From Dust to Lunch: Jordanian Christians Decry Cost of Funeral Feast

Jayson Casper

Tribal hospitality demands feeding the 500. But believers pinched by poverty call for cultural changes that still preserve honor.

A Jordanian woman sitting beside the grave of a relative.

Mohammad Abu Ghosh / AP Images

To honor the dead in Jordan, one must feed the living.

But in solidarity with the poor, leading Jordanian Christians are calling for a change in funeral customs.

Shared with wider Muslim society, certain Christian practices are similar to Western norms. Upon the announcement of death, the bereaved family makes arrangements through the church to conduct a memorial service. The casket is then conveyed to the cemetery, where hymns are sung and the traditional “dust to dust” is prayed over the loved one. And in somber conclusion, a line of condolences forms as the pastor or priest extends the family invitation to take part in a luncheon of remembrance.

But in Jordan, this may involve up to a thousand people.

“Culture requires that if you attend my funeral, I will come to yours,” said Nabeeh Abbassi, president of the Jordanian Baptist Convention. “But that is a lot of food, and increasingly, many cannot afford it.”

An average gathering is between 300 and 600 people, he said. It includes immediate family, extended relatives, and almost all residents of the village or city quarter. In a culture of honor and shame, it would be a great insult not to share in a neighbor’s grief.

The meal is the Jordanian national dish of mansaf, lamb meat served with rice and topped with nuts and a sauce of fermented dried yogurt. The dish is presented on large circular trays, and mourners gather by gender to eat with their right hands while standing.

When Abbassi’s mother died nine years ago, 500 people came to honor her life. Expenses nearly reached $10,000, with only $1,500 due to the funeral. Like many Jordanians, he contributed to a monthly family allotment to cover such costs. But at the time of the funeral, the savings totaled only $700, which the five siblings decided to give to their father.

Generations ago, Abbassi explained, tribal culture involved relatives and clan members coming from great distances for a three-day period of mourning. Before the age of automobiles and restaurants, the hosting family provided hospitality for their guests—but each came with a contribution of coffee, rice, or sugar, with many bringing a live lamb to slaughter. Often, they left behind an excess.

“We keep some of the culture, but neglect the best of it,” Abbassi said. “Living in the 21st century, we are burdened by the 20th—it doesn’t make any sense.”

He advises a change in service time—if held later in the day, people will have already eaten lunch. As many Jordanians live in Amman, the capital, travelers from most outlying cities are no more than an hour away by car.

Honor, however, runs deeper than reciprocity.

“No one wants to be thought of as cheap,” said Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning Palestinian journalist living in Jordan. “And the number of people at a funeral is almost viewed as an indicator of social standing.”

An evangelical, Kuttab is playing a leading role in promoting the boycott of traditional mansaf practices. As editor-in-chief of Milhilard (Salt of the Earth), his coverage seeks to get Christian church and community leaders on record about their stances regarding the funeral customs. So far, the Greek Orthodox archbishop of Sebastia (Samaria) and the Lutheran bishop of Jordan and the Holy Land have indicated their opposition to the pan-Levantine tradition.

Kuttab’s advocacy was actually sparked by a Muslim decision. Noticing how the Shawabkeh clan in northwest Jordan publicly banned the mansaf meal for all but close family relations, he wondered if Christians could do the same.

Survey responses from the partner publication Asha’ir Mesihiya (Christian Tribes) were overwhelmingly positive in favor of reform. But some people nonetheless expressed a cultural unease.

“Share their sorrows, but not their banquets,” wrote Michel Ghawi. “But the matter is not easy—it is a shame if we do not go.”

The issue of reputation is deeply ingrained in Jordanian mentality, a reality affirmed by Ibrahim Nassar, pastor of Church of Glory in Marka, a lower middle-class area in east Amman. The bereaved family must not risk marring the status of the deceased as a generous person, but meanwhile, everyone else is calculating the financial costs and dreading their turn.

“People are in very difficult circumstances economically,” he said. “They are worrying, ‘If my father or mother die, what will I do? Where will I borrow money from? What will I do if the bank doesn’t give me a loan?’”

In 2022 Jordan had an unemployment rate of 23 percent, and the World Food Program stated that the country suffers slow economic growth and an inflation-induced increased cost of living. And according to an Arab Barometer survey, nearly half (48%) of the population reported they sometimes or often run out of food before being able to afford more.

A Muslim friend from a large tribe told Nassar that his family took out a loan of nearly $30,000 to cover the cost of funeral proceedings. But last year, when his own father and uncle died within six months of each other, the Nassar family decided on an alternate custom: They gave the money to the poor.

The practice has been repeated by others.

“Such generosity will address the issue of honor, avoiding whispers of stinginess,” said Imad Shehadeh, president of Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary. “I’m not sure if it will succeed, but if we can have a string of funerals without mansaf, the idea may really spread.”

But it may risk a perceived eternal reward. For most Jordanian Christians, the funeral meal is a prayer of mercy for the deceased. Especially in the historic Catholic and Orthodox churches, a priest will bid guests to the family home to “eat over the spirit of the departed.”

Evangelical pastors will substitute the language of mercy with a “meal of fellowship,” but many ordinary believers still link the meal to religious obligation.

“It is appointed for man to die once, and then the judgment,” Shehadeh said, quoting Hebrews 9:27. “Calling for mercy after death is unbiblical.”

Bassam Shahatit, a Melkite Greek Catholic priest and head of his denomination’s ecclesiastic court, said that many Christians misunderstand the traditional “God have mercy upon him.” Primarily meant to comfort the family, it places the departed in the hand of God, who is by nature merciful. But whereas some popularly believe that such prayers will impact eternal fate, it is Jesus alone who will judge. The substitute “God comfort your heart,” he said, is scripturally sound and offers better condolence.

Shahatit nonetheless commended the funeral meal in its ideal, as it is based on biblical principle. Weep with those who weep, taught Jesus, for the presence of many guests helps the family to not feel alone in their grief. And in the Old Testament, Abraham similarly hustled to provide generously for his three mysterious visitors in Genesis 18.

Some interpretations see the supernatural guests as a pre-incarnation theophany.

“‘Freely you have received, freely give’—this is Christian spirituality,” said Shahatit, quoting Matthew 10:8. “And when you welcome others to your table, you welcome God.”

Unfortunately, like the misunderstandings around spoken “mercy,” the mansaf has been corrupted by culture. Everyone tries to show off their generosity, while avoiding any appearance of poverty. In solidarity with the poor and middle class, Shahatit favors canceling the tradition—or greatly reforming it.

For example, in Syria, the funeral mansaf has been replaced by mujaddera, a rice dish served with lentils and caramelized onions, thus helping alleviate much of the expense. Due to the deteriorating economic situation, Shahatit said a kilo of meat now costs half the average monthly salary.

Kuttab said that as a smaller religious community, Christians might be better able to reach a collective decision to change funeral culture. But being, on average, slightly wealthier than Muslims, Christians may also be better able to tolerate the costs. As for himself, he will no longer provide for the funeral meal, nor partake in it.

Abbassi, who will put the question to Baptist pastors in an upcoming convention gathering, wavered only slightly in his resolve. Family obligations are strong, he admitted, but to pick and choose which funerals he attends would show an ungodly favoritism. A group decision provides protection for all.

But who will go first?

“As pastors, we have to encourage the families to stop the tradition,” Abbassi said. “And if more and more people make this choice, the custom will fade away.”

Additional reporting contributed by Heather Surls. The Arabic translation of this CT article was provided by Milhilard after publication.

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All the Lonely People in the Building

Mike Cosper

Hulu’s whodunit is stubbornly pro-community in an isolated age.

Left to Right: Oliver (Martin Short), Mabel (Selena Gomez) and Charles (Steve Martin) in Only Murders in the Building.

Craig Blankenhorn / Hulu

In August of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic was in its 18th month. It had shaped a presidential election, transformed our vocabulary and social lives, and taken more than 600,000 lives. The Delta variant was starting to surge, and for large swaths of the country, it was clear normalcy wouldn’t return any time soon.

That same month, a new television series premiered on Hulu with an unlikely trio of stars: Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, and Martin Short—a millennial pop icon and two comedy legends from her grandfather’s generation. The show was Only Murders in the Building, a whodunit about three New York City neighbors making a true-crime podcast.

The premise was inevitable. True crime consistently draws huge podcast audiences, so it was just a matter of time before podcasters came to TV, much like TV producers (The Larry Sanders Show, 30 Rock) and journalists (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Murphy Brown, The Newsroom) did in an earlier era. What wasn’t inevitable, however, was Only Murders’ comedy and pathos—as well as its intense and timely interest in what it looks like to stubbornly choose community with flawed and frustrating people in an isolating age.

Only Murders’ primary hook is the punchy, insult-driven dialogue between Martin and Short. It echoes the caustic manner of Don Rickles, as if every conversation is happening at a roast or a Vegas dinner theater, and it manages to both shock and charm. Martin’s Charles-Haden Savage and Short’s Oliver Putnam relentlessly mock each other’s failed careers and relationships, old age and physical appearance, and bad taste in clothes and art.

This comes naturally to longtime comedy partners Martin and Short, but a delightful surprise is Gomez’s seamless entry into the act. As Mabel Mora, a fellow resident of the Arconia apartment building, her melancholic energy is a foil to Charles’s neurosis and Oliver’s manic excitement, but her quips are equally ruthless.

“Is it cancer?” Mabel asks when Charles gets a nervous nosebleed early in the first season. “I just need to know how invested I should get in you. You don’t adopt a 20-year-old dog.”

It’s a startlingly funny line—and it was especially startling in 2021, when death loomed so large in our imaginations and in our headlines. More timid artists would have tempered jokes like this or altogether nixed a mid-pandemic farce about violent death. But death isn’t really the point of Only Murders in the Building. The heart of the show is not the murders—it’s the building, or, more precisely, the community that forms within it.

This is why, though ostensibly a show about a true-crime podcast, Only Murders hardly pays attention to the conventions of the genre. The addictive power of true crime is in the minutiae: phone records, unexplained or discarded bits of evidence, leads the police ignored, tiny discrepancies in testimony.

But the Only Murders team are barely competent as sleuths. The murders are a MacGuffin—a plot device that brings them together, yet has little significance in its own right. The real mystery that Charles, Oliver, and Mabel are trying to solve is their loneliness.

They are hardly exceptional in this. Friendship has been in decline in America since the 1990s. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that decline, with nearly 1 in 10 Americans reporting losing touch with most of their friends between 2020 and 2021. The US surgeon general recently declared loneliness an epidemic, linking it to cardiovascular disease, depression, anxiety, dementia, and a host of other diseases.

Only Murders wasn’t conceived as a response to the pandemic or its containment policies. (Hulu announced the production in January of 2020.) But its timing was perfect. Viewers could identify with Charles’s solitary ritual of making an omelet for no one, or police detective Donna Williams’s belief that we’re “born alone, spend most of our time alone, then we all go out alone.”

After months of isolation, many were questioning what value was to be found in gathering again at churches, schools, and workplaces. Only Murders offered an adamant answer: Community is necessary. Loneliness can be escaped. Even grief and tragedy can be a catalyst to connection.

However unintentionally, that echoes a foundational Christian understanding of community. Unlikely friendship was knit into the DNA of the church from the beginning, when zealots, tax collectors, fishermen, and sinners of all kinds encountered grace and began following Jesus together (Matt. 10:2– 4). As the gospel spread, Christian communities became more culturally disparate, and much of the pastoral counsel in the Epistles was written to teach this strange new people how to be generous and hospitable to one another (e.g. Eph. 2:11–22).

Today the church’s biggest obstacle to that kind of community is often self-imposed. First, leaders act like marketers, dividing congregations into demographic groups and programming ministry to meet specific needs. Then, in the interest of highlighting “diversity,” we attempt to manufacture experiences that bring those groups together, expecting various members to fulfill stereotypical roles according to race, age, or gender.

I wonder if we couldn’t take a cue from Only Murders on this front. In the fifth episode of the current season, when Mabel is asked to characterize her relationship with Oliver and Charles, she calls them her “best buds.” They talk about “murder, mostly,” she adds, but also “how to connect to Bluetooth. We talk about that a lot.”

It’s an artful understatement. Friendship defies description. It also resists force. Those who want to fight the loneliness epidemic from inside the church could learn a lot from a relationship built on murder and Bluetooth, a pairing of serious purpose and the mundanities of life together. To make another understatement, that pair is just what can unite us at church.

In the first two seasons of Only Murders, Charles, Oliver, and Mabel tested the possibility of friendship under tenuous circumstances, and we cheered for them as they succeeded. As backstories surfaced, our heroes were exposed as liars, each hiding old sins and shame, and still, the friendship proved durable. They forgave one another, over and over, and carried each other’s burdens (Gal. 6:2).

Season 3, which just passed its halfway point on Tuesday, still has a murder plot. But the most important storylines are those taking the three main characters in separate directions. Mabel is being forced to move out of the building and is being recruited to a new true-crime gig. Charles and Oliver are tempted by romance and career, respectively, to turn away from the trio’s friendship (and their podcast). The true menace of this season is less the new murderer, yet to be revealed, and more the already looming loss of community.

After two seasons of vicarious joy in the friendship between the three, Only Murders’ threat to its characters’ life together is more frightening than any of its previous scares. It feels like a horror movie, and one of the classic rules of slasher flicks—recited by Mabel and fellow Arconia neighbor Howard in this week’s episode—is the very thing that could save our heroes: “We have to stick together.”

Mike Cosper is the director of CT Media.

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Culture

Worship Artists Who Skip Labels Still Need Support

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

An emerging infrastructure offers indie musicians help with streaming and marketing without signing away their music rights.

Mike Von / Unsplash

Worship artists who eschew traditional label contracts are drawn to the creative freedom and ownership of their music—but not to the administrative load that comes with marketing and distributing their work.

As the streaming era has opened new doors for a wider array of worship musicians to make a living outside commercial deals, a new infrastructure is forming to help them find and expand their audience.

Over his career, Elias Dummer, former frontman of The City Harmonic, has seen the complex and sometimes secretive gatekeeping around popular curated playlists on streaming platforms. Now as an independent musician, the biggest share of his streaming revenue comes from Spotify, and he’s enlisted help so that his music can break through amid the hundreds of thousands of tracks uploaded each week.

The Ontario-based musician currently has a label services deal with Integrity Music—a kind of stripped-down contract that usually includes uploading and marketing music to streaming platforms and consulting around release strategies.

“Artists have more equity than they used to,” said Dummer. “Labels are being pushed into more split or services deals rather than straight-ownership deals.”

Unlike a traditional record contract, which secures a portion of publishing and/or master rights (see the Taylor Swift saga), a label services deal typically takes a cut of streaming revenue.

And even though the idea of operating completely independently appeals to many artists, having at least some of the resources of a label or marketing team can make a huge difference for an artist, even one with an established career like Dummer.

“You’d be crazy not to bring in some support,” he said.

Fortunately, the new infrastructure to support these independent artists includes companies offering more bespoke, à la carte services that feel less high-stakes and confining than a traditional record deal.

“We are trying to create a third space and a professional infrastructure for artists,” said Chris Lawson Jones, founder of Wings Music Group, a Christian label services and distribution agency.

He sees a vacuum between the two ends of the industry spectrum—major label contracts and total independence. The musicians Wings works with want to retain agency and creative freedom as much as they want to break through in the oversaturated music market. “The future of new music is independent artists,” he said.

The emergence of label services deals and companies like Wings that handle streaming platform strategies, marketing, and social media is a sign of how dramatically the ecosystem for independent artists has changed over the past two decades. Touring and CD sales are less lucrative, and label deals aren’t as attractive.

Christians involved in independent music see the shifts as a good sign—they believe we are on the verge of a groundswell of innovative, genre-bending music created by artists who want to serve and expand the musical vocabulary of the church.

“One of the strengths of the indie Christian scene is that we aren’t tied down to contracts and the commercialization of our own music,” said Stephen Bradley, a UK-based musician and producer. “We have far more flexibility and freedom.”

Wendell Kimbrough, a singer-songwriter based in Dallas, has also opted for label support from Integrity Music. He’s an outlier among indie artists—the majority of his royalties come from Christian Copyright and Licensing International (CCLI).

“My music is out there and being sung in a lot of churches, and I’ve done that without a publisher,” said Kimbrough.

Kimbrough’s career is an instructive case study in how churches can support an artist’s work. He works as the music director at a large Episcopal church and has had success in promoting his music to church musicians and leaders.

Prior to his appointment at his current church in Dallas, Kimbrough was an artist in residence at an Anglican church in Alabama. He had time and creative freedom to work on his own music while also writing refrains to accompany the lectionary Psalms.

One reason the outlook for the indie worship space may be better than the broader music industry is that churches help support these artists by employing them and singing their songs on Sunday mornings.

Kimbrough’s relatively substantial CCLI income is an example of this. The church is one of the few settings of organized corporate singing in the US; it may also be a much-needed patron of independent musicians in this new music industry landscape.

Singer-songwriter Caroline Cobb is showing that it’s possible to get your music out there without any label support. Cobb doesn’t love doing all of her own marketing, but it’s worth saving the money, she says. She also arranges tour dates and uses a bare-bones service for worship artists, Integrated Music Rights, for publishing and distributing to streaming platforms.(Integrated Music Rights is a division of Integrity Music formed in 2021 to offer the stripped down administrative and tailored label services.)

Publishing services can be particularly opaque for independent artists, especially those wanting to claim mechanical royalties, sync royalties, and performance royalties for their songs (which can be a major source of revenue for musicians writing worship songs for congregational use).

“I’m an independent artist. I’m wearing all my hats,” said Cobb. “It’s always a little weird to wear the publicist hat, honestly, but I’m grateful to get to do what I do.”

But even Cobb relies on others to make her music. She receives a stipend from her church as a resident artist. She also regularly collaborates with other established artists—Wendell Kimbrough, Jess Ray (Mission House and Paper Horses), Andrew Osenga (formerly of Caedmon’s Call), Paul Zach, and Shane Barnard (Shane & Shane).

Cobb and Kimbrough both benefit from a modern “patronage” model of sorts in larger churches; church patronage has supported new music for centuries. Churches today support worship artists through residencies or staff positions, subsiding new music.

New models of patronage and support from churches may be instrumental in helping new worship artists get off the ground more quickly. Without support outside of their meager (at first) streaming revenue, artists simply need to sustain another career.

Stephen Bradley, who releases music as “sxxnt,” didn’t start making money from his music until he had been at it for two years. He started out just as he and his wife had their first baby, and he jokes about how crazy it sounded to everyone around him at first.

“I spent loads of time making music during that first year, and I told my brother I’d maybe make a thousand dollars off it by the end, and he was like, ‘Do you need help?’”

But Bradley had experience in production and industry connections from his years of running The Good Christian Music Blog, an influential indie music publication in the UK, from 2012–2019.

“I trusted that I had the marketing skills to pull it off,” said Bradley. “I didn’t make any money for the first 12 months or so, but now I can take a month off and still earn a few thousand dollars a month because my songs are all streaming more than they did when they were first released, which is kind of crazy to think about.”

Bradley now runs Amen Collective, an indie music label (a small label not affiliated with or owned by one of the major industry giants). He recognizes that not every artist can afford to spend up to two years waiting to make money, and wants to be part of building up the “middle” of the worship music industry into a healthier space for independent artists.

He also hopes that an increase in opportunities and independence for worship artists will lead to more creativity and an expansion of the industry definition of worship music.

Bradley, who became a Christian in 2012, says that artists like King’s Kaleidoscope were instrumental in his coming to faith and in forming his vision for creativity informed by that faith. But his first encounters with contemporary worship music left him feeling alienated.

“It felt like showing up in a different country where you don’t speak the language,” recalled Bradley. He was mystified by auditoriums full of people who all knew the same songs, knew when to raise their hands, and even knew some of the same vocal embellishments from recordings. He would like to encourage a more expansive view of what the industry and Christian listeners think of as “worship music.”

His latest album is Hymns in High Fidelity, an instrumental beat tape featuring arrangements of hymns on jazz guitar. He would like to see churches use instrumental music more proactively.

Bradley sees the importance of congregation-friendly songs, written to be singable and easily teachable. But, on the other hand, he wonders if the singular focus on getting people to sing has been at the expense of their inner lives.

“The thing that’s missing from many modern churches is space for reflection and contemplation,” said Bradley. “So no wonder people struggle with it in their private lives, and instead listen to preachers on podcasts.”

Bradley also hopes that a rising generation of independent worship musicians can tackle questions of industry ethics head-on. Independent Christian labels and artist-support companies can aspire to operate by serving artists, rather than holding them hostage to deals that indebt them to a major label—traditional label deals will sometimes offer an advance, but then claim all revenue from the artist until the artist’s work repays the advance.

“How can we promote people ethically? What does it mean to self-promote? What about ego and pride?” Bradley said. “We’ve got to do things differently, and it’s where the indie scene can do things differently.”

And Bradley already sees some promising signs that the artists he is working with want to operate differently—creatively and spiritually—not treating success in the industry like a zero-sum game.

“There’s not as much competition as people think. If I promote your music, it benefits the whole scene. How do we build something that benefits everyone?”

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

Theology

Men Are from Right-Leaning Mars. Women Are from Lefty Venus.

Taylor Combs

The sexes are trending in different political directions. Here’s what the church can do about it.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Getty / NASA / WikiMedia Commons

“Does it feel like everyone in your church is getting more liberal?”

Someone posed this question at a recent get-together of evangelical pastors that I attended in the Nashville area. The person raising it had recently discovered that most of the young women in his congregation were not onboard with the church’s complementarian convictions.

Just a few minutes prior, I’d spoken with some of the pastors about a young man with a bad habit of attending services for several weeks, deciding something said or done exposed the church as “liberal,” then moving on to the next congregation. (Mine was one of them.)

“I think many of the women in our churches are getting more liberal,” I said. “But I think the men are getting more conservative.”

An array of empirical data provides evidence of this growing trend. Generations, the new book by San Diego State University professor of psychology Jean Twenge, demonstrates that among high school seniors, 30 percent of young women identify as conservative—down more than 10 percent in the last decade. Meanwhile, the number of young men who identify as conservative is more than double: an all-time high of 65 percent.

Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox note in The Atlantic that the share of young single women identifying as liberal nearly doubles that of young single men, and the share of young single men identifying as conservative doubles that of young single women.

We can expect the same trends in the church. Even back in 2014, Pew’s “Religious Landscape Study” revealed that, while Christians were overwhelmingly politically conservative, there was an 18-point percentage gap between liberal Christian women and liberal Christian men. One could fairly assume that gap has grown in the last decade, as it has among the general population.

As I watch Christians debate this growing fissure, I often hear two knee-jerk reactions. Some see a discipleship problem among women.

“The problem,” they say, “is that our women are being co-opted by progressive podcasters and social media influencers. They’re caught in the liberal drift. They need to be discipled into a more conservative position.”

Others see a discipleship problem among men: “All these young guys are being discipled more by Jordan Peterson than Jesus. They need to listen to those on the margins and move to a more progressive political position.”

Both responses are shortsighted. Neither one digs below the surface. And each will alienate one sex or the other. Rather than rushing to quick reactions, we need to make space for reflection. What is it that men and women are looking for (and apparently finding) in their political parties? What leads them to identify so deeply with a movement outside the church that it threatens their identification with others inside it?

The answer, I think, might be simpler than we expect.

In recent years, the Left’s message to women in America has been loud and clear: We want you. You belong here. You have a home here. You are welcome here. You are not part of the problem. But the same movement has often said to men—particularly white, heterosexual, Christian men: You are the problem. Men are oppressors. They’re abusers. They’re not to be trusted.

On the flip side, conservatives in America have played to men’s sense of victimization by telling them: We still need you. You still have a role to play. You are wanted. You are welcome here. You are not part of the problem. But the same movement elected as its standard bearer a male president who unashamedly boasted about sexually assaulting women. You are the problem, conservatism has often told women. You are not to be trusted.

As a pastor, I’m primarily concerned with the local church. How can I and others lead wisely as our congregations experience this politically induced divide between men and women?

Theologically speaking, we need a healthy dose of “the doctrine on which the church stands and falls.” In Galatians 2, Paul recounts how he opposed Peter for practicing justification by works. If we divide over political preference, we’re doing just the same. And like Peter, we stand condemned.

No person is justified by works of the law—and that includes political preference. We are justified by grace through faith in Christ and have no right to build barriers between people and God, or people and the church, based on their voting records.

Practically speaking, church leaders need to model healthy friendship across genders. Yes, boundaries matter, and each person needs to follow their Spirit-led convictions. But male-female friendships are essential to healthy communities.

Cross-gender relationships have an undeniable presence in the Bible, in church history, and in any thriving culture. Modeling charitable, gracious, and, yes, wise friendship across the gender boundary is a helpful way to foster unity in the local church.

But perhaps there’s nothing we need to take more urgently from this moment than the truth that people want to be wanted. It’s a judgment on our political era that so many people feel one of the two major parties has told them, You are not welcome here. Shame on our churches if half the population hears the same from us! If we treat the leftward drift of women as the problem, we’ll only puff up the pride of some and push out others. If we treat the rightward drift of men as the problem, we’ll only puff up the pride of some and push out others.

But if we model the love of Jesus Christ, who gave himself for the sins of “the whole world” (1 John 2:2), including men and women, the Left and the Right, our words and actions will say loud and clear, You are not a problem here. You are welcome. You are wanted. You are loved. Let’s follow Jesus together.

Taylor Combs serves as lead pastor of King’s Cross Church in East Nashville, TN.

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Inkwell

A Secret History of Strawberries

Preston Pouteaux

On the Goodness Beyond Our Imagination

“Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.” — William Butler

Do you know what strawberries are? I mean, real and enchanted strawberries? It seems we barely register a strawberry when we come across it. Today it is as ordinary as free Wi-Fi or coffee cream. Strawberries lean evenly to one side in their clamshell packaging, stacked high at the supermarket. Convenient and uniform, the labeled container held closed with a plastic snap. The only surprise is that they used to be $5.49, now they’re $5.99. Oh well. Inflation, we suppose. It was bound to happen. We slide a container into our shopping cart, a pint destined for tomorrow’s smoothie, or the kids’ lunch.

Strawberries have a secret history. The strawberries of legend are almost unrecognizable from what they have become. Strawberries were not always synthesized into flavorings for jellos and breakfast cereals. They were not always what they are. Strawberries were once beatific.

This would be a good time for you to open the plastic container of strawberries languishing at the back of your fridge. Take a bite. What do you actually taste? Anything at all?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, “one must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.” Wonder, the kind only accessible to those with innocent awe, urges us to see and taste all over again. Perhaps we blame the strawberries for failing to dazzle. Maybe our taste buds are shot. Whatever it is, our imaginations have settled into this strange blandness, and so we expect nothing more than to lop off the green tops and toss them in the blender. We need others—perhaps it’s the children and the birds—to show us how to taste. Strawberries are an accessible and tender starting point to help us see what we might have forgotten to look for; what to enjoy. This singular fruit may show us how to expect again.

Strawberries hold a peculiar place of wonder in history’s imagination and lore. Some Native American stories hold the strawberry in a high place of honor. One Cherokee legend tells of the first husband and wife who were at peace for a time, then fought and parted ways. They wandered alone and sad until the Creator saw their sorrow. So, the Creator set out berries along a trail to draw the couple back together. Blackberries, huckleberries, and other fruit did not lead them any closer to finding each other. The Creator made the first ever patch of ripe strawberries, and upon discovery, the couple’s hearts were softened, and they remembered love. The legend says, “at last she gathered a bunch of the finest berries and started back along the path to give them to him. He met her kindly and they went home together.” Strawberries were the fruit of forgiveness and love, they grew between two people and drew them together again. When shared, they mended what seemed beyond repair. Strawberries were a gift from the Creator’s hand.

History tells a story of people enchanted by this small red fruit. Strawberries grew on rustic hillsides and were not widely cultivated until the 17th century. Prior to this, gardeners made attempts at transplanting strawberries from the wild. The plants in their new surroundings would, according to Peter Blackburne-Maze in Fruit: An Illustrated History, “produce fruit the following year or the next one, after which they would be discarded.” Roger Williams, an early colonist to Rhode Island, observed that strawberries were “the wonder of all fruits growing naturally in these parts . . . I have many times seen as many as would fill a good ship, within few miles compass.” Rolling fields full of this seasonal fruit, though proven hard to tame, captured imaginations in the New World, and the old.

In ancient times Greek philosophers referenced the strawberries, but they were still rare in their region: though small and uncommon, the strawberry held a kind of allure. Centuries later, Saint Augustine reflects on how the strawberry was unique and unimaginable to him before tasting it. He writes in Letter 7, “As small children living inland we could imagine the seas from the sight of water in a cup, whereas the taste of strawberries or cherries, before we tried them in Italy, never occurred to us.” Strawberries so endeared the senses that it opened, for Augustine, a kind of world of possibility beyond what he could imagine. It was only in tasting one that he could even conceive of such goodness.

The rarity of this fruit in Europe made it all the more valuable. Markus Bockmuehl explains that “prior to the seventeenth century strawberries were not easily and widely cultivated; and this meant that, although they were popular to gather in the fields and eat with cream or wine and sugar, they always remained something of a luxury and only the rich could afford to buy them. As late as 1680, the accounts for a London wedding dinner for seven people suggest that a ‘dish of strabreys’ had cost six shillings, about six times a labourer’s daily wage” (Strawberries, the Food of Paradise: A Study in Christian Symbolism). Strawberries, due in large part to their value and charm, became known as a fruit from heaven.

In late medieval Europe and during the Renaissance, the near-mythical strawberry found its place in the imagination of artists and Christian philosophers. They wondered at the apparent symbolism this heavenly fruit might proffer. Strawberries were, to their eyes and mouths, a miracle. They had white flowers that symbolized purity and berries red like the blood of Christ and the wound of love. The seeds on the outside of a strawberry pointed to renewal, and the leaves were reflective of the Trinity.

They were also inspired by the resilient plant itself. This little bush grew in low places, in hard conditions, and still seemed to thrive without concern. For those willing to look, a perfectly ripe strawberry could be found peeking out unspoiled from under leafy debris and rot. The strawberry was life even in the midst of death. For all its beauty, the strawberry plant did not protect itself with thorns and offered its fruit for picking without difficulty. This berry seemed to be a perfect picture of the fruit of the spirit mentioned by Paul to the Galatians (Gal. 5:22–23). Here we have, growing in hard places and free for all, a gift from heaven. A fruit so full of symbols of hope, goodness, sacrifice, love, and delight that it seemed to be very much a pleasure from the hand of God.

The strawberry, then, provided a kind of sensory sermon that inspired people to consider their own faith and devotion to Christ. Soon, strawberries made their way into the borders and backgrounds of religious art. Artists would depict the stories of the Bible and of the saints and tuck strawberries into the scene. They were small but poignant reminders of the good and the beautiful—a coming together of heaven and earth. These berries would have been a nod to the kind of love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness that God’s spirit nurtures in the soil of a pained world.

Bockmuehl helps us understand the wonder woven throughout. He says, “Symbols are earth’s window to heaven, they are islands in the cosmos where human vision assumes a curious double focus, perceiving now a piece of creation, now a flash of the Creator’s deeper, vaster world beyond. For pre-Reformation Christianity the world was abrim with such pointers to God and to spiritual truth. For us moderns, by contrast, the heavens no longer seem to declare the glory of God.”

The strawberry, though now thoroughly tamed, rolls over in our imagination as a latent and timely invitation. Is it possible that this diminutive fruit is a “flash of the Creator’s deeper, vaster world beyond?” Is it still too late to see other flashes of the Creator’s world much closer than we would expect? While we may nearly have lost the ability to see the glory of God in places like strawberry patches, apiaries, around kitchen tables, and across the street or throughout our neighborhood, the garden awaits with its surprise. Strawberries, these symbols acting as “earth’s window to heaven,” might be kindly drawing us out into our proximal future. It may be that the very life we are looking for is found in our neighborhoods, in the ordinary places between us and others, and it may be that God is growing something for us to enjoy. Strawberries, in their ancient and enchanting way, reorient our imaginations to see all that is beautiful and growing nearby. When I gather strawberries I wonder, is something growing and fruiting by the hand of God in my community? Are the plastic and vinyl suburban homes that edge my neighborhood just the façade, or do I stop to see something more? Perhaps, like the first man and woman in the Cherokee story, the Creator is leaving a trail of strawberries hoping we will follow long enough to draw near and find each other once more.

Fruit is not as mysterious as it once was. We’ve dispelled much of the mythology around the strawberry, and perhaps that is why it sits in plastic containers at the grocery store as one more commodity to be bought and blended up. But for all that it has stripped of wonder, it is science that is starting to bring us home, full circle. What research reveals about the unseen world of fruit is every bit as glorious as any myth or lore. There is more happening here than we see.

On long summer evenings I sit on the stone bench beside my beehive and breathe in the warm aroma of their sweet industry. Bees make my neighborhood beautiful. Their ongoing engagement with my place causes plants to thrive and fruit to grow. But it’s not a bee’s one visit to a plant that makes it fruit. Researchers have discovered that strawberry flowers need to be visited by pollinators many times for the best fruit to grow. Pollinators, it seems, are not just a utilitarian part of a system, rather their simple and tender visits to flowers over and over again is a kind of nurture that makes the fruit grow lush, sweet, and ripe.

Teja Tscharntke, an agroecologist at the University of Göttingen in Germany, carried out research which revealed that fruit grew better as more pollinators visited the flowers. Plants that were visited by few pollinators would grow smaller fruit that was often susceptible to deformities and malformation, was unable to withstand bruising, and was prone to more rapid decay. However, strawberry plants that were visited by many pollinators of different species would produce fruit several times per season, with greater yield, larger fruit size, less spoilage, and far fewer malformations. Pollinators trigger the plant to produce hormones that make the plant thrive (Erik Stokstad, “A Better Berry, Thanks to Bees”). Pollinators not only make fruit grow, but many pollinators tending regularly to fruiting plants make the fruit better and healthier. Science may reveal that sterile and untouched strawberry flowers will make tasteless and woody strawberries. We’re getting closer to the truth of it all.

“Can you smell the strawberries?” our friend asked us as we walked up the hill, pointing out the native plants growing freely in every direction. Three of us were out looking for well-pollinated, wild strawberries. Birds flitted nearby, evidence of a berry patch that nourishes more than a few visiting.

Preston Pouteaux is a neighborhood pastor, author, and beekeeper in Chestermere, Alberta.

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News

Died: ‘Jesus Calling’ Devotional Author Sarah Young

Daniel Silliman

The missionary wife’s “listening prayers” comforted and inspired millions.

Sarah Young, author of Jesus Calling

Courtesy of Jesus Calling / edits by Rick Szuecs

Sarah Young, a devotional author who wrote in Jesus’ voice and became one of the most-read evangelicals of the 21st century, has died at 77.

The wife of a Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) missionary to Japanese people, Young suffered from Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses that sometimes forced her to stay in her room for 20 hours a day. In her isolation, she started to practice “listening prayer” and journaling what she felt the Spirit tell her.

“Messages began to flow … and I bought a special notebook to record these words,” Young later wrote. “I have continued to receive personal messages from God as I meditate on Him.”

A few pages from her journal found their way to a women’s prayer group in Nashville in the early 2000s. One of the women shared them with her husband, who was vice president of marketing at Integrity Publishers, and Integrity asked Young if she could write one message from God to the reader for every day of the year. She agreed, and they published Jesus Calling in 2004.

With an additional marketing push after Integrity was absorbed by Thomas Nelson, the book earned a top 10 spot on the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s bestseller list in 2009. It remained atop the list, month after month, for the next 15 years, ultimately selling more than 45 million copies. In August 2023, Jesus Calling outsold T. D. Jakes, Lee Strobel, Rick Warren, Joyce Meyer, Louie Giglio, and Max Lucado.

A children’s version of Jesus Calling has also sold more than a million copies, as have two of Young’s follow-up devotionals, Jesus Always and Jesus Today. Two others, Jesus Lives and Jesus Listens, have sold half a million copies each.

Young’s devotional writing has stirred controversy, with some evangelical leaders expressing concern that she undermines the idea that the Bible is sufficient for contemporary Christians, and others saying that writing from Jesus’ perspective borders on blasphemy. Many, many believers, however, have found comfort, peace, encouragement, and inspiration in Young’s Jesus’ words.

Jesus Calling has attracted fans as diverse as hip-hop producer Metro Boomin, who posted photos of completely highlighted pages on his social media, and talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford, who has praised Young’s spiritual guidance in her life.

“I marvel at her endurance and her faith,” Gifford said. “I’m deeply humbled by her heart for Jesus.”

On Goodreads, a social media site where people share book reviews and ratings, 85 percent of Jesus Calling readers gave it four or five stars.

“I absolutely adore this devotional,” wrote one woman from Tennessee. “I have read it nearly everyday for the past year, but I still find peace from it even now. Beautiful and comforting.”

Spiritual struggles led to L’Abri

Young was born Sarah Jane Kelly in Nashville on March 15, 1946. Little is known about her childhood except that her father was a college professor and her family lived in the South. She graduated from E. C. Glass High School in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1964, and attended Wellesley College, where she majored in philosophy. She went on to earn a master’s in education, focusing on child study, at Tufts University in 1974.

Despite her academic success, the future author of Jesus Calling was struggling spiritually. She was not a Christian, and her philosophy classes had convinced her that life was ultimately meaningless and absurd. Then she found Escape from Reason by Francis Schaeffer. The book made her think there might be answers to questions she had thought were unanswerable. She might be able to know the truth and even have confidence it was absolute.

The hope prompted a trip to L’Abri, Schaeffer’s evangelical study center in the Swiss Alps. There, Young had an encounter with Jesus. A counselor asked her if she was a Christian and what she thought she needed to be forgiven for.

“Immediately I understood my need for Jesus—to save me from my many sins,” she wrote.

After walking alone in the snowy Swiss woods, Young felt a Presence—she would always write about it with a capital P—and felt it was the overwhelming personal answer to a question she had only thought was intellectual. She said aloud, “Sweet Jesus.”

A year later, she felt the same Presence while reading Christian author Catherine Marshall’s book about prayer, Beyond Our Selves.

“I no longer felt alone,” Young later recalled. “I knew that Jesus was with me.”

Young decided to become a Christian counselor and went to earn a second master’s degree at Covenant Theological Seminary, a PCA school in Missouri. There, she met and married Stephen Young, a child and grandchild of missionaries to Japan who also planned to be a missionary to Japan. The couple was married in 1977 and moved south of Yokkaichi to plant a church with Mission to the World.

The Youngs moved to Melbourne, Australia, in 1991, where Steve helped plant the first Japanese-language church in the city. Sarah started a counseling practice, helping women who had been sexually and spiritually abused find healing in Christ. Young began to meditate on God’s protection, visualizing each member of her family encircled by the Spirit. As she did, she later recalled, she had a mystical experience. She was enveloped by light and overcome by peace.

“I had not sought this powerful experience of God’s Presence,” she wrote, “but I received it gratefully.”

Experimenting with a prayer journal

The following year, Young started experimenting with listening prayers. In her journal, instead of writing down what she wanted to say to God, she would write down what she felt God saying to her. She was inspired, at least in part, by the evangelical theologian J. I. Packer, who wrote that God “guides our minds as we think things out in his presence.”

More controversially, Young was also influenced by God Calling, a British record of purportedly divine revelation given to two anonymous women known only as “The Listeners.” It was edited and published by a newspaper editor interested in spiritualism, mystic experiences, and alternative religious authorities.

“Christ Christ Christ. Everything must rest on Me,” they women recorded God saying in 1933. “Be channels both of you. My Spirit shall flow through and My Spirit shall, in flowing through, sweep away all the bitter past.”

Young treasured the book. It “dovetailed remarkably well with my longing to live in Jesus’ Presence,” she said. It prompted her to start writing in God’s voice in her prayer journal.

Young didn’t think her writing was inspired by God—and was certainly not inerrant—yet she didn’t think it was just a creative writing project, either. Writing from God’s perspective wasn’t conceived as a rhetorical device. She thought of her journals as a testament to God’s Presence.

As she experienced various illnesses, including two surgeries for melanoma, a misdiagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, and persistent vertigo, the prayer practices became increasingly important to her. Young wondered if she might be called to share them with others.

“When people open up to me,” she wrote, “I find most of them also desire the balm of Jesus’ Peace.”

She spent about three years preparing a manuscript but could not secure a publishing contract. She gave up in 2001, when the family moved to Perth, an isolated city in Western Australia, so that Steve could establish a ministry for Japanese people there. Her illnesses, in the following years, got so bad that she could barely leave her room. She focused as much as she could on writing, praying, and meditating on God.

Byron Williamson, founder of Integrity, received a sample of Young’s work in 2003. The writing grabbed him.

“I spent the next few days reflecting on the voice I heard in Sarah’s devotionals … they were remarkably intimate words, warmly voiced,” Williamson later recalled. “It reminded me of a book I’d seen on my own mother’s bedside table years before titled God Calling.”

He suggested the title Jesus Calling and offered Young a contract. She accepted, telling her husband she hoped the publisher would not lose money on her devotional.

A publishing miracle

She need not have worried. In its first three years, Jesus Calling sold an average of 20,000 copies per year, with many people buying them as gifts. Christian bookstores reported customers asking if they could buy the devotional by the case.

Thomas Nelson took over Integrity in 2006 and, instead of treating the devotional as an odd backlist title, saw Jesus Calling as a potential bestseller. The Christian publisher pushed the book. In 2008, they sold 220,000 copies. In 2009, it landed on bestseller lists. In 2013, it outsold Fifty Shades of Gray, and Thomas Nelson translated it into more than two dozen languages.

Young herself barely participated in the promotion of her books, earning a reputation for reclusiveness even after moving back to Nashville with her husband. When Christianity Today attempted to profile her, she only communicated by email through an intermediary at Thomas Nelson. The New York Times and Publishers Weekly were also denied telephone interviews.

But her book continued to sell. Many readers found Jesus Calling through personal recommendations. The musician David Crowder said he lost track of how many people asked him, “Bro! Have you read Jesus Calling?”

Actor and singer Kristin Chenoweth, who starred in the TV show Pushing Daisies and the Broadway production of Wicked, said she was given a copy by actor Rita Wilson, who is married to Tom Hanks and had roles in the films Sleepless in Seattle and Runaway Bride. Wilson was herself given a copy by country singer Faith Hill.

“It’s kind of crazy that sometimes you read the passage from that day and it’s exactly what you need to hear,” Wilson said.

The book was also promoted by Republican presidential primary candidate Scott Walker and passed around the White House. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she found a copy in her office shortly after president Donald Trump promoted her to press secretary.

“I grabbed it,” she told CBN. “I went into the other room, and I read it immediately. I just was kind of like, ‘I’m at peace.’”

As the book became more popular, it also attracted serious criticism.

“She puts her thoughts into the first person and then presents that ‘person’ as the resurrected Lord. Frankly, I find this to be outrageous,” David Crump, a theology professor at Calvin University, told CT in 2013. “I’m sure she is a very devout, pious woman, but I’m tempted to call this blasphemy.”

Evangelical blogger Tim Challies wrote that it was a “deeply troubling book” that was both dangerous and “unworthy of our attention.”

Kathy Keller, assistant director of communications for the New York City PCA church where her husband, Tim, was the lead pastor, wrote a review explaining why Redeemer would not sell Jesus Calling at its book table, even though lots of people asked for it.

“Young had the Bible but found it insufficient,” she said. “If you want to experience Jesus, learn how to find him in his Word. His real Word.”

Editors at Thomas Nelson objected that the critics were being obtuse.

“In no way does she believe her own writing is sacred or that she has new revelations,” one told The New York Times. “I feel like she’s tried to be pretty clear about that in her book introductions.”

They also pointed out the long history of devotional writing, including classic works by Andrew Murray, Oswald Chambers, and A. W. Tozer, was broadly accepted in evangelicalism. Young’s writing style might be different, but readers were very familiar with the devotional genre that critics seemed to wildly misunderstand.

Helping readers connect with Jesus

The accusations of possible heresy did not hurt sales. While some new readers approached Jesus Calling and follow-up devotionals with caution, most became ardent converts when they read Young’s Jesus’ words

Author Dawn Paoletta, for example, wrote that she was skeptical because Young’s account of receiving divine messages reminded her of New Age writings. But when she read Jesus Calling, she was convinced it was from God.

“I wholeheartedly recommend this book and have already bought a half dozen copies as gifts,” Paoletta wrote on Goodreads. “I have also purchased a hard copy that I currently keep in my purse! … I probably will eventually give it to the person God prompts at the moment!”

Millions responded the same way, returning to Jesus Calling again and again for spiritual substance and giving copies away to anyone who seemed like they might need it.

Young said she was astounded by the commercial success of her writing, but was glad she could help people connect with Jesus. As sales numbers grew astronomical, she committed to continue praying for all of her readers.

“Remember that I’m always praying for you,” she wrote upon publication of Jesus Listens. “But most importantly, remember that Jesus is always with you, listening to every one of your prayers.”

Young died in Nashville on August 31. She is survived by her husband, Steve, daughter Stephanie, and son Eric.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Books

Review

When American Evangelicals Needed a Reputational Boost, They Turned to South Korean Evangelicals

Alex Ward

In the second half of the 20th century, each group used the other as a ticket to legitimacy at home and abroad.

Billy Graham (top) South Korea in 1971 (Bottom)

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons / Getty

On June 3, 1973, Billy Graham preached before 1.1 million people at his largest crusade. This event did not occur in America’s heartland or a major American metropolitan center like Los Angeles or New York. Instead, it took place in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

Race for Revival: How Cold War South Korea Shaped the American Evangelical Empire

Helen Jin Kim (Author)

254 pages

$56.28

Next to Graham on the platform, acting as his translator, was Billy Kim, a South Korean evangelist who, like the revivalist, had ties to Bob Jones University. By the end of the message, 73,000 people would walk the aisle and make public decisions for Christ.

Graham’s Seoul crusade was but one point of connection in the postwar era between white American evangelicals and their counterparts in South Korea. Two decades prior in 1950, World Vision—currently a multi-billion-dollar evangelical philanthropic organization—was founded in South Korea. A year later, Campus Crusade for Christ would launch its first international chapter by looking across the Pacific to a country establishing itself as a bastion of evangelical theology.

The relationship between these two groups—white evangelicals in America and South Korean evangelicals—is the focus of Helen Jin Kim’s book Race for Revival: How Cold War South Korea Shaped the American Evangelical Empire. Kim, a religious history professor at Emory University, presents a largely unknown history of how postwar American evangelicals cultivated relationships in South Korea and used them to win acceptance within the religious mainstream back home. For evangelicals, it is also a convicting story that illustrates the corrupting influences of militarism, ethnic identity, and religious ideology.

The ‘transpacific highway’

It is impossible to tell the story of early evangelicalism in America, particularly in the period surrounding the Great Awakenings, without attention to transatlantic connections. However, historians have not paid similar attention to connections made across the Pacific. In this regard, Kim’s history of the modern evangelical movement is a helpful corrective, illuminating how American religion has been shaped by its interaction with faith outside of the Western European context.

The benefit of this new framing is that American religion—and evangelicalism especially—are placed into a global context. The rise and success of figures like Billy Graham and institutions like Campus Crusade for Christ was owed not only to domestic realities but also to the interconnected web of relationships that existed along what Kim calls the “transpacific highway,” particularly as it ran through South Korea.

Highways are different from one-way streets, and Race for Revival does not see either party in this evolution as a pawn of the other. Both South Korean and American evangelicals were comfortable using the other as a means of achieving respect and legitimacy at home and abroad, but sometimes the relationship came at a cost to South Koreans. The story of the World Vision Korean Orphan Choir serves as a useful example. The choir—which included children who weren’t orphans—helped the organization and the American evangelical movement to distance themselves from associations of racism in the American South.

The South Korean children became a shining example of American evangelicalism’s colorblind approach to evangelism and faith—an advertisement for its rightful place within the American mainstream. And for their own part, the children benefited from the choir, with many expressing excitement about trips to Disneyland and the chance to sing before foreign dignitaries like the king of Norway.

There was, however, a darker underside tragically captured in the suicide of one of the choir’s former members, Kim Sang Yong (nicknamed “Peanuts”) at the age of 19. According to letters from the World Vision staff, Peanuts was one of several children in crisis who were part of the choir. Some worried that the tours were exacerbating the situation by placing these young, impressionable children in the limelight, where they were adored, before dropping them from tours once they were no longer children.

This is not to delegitimize the very real help that flowed to many South Korean families and children because of donations generated by the choir. But the episode does reveal the unequal relationship between the parties, and the disparity in the benefits flowing to each. Both sides stood to gain, but American evangelicals, in Kim’s telling, reaped far greater rewards from the opportunity to repair a reputation bound up with Jim Crow segregation.

And such reputational enhancements tended to obscure one reason there were so many South Korean orphans and widows needing aid in the first place: the Cold War, which turned hot on the Korean peninsula. Like historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez in Jesus and John Wayne, Kim portrays strong links that existed between militarism and the rise of modern evangelicalism. And like Jonathan Herzog in his study of the early Cold War years, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex, Kim describes conscious efforts to spur on revival in America and create spiritual ballast for the foreign policy of containment.

Looking at Graham’s 1973 crusade, Kim notes that it served to strengthen diplomatic ties between the US and South Korea (the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association had to work with the ruling authoritarian regime to hold the meeting), while also strengthening ties between the domestic evangelical movements in both nations. The church and state were not separate spheres, but intimately connected pieces of a larger American apparatus engaged in combating the spread of communism.

The revivals of this era set the context for the most interesting shift that Kim’s book depicts. While American evangelicals were looking to demonstrate that evangelicalism was national in scope rather than concentrated in the South, South Koreans were arguing for a pivot away from America and toward their own country.

Two major events, considered side by side, offer a snapshot of these dynamics. In 1972, Campus Crusade leader Bill Bright was able to bring some 80,000 people to Texas for a gathering that became known as Explo ’72, where college students committed to evangelizing the world. Two years later, Joon Gon Kim, the leader of the South Korean chapter of Campus Crusade, organized Explo ’74 in Seoul, which gathered 1.3 million people (even Graham’s crusade hadn’t attracted that many). In announcing the event, he boldly called for attendees to pray for the total conversion of the nation as a “symbolic sample Christian nation … uniquely used of God for Christ.”

American evangelicals were not the only ones capable of achieving legitimacy through bold displays of Christian commitment. South Korean evangelicals pushed against a message that placed revival within a framework of American exceptionalism, arguing that their country was the new center of heartfelt faith.

An essential corrective

Race for Revival excels in bringing forward the story of South Korea’s place in the revitalization of American evangelicalism. Kim’s work unearthing the role played by South Korean evangelicals in creating, sustaining, and empowering some of the most influential American parachurch organizations makes this an essential corrective to histories that place undue focus on white American figures.

Readers may disagree with some of Kim’s conclusions, in particular her belief that American evangelicals were consciously trying to distance themselves from Southern racism rather than simply living out their commitment to evangelism and care for orphans. However, even those who disagree should reckon with how her narrative highlights an overly individualistic approach to race, one that stressed personal heart renewal while downplaying the importance of broader social and political reform. Like other scholars, Kim has done a helpful service in showing the danger of isolating theological commitments from other concerns, a mindset that can lead to overlooking the human rights abuses of authoritarian governments just because they will allow a large-scale Christian gathering to take place in their country.

In any event, differences with Kim’s conclusions shouldn’t detract from the value of her larger argument about the interconnected web of relationships between evangelicals in America and South Korea, and how those relationships bolstered the status of both groups in different ways. Seoul’s status as host of the Lausanne Movement’s 2024 Fourth Congress on World Evangelization vindicates her theme of South Korea’s emergence as a new center of evangelical power. So, too, does the fact that South Korea has, for some time, been among the top missionary-sending nations, with some missionaries even ending up in America. Clearly, those transpacific highways are still very much in use.

Alex Ward is research associate and project manager for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is pursuing a PhD in history from the University of Mississippi.

- More from Alex Ward

I Used ChatGPT for Six Months to Help My Pastoral Ministry. Here’s What Worked.

Yi-Li Lin

A young Taiwanese pastor shares about the opportunities and challenges AI offers to those in the ministry.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Getty

This article appears here as the result of a partnership between Christianity Today and Campus Magazine, a Taiwanese Christian publication.

Since ChatGPT became publicly accessible last year, we’ve heard reports that artificial intelligence (AI) will replace jobs and disrupt other aspects of our lives. Such changes may not currently be apparent to individual local churches in Taiwan. But in recent months, a number of Christian thinkers have been discussing how AI might either aid or possibly replace humans when it comes to pastoral care and preaching.

Several pastors point out that AI lacks physical, emotional, or empathetic abilities, though I personally believe that these limitations may one day be overcome technologically. In addition, they note that AI’s social bias, monopolization, and lack of spirituality when it comes to data labeling. But these are the same dilemmas humans are facing.

Many have cautioned that AI will have an ideological bias, but we can actually use the intelligence of ChatGPT to examine whether our words could unintentionally offend congregants with different political identities and positions.

As a young pastor who is optimistic about what role AI can play in my work, I recently spent six months exploring whether ChatGPT could be beneficial to my own ministry. After using this tool for half a year, I believe AI offers ways for pastors to more efficiently work and balance their many responsibilities.

Working smarter, not harder

For many pastors, there is never enough time for sermon preparation. When I was in seminary, one of my classes required students to draw up a schedule of a typical week in a pastor’s life. The professor critiqued the schedule I submitted as having “too much time for sermon preparation.” Indeed, after researching and writing a sermon and dealing with all the administrative work, leading additional ministries, serving as an official of our presbytery, and continuing my education, I find my time for actual pastoral care is very limited.

Consequently, pastors often rely on liturgical manuals or official sermon templates, or they recycle their own past sermons for recurring events like invocations, fundraising activities, weddings, and funerals. Yet these tools require additional personalization and human touches too. Thus, it might be helpful to think about what recurring tasks or events might be automated.

If we use ChatGPT to assist in creating pastoral notes, personal biographies, prayer letters, news reports, etc. (making sure to protect personal information and privacy), we can effectively generate customized templates. ChatGPT can generate scripts for newer ministers to follow, aiding us in our ministry and leaving more time for one-on-one pastoral care and visitation.

Further, ChatGPT can instantly generate a paraphrase of a Scripture passage or write discussion questions for a college student fellowship or a community small group. I could ask ChatGPT to summarize and synthesize various Bible commentaries and content from reference books that I feed it to create a rough research report on a certain theme.

When I need examples or applications for a sermon, I go to ChatGPT for ideas. For example, I can ask ChatGPT to write a story of Jesus riding a motorcycle into town based on Scripture and then can add more context and continue to adjust the plot to make my point.

In seminary, I wrote first-person sermon assignments with a golden calf as the main character and found the process difficult. When I asked ChatGPT to write a similar type of sermon, the result was actually no worse than what I personally wrote.

One habit I implemented when I began my AI experiment was noting reflections and thoughts that occurred to me while having my daily quiet time. Later I input them in ChatGPT to synthesize these thoughts and help build out my sermon.

Some of us may have already experienced entering a text into ChatGPT and asking it to generate a short sermon or sermon outline of 500–800 words. (One option is the AI Sermon Outline Generator available on the OpenBible website.) If necessary, users can expand from the outline option to a full sermon that is at least moderately accurate and free of errors. Obviously, however, a 100 percent AI-generated sermon would miss the context of the speaker and the congregation.

Not a one-person show

Many see sermon writing as one of the most important components of a pastor’s work. Personally, I don’t believe sermon preparation or preaching is a one-person job. A sermon is a representation of God’s revelation. In addition to interpreting the Scriptures, in order for a particular congregation to receive it effectively, the homily must be close to the life and situation of each church member.

For the novice pastor, a sermon’s foundation is built not only on one’s own devotions but also on the writings of other pastors and spiritual predecessors. To understand and acknowledge the congregation’s context, apart from weekly interactions with church members, one also may rely on the translation of veteran local “guides.” After the sermon has taken shape, the pastor’s family members or peers may play a role in correcting and giving feedback.

In addition, sermon delivery is not a one-person affair either. We know that a congregation’s reception is affected not only by the speaker’s appearance but also by the sound control, the slide show, the music, and so on. Because of the pandemic, online services, audiovisual colleagues, and social media editors have become particularly important to online preaching; recent studies have even identified them as co-preachers. Though it is unethical to plagiarize others, it is difficult for a pastor to achieve the purpose of preaching—that is bringing people to God, making the truth clear, encouraging other believers—by relying on his or her own single-person sermon writing.

What, then, is the role of the preacher? According to Danish bishop Marianne Gaarden, preachers merely provide their own voices as vehicles for the Holy Spirit to move their congregations to receive the Word individually. In her qualitative research, Gaarden found that when a sermon is given, the church enters a “Third Room … where the listener’s own experiences are met with the words of the preacher.”

Preaching—be it preparing a sermon or delivering the words to a congregation—is a process that currently involves a speaker, the influence of numerous people living and dead, and the Holy Spirit. I believe that within these actions, there is room for the work of AI too.

Yi-Li Lin is the pastor of Chung Po Presbyterian Church, Taiwan.

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News

Haitian Gangs Are a Major Threat. Last Week, a Church Fought Back.

Morgan Lee

Evangelicals lament the circumstances but say a syncretistic pastor’s faith-driven counterattack was unwise.

Protestors gather in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Odelyn Joseph / AP

Vijonet Déméro had little patience for the Haitian pastor who led his congregation into what proved to be a deadly confrontation with local gangs last week.

“Foolishly foolish action,” said Déméro, a Protestant leader and secretary general at Université INUFOCAD in Port-au-Prince, referencing Jesus’ words about the blind leading the blind. “For me, the pastor forgot his role as pastor. He is not the police.”

The pastor at the center of the controversy is Marcorel Zidor, also known as Pastor Marco, who leads the Evangelical Piscine de Bethesda church, in the northern suburb of Canaan.

On August 26, gang members opened fire, killing at least seven people with machine guns, as Zidor and members of his congregation approached the group, marching in armed protest.

Despite criticism from human rights groups and Christian leaders, and even acknowledging personal injury himself, Zidor has defended his actions.

“Ninety-five percent of my faithful followers were not hurt by bullets even though they were hit by them,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “Those who died are those who ran to take shelter at some houses. If they didn’t lose their faith, and if they had run in the same direction with the main crowd [the faithful ones], they wouldn’t be dead.”

Haiti’s department of foreign affairs and worship has since suspended the church’s license, noting that many of the victims’ relatives had showed up to Evangelical Piscine de Bethesda demanding answers and reparations. (The department also noted its commitment to religious freedom.)

Zidor’s protest comes at a time when churches in Western Haiti have struggled to keep their doors open. Congregations have cut back on Sunday services and Bible studies and canceled evening events.

“Some are drawn closer to God because they believe it is God only who can do something to take the pain away,” Samson Doreliens, a pastor of a 600-person church, recently told Baptist Press about his congregation. “Others are discouraged, questioning why God is letting all kinds of things happen to the country: violence, natural disasters, etc.”

The circumstances in Haiti are dire enough that even though Haitian theologian Andrikson Descolines considers Zidor a “religious zealot,” he empathizes with the pastor’s desire to take action when the authorities who are supposed to can’t or won’t.

“Hopeless people make hopeless decisions,” said Descolines, a professor at the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Port-au-Prince (STEP). “The pastor is a victim of the current situation that is prevalent in Haiti. … The members of his church are every day exposed as the prey and victims of gang members, and the government is doing nothing. He took the matter into his own hands and was trying to address it, based on his understanding of Scriptures.”

Descolines said he sees Zidor and his church’s confrontation as “neither brave nor foolish,” though the pastor didn’t think his action through.

Neither Déméro nor Descolines describe Zidor’s congregation as evangelical, but instead see it as syncretistic, combining Christian teaching and voodoo practices.

“I have been in Haiti for 49 years, and this is the first time I saw what just happened in the country,” said Descolines. “I never saw something like this, where a bunch of people armed with their faith and machetes tried to overpower gangs with automatic weapons.”

Days after the incident, the Haitian National Police announced it will open an investigation into those responsible for the massacre.

In a statement, Frantz Elbé, the director general of police, described how hundreds of people had amassed at the scene, many wearing uniforms and clothes bearing Zidor’s name. Elbé stated that the police created a security perimeter but failed to dissuade the crowd.

“The pastor’s followers really believed what he told them,” Francois Vicner told The New York Times. “He said they were bulletproof, that those who were wounded had no faith.”

In one video currently circulating among Haitian social media users, the gang’s leader, Jeff, interviews one of the kidnapped church members. She explains that she had been waiting for an update from the Biden parole program and had gone to church to pray and fast for a response when she ended up going out and joining the march to confront the gang.

As the police have struggled to push back against the strongholds that many gangs have in the country, some Haitians have joined civilian self-defense groups known as “Bwa Kale.”

“The church does not have the responsibility to attack the gang,” said Déméro. “It is the responsibility of the police to do so. In addition, the way they protest does not sound like protest. It sounds like an offensive attack on the gangs.”

Haiti’s security situation crumbled when UN peacekeepers left in 2019, David Shedd, a former CIA agent and executive adviser of VDI, a regional security consulting firm respected by American missionaries, told CT in 2021. Soon after, large numbers of Haitian National Police (HNP) officers defected, and wealthy Haitians colluded with gangs, hiring members for protection.

By November 2021, CT reported that “gangs in the Port-au-Prince area informally work together to delineate turf so as to avoid committing fratricide. They also help members avoid HNP checkpoints and seamlessly move around the city of about a million people. Gangs often keep kidnapping victims inside ungoverned parts of the city.”

“I don’t think there’s sufficient awareness of the vicious and enormous power that these gangs wield,” Shedd said then.

In the days since Zidor and his church’s confrontation with the gang, Descolines noted that there were “a lot of shootings in my area.” Yet he believes the church should continue to eschew violence.

“I cannot encourage people to behave the same way as gang members do,” he said. “The Bible encourages us to pray for our enemy and especially for their salvation. So ‘prayer’ is the first proper answer we can give to what is happening right now in Haiti. We need to keep our eyes on God and promote his love through our country, until those who are getting paid to manage the country properly do their job.”

Déméro, who formerly served as a Haiti representative for Bethany Christian Services, echoed this.

“Me, as a Christian, I pray. I raise the awareness of the prime minister and his ministers. I educate my people to make the difference, to act and serve differently; to understand that God is in control of the situation,” he said, referencing Exodus 14:14. “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

- More from Morgan Lee

Books

Excerpt

Gen X Dropouts Widen the Generational Divide among Singapore Christians

Wei-Hao Ho and Soo-Inn Tan

Interviews with 63 churches reveal an urgent need for greater mutuality in relationships.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty / Unsplash

When I (Wei-Hao) met with Matthew in a café in eastern Singapore to talk about generational divides in the church, he was very relaxed, jovial, and candid until the issue of church leadership came up. I knew I had touched a raw nerve when he leaned back, folded his arms, and sighed, saying, “This is a conversation that I often have with some friends. A lot of us are struggling to convince our leaders that the church needs to stop being so old-school and inward-looking.”

The Generations Project: Bridging Generational Divides in the Singapore Church

Ho, Wei-Hao, Tan, Soo-Inn

May 23, 2023

Matthew and a few friends had approached their church leaders to talk about creation care a few years ago. A big conference had just been held at their church, and they were appalled by the amount of plastic waste generated from the meals and refreshments.

“We suggested that this issue should be addressed over the pulpit and those who feel the same way could organize activities or, you know, maybe start some recycling initiatives in the church,” Matthew, a millennial, said.

“But you know what was my pastor’s reply? He said that the pulpit was meant to address spiritual stuff and most of the congregation probably wouldn’t be interested anyway,” Matthew said with a shrug of his shoulders and an even deeper sigh than before. “To his credit, he said he agreed with us that this is an issue, but it was definitely not going to be a focus for the church.”

Matthew’s experience of attempting to initiate positive change in his church and receiving pushback from his baby-boomer pastor is not an isolated one. There is a serious lack of understanding and empathy among different generations in Singapore churches. Each generation does not understand the other’s actions, as they often read each other through their own lens. For example, boomers grew up in a time of extreme turmoil in the local Christian world, which prompted lines to be drawn in the sand as a means of keeping their faith “pure,” whereas millennials live in an era where pluralism and tolerance are a given.

In 2020, we embarked on a research project to investigate areas of church life in which different generations held varying opinions and how churches can work toward greater unity through building an intergenerational community. We conducted 131 in-depth qualitative interviews with Singaporean Christians from 63 churches across 10 denominations and circulated an online quantitative survey that had 1,672 respondents. These believers were from five generations: the silent generation (1928–1945), baby boomers (1946–1964), Generation X (1965–1980), millennials (1981–1996), and Generation Z (1997–2012).

One of our biggest considerations regarding the validity of our project was whether we were reinventing the wheel and whether there was already material readily available on the market. We found that much of the research in this area had been done in the West (especially in America), and there were no parallel publications that we could find for Asia, let alone Singapore. While some Western research is applicable in our context, we believe there are significant local issues that the Singapore church needs to grapple with.

Here are three of our most unexpected research findings:

1. Gen Z values the institutional church.

One clear trend that emerged as we spoke to the different generations is the decline in perceived importance of the institutional church as the interviewees got younger—until we started speaking to those in Gen Z.

Most interviewees from the silent and baby-boomer generations saw the institutional church as an absolute necessity for the Christian faith. This started to wane with the Gen Xers, who became much more open to organic or house churches after negative experiences in their institutional churches. Millennials identified with the importance of the broad concept of church but were very uncomfortable with how Christianity was being expressed practically when it came to issues such as LGBT and women’s rights, as they felt it caused nonbelievers to have misconceptions of the faith.

However, many Gen Z individuals appreciated the stability and predictability that the institutional church brought during the COVID-19 pandemic when everything else seemed to be spiraling out of control. They viewed the church as an integral part of being a Christian, citing its importance particularly in the areas of community, accountability, and scriptural instruction.

While they were relatively open to the concept of organic churches, they were also cautious about the potential lack of orthodoxy and governance. Yet they struggle deeply with the implications of the faith on broad societal and popular-culture trends that are often not given much attention from the pulpit.

2. Gen X is the missing generation in most churches.

Many Gen Xers we spoke to were active in church during their youth and young adult years, but work and family commitments caused them to shift their focus in life. When they spent less time serving in church, they felt that church leadership—mainly comprising baby boomers—stopped caring for them.

In our interviews, churchgoers and pastors shared stories of a mass exodus of Gen Xers in their congregations in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Many left to attend megachurches that had resources to run vibrant children or youth ministries. There are Gen Xers who still attend church faithfully, but a major motivation is so that their children can attend Sunday school or youth ministry. They are often no longer interested in getting involved in church ministries because of previous negative experiences and the lack of motivation to reestablish themselves in a new church. Anecdotally, some Gen Xers estimated that up to one-third of their church friends are no longer attending an institutional church; they either are in house churches or have simply stopped going.

Because churches do not have this buffer generation that can understand both boomers and millennials, we have a leadership transition crisis in our churches now.

Boomers are at the age where they have no choice but to start the process of leadership transition to people from younger generations. But without Gen Xers around, they have had to pass the mantle to millennials. These two generations differ greatly in their formative experiences—so much so that when a boomer tries to train and equip a millennial in leading a church, they clash over issues like preaching and teaching, the sacred-secular divide, and congregational hierarchy structures. Millennials typically end up leaving these churches: Some stop going altogether, but there is a rising phenomenon of mono-generational churches where the bulk of the congregation consists of millennials and older Gen Z members.

3. Mentoring has exacerbated intergenerational tensions.

Young believers are reluctant to be mentored in church because it often entails someone older taking over their lives and telling them what they should be doing, with no attempt to understand their contexts. Older generations perceive mentoring as a means of giving valuable advice to younger people based on their life experiences, which they didn’t get growing up. But when they offer this type of mentorship, they feel not only unappreciated and hurt but also rejected by young people. As a result, while churches are actively trying to cultivate good intergenerational mentoring relationships, responses to these efforts are often discouraging.

Close to 90 percent of the boomers we interviewed did not have personal mentoring relationships where older individuals with more life experiences would journey with and guide them through challenges. One key reason for this is that between 1967 and 1980, close to one in two persons in Singapore were within the same age group. Thus, most local churches at the time were largely mono-generational.

Prominent Christian authors were their “mentors” instead. When we asked a well-known local boomer pastor whether he had mentors in his younger days, he replied with gusto, “Yes, I had many! John Stott, A. W. Tozer, C. S. Lewis, and many others!” He quickly clarified that he didn’t know these spiritual giants personally but that their books had a tremendous impact on his life and ministry. “In our time, mentoring was unheard of; we were content to admire our heroes from afar,” he remarked.

The pastor’s comment sums up the sentiments of his generation. Boomers saw their mentors as heroes or paragons of faith, implying a focus on their achievements and successes. The word afar assumes the absence of any personal relationship—mentors were examples to aspire toward rather than people you shared meals with. Thus, in many boomers’ view, a mentor is almost like a superhuman expert who provides solutions rather than someone who offers a warm, supportive relationship.

In contrast with boomers’ ideas of mentoring, Gen Xers we spoke to believe that one of the church’s greatest weaknesses is its lack of emphasis on deep relationships and community formation beyond its official ministries. Millennials especially value people who are willing to have authentic relationships and are ready to journey with them without trying to run their lives.

Members of Gen Z, meanwhile, find it difficult to establish meaningful relationships in church. They find that most friendships are built around structures and activities that seem to have unspoken rules and expectations.

A renewed ecclesiology

If intergenerational cohesiveness in the church is an aim, it is dangerous to assume that simply gathering people from different generations into a ministry with a stated end goal will naturally produce good outcomes. Our anecdotal observations seem to suggest the opposite: When older and younger generations are put together without intentional and purposeful preparation and scaffolding, it usually results in further alienation and division.

During our interviews, a sizable number of millennials and older Gen Z individuals critiqued Celebration of Hope, an evangelistic nationwide rally held at the 55,000-capacity National Stadium in 2019. They felt that such a large-scale event was not attractive to their friends and that it wasn’t a good use of resources such as money and manpower. The pageantry was also something they struggled with. “The way that they (older generations) were running the event—I’m not sure whether it was for God’s glory or for their own glory,” said one Gen Z Christian in her mid-20s.

From the older generations’ perspective, however, this event was motivated by their concern over a perceived drop in evangelism efforts, as the proportion of Christians in the nation-state has grown by only 0.6 percent in the past decade. It was also an attempt for them to recapture the magic of the Billy Graham crusade in 1978, where almost 20,000 people gave their lives to Christ.

When there is no awareness or understanding of generational differences, it is almost natural for one generation to interpret another’s actions through their own generational lens. Unfortunately, this sometimes results in a particular generation feeling that they are trying to be true to God’s calling for them but that another generation has become a stumbling block in their journey.

Nevertheless, bearing in mind Christ’s command that we love one another, we approach the intergenerational journey with a shared appreciation for spiritual friendship as the essential bedrock for building mutual understanding between the different generations. With a deliberate effort to relate to one another by understanding “the other,” we can help reduce the likelihood of misreading intentions from observed actions.

This essay was adapted from The Generations Project: Bridging Generational Divides in the Singapore Church by Wei-Hao Ho and Soo-Inn Tan. Copyright © 2023 Graceworks Private Limited. Used by permission of Graceworks.

- More from Wei-Hao Ho and Soo-Inn Tan

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1. Gen Z values the institutional church.

2. Gen X is the missing generation in most churches.

3. Mentoring has exacerbated intergenerational tensions.

A renewed ecclesiology

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