularity of Chapman’s work?

A new paper in “Current Directions in Psychological Science” suggests Chapman’s theory about how love works doesn’t quite add up. For the paper, Impett and a pair of colleagues looked at a series of studies that tried to test three key ideas about the Five Love Languages: that people have a primary love language, that five love languages exist and that people are happier with a partner who speaks their primary love language.

The studies, said Impett and her colleagues, don’t support that theory.

For example, people will choose a preferred language if forced to in a quiz. However, researchers found that if asked about all five love languages on an individual basis—people rate all of them highly. The researchers also found that some important ideas, such as supporting a partner’s or spouse’s goals, don’t fit in the five love language model and that people who have the same love languages aren’t happier than other couples.

“Love is not akin to a language one needs to learn to speak but can be more appropriately understood as a balanced diet in which people need a full range of essential nutrients to cultivate lasting love,” Impett and her colleagues wrote.

They did suggest Chapman’s book has filled a need for couples in that “it provides partners an opportunity to reflect on, discuss, and respond to one another’s need.”

In a follow-up email, Impett said that reading the love languages book—which includes examples of how to practice showing love in different ways—is much more helpful than using the online quiz. That’s in part because the focus on finding a partner’s primary love language can be too restrictive and ends up putting people into a box.

Instead, she told Religion News Service in an email, “all of the behaviors Chapman identified are important.”

“We are not suggesting that people necessarily are multilingual (skilled at all five behaviors) but that they should learn to be since the five behaviors that Chapman identifies are really important things people can do to maintain their relationships.”

On that point, Chapman agrees.

The 86-year-old author, who recently stepped down after 50 years on the staff of Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said all of the love languages matter.

“There is absolutely no question that what makes one person feel loved doesn’t necessarily make another person feel loved,” he said in an interview. “But I don’t want to communicate that you only speak the person’s primary love language.”

Chapman, who still travels and speaks at marriage conferences and other events, said he was surprised by some of the paper’s findings but appreciates researchers taking his work seriously. The more research, he said, the better.

He said he continues to be surprised at how popular the idea of love languages has been. Chapman developed the idea for the book while counseling troubled couples at his church. Those couples, he said, were often at their wit’s ends, because each partner thought they were acting in loving ways, but the other partner felt unloved.

A master storyteller, Chapman recalled one husband saying he cooked dinner most nights, shared in the housework and lawn work, and did all he could to support the family. But his wife felt distant because he was so busy helping out at home that they never had time to talk.

Looking over his counseling notes, Chapman began to look for patterns and eventually came up with the five love languages.

“It’s a simple concept,” he said. “But I knew from my counseling and working with couples—it would help people if they could get that concept. In all of my writing, I’ve tried to put the cookies on the bottom shelf, so people can understand it easily.”

That approach is something researchers say they can learn from.

In their paper about the love languages, they said Chapman’s book has connected with people because it uses “intuitive metaphors, which may resonate with people and convey an easily digestible message free of scientific jargon.”

Impett also said the focus on finding a primary love language can overshadow the reason why so many people find Chapman’s book helpful. The book, she said in an email, “gets people to identify any currently unmet needs (areas of improvement) in their relationship and opens up lines of communication to address those needs.”

Chapman, who has been married 62 years, said that’s the point. He said love begins with emotion but is sustained by having the right attitude and by acting in ways that put your spouse or romantic partner first.

That right attitude, he said, can be summed up this way: “I want to do anything and everything I can do to help you become the person that you want to be. I want to do everything that would be good for you.”

Meleah Smith of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who coaches “brands and bands” on marketing, said the idea of five love languages never really connected with her. She knows the book has worked for other people, but for her, it’s too simplistic, said the 40-something, who described herself as “single as a Pringle.”

Smith said she has plenty of love in her life, with friends, her church and her family—she helps manage her brother’s band—but no romantic relationship. She said the love languages can be too easy at times—tempting people to avoid the hard work of getting to know someone and paying attention to them.

“If I have to give you a list of things you have to do for me—maybe we are not a good match,” she said.

After 17 years of marriage, Frugé had some advice for those using the five love languages. Remember that people need all kinds of love, not just one kind. Pay attention to them—rather than running to a book for all the answers.

Sometimes the answers you need are right in front of you.

“Thriving relationships occur when you have a partner who understands and knows you, sees what your need is and meets you in that moment.”

- More from Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

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The Tragic Injustice of the British Post Office Scandal, Explained

Madeleine Davies in London

How a tech glitch ruined hundreds of lives … and what the Church of England is learning in the aftermath.

Post Office in Westminster in London

Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

In recent weeks, Britain has seen an outpouring of anger at what has been described as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in its history: the Post Office scandal.

Over more than a decade, hundreds of local businesspeople were prosecuted on the basis of a faulty IT system, and the government has just recently begun to right its wrongs. A TV dramatization of the saga aired last month has generated further outrage and empathy for the innocent victims.

And because the Post Office’s former CEO happened to be a member of the clergy, the Church of England is also trying to learn lessons from the scandal.

What is the Post Office scandal?

Between 1999 and 2015, 736 people running local post offices (“sub-postmasters”) were prosecuted for false accounting, theft, and fraud, based on information from an online accounting system called Horizon. Hundreds went to prison. Families were left bankrupt, marriages collapsed, and lives were ruined.

Sub-postmasters had raised concerns about Horizon and the shortfalls it reported, and eventually 550 of them brought a group legal action. The Post Office agreed in 2019 to pay out £58 million ($73 million) but didn’t admit liability. In 2021, the Court of Appeal ruled that “the failures of investigation and disclosure were … so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the ‘Horizon cases’ an affront to the conscience of the court.”

A public inquiry is now underway to determine what went wrong. Although media first exposed the scandal, a recent TV miniseries, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, has sparked outrage among a much wider public.

What is the Post Office?

More than a mail service, the Post Office is an institution that is part of the fabric of British society and dates back to the rule of King Charles I in 1635. The postal market remained a state monopoly until 2006 and, while much has changed in recent decades, the Post Office is still entirely owned by the British government. With more than 11,500 branches, it is the largest retailer in the UK. Much of the population is able to walk to a branch.

The Post Office has expanded to offer banking for individuals and small businesses. The vast majority of local post offices are operated by franchise partners: “sub-postmasters.” They are often regarded as pillars of the community: familiar faces entrusted with thousands of pounds of local money. Another important fact is that the Post Office is able to bring private prosecutions. In fact, Royal Mail solicitors are believed to the earliest known formal investigators and prosecutors in the world.

When did the Horizon scandal begin?

More than 20 years ago, sub-postmasters flagged Horizon for generating shortfalls in accounts that they couldn’t explain. But the Post Office approach was to demand that they either make up the shortfall or face prosecution. In 2004, a sub-postmaster from Northern England, Lee Castleton, was made bankrupt after losing a legal battle with the Post Office.

Although the sub-postmasters eventually formed an alliance, each were initially told that they were the only ones reporting problems with Horizon. A key aim of the public inquiry is to establish who knew of faults with Horizon and when. Last month, one of the executives at Fujitsu, the IT company that ran Horizon, said that bugs had been present in the system for “nearly two decades” and that the Post Office had been made aware. The chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, Paula Vennells, told a parliamentary inquiry in 2020 that Fujitsu had assured her Horizon was “fundamentally sound.”

What is the connection to the Church of England?

Paula Vennells was unusual in serving as the CEO of a major company while also being ordained. She became a priest in the Church of England in 2006 and worked as a “non-stipendiary” (unpaid) minister at village churches in an area north of London.

She was a trustee of Hymns Ancient & Modern, the charity that owns the independent Church Times newspaper, serving a full nine-year term that ended in January 2019. She also served in a number of advisory roles for the church, including its Ethical Investment Advisory Group from 2019 until 2021, when she resigned.

Last month, it was reported that she had been considered for appointment as the bishop of London—one of the most senior roles in the church. Although she was not appointed, eyebrows were raised about the shortlisting, given that she had held no other senior roles in the church. A Church of England spokesperson has said that “more questions should have been asked about the appropriateness of Vennells’s involvement in various committees and working groups.”

In January, she handed back her Commander of the British Empire honor, which was bestowed upon her by the queen in 2019 for services to the Post Office and to charity. Vennells said, “I am truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system. I now intend to continue to focus on assisting the inquiry and will not make any further public comment until it has concluded.” She stepped back from public ministry in 2021.

How has the church responded?

The bishop who leads the area in which Paula Vennells has carried out her local ministry, Alan Smith, is the son of a former sub-postmaster. After the 2021 court ruling, he expressed his “distress at the miscarriage of justice that so many sub-postmasters have suffered” and last month he said that the TV dramatization “rekindles the suffering and pain of the sub-postmasters and their families who are victims of the Horizon IT scandal, and anger in all of us for such a serious miscarriage of justice.”

He added, “I hope and pray that the public inquiry will explain fully the sequence of events, provide redress for the victims and hold to account the responsible people and organisations.” Some clergy have personal links to the scandal, including those who supported sub-postmasters facing prosecution.

What has the recent response been like?

Recent weeks have seen an outpouring of sympathy for those wrongly convicted and anger at how the Post Office pursued prosecutions. The subject of the miniseries, Alan Bates, has been hailed as a hero, with the sub-postmasters regarded as David up against Goliath. The story has tapped into wider anxieties about large-scale IT projects and corporate faith in technology, with many people incredulous that the Post Office was ready to believe that so many sub-postmasters had turned to crime.

Within the church, questions have been raised about its own relationship with corporate culture. Vennells was a member of a faculty appointed by the Church of England to deliver training for senior leaders.

A few weeks ago, an overview of the program was shared on social media, with topics including “applying concepts around value creation, value destruction and resource allocation to support the ministry and mission of the Church.” It comes against a wider, long-term backdrop of anxiety about incorporating secular management techniques in the church.

What happens now?

The public inquiry remains underway, with Vennells due to give evidence later this year. To date, only 95 convictions of sub-postmasters have been overturned, although the government has said that those previously convicted will be cleared of wrongdoing and compensated under a new law. Each will be eligible for a compensation payment of £600,000 ($756,765). For some, it is too late: at least 60 died without seeing justice or compensation. Some took their own lives.

Madeleine Davies is a senior writer for the

Church Times

in London, where she has covered the Post Office scandal.’

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Church Life

Big Trouble in Small Groups

Nik Schatz

A pastor offers practical advice for the top three hurdles of church small groups: childcare, commitment, and over-talkers.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Pexels

Let’s take a few minutes to pray together.” [SCREAMS. CRYING. YELLING.] “On second thought, we gotta go. It’s Mia’s nap time.”

The idea of a church small group sounds great in theory. But week by week, it can be frustrating. Maybe in your small group, the kids outnumber the adults. Or you never know who is going to show up. Or you squirm in your seat every time John gets on a soapbox.

I’ve been a pastor for 14 years, and for 6 of those years, I’ve been directly involved in small group ministry, where I hear about the same practical obstacles time and time again. Below are the three most frequent questions I’m asked and some options for addressing these challenges in your church.

Childcare

This is the biggest hurdle that small group leaders and members face: What do we do with our young kids? There’s no easy answer, but here are several workable ideas.

Pitch in for a sitter. If every family fronts $8 to $10 per meeting and shares their babysitter lists, usually a group can find someone who will come watch all the kids for an hour.

Swap men and women meeting. Some groups choose to meet three times per month: once as men, once as women, and once as a whole group. When only the women meet, the men stay home with the kids, and vice versa. Then the third meeting is mostly bonding time, and the kids can be part of the action.

Swap sitting duties. If a group has several families involved (five or more), a good alternative is to rotate couples who do the sitting. Each week, one couple watches all the kids while the other adults meet and talk. This can happen in different houses, or in the same house, using different rooms. In this model, there is no need to pay or depend on a sitter.

Include the kids. If kids in the group are in elementary school or older, I suggest involving them in the group, at least occasionally. It is important for kids to grow up viewing the church as a family and seeing themselves as part of the present church, not just the “future of the church.” Adolescents can learn to dialogue with adults, and younger kids can be asked to share their fears, successes, or excitement about things happening at school or church.

Commitment and attendance

After childcare, this is the most common issue I’ve heard from group leaders: “How do I get people to show up consistently?” I have four suggestions.

Decide on the highest value of your group. If your group wants to be outwardly focused—meaning you wish to invite new people to join, utilize the group for community outreach, and multiply groups—then you will need to have a critical mass of consistent, mature people. If your priority is deeper relationships—meaning you want this group of people to become closer friends and wrestle through the practicalities of following Jesus together—you’ll need to be upfront about your expectations for depth of relationship.

Complete a group covenant. I urge all new groups to agree on their values and commitment expectations shortly after the group forms. Among other things you might want in a group covenant, one should be attendance.

Revisit attendance and commitment once or twice per year. I recommend all groups extend an off-ramp once per year, preferably at the end of summer. Simply say, “Next month I think we should revisit our group covenant. Think it over and consider if you want to commit to another year with this group, or if you need to try something different in this season.”

Schedule meetings in advance. The two best ways to do this are: (1) agree on a regular rotation so it’s never a mystery when the group will meet next, or (2) at the end of every meeting, confirm your next two gathering times.

Conversation dominators

Many groups have at least one “over-talker.” Perhaps it’s the person who wants to give good advice but speaks too soon and too simplistically. Or the person who takes on the role of therapist when someone shares a struggle. Maybe someone in your group is prone to interjecting or talking more than listening. Here are some quick tips to help in these situations.

Choose. Instead of asking the whole group a question, call someone out: “Suzanne, what do you think?” You can also start a question like this: “Let’s go around the room and each take 60 seconds to answer this question.”

Interrupt. “I know I’m interrupting, but I want to hear what Suzanne has to say.” It is counterintuitive, but letting people know you are interrupting is more polite than covertly cutting them off.

Thank them. If you feel too intimidated to interrupt, wait for a subtle pause and say, “I liked what you said about ___. Who else has a comment?” Many over-talkers are simply verbal processors who have a habit of never ending a sentence. When they come to the end of a thought, they’ll cue everyone that they are still talking—maybe by raising their voice inflection so it doesn’t sound like they are concluding a thought, or by adding a filler word (“so…”) to keep the next person from jumping in. Take advantage of those subtle pauses!

Non-verbal cues. Leaning in and using your hands or facial expressions can hint that you want to say something. I often look around the room for someone visibly waiting for a chance to talk, and I’ll point that way. Everyone turns to look, and the conversation naturally shifts.

Confront offline. This is never fun, and it must be done gently. Nevertheless, if the whole group dynamic is suffering, it may be necessary for you to speak with the conversation dominator privately.

If these suggestions fail to resolve a tension in your group, consult your pastor or whoever oversees small groups in your congregation, who will likely be personally acquainted with the people in your group and may have other practical suggestions specific to your circumstances.

Nik Schatz serves as the executive pastor at Hershey Free Church in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He holds a ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary and a DMin from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

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Ideas

What the Asbury Revival Taught Me About Gen Z

Kevin Brown

A year ago, I saw the cure for casual Christianity.

Illustration by Kyle Smart

On February 8, 2023, a routine 50-minute chapel at Asbury University turned into a 16-day event that captured attention around the world.

I streamed the service from my office that morning. After a message from the speaker, a student gospel choir closed in song. I left my computer and proceeded to my next meeting. Later, as I was preparing for lunch, my wife texted me that some students were still praying and worshiping in Hughes Auditorium.

More students came. Then more.

Over the next few weeks, what the university’s leadership described as an “outpouring” grew exponentially to an estimated 50,000 visitors who descended upon our two-stoplight town in central Kentucky. They overflowed into simulcast sites hosted at the neighboring seminary and local churches. They knelt and prayed and sang on the cold ground of our wide campus green.

Asbury has identified over 250 podcasts, 1,000 articles, and dozens of sermons and conference sessions addressing what happened. More than 100 local, national, and international media outlets visited our campus. There have been approximately 250 million social media posts related to #AsburyRevival or #AsburyRevival2023. I have never seen such a collection of men and women from all ages, backgrounds, and nationalities stirred, seeking, repentant, and unified.

Throughout it all, the internet swirled with debate over what defined a revival and whether the events at Asbury qualified as one. Comparisons were inevitably made to prior revivals at Asbury, most notably the one in 1970. These are fair discussions. Words like revival, renewal, and awakening carry nuanced theological and historical significance.

It may ultimately fall to historians to catalog the long-term consequences of the events of last February and to determine whether they were a revival or something else. For now, looking back after only a year, I believe outpouring is capacious enough to hold a variety of understandings and avoid prematurely defining what unfolded before us.

There is one thing, however, that I have come to see very clearly in the wake of those 16 days: Gen Z is emerging as a corrective to the casual Christianity that has marked our religious landscape and characterized our dechurching movement.

To understand why that is, you have to first understand some of what Gen Z has been through. In media interviews last year, I often suggested that the social, economic, and emotional burdens of our country—and the moral failures within the church itself—have been acutely felt by younger generations. “There is a hunger for something more,” I told one journalist.

I have asked students what they thought of my comments. While agreeing in spirit, one student told me he would state it differently. “We don’t want something more,” he said. “We want something less.” He was speaking to his generation’s desire for something distilled and real—an anchor amid the disorientation and dynamism of this moment.

Students are less interested in “beliefs” than in a faith that works. There is a trenchant meaning vacuum in our country fostering a sweeping spiritual hunger.

A former Iraq War medic—a nontraditional Asbury student who participated in the outpouring five times—described to me the harrowing look of desperation on a soldier’s face prior to death. “I saw a similar look on the faces of visitors,” he said.

Baylor University’s Jason Vickers writes in his book Outpouring (coauthored with Asbury Seminary theologian Tom McCall) that the long lines of people trying to enter Hughes Auditorium were reminiscent of soup lines during the Great Depression. “The connection was obvious and overwhelming,” Vickers writes. “They were hungry and thirsty for God. And they genuinely believed that God was there.”

The existence of spiritual hunger in America is perhaps obvious. But what struck me about our students was how they met that hunger. Those lines of visitors reflected an orderliness that marked the entire event. Its leaders sought order but not orchestration—and some of the most visible leaders were students, who could be found testifying, serving, and leading worship.

We have documented student visitors from 285 colleges or universities who came over the 16 days. An estimated 100 worship teams took the stage. Without being directed, they played from the side of the stage, outside the spotlight. This was consistent with a broader and unspoken sensibility to get out of the way. Prior to leading worship, teams would spend an hour in a “consecration room” that we had set aside, to pray and be prayed over. While this nonvisible space has been given scant attention, one person described it as the “nuclear reactor” of the outpouring.

I do not believe there is anything special about Asbury University or even the year 2023, in the sense that God can use any place and time to pour out his Spirit. Indeed, similar spiritual outpourings have since occurred at Samford University, Lee University, Baylor University, Texas A&M, and Auburn University.

There is, however, something special about the people. A year ago, I witnessed the best of our student community and the faculty and staff who guide them—faithful men and women with a high spiritual temperature, a holy imagination, and a willingness to exercise radical selflessness.

“Asbury is like a riverbed,” art professor Chris Segre-Lewis said during a community panel after the outpouring. “When water comes, it knows where to flow.”

This radical selflessness, together with Gen Z’s evident hunger for something unvarnished and genuine, is a sign of hope for the future of Christianity, its institutions, and the church.

Commentators have been abuzz with data from Jim Davis and Michael Graham’s 2023 book, The Great Dechurching. In the past quarter century, approximately 40 million Americans have gone from attending church regularly to attending less than once a year—a number greater than all conversions from the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, and every Billy Graham crusade combined.

Of those who have dechurched, approximately 10 million have done so under the banner of “church hurt,” departing due to things like spiritual abuse or loss of trust. Michael Graham calls these “casualty” exits. But the remaining three-quarters are “casual” exits. These are men and women who stopped attending because they moved and did not find a new congregation or because busy schedules or lifestyle changes crowded out weekly worship.

A casual exit from church is a function of a casual faith. As theologian and author Stanley Hauerwas has suggested, pockets of contemporary Christianity have become domesticated into a set of propositions that we mentally carry but that have little bearing on our day-to-day life. Casual faith produces a belief system that demands little and utters pale statements like “I believe Jesus is Lord, but that is just my personal opinion.”

I believe Gen Z is different. I am surrounded by young adults and teens with an unsated hunger, ready to “count the cost” in their commitment to Christ. There is a seriousness to Gen Z Christians, and they are dissatisfied with the institutional status quo.

Research from the Barna Group shows that Gen Z sees spiritual growth as a top priority. In general, they reject hollow words and hypocrisy and want values embodied in action. They prioritize behavior over words as a strategy for sharing faith.

This is little surprise for a generation that elevates authenticity as a core value.

In a podcast, journalist Olivia Reingold, who described herself as “not a very spiritually inclined person” and said she had never set foot in a church, closed with this remarkable statement about what happened last year at Asbury: “Regardless of what you believe, you cannot deny that there are young people out there who earnestly believe in God—and now, I think, you can say have kicked off a movement of sorts.”

I hope Reingold is on to something.

I hope a remnant will emerge out of this cohort whose steadfast commitment will radically restore a nondomesticated, exilic, and fundamentally demanding spirit of historical Christianity.

I hope they want pictures of serious and devoted saints like Sophie Scholl, Simone Weil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Óscar Romero, or Martin Luther King Jr.—instead of hype priests, prosperity gospel theology, celebrity culture churches, or an individualistic, therapeutic god who underwhelms and exists only to affirm our preferences.

There is ample evidence to suggest Gen Z is producing precisely these kinds of believers. Our students shaped the outpouring in small but radically countercultural ways for today’s church. They had no interest in platforming celebrity entertainers or media personalities on campus. They did not offer bios when they testified or worshiped. During prayer, many students placed their phones upon the altar. They prayed over faculty, staff, and administration—including me.

Gen Z is often described as a highly pathologized cohort. They are less religious. They are leaving the church. They are wary of institutions. They are anxious and depressed and malformed by technology and social media. You would have good reason to be skeptical that such a group holds the answer to what plagues evangelicalism today. Them?

But that question bears a striking resemblance to exchanges with Christ in Scripture. Jesus, do you know who is washing your feet? Do you know whose house you are eating at? Them?

The outpouring raised a great deal of questions for me, many of which cannot be answered now. But it has helped me see this generation in fresh ways. What if, instead of the Anxious Generation or the iGeneration, we are witnessing the rise of the Corrective Generation?

I know that some in Gen Z are weary of outsized expectations that they will clean up every mess left by their forebears (leading to another moniker, Generation Fix-It). Still, I cannot help but wonder if they will embody resilient, committed, costly faith in Jesus Christ as an antidote to the casual Christianity that has emptied church pews in recent decades.

I wonder because I have already seen it.

“Revival,” said one Asbury student, Charlie Cox, “is when dead things come to life.”

Kevin Brown is president of Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky.

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Wire Story

Died: Henry Blackaby, Author of ‘Experiencing God’

Carol Pipes - Baptist Press

The Canadian pastor’s influential Bible study sold 8 million copies and pointed readers to trust God’s plan.

Henry Blackaby

Blackaby Ministries International

Henry Blackaby, author of Experiencing God, passed away Saturday. He was 88.

Considered a spiritual statesman by many, the quiet pastor from Canada had a ministry that reached from pastors, missionaries, and lay people, to CEOs, US presidents, and world leaders.

Blackaby’s famous summary of how to know and do the will of God—“watch to see where God is working and join him”—has guided numerous people, churches, and ministries to join God’s work. Blackaby’s teaching and influence crossed denominational lines as well as cultural and geographic boundaries.

“We are deeply saddened to hear the news of the passing of Henry Blackaby,” said Lifeway President and CEO Ben Mandrell. “He was a great man of God and minister to the body of Christ, beginning with his time as a local church pastor and continuing through his ministry as an author and Bible teacher.

“Millions of people around the globe have been impacted by his Bible study Experiencing God. He loved his Lord, his family, and his local church. Lifeway sends the Blackaby family our sincere condolences as they remember the life and ministry of this godly man.”

Blackaby served as founder and president emeritus of Blackaby Ministries International, an organization built to help people experience God. He coauthored the modern classic Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God. His other acclaimed works include Spiritual Leadership, Fresh Encounter, and A God Centered Church.

“Only eternity will reveal the extent of Henry’s impact on the church. I know of no published material that has impacted more churches in more ways than Experiencing God,” said Lifeway President Emeritus Jimmy Draper.

“Though Henry wrote more materials after Experiencing God, that book became the foundation upon which his entire ministry was built. It was obviously the hand of God upon Henry and his message. He will be forever remembered for his passion for spiritual awakening and for the practical working of the Holy Spirit in believers’ lives. The impact on the church will continue until the Lord returns!”

Blackaby, a native Canadian, was pastoring a church in southern California when a Canadian pastor approached him and asked him to consider returning to Canada and becoming pastor of a small, dying church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Blackaby was struck when he said, “The only hope for Canada is if Canadian pastors come back home.”

He and his wife Marilynn answered the call to serve Faith Baptist Church in Saskatoon. Over the next 12 years, the once-dying church grew from 10 members to a thriving congregation that launched 38 mission churches as well as the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary and College.

There, in those years of local church ministry, the principles of Experiencing God took shape into what would become the resource that has led to millions of changed lives.

“Experiencing God is my life’s message,” the noted author often said. “It’s how I had always understood and walked with God. This is how I pastored and led God’s people.”

Experiencing God has touched and changed millions of lives and thousands of churches around the world. Since 1990, the study has sold more than 8 million copies in English and is available in more than 75 languages. The study, published by Lifeway and co-authored by Claude King, promotes a God-centered way of life that helps people know God intimately, recognize his voice and understand his will for their lives.

“Our human tendency is to think and act from a human-centered perspective. We often make plans and ask God to bless them, but God is the One who has the plan,” said King. “Henry taught me to find where God is working and join him. God has a plan, and he’s working in places we wouldn’t know. When we recognize where he’s working and join him, he does amazing things.”

Countless pastors, denominational and ministry leaders, church planters, and missionaries identify Experiencing God as an influential tool God used in calling them to vocational ministry, according to King.

“Only heaven would have an accounting,” King said. “There are thousands and thousands who have sensed God’s call to ministry because of Experiencing God. Through Henry, God has revealed what he can do through one ordinary man who is a humble servant and full of faith.”

Blackaby’s son Richard now leads Blackaby Ministries International and writes and speaks on spiritual awakening, experiencing God, and the Christian life. In 2022, Lifeway re-released the Bible study with new video content that includes Richard and Mike Blackaby, the son and grandson of Henry Blackaby.

Reflecting on the legacy of his father’s work on the original Experiencing God study, Richard Blackaby said there was no way to know how dramatically the study’s message would be received or how it would spawn a multigenerational movement of people seeking to recognize God’s voice.

“My dad always said there is a deep longing in people’s hearts to know and experience God,” he said. “Many people knew there had to be more to the Christian life than what they were experiencing.”

Describing what it was like to grow up the son of Henry Blackaby and watching his parents, Richard Blackaby said: “I knew you didn’t have to be a superhero to be a man of God or a woman of God. You just had to be willing to follow wherever Jesus leads you.”

After pastoring Faith Baptist Church, Henry Blackaby served as director of missions in Vancouver for two years before moving to the United States to become the director of prayer and spiritual awakening at the North American Mission Board.

He later served as special assistant to the presidents of the Southern Baptist International and North American mission boards and Lifeway.

Blackaby was born April 15, 1935, in British Columbia. He is preceded in death by his wife Marilynn and survived by their five children and 14 grandchildren.

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Inkwell

A Call for Weird Christian Art

Josh Tiessen

Ways for outliers to be sincere followers of Christ

Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (1503-1515)

I DESCEND FROM a holy heritage of Christian martyrs, pastors, and missionaries who dedicated their lives to serving the Lord and ministering to people. I was born in Moscow, Russia to Canadian parents who taught at a Christian university, training young pastors for ministry in a country healing from the brutality of atheistic communism. From as young as I can remember, I believed in God and wrestled with the big questions of life. As I grew older my faith matured, and I sought to follow the way of Jesus with faithfulness.

I developed an artistic flair from the time I could hold a fat crayon in my little hand, spending long hours as a preschooler doing crafts with my Russian nanny. I requested stylish clothes and unusual haircuts—from the colored spiky-do of the early 2000s to the emo side-sweep of the 2010s. While friends bragged about their latest video game conquests on Halo, I quietly studied under a pet portrait artist who helped me stage my first fine art exhibition at the age of eleven. That Easter, instead of a chocolate bunny, I asked for The Passion of the Christ. I guess you could say I was an odd little duck.

My parents were not artists, but I was fortunate to fall down the rabbit hole into the art world by way of the wildlife art scene in Canada. By invitation, I was mentored at fifteen under the world’s most well-known wildlife artist, Robert Bateman. During this mentorship, I studied alongside a few Christian artists, who were some of the kindest and most supportive people I knew. In the following years, I frequently met Jesus-followers at regional art festivals. Throughout the United States at juried gallery shows I met accomplished artists of faith exhibiting traditional representational art.

By my late teens, I had found my own artistic voice and transitioned away from naturalistic wildlife art. I began juxtaposing animals in abandoned ruins, lacing my paintings with stories and symbolism. I called my style “narrative hyper-surrealism.” While my new work was accepted into contemporary avant-garde galleries in New York City, Los Angeles, and Portland, a new observation dawned on me: all the Christians had disappeared.

I HAVE OFTEN been perplexed by the reality that though the Bible is chock-full of strange tales of talking snakes, seraphim covered in eyes from wing-to-wing, and dead men coming to life, most of the last century of Christian art is tame, predictable, and palatable. As for music, I wonder if anyone else has grown weary from the proliferation of worship songs with clichés about breaking chains, or the never-ending references to water. It’s easy to poke fun at kitsch-y Thomas Kinkade cottage landscapes and Greg Olsen biblical prints found in your local Christian bookstore. But in a different way, this is also present in the millennial Christian culture, where the creative output is kinfolk-style minimalism with Bible verses overlaying pastel tones. We merely replaced the sentimental with the slick.

I get it. In the hopes of making Christianity ‘seeker sensitive’ we want to present our faith in an accessible way—so we draw on safe themes for art and music, like purpose, freedom, and comfort, which resonate with the largely suburban culture in which our churches are located. The nagging question is: are we being dishonest and doing society a disservice by covering up the “holy weirdness” of our faith?

While many churches in the West have attempted to make the ancient religion of Christianity more normal and relevant in order to appease a secular audience, trends now indicate that our culture is actually doing the reverse. The cool logic of naturalistic materialism is giving way to a tsunami of interest in the esoteric world of New Age. I have seen this most evidently in my artist colleagues who regularly incorporate Indigenous spirituality, psychedelic, and shamanist themes into their art. Maybe it’s time for us to rediscover and embrace the “holy weirdness” of Christianity.

IN MY ESCAPADES through art history, I’ve found many artists of faith who have integrated the wild and wonderful in their work. Perhaps we can look to them as guides, or at least conversational partners as we aim to reconcile an ancient faith with a postmodern world.

What I find fascinating is the kind of art that my non-Christian artist friends are attracted to—whether that be mysterious Byzantine icons or the organic whimsy of Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família cathedral.

One of the most popular works, especially among surrealist painters, is Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (1495-1505). If you have not done so already, take a moment to gaze at this iconic triptych and notice your visceral reaction. Are you intrigued, repulsed, confused?

At first glance, you might think this eccentric artist must have indulged in magic mushrooms, with all his bizarre and fantastical creatures. However, Bosch descended from a family of painters who were members of the Illustrious Brotherhood of our Blessed Lady, a conservative religious group that held to Christian belief and overtly critiqued the lavishness of the Catholic Church. According to historian Terry Glaspey, in his book 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know, Bosch himself had a great familiarity with the Bible and wished to convey the reality of sin, judgment, and hell.

The meaning of The Garden of Earthly Delights is debated, but with the artist’s Christian context in mind it is not so challenging to decipher. The first panel presents the Garden of Eden, in which the Lord is communing with Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:8) showing the initial harmony enjoyed between nature, humans, and their Creator. The second panel depicts The Fall—humans multiply and fill the earth (Gen. 1:28), sin enters the world (Gen. 3), then humanity devolves into wickedness and indulgence (Gen. 6:5). The third panel projects the theme of apocalyptic judgment—sinful humanity left to its own devices turns chaotic and leads to self-destruction. While God’s holy judgement will be for the unredeemed who have followed their sinful nature, for the godly it will be a joyous occasion of God laying bare the earth in order to purify it for the New Creation (2 Peter 3:10-13).

A COUPLE YEARS AGO, I was sitting in a friend’s living room surrounded by a pleasant group of Christian artists sipping tea and nibbling on biscuits. I thought it was the perfect time to express my appreciation for Bosch and his faith-filled work. To my dismay, I was met with disdain and apathy for this Early Netherlandish master.

What Christians fail to recognize is that Bosch created his own vocabulary of symbols, which many years later inspired fantasy and surrealist artists attracted to his aesthetic, inventing ghoulish creatures and imaginative worlds. However, unlike the fantasy genre which is often purely for entertainment value, Bosch used vivid metaphors for holy purposes to warn of the easy path toward self-indulgence.

Perhaps even more undervalued by Christians are the mystical saints of the Church, such as the 12th-century benedictine abbess and polymath Hildegard of Bingen. With a deep respect for the Creator and creation, she was the first to study natural science in Germany with her work Physica and Causae et Curae. Like the mystical female artisan of Proverbs 8 delighting in creation, Hildegard loved music and pioneered the first musical, allowing nuns under her care to perform moral plays, even letting down their hair and wearing colorful dresses. She experienced multiple visions throughout her life, recording them in her theological volume, Scivias. She also directed artistic illuminations to bring her unusual visions to life, depicting themes of creation, incarnation, the new heavens and the new earth, combining these with eastern mandala motifs in vibrant hues.

While Hildegard was almost lost to the sands of time, her life and work has been re-discovered. What made her weird in her day, namely being a female theologian and nature mystic, is now intriguing. Through her writings, she has helped contemporary Christians reconnect to the feminine aspects of embodied living and the sacredness of nature. Yet, Hildegard was far from a fourth-wave feminist or syncretistic nature-worshiper, showing that outliers can be sincere followers of Christ and remain theologically orthodox.

ALONGSIDE MY full-time work as a professional artist from the time I was sixteen, I studied very part-time toward a Bachelor of Religious Education in Arts and Biblical Studies, taking me nine years to complete. While I cherished the time with my professors and was thoroughly enriched by the high-quality education I received, I struggled most with classes on the Bible.

I was troubled by the 19th-20th century form critics who sought to “demythologize” Scripture. They claimed that anything supernatural was simply a later addition, and that when you looked “behind the text” only the natural remained. For a season I experienced great consternation when reading the Bible. Were the critics right? Was the Bible just a work of legend from a pre-scientific age?

Around that time, I discovered The Bible Project, a series of animated videos on YouTube explaining biblical books and key themes. They approach Scripture on its own terms, as both fine literary art and divine inspiration. They admit it’s weird, in fact “holy weird” (I recommend their trippy “Spiritual Beings” video series, a careful and imaginative exegesis of the ancient supernatural worldview that inspired Scripture). The co-founder, Dr. Tim Mackie, is the only Ph.D. I know of who skateboards to work. Curiously, the Bible Project is based in Portland, Oregon, known for its idiosyncratic blend of weirdness and post-Christian culture. The Bible Project spoke to me as an artist and intellectual, and helped rehabilitate my love for the Bible. I am heartened that “holy weirdness” is being embraced by some Christian artists and thinkers of our day.

I RECENTLY ATTENDED a megachurch for a few years, where I experienced a sub-culture in which sharing doubts and grappling with questions was discouraged, prefering cookie-cutter Christians who give pat answers and pray predictable prayers. Not surprisingly, I found few artists there. Great art doesn’t flourish in a culture of creative and theological homogeneity. Embracing the weirdness of our faith through art can be disarming for people who generally think religious art (not to mention evangelism) is about selling something that comprises propositional truths which cannot be questioned.

As I alluded to earlier, in my subject matter as a hyper-surrealist oil painter, I often juxtapose animals into abandoned remnants of human civilizations, highlighting irony and parody, the hallmarks of postmodern art. This is best seen in my thematic body of work Streams in the Wasteland (2015-2021), inspired by nature’s reclamation in the book of Isaiah. I write about why my work has been accepted in the mainstream art world in spite of the fact that it draws upon biblical and theological themes.

In my recently published art monograph Streams in the Wasteland, the final painting in the series, Agnus Dei, was inspired by the Lamb of God symbolism in Isaiah 53, echoed in Revelation 5, where all the creatures on earth and in the sea encircle the throne, praising the Lamb who was slain. Curiously, animals seldom appear in Western (Christian) art, despite a plethora of biblical references. I suspect it is because an interest in animals has been seen as childish, reminiscent of children’s storybooks, and antithetical to grown-up, sanitized Christianity. However, as Balaam’s donkey did, could creation itself jolt us to turn to our mysterious Creator? (Numbers 22:21-39).

THE VALUE OF HUMOR and irony in the current cultural ethos finds its roots in the writings of the Christian existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who recognized that faith is filled with paradox and the “virtue of the absurd.” Our culture has become wary of confrontational truth claims because of their associations with abuses of power at the hands of traditional religious institutions and political ideologues. As Mark Shaw writes in Work, Play, Love, “In the postmodern world the best way to subvert the pretensions of power is to mix and match form and content. The “trivial” is freed to serve the truth, and the truth is liberated from the hands of the powerful or learned to partner with the playful to accomplish a common purpose.”

In an age skeptical of objective universal truths, might an approach through art that infuses the strange, ironic, and humorous provide some levity for generally taboo subjects like the meaning of life and opposing belief systems? What might Christian communities miss if we sanitize the Bible, making it less weird? To me that seems dishonest, especially as I strive toward authenticity in my own work. Granted, there are risks in embracing a “holy weirdness”—we could be mocked or misunderstood, or we may be tempted to compromise theologically, trying to blend Christianity with Hindu, Buddhist, or the New Age iconography currently in vogue.

In order for “holy weirdness” to flourish, we need to be shaped by the totality of Scripture. According to The New Bible Dictionary, holiness refers to the consecration of a person, day, or place for a divine purpose. While God is the paragon of holiness, as the perfect embodiment of ethical purity he “disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10 NIV, emphasis added).

In his teaching series “Future Church” John Mark Comer asserts that while the word holy sounds outdated, accruing shameful baggage for many people, it’s too important a word to abandon. He goes on to say that in the New Testament the word for holy, hagios, means unique, special, or different, but can also be translated “weird.”

We must submit to living differently, in order that the art we make be likewise a participation in God’s holiness. In addition to Scripture, we can look to mystical artists throughout church history like Hieronymous Bosch and Hildegard of Bingen, to guide us on our artistic journey. For accountability, it is important to be part of a local community of believers who not only affirm our gifting but are there to “reel us in” if needed.

While my proposal of “holy weirdness” may be risky, we are called to engage our generation in their native tongue of doubt and dialogue—prioritizing the dialectic over the dogmatic. The days of “easy Christianity” that blends into the culture are quickly passing by, and we are already perceived as weirdos in our society. The arts need not be the Church’s public relations arm presenting a predictably sanitized faith. Rather, as artists press into the mystery of our ancient faith we can trust God to use what the world may deem as ‘foolishness’ to further his mission of redeeming culture for his glory (1 Corinthians 1:21).

Admittedly, I struggle on the lonely road of non-conformity to the monolithic Christian arts culture, and I puzzle as to why there are so few Christians in the contemporary art world. But I have come to realize that I am called to take the path less traveled, not unlike some of the historical artists mentioned above. To be sure, it is a solitary path and I often feel equally out of place in the Christian culture and the contemporary art world, with very little overlap in between. Perhaps “holy weirdness” is a bridge where both communities could meet. Contemporary artists of our day are already hanging out on the fringes, waiting for the Church to embrace an ancient-future aesthetic.

Josh Tiessen is a professional fine artist, speaker, and writer based in Ontario, Canada. He has had solo exhibitions in galleries from New York to LA. His latest art monograph book, Streams in the Wasteland, released in fall 2021. www.joshtiessen.com

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Chilean Church Seeks ‘Spiritual Reconstruction’ After Deadly Fires

Franco Iacomini

Multiple blazes torched at least eight evangelical churches, as pastors grieve and bury the dead.

A burned Chilean flag is seen outside a burned house after a forest fire.

Javier Torres / Contributor / Getty

This January marked Chilean pastor Alex Ugarte’s 24th anniversary at Iglesia Evangélica Bautista Esperanza Viva (Living Hope Evangelical Baptist Church) in Viña del Mar, a milestone that prompted him to ask himself if he should transition to something new.

His moment of reflection was short-lived. Last Friday, wildfires started in at least four places across the Valparaíso region. Within hours, they had reached Ugarte’s neighborhood. They soon torched his home and church and claimed the life of his father-in-law, a tragedy that prompted the church leader to reconsider his vocational plan.

“God showing me this tragedy and the needs of His people helped me understand that it’s time to start all over again,” he told CT.

Summer wildfires are not uncommon in this Pacific coastal South American country. This year, however, a particularly intense heatwave has coincided with prolonged drought. Strong winds caused the blaze to spread quickly toward some of Chile’s most heavily populated areas, including historic cities like Valparaíso and the country’s tourism capital, Viña del Mar.

As of February 9, the fires have killed 131 people and damaged or destroyed more than 5,000 homes.

Among the casualties were eight Esperanza Viva congregants, who lost their lives when the blaze reached their residential neighborhood of Villa Independencia. On Friday, Ugarte preached at two funerals, one for an elderly couple and another for two siblings, who were 5 and 7.

“There’s so much pain,” he said. “Many people are desperate because their families are now homeless. But our hearts remain steadfast, looking forward to seeing what God will do.”

Close to home

Esperanza Viva is one of eight churches that experienced significant damages, the National Office of Religious Affairs of Chile told CT. But church leaders in the area estimate the real number could be twice that. Furthermore, at least nine pastors lost their homes, according to a group of leaders from various churches trying to organize a disaster response.

Pastor Magno Rodriguez and his wife, María Angélica Cubillos Álvarez, are among them. They lead the Corporación Internacional de Restauración, an independent Pentecostal church in Quilpué, a more inland city in the Valparaíso region, where they live.

“We could see the wildfire far off,” said Cubillos. “But then a neighbor came to me yelling, saying, ‘Your house is on fire.’”

Magno and one of his sons tried to put it out, but gave up when the flames intensified. The family fled in a pickup truck as flames and smoke surrounded them.

“It was like driving with your eyes closed,” he said.

Cubillos has burns in her neck, and her husband and one of her sons both injured their arm fighting the blaze.

“It is a miracle that nobody in the congregation died,” she said.

But the tragedy still hit too close to home. While the fire spared the house next door, their neighbors perished from smoke inhalation, trying to escape.

“They died of suffocation in our backyard.”

‘Looks like we were bombed’

A week after the fires first began, the government has continued to issue emergency alerts for new fires in Valparaíso, Viña del Mar and Quilpué. (Though most fires are now under control, the hot weather and other factors continue to spark new blazes.)

“Our focus is now on helping people,” said pastor Dionicio Viana, director of the Youth With a Mission (YWAM) base in Viña del Mar. His headquarters were spared by the fire because a nearby avenue created a kind of wind corridor between two hills, which redirected the flames away from the building.

In neighborhoods like Villa Independencia, Achupallas (in Viña del Mar) and Pompeya (in Quilpué), few homes remain.

“When you look at our neighborhood [of Achupallas], it looks like we were bombed, like a war,” said Viana.

For the past week, residents have been without water and electricity. There are rumors that at least some of the fires were set intentionally.

“A collective psychosis has arisen and now everyone is afraid of new outbreaks,” Viana said.

“People are stealing the little that we have,” said Cubillos. He explained that looters are searching for valuables among the rubble. To protect against additional looting, residents are building fences around the houses, “but there isn't even a hammer or boards, nor lighting to do the work when it gets dark. We have to use our cell phones for light.”

In the past week, volunteers from churches around the country have gathered in Viña del Mar to help. With funding from Operation Blessing, four YWAM bases have sent people to join Viana in removing debris from the streets and houses. In some instances, they have begun to rebuild.

“This week we started to build a house for a brother here. We have already repaired the floor,” he said.

Although the wildfire victims have received significant attention from the media and government, this won’t last longer than two or three weeks, says Viana. But then the expensive work of reconstruction will begin.

Struck down, but not destroyed

In 1982, a group of Swedish missionaries opened an Independent Assemblies of God church in Villa Dulce, a neighborhood in Viña del Mar. Last week, the fire burned it down.

But assistant pastor Gonzalo Ramírez’s heart feels heaviest when it comes to the impact the disaster will have on the faith of congregants.

“Before the reconstruction of the walls of the church, we will need a spiritual reconstruction,” he said. “You can rebuild the church. But the history of it, of the missions that began in that place, the souls that got saved there … How many miracles have we seen in that place?”

With all this emotional baggage, he had to preach at the first service after the disaster, two days after the church was turned into ashes.

Ramírez first came to Villa Dulce to study at the church’s Bible institute (which now operates only online), where he met his future wife.

“My daughter, who is now 15, was practically born in those pews,” he said.

Usually, between 80 and 100 people attend Villa Dulce on Sunday. But with many roads closed and people displaced, only about half of that number turned out. The group met in a church building that the fire left mostly unscathed.

Ramírez preached on 2 Corinthians 4:7-18, reminding his church that as followers of Christ, they had “this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from [themselves],” and that they were called to persevere in the midst of turbulent times.

Because power was still off, the service was not livestreamed. But several days later, he preached a similar message on Facebook.

“With much respect and much humility I invite you, my beloved brothers and sisters, to look into the eternal things that go beyond what is evident … to keep our hope in God, because those are the things that will remain,” he said.

At Esperanza Viva, Ugarte says his congregation will meet this Sunday on the grounds of the church building for an open-air service, for the first time since the fire. (The location was inaccessible last week.)

“For 24 years, God blessed us with a beautiful building, with classrooms for [Christian] education, training rooms, and a kitchen that prepared 8,500 meals during the pandemic,” he said. “Now our neighbors say we are going to build a church even more beautiful than the old one.”

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The Baptist Pastor Turned Senator Behind This Week’s Failed Border Bill

Harvest Prude

After Republicans greenlit—then spiked—a bipartisan deal, evangelicals are still waiting for a solution to address the migrant crisis.

Senator James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Senator Jim Lankford didn’t sign up to lead the charge on one of the most contentious issues before Congress.

But after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appointed him to develop a deal to address the migrant crisis—a contingency for the House passing emergency aid to Ukraine and Israel—the Oklahoma Republican got to work. He spent four months meeting with Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy and Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to put together a deal.

Those careful efforts came crashing down this week when his own party and former president Donald Trump dismissed the package. The sound bites were harsh: “a very bad bill,” “even worse than we expected,” “worse than bad negotiation,” and “betrayal.”

While his role as the lead Republican negotiator represents one of his biggest moments in the political spotlight, evangelicals may recognize Lankford. The 55-year-old conservative is a churchgoing Baptist, a former pastor, and an outspoken advocate for religious freedom.

He’s known for putting faith and service before political grandstanding. Some hoped he’d be successful at negotiating a deal on an issue that’s becoming a bigger concern for evangelicals, most of whom want to see improved border security and a path to citizenship for immigrants.

“Lankford is just a really good man. He’s solid. He’s a devoted Christian,” said Dan Darling, director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. “He has a real sense of calling. … I think he literally felt like he was going to Washington to try and do what he can to solve problems.”

The National Association of Evangelicals came out in support of the bill before the failed vote. In a statement on Monday, the association encouraged lawmakers to “carefully study the Lankford-Murphy-Sinema text. While some aspects of the bill raise concerns, and there are some missing pieces (notably a permanent solution for Dreamers), that is not a reason to dismiss the proposal out of hand.”

“As people of faith we pray for all our leaders as they fulfill their God-given responsibilities,” the statement continued. “The nation is watching.”

Prior to Lankford’s entrance to public office, the 55-year-old Oklahoman served for two decades as a youth minister. He felt called into ministry while he was still in high school. He spent the better part of 20 years working at the youth program at Falls Creek, a Christian youth camp.

His foray into politics came when he read that his local congresswoman was leaving office. He told the Christian Broadcasting Network, “It’s as if it jumped off the page and I heard God say, ‘That’s what I want you to do.’” He was elected to the House in 2011 and to the Senate in 2015. His most recent reelection was in 2022.

“He rolls up his sleeves,” Warren Cole Smith, author and president of the evangelical watchdog organization MinistryWatch, told CT. “He understands that if you want to get something done, you are going to have to convince people who don’t agree with you.”

Smith, who has interviewed Lankford a few times over the years, said Lankford tends to avoid “a lot of the bombastic, God-and-country rhetoric that we’ve since become all too familiar with among, you know, sort of a populist wing of the Republican Party. And I was impressed by that. This was a guy that was going to do his best to live according to Christian principles. But he was not going to be a showboat or be pretentious.”

In the pulpit, he was never the fire-and-brimstone type. In Washington too, he’s avoided rhetorical bomb-throwing, instead earning a reputation as a workhorse that has gained respect from his colleagues across the aisle as well.

“We agree on almost exactly nothing. [Lankford’s] a very conservative man,” Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, told CT. “But he’s a really good guy.”

Coons chairs the Senate Ethics Committee, of which Lankford is the highest-ranking Republican. The two served as honorary co-chairs of the National Prayer Breakfast in 2019 (Coons is Presbyterian).

“it's gotta be disappointing to put in this much work, and to now have been [censured] by the Oklahoma Republican Party,” Coons added. “This place doesn't work without compromise and consensus. And there are demonstrably members now who only want to blow things up. And who don't really want a result on anything.”

But congeniality hasn’t inculcated Lankford from being singed by the nation’s increasingly heated partisan politics. On Wednesday, when a procedural vote on the border deal came up, Lankford said in a floor speech that a well-known right-wing commentator told him, “If you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election.”

Senators rejected the measure by a 49 to 50 vote. The chamber’s rule requires 60 votes for overcoming a filibuster. And the conservative commentator who threatened to try and “destroy him”? Lankford refused to name names but said that the person has “been faithful to their promise and have done everything they can to destroy me in the past several weeks.”

The immigration issue has been a political hang-up for a long time: laws haven’t been updated in almost 40 years, leaving presidents to rely on executive orders to wrangle surges at the southern border; an overburdened immigration court system; burgeoning waitlists of asylum claims; and the unresolved question of how to handle millions of undocumented immigrants.

Previous bipartisan attempts at congressional action have crumbled, often due to political pressure. In the recent attempt, the immigration-related provisions were more of a border crackdown than a comprehensive reform.

The text didn’t include a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally. Previously, Democrats had refused to consider legislation that didn’t address protections for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, also known as Dreamers.

Among other provisions, the legislation would have put a higher bar in place for migrants to request asylum and would have sped up the deportation process for migrants who don’t qualify. It also would have required adjudications on asylum cases to be issued within six months. (The process currently can take as long as ten years.) It also allocated funds to hire more border patrol agents.

The deal drew criticism from progressive lawmakers and immigration advocacy groups. Despite pressure from the Left, the Biden White House signaled that the president would sign it, releasing a statement saying it represented “the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades.” Meanwhile, conservative critics of the bill said it didn’t do enough to stop border crossings.

In defending the bill, Lankford said he believes it was subject to “a remarkable amount of misinformation”; “either people did not read the bill, didn’t follow it, or they … saw some posting on Facebook and believe that.”

While immigration reform is always a challenge, an attempt to tackle the topic was bound to face tough political winds during an election year. “Let’s say time-out and let the American people decide how we want to deal with this in November, when we have President Trump—who actually had control of our border—against President Biden,” Rep. Jim Jordan said on Fox Business. “Let the country decide.”

Republicans have made clear that they don’t want to give Biden a political win: RealClearPolling shows that he has a 63 percent disapproval rating on the issue of immigration. In his campaign, Trump pledges to be tough on enforcement.

Meanwhile, Democrats blamed partisanship for the effort imploding.

“We now have a definitive answer as to whether the Republican Party really wants to fix the border. They don’t. They have become addicted to just using the issue of immigration as a political wedge and an election year issue,” Murphy, the lead Democrat negotiator, told The Washington Post after the vote.

On Sunday, there were 20 to 25 Senate Republicans who would potentially support the bill, according to Murphy. But on Wednesday, only four Republicans voted to advance the measure.

“What would they do on their weekends if they couldn’t drag cameras down to the border to show off how disastrous it is? What would they give speeches about if we actually fixed the border?” Murphy asked rhetorically.

Some Republicans also expressed frustration with the party politics. “I followed the instructions of my conference, who were insisting that we tackle this in October,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “I mean, it’s actually our side that wanted to tackle the border issue. We started it.”

Even as Congress remains stalled on immigration, polls show that growing numbers of American evangelicals want something to be done to address the country’s broken immigration system.

In a 2015 Lifeway survey, 61 percent of self-identified evangelicals responded that they were in favor of a pathway to citizenship for immigrants; by 2022, the number had ticked up to 77 percent. Among evangelicals who said they attended church at least once a week, it was 82 percent in favor.

Evangelicals reported favoring a bipartisan immigration deal that would pair border security with allowing undocumented immigrants to seek citizenship if they met certain requirements, such as paying a fine and passing a criminal background check.

Some evangelicals said they hope this most recent stalemate doesn’t prevent people of faith from continuing to engage on the tough issue.

“Immigration is an issue that should strike very close to the heart of any Christian in this country,” Smith said. “If we care for the least and the lost, that has got to include the immigrant. And for Christians not to be actively involved in trying to solve this problem is cowardly.”

Darling argued that the week shows the need for more Christians to get involved in politics, following Lankford’s example.

“It seems, right now, that the most extreme and shrill voices are the ones that have their voices heard because a lot of other folks just don’t get involved,” he said. “I actually think this means Christians should be involved. … I think when we leave the arena, it cedes it to the most extreme voices on both sides.”

As of the time of publication, Lankford’s office had not returned a request for comment.

- More from Harvest Prude

Theology

Family, Dumplings, and Jesus? Christians Navigate Mongolian New Year

Angela Lu Fulton

Believers are learning how to celebrate and evangelize amid Tsagaan Sar’s Buddhism-infused rituals.

Mongolian woman preparing buuz, or meat dumplings, traditionally eaten during the Lunar New Year.

Edwin Tan / Getty

Before college students travel home to celebrate Tsagaan Sar, Mongolia’s Lunar New Year, Dagdansengee Delgersaikhan, the general secretary of the student ministry IFES in Mongolia, discusses with the students how to approach the country’s biggest holiday with their new Christian faith.

It’s good to respect your parents, Delgersaikhan tells them, but there are certain rituals steeped in Buddhism and shamanism that they can no longer take part in, such as bowing to family idols or walking in a certain direction for good luck. She guides them on how to keep good relationships with their family while kindly explaining that, because they are Christians, they can no longer join in on some of the traditions.

Delgersaikhan speaks from experience. She remembers 20 years ago when she approached her father nervously on the morning of Tsagaan Sar and told him that she wouldn’t be joining the rest of the family as they went out to perform prayers. Instead, she would stay home and make them a hot pot of milk tea for when they returned home. He agreed.

For Christians in the majority Buddhist country, celebrating Tsagaan Sar—which begins Saturday—looks different from before they came to faith. Some Christians do not engage in the holiday at all because of its spiritual roots, while others find ways to embrace the positive aspects of spending time with family and respecting elders while refraining from practices that conflict with their faith.

The gathering of so many people also makes it “a good time to testify about Jesus,” Delgersaikhan said. Conversations about faith can pop up over preparing buuz, steamed meat dumplings, or during visits to the homes of relatives.

“We encourage them that this is a good time to testify about ourselves, about Jesus,” she said. “Go home and serve them and show them good hospitality, shock them and they will say, ‘Why is he so hospitable?’ And after that share the gospel.”

Gathering with family and seeking good luck

Tsagaan Sar, which means “white moon,” is the biggest holiday in Mongolia, marking the end of Mongolia’s long winter—which can reach −20 degrees F (−28 degrees C)—and the beginning of spring. While Genghis Khan decreed the holiday in the 13th century, it wasn’t until the 17th century that Buddhist leaders began to incorporate Buddhist elements into Tsagaan Sar. When Communism took over Mongolia in 1924, leaders prohibited the holiday as it was viewed as religious. Yet many Mongolians continued to celebrate it quietly, said Bolortuya Damdinjav of the Mongolian Evangelical Alliance. When democracy came in the 1990s, Mongolians began to celebrate Lunar New Year widely again.

“Most Christians view it as a cultural or traditional holiday,” said Damdinjav, “We eliminated the religious parts but we still see it as a time to meet our family and show respect for that.”

Families start preparing for Tsagaan Sar weeks in advance, cleaning the house, buying ingredients, and making and freezing hundreds of buuz for the guests who will visit during the three days of Tsagaan Sar. The day before the New Year is known as Bituun, meaning “to close down,” when people clean the house, repay debts, and feast to end the year with a full belly. They light candles to represent Buddha’s enlightenment and leave ice on the door of their homes, as they believe the local diety Baldanlkham visits every family on a mule, and the ice gives the mule something to drink.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C28vNoAyVUo/

The next day, families dress up in traditional Mongolian clothes, known as a deel (which resembles a tunic), and the matriarch brews milk tea. The first cup is offered to the gods. They use their zodiac sign to determine which direction they should step out of their homes on the morning of New Year’s day in order to bring good fortune. Some Mongolians climb to the mountaintop to view the first sunrise of the year and wish for good luck.

Mongolian families then visit their grandparents or oldest living relatives. At each home, the younger people greet their elders by grasping their elbows and asking, “Are you living peacefully?” and the elders kiss both their cheeks. They give gifts of money while children receive toys and play games. They eat buuz and ul boov pastries stacked in an odd number of tiers to signify good luck, as well as cooked lamb hide, dairy products, and candies. Conversations focus on happy topics to bring more good things in the new year.

Families then move on to visit other relatives and neighbors for the next three days. People also visit the temple and ask for a fortune from the lama, set out food for household idols, and perform prayers.

Celebrating Tsagaan Sar as Christians

When Amaraa Jargalsaikhan became a Christian, friends and family asked, How could you become a Christian? If you’re a Christian you will lose all your identity … you cannot celebrate Tsagaan Sar! Yet Jargalsaikhan sees Tsagaan Sar as a unique time to share the gospel.

Formerly one of the pastors at Amid Ug (Living Water) Christian Church in Ulaanbaatar, the largest church in Mongolia, he noted that sometimes non-Christians didn’t want a visit from a pastor. Yet on Tsagaan Sar, everyone was welcomed into the home. When he sat in the homes of relatives and neighbors and they caught up on their lives, he talked about his “reason for becoming a Christian and the differences [between Christianity from Buddhism] and the good things about it.” From these conversations on Tsagaan Sar, several family members ended up visiting Jargalsaikhan’s church.

“I think it’s a good time to share the gospel,” Jargalsaikhan said. “We [tried] not to ruin the mood, because some people get offended if you say something about a different religion.”

When Tsagaan Sar fell on a Sunday, Jargalsaikhan’s church continued to hold services even as they found that attendance—which typically numbered 1,000 across three services—dropped significantly. The pastors took turns leading different services so that they all had an opportunity to visit relatives. Often from the pulpit, Jargalsaikhan would preach about how Tsagaan Sar was an opportunity to share the gospel and would tell others how God had worked in their lives.

Today, Jargalsaikhan and his family live in Chicago, where he is ministering at Antioch Mongolian Christian Church. While he and his family don’t have relatives to visit, they’ll still put on the traditional deel, cook buuz and ul boov, and video chat with his parents back in Mongolia. Then they visit the members of their church, especially the older congregants—though in America they have to ask to come over, unlike in Mongolia, where people show up unannounced.

Standing firm while respecting parents

Delgersaikhan of IFES also noted that Tsagaan Sar is a prime opportunity for Christians to speak about their faith, because people are often respectful toward one another during the holiday and because they see so many friends and family. Some Christian families will give their guests small Bibles or stationary sets with Bible verses. There’s also an opportunity to do “hospitality for them very well and to be kind … to share personal testimonies.” She noted that, nowadays, some people no longer see the holiday as a way to serve one another, or they only use Tsagaan Sar as a way to show off their wealth. Christians can be different by being humble.

Before students leave for the holidays, IFES also holds a Tsagaan Sar celebration on campus. Christian students invite their friends to come dressed in deels to eat, drink, play games, and learn about the Christian faith. She reminds the IFES students that there will be many rituals they should no longer participate in. For instance, they shouldn’t go with their families to climb the mountain to see the sun rising and pray for blessings. “Our God, we can pray to him anywhere, anytime, not just New Year morning,” she reminds them.

Some of the Christian students who return home to the countryside for the New Year—especially in areas where Buddhism still has a very strong hold—find themselves facing stronger pressures to join in on the religious rituals. She noted that when they come back from break, some are glad because they were able to refuse to participate, but others are sad because they could not. If parents are very insistent that they must join them in some of the religious rituals, Delgersaikhan tells them they can pray to God silently.

Yet in most cases, she’s found that young Christians these days face less backlash than those a generation before. She said that students today are more honest and open in sharing with their parents about their conversion and their spiritual journey, and many parents are not upset that their children don’t want to partake in the rituals. Sometimes parents also see positive changes in their children’s behavior—such as giving up smoking, drinking, or cursing—so they have a more positive view of Christianity.

“In my time, we were very scared [of] our parents, but now students are very open to share what they believe in,” Delgersaikhan said. “Some countryside people say it’s a really good thing.”

Talking about Jesus while wrapping buuz

Bolortuya Damdinjav of the Mongolian Evangelical Alliance said her favorite memory of Tsagaan Sar while growing up was all the time spent with her family members, whether it was preparing for the holiday by cleaning and making buuz or visiting older relatives and meeting with extended family that she rarely sees.

Damdinjav, along with her mother and sister, became Christians in 1993 a few months before Tsagaan Sar, and she remembers that holiday being a big step of courage. The day before the New Year, her grandma, who was staying with them, fell very ill, so the family started praying for her. At the time, they still had some idols in their home, yet Damdinjav felt God telling her to get rid of the idols and the other religious items in the house. She told her mother, and the two of them threw the items into the fire. The next day, her grandmother started feeling better. When her other grandmother and relatives came to visit, they immediately went to where the idols had stood to show respect, but were shocked to find nothing there. Damdinjav feared that they would be angry, but instead they didn’t say anything about it; they sat and ate with them, and then they left. They never brought it up again.

“In some families, [the removal of idols] can be a big debate, and people could argue with each other,” she noted. “But somehow, I think God protected us, and since then, our house has been clean, free [of idols].”

Damdinjav has found that the best time to talk about the gospel with family is while wrapping buuz. Everybody is relaxed and chatting to pass the time as they make hundreds of tasty dumplings. During those conversations, she’s had the opportunity to tell her relatives why she believes in Jesus, why she reads the Bible, and what Christianity is all about.

“So I believe we’re just planting seeds whenever we have an opportunity to share about our faith.”

- More from Angela Lu Fulton

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