Built by the living God,

For all of every nation,

Who seek that grand abode.”

About 200 Christians of multiple nationalities — Russian, Ukrainian, Iranian and Israeli, to name a few — sang that verse of unity together, their citizenship on Earth far less important than a shared home in heaven. 

Some attendees drove 45 minutes. Others spent more than a day on planes and buses. 

They gathered in a city known for a particular distance — 26.2 miles. 

That’s how far the legendary messenger Pheidippides ran from here to Athens to announce the defeat of the Persians in the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. After the run, he collapsed and died. 

The view of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, from Mars Hill where Paul delivered his sermon in Acts 17.

More than 2,500 years later, Christians gathered in Marathon, on the coast of the Aegean Sea, for the sixth Mediterranean Christian Conference sponsored by the Glyfada Church of Christ in Athens. 

Tim Burow, president of Sunset International Bible Institute in Lubbock, Texas, studied the multinational crowd.

“Every tribe and every nation, every tongue and every people, they are the ones that Jesus died for,” Burow said, referencing Revelation 5:9-10. “And what did Jesus make them into? Kings and priests. And they reign upon the Earth. They are not a defeated church.”

He talked about “all of the barriers that seem to exist in our world and might seem to get in the way.”

Christians are a diverse people who speak different languages, he added, and come from different cultures “where sometimes our national governments may not get along with one another.”

“In spite of all those things and in spite of the religious backgrounds that may exist where we come from,” Burow stressed, “when we are in Christ, you and I are one people.

“There is nothing that keeps me from loving you. And there is nothing that keeps you from loving me.”

“There is nothing that keeps me from loving you. And there is nothing that keeps you from loving me.”

A multipurpose, multicultural conference

Conference director Dino Roussos has a history of multicultural ministry. 

He is the senior minister of the Glyfada church, which hosts services in five languages — Greek, English, Russian, Farsi and Albanian — every Sunday. 

Some have come to Athens fleeing conflicts in their homelands, Roussos said, but all share in spiritual unity. 

“They want to hear the word of God in their own language and with their own people,” he said. “And that’s what we’re doing.”

Yevhen Marushko translates an English lecture into Russian for non-English speaking refugees attending the conference.

Dino Roussos, director of the Mediterranean Christian Conference and senior minister of the Glyfada Church of Christ, listens to a speaker.

The conference is simply one outreach to bring diverse Christians together.

“This conference has many purposes,” Russos said. “The first purpose is to evangelize those who never heard the Gospel of Christ. That’s why we also invited about 50 Ukrainian refugees who recently came to Greece that come to our church. 

“Another great purpose is for preachers and elders and church leaders who are many times isolated in the mission field to come here and find here a spiritual oasis in the desert of their lives and to be strengthened, built up.” 

The last purpose, Roussos said, is to minister to children — some of whom have lost homes to war or persecution.

What the church will be — and what it already is

Tim Yaeger, chief information officer for World Bible School, leads the conference’s children’s ministry. 

About half of the children each year are refugees, he said. The two largest displaced nationalities are Iranian and Ukrainian. 

He and his wife, Katie, take trauma into careful consideration when organizing activities. 

Tim Yaeger leads the children’s program at the sixth Mediterranean Christian Conference.

Children pray during the sixth Mediterranean Christian Conference in Marathon, Greece.

“In their life circumstances, they’re fleeing different types of persecution or war,” Tim Yaeger said. “Some of the kids from Ukraine were near where the bombings were happening.”

“We have to be careful with loud noises,” Katie Yaeger added. “If a balloon pops, they get very jittery.”

But the children’s fraught experiences did not seem to dampen the joy of coloring and crafts. 

Across language barriers and different backgrounds, they made friendships through shared art supplies. 

They saw potential playmates. 

The Yaegers saw Christ’s love. 

“I think it’s a representation of what the church will be like, what the church is,” Katie Yager said. “I love it. We see how Christ has worked in all these different people and all these different cultures.”

“I think it’s a representation of what the church will be like, what the church is. I love it. We see how Christ has worked in all these different people and all these different cultures.”

‘God is on his throne’

While the children played, the adults gathered upstairs to pray — in between speakers — for the world’s conflicts.

“We pray for salvation,” Burow said. “We pray for protection. We pray for deliverance from the current situation, and we pray for peace within our land. 

“We ask you, O Lord, that you would work through this conference in the hearts and the minds of those who have been displaced from their homes,” he added, “who have seen the tragedy of war and the difficulties of seeing the loss of their homes and family members.”

Ibrahim Fatahi, an Iranian Christian, opens a door with the words, “Christ for the nations,” translated into 29 languages.

Afterward, multiple nationalities took turns singing hymns in their native languages before concluding with a shared fellowship song in English. 

Russians and Ukranians exchanged hugs. Iranians shook hands with Americans.  

“No matter what happens in this world, no matter what the barriers may be, God is on his throne,” Burow reminded the attendees. “In the midst of our diversity, God is still on the throne. Even when evil kings and rulers are in power on the Earth, God is on his throne. When wars take place on this Earth, God is on his throne.”

AUDREY JACKSON is Managing Editor of The Christian Chronicle. Contact audrey@christianchronicle.org.

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LIBERIA

MONROVIA — In a place called Chicken Soup Factory, they provided chicken soup for the soul.

A team of Liberian, Nigerian and American church members recently completed a Back to the Bible evangelism workshop and door-knocking campaign in the Gardnersville Township of Monrovia, the capital of this West African nation.

The Gulf Church of Christ in Chicken Soup Factory hosted the event. The community of about 25,000 people gets its unusual name from a now-defunct chicken bouillon cube factory once operated by the Maggi spice company.

A new believer is baptized during the Back to the Bible campaign in Liberia.

Prince Ugbe, director of the Darrell Memorial Bible Institute in Nigeria, and his wife, Regina, worked with Liberian missionary Edmund Borfay and Phil Taylor and Ray Hawkins of Manassas, Va. The team gave away more than 100 Bibles, spoke with nearly 200 Liberians and baptized five people during the first week of the campaign.

“A door of faith is open,” Prince Ugbe said, “within the Chicken Soup Factory.”

PAKISTAN

LAHORE — In this predominantly Muslim nation of 236 million people, about a dozen preachers from Churches of Christ gathered to train and encourage each other at a recent seminar. The preachers, who face persecution and alienation for their faith, also honored the legacy of two Christians who committed much of their lives to gospel work in Pakistan. Native evangelist Eric Masih died in 2021 from COVID-19. Bruce Antsey, missions liaison to Pakistan for the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ in Nashville, Tenn., died in 2022.

Seminar organizers presented certificates to the participants and gave special recognition to a 17-year-old Christian who coordinates online services for the church in Lahore in addition to song leading and youth outreach.

UNITED KINGDOM

KINCARDINE — About 30 Christian women gathered at Tulliallan Castle in Scotland for the recent Field of Refuge Women’s Renewal — the first since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Participants in the Field of Refuge Women’s Retreat share their original artwork.

Participants focused on “Grace,” the theme for the 2024 retreat. Speakers including Cinde Cesone and Chrissy Vick offered “encouraging and challenging lessons on God’s grace and the grace that we should show others,” said Sarah Haddow, a participant from Dundee, Scotland.

Another participant, Marianne Dale of Livingston, Scotland, said, “We bloom where we’re planted, and we are all at different stages in our Christian growth. And when we offer grace to others, like the blowing of a wish on a dandelion, it reminds us that we may never know how it travels or lands with the wind.”

This report appeared in a recent issue of Christian Worker, a publication for Churches of Christ in the U.K.

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It was 1977, and Mariko was part of an exchange program that had started three years earlier between Ibaraki Christian and Oklahoma Christian University. We toured the Philbrook Museum of Art and the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Okla.

In 1986, Connie Penick spends the summer with a Japanese family and attends Ibaraki Christian.

Nine years later, I was the exchange student, spending my summer living with a Japanese family and taking classes at Ibaraki Christian. I became good friends with Tomoko, a close friend of my host family’s daughter.

Forty-seven years after that first meeting with Mariko and 38 years after hanging out with Tomoko, I reunited with both of these wonderful women in Japan as we celebrated a half-century of cultural exchanges between Ibaraki Christian and Oklahoma Christian. It’s the longest continuous mutual exchange program between any two schools in the U.S. and Japan, said John deSteiguer, Oklahoma Christian’s chancellor, who traveled to Japan for the commemoration.

Connie Penick and Mariko reunite in 2024.

My father, Joe McCormack, was on faculty at Oklahoma Christian when the schools became sister campuses in 1974. He sponsored some of the first groups who made the journey from Oklahoma to Japan. It’s because of my father that I was in Tulsa that day in 1977 — and he’s why, while I was a student at Oklahoma Christian, I spent the summers after my freshman and junior years in Japan. My dad’s love for the program played a role in my decision to spend a year in Japan in 1992, teaching English at a junior high school.

The relationship with Ibaraki Christian has changed lives for eternity in both countries. In 1980, I witnessed my friend Emiko give her life to Christ on a frigid day in Japan. The baptistery was built into the stage floor of an unheated auditorium on Ibaraki’s campus. Emiko went into that ice-cold water so that she could be united with Christ and become my sister.

Mariko, whom I met back in 1977, met her husband, Larry Weatherford, through the exchange program. So did Tomoko, who spent a year at Oklahoma Christian. There she met Mike McLain. Now they run an English school in Japan.

Although Ibaraki Christian has roots in Churches of Christ, most of its 2,500 students do not come from a Christian background.

Oklahoma Christian University professor Joe McCormack teaches students from Ibaraki Christian University as part of the two institutions’ exchange program.

Christianity is a minority faith among the 125 million souls in Japan, and the country has fewer than 1,200 Church of Christ members.

That’s why the partnership between Ibaraki Christian and Oklahoma Christian is so important. It has helped missionaries strengthen congregations across Japan. Short-term mission teams study the Bible with Japanese English students, many of whom would never hear the Gospel otherwise. In Oklahoma, OC students invite visiting Ibaraki students to church.

Earlier this year, OC hosted a visiting group of administrators, faculty and staff from Ibaraki Christian, including outgoing president Naomi Ueno. Oklahoma Christian unveiled a carved stone on campus that commemorates the 50-year partnership.

On Ibaraki’s campus, the university hosted a standing-room-only reception for those of us visiting from Oklahoma. Yoshiya Noguchi, Ibaraki Christian’s chaplain, led “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” in Japanese and English. Jim Batten, an Oklahoma Christian alum, was there with his wife, Michiyo. The Battens dedicated their lives to Ibaraki Christian, where Jim served as a professor and chancellor. Also present was Randy Voss, who was part of the first exchange program in 1976. He now serves as principal for Ibaraki Christian’s junior high and high schools.

The celebration was an example of a Japanese concept of ichi-go ichi-e, “one time, one meeting.” My brother, Dr. Jeff McCormack, discovered the term while reading our father’s journals, which spanned three decades of travels to Japan. Jeff recently retired after serving as Oklahoma Christian’s chief academic officer. He loved the exchange program, just like our dad, who passed away in 2022. The 50-year celebration was an ichi-go ichi-e gathering that occurs once and never again, Jeff said.

Earlier this year, OC hosted a visiting group of administrators, faculty and staff from Ibaraki Christian, including outgoing president Naomi Ueno.

But the partnership between the two universities is far from over, said Ibaraki Christian’s new president, Hiroshi Shoji.

“It feels like there is still so much ahead,” he said.

John deSteiguer agreed, adding, “Mark your calendars for May 17, 2074. We’ll be back for the 100th.”

CONNIE PENICK is an administrative assistant for The Christian Chronicle. She and her husband, Jay, worship with the Memorial Road Church of Christ in Oklahoma City.

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The immaculate simplicity of the Irpin Church of Christ feels like a warm embrace, an answer to the chaos outside these walls — two years of tanks and bombs, bombs and guns.

The Irpin Church of Christ near Kyiv worships on a Sunday morning.

Most of the congregants are older women. Standing behind them, a young woman leads singing, waving her arms as she follows the lyrics projected on one of the bright, white walls. It’s a Ukrainian-language translation of “10,000 Reasons,” a song that challenges us to bless the Lord, even when our strength is failing.

“For all Your goodness I will keep on singing; 10,000 reasons for my heart to find.”

“You are mighty, God,” prays Ruslan Adamenko. Two days earlier I watched him graduate from the Ukrainian Bible Institute. “Unify us as one body of Christ. May we hear your Word and apply it to our lives.”

Moments later, my friend Dennis Zolotaryov asks the Lord to “strengthen the families that are separated right now.”

Soon, it’s time for me to offer prayers for the Lord’s Supper. I’ve been struggling to find the words to say since the church’s minister, Sergey Shupishov, asked me to speak. I tell my fellow Christians how proud I am of what God has done through them. When the bombs drop, when the lights go out, they keep finding reasons to bless the Lord.

“Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes.”

Then Richard Baggett, who I’ve accompanied to Ukraine multiple times in the past 20 years, delivers the sermon. He shares a bit about post-traumatic stress disorder and the impact it’s had on his family. He reads from the Old Testament book of Job, a man who endured unimaginable suffering but held fast to his faith.

Richard Baggett preaches while Inna Kuzmenko translates during the Irpin Church of Christ’s Sunday worship.

“I’m going to live like God is good because I believe he is good, even when I can’t see it,” he says, summarizing Job’s belief. “God is just, and there will be justice. He will not allow any evil to go unpunished.”

One woman in the audience responds, in Ukrainian. “Hope it’s gonna happen soon!”

That’s what most of the psalmists in the Bible said, Richard replies. “God, please come soon!”

After the sermon, we celebrate with Tamara Petrina, who was baptized just a few days ago. She and her daughter were in the capital, Kyiv, when the war started. Her husband and her mother hid in a basement here as Russian troops invaded. Petrina worried that her mom, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, would scream. Her husband did his best to keep his mother-in-law calm.

Richard Baggett and I ask Petrina how she learned about the Church of Christ. They gave her bread, she explains. In the days after Ukrainian forces repelled the invaders from Irpin, the Church of Christ distributed aid to people as they returned home.

“I had never been to church in my lifetime,” Petrina says, but she had to know more about these people. Now, they’re family.

Another woman, Rimma Bukova, pulls Richard aside to tell him how much she appreciated his sermon. Her son is serving in the military. Weeks pass between messages from him.

Richard Baggett, left, speaks with Rimma Bukova after Sunday worship in Irpin, Ukraine.

There’s a brace on her right arm. Recently, she got a call that her son was missing, she explains. She got so distraught that she fell and fractured it.

Eventually, she heard from her son. He’s OK, but he’s changed. He told her, “I pray every day for forgiveness from God for the things I’m doing.”

Sergey Shupishov, the Irpin church’s minister, also got a call from the Ukrainian government. The squad his brother, Dima, was serving in is missing in action.

That call came more than four months ago.

As we wait for lunch at a Georgian shish kebab restaurant, I ask Sergey to tell me about his brother. He pulls me aside to a corner booth and shows me photos on his phone of the two of them, together. They had a rough life, growing up in eastern Ukraine. While Sergey got baptized, married and studied at Ukrainian Bible institute, Dima got caught up in crime and went to prison in the city of Zaporizhzhia for stealing.

Dima Shupishov teaches Bible to a Church of Christ in Chernihiv, Ukraine.

God didn’t give up on Dima. He got involved in prison ministry and got baptized, eventually joining his brother in Irpin. Then he joined a team of evangelists in Chernihiv, just south of the Belarus border. Dima was making a big impact in the small city, his brother says. Then Dima was called into military service.

“He is a person who loves people very much. … And you’ll notice that I’m speaking about him in the present tense because I don’t want to believe that he’s not here.”

Since his brother went missing, it’s been hard to preach, Sergey says. But he’s had little choice. There are so few men left in our congregations. Ukraine is short on soldiers and has intensified its draft. Sergey is exempt from that draft now because of his brother’s sacrifice, he says — a kind of “Saving Private Ryan” rule.

He doesn’t know if he’ll see his brother again on this earth, Sergey says. But he will see him again.

Sergey Shupishov, left, with his mother and his brother, Dima.

We return to the table with the rest of our small fellowship. I sit next to Oleksandr Sikorskii, one of the Irpin church’s elders. He fought with the Soviet army in Afghanistan. I ask him if he knew Dima.

“Yes, I know him,” he replies. “He is a person who loves people very much.”

Dima answered the call to serve in Chernihiv without hesitation — without even visiting the city first, Sikorskii says.

“He’s a kind person, a worthy example,” the elder adds, “and you’ll notice that I’m speaking about him in the present tense, because I don’t want to believe that he’s not here.”

And on that day when my strength is failing, the end draws near and my time has come, still my soul will sing your praise unending, 10,000 years and then forevermore.

Dennis Zolotaryov, left, and Sergey Shupishov speak after the Irpin Church of Christ’s Sunday worship. The congregation meets in a building near the city’s downtown square.

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org, and follow him on X at @eriktryggestad.

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“Free Bibles.”

The simple messages catch the attention of motorists passing the Bridgewood Church of Christ — at a busy corner just off the East Loop 820 thoroughfare.

“Is it really free?’” people ask.

“It’s free,” church member Booker Williams assures them. “It’s like salvation. You’ve just got to come and get it.”

Bridgewood Church of Christ member Booker Williams, center, greets neighbors during the congregation’s regular Saturday food giveaway.

The North Texas church started giving away physical — and spiritual — food in its parking lot nearly three years ago. 

The outreach began as a one-time pop-up. It transformed into a twice-weekly benevolence program that connects the congregation with neighbors and leads souls to Jesus.

“A food pantry that I volunteer with … used to give us like two or three of these banana boxes of bread,” minister Jon McKenzie said. “Our members would just kind of grab the bread from the kitchen … and they could give it to a friend or a neighbor who needed it.”

But one day, the charity called and offered McKenzie extra bread — 24 cases in all.

He gulped and took it.

Contemplating how to distribute it, he thought, “We’re on a busy road, so why don’t we just try and give it away?” 

He rounded up Bibles to hand out with the bread, but he feared the impromptu pop-up might just go … pop.

“I was worried it was going to flop, so I didn’t call anybody for help. It was just me,” McKenzie recalled. “And the people came. … I guess the rest is history.”

Jon McKenzie serves as the minister for the Bridgewood Church of Christ. He’s pictured at the congregation’s regular Saturday food giveaway.

Doing good in Jesus’ name

Built in 1969 in an affluent area, the Bridgewood church grew to more than 500 members in the 1970s.

Ensuing decades brought increased poverty and crime to east Fort Worth. As many moved away or chose to worship elsewhere, Sunday attendance fell to about 80.

“Crime has leveled out and decreased,” McKenzie said, “but crime and the working poor remain a key issue.”

Several years ago, Bridgewood became known mainly as “the church across the street from Whataburger.” While the fast-food restaurant is a nice neighbor, the minister said, the church “wanted to be known for the things we actually do in the community — in the name of Christ.”

Members started volunteering at nearby schools. 

They planted a community garden. 

And — whether the result of happenstance or providence — they began organizing the bread-and-Bible pop-ups each Wednesday and Saturday.

Guests browse the options during the regular Saturday food giveaway of the Bridgewood Church of Christ.

Pam Griffin became a Christian after McKenzie and his wife, Brianne, mentored her granddaughter Alexus Giffen, now 13, at a public elementary school. 

Griffin’s husband, Robert, and other friends and relatives were baptized as well.

“The one thing that got me was that they were very loving, very caring,” Pam Griffin said of the Bridgewood church. “They don’t look at what you’re wearing. … They care more about the person that you are.”

“The one thing that got me was that they were very loving, very caring. They don’t look at what you’re wearing. … They care more about the person that you are.”

Longtime member Catie Mckee, 35, is a licensed barber and cosmetologist. 

She offered free haircuts during a recent pop-up.

“I do remember when Bridgewood was 500-plus strong,” Mckee said. “I have seen many families come and go, but I love seeing the new faces who become familiar faces.”

Bridgewood Church of Christ member Catie Mckee gives a free haircut during the congregation’s regular Saturday food giveaway.

A growing Spanish ministry

Those faces used to be predominantly White.

Now the flock reflects the area’s multicultural mix — with sizable numbers of Black and Hispanic members.

Average attendance tops 120 a week, including about 20 Spanish speakers, many reached through the pop-ups.

One of Bridgewood’s key volunteers, 80-year-old Carrol Harris Sr., grew up on a South Texas farm.

“All my friends were Mexican,” Harris said of how he became bilingual.

Carrol Harris Sr. hauls a trailer with drinks during the Bridgewood Church of Christ’s regular Saturday food giveaway.

Federico Sandatte and his wife, Amalia, lead the church’s Spanish ministry.

Federico previously served as an elder for a different congregation. The Sandattes connected with Bridgewood when they noticed the pop-up and stopped to say hello.

Harris recalls that first conversation.

“Hey brother, how are you doing?” Federico said to Harris in English.

Harris drew a chuckle when he responded in Spanish. 

Federico Sandatte, right, and his wife, Amalia Sandatte, look through a box of bread during the Bridgewood Church of Christ’s regular Saturday giveaway.

As the two men talked, Harris explained to Federico “that we were praying and trying to get the Spanish work started in this congregation.” 

“That’s really good,” Federico replied. “Keep praying.”

Two months later, the Sandattes decided to join the work at Bridgewood.

As Harris sees it, Bridgewood had no choice but to adapt to the area’s demographic changes.

“If we don’t change, we might as well go ahead and shut the door,” he said. “Because guess what? You don’t have to fly on a plane or ride on a bus to be on the mission field. It’s right here.”

The Bridgewood Church of Christ added a Spanish assembly to serve the changing needs of its neighborhood.

‘A fantastic thing’

“Pan, alimentos y biblias gratis,” reads a sign by the road.

In English, that means, “Free bread, food and Bibles.”

Bridgewood’s Spanish services draw attendees from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and other countries.

On a recent Sunday, the group sang hymns such “Tuyo Soy Jesús” (“I Am Thine, O Lord”), “Canten del Amor de Cristo” (“When We All Get to Heaven”) and “En la Viña del Señor” (“In the Vineyard of the Lord”).

Richard Garcia leads singing during the Bridgewood Church of Christ’s Spanish assembly

Juan Noriega and his wife, Nuerys Malavè, visited the assembly. 

They came to the U.S. from Venezuela about a year ago. The free bread and Bibles led Noriega’s brother to accept Jesus in baptism.

“This is a fantastic thing for new immigrants,” Malavè said of the pop-ups, “to have some help and be able to get their feet on the ground.”

What accounts for the Spanish ministry’s growth?

“I think part of the reason,” Brianne McKenzie said, “is because (the immigrants) are coming from hard places, and they’re finding a sense of community.”

Carrol Harris Sr. chats with Juan Noriega and his wife, Nuerys Malavè, who visited the Bridgewood Church of Christ on a recent Sunday.

A prime location

For a smaller congregation, maintaining a facility built to serve hundreds presents a major challenge, as does paying for the upkeep and utilities, leaders said.

“But we’ve got such a good spot,” Jon McKenzie said of the location. “We hate to give it up.”

He quoted a neighbor who told him: “We need your church on that corner. We need someone to share good into the community on that corner.”

Church member Marsha Fry, a 74-year-old retired schoolteacher, volunteers at the pop-ups.

She began helping when key ministry leaders were out of town on mission trips to El Salvador and the Caribbean island of Dominica.

And she liked it.

“These men work very hard … lifting heavy boxes and everything,” Fry said. “I was blown away with admiration for them and respect. I may not be as strong as they are, but I come up here, and I do my best.”

Church member Marsha Fry offers a free Bible to a neighbor during the Bridgewood Church of Christ’s regular Saturday food giveaway.

A guest picks out a free loaf of bread during the Bridgewood Church of Christ’s regular Saturday food giveaway.

Rose Batiste, a 63-year-old grandmother, characterizes herself as a French-speaking Louisiana Cajun. 

A regular at the pop-ups, the transplanted Texan welcomes the free bread. The home health care worker said she makes about $10.50 an hour and struggles to make ends meet.

Through partnerships with the Midwest Food Bank of Texas and N.E.E.D. DFW, Bridgewood distributes thousands of pounds of bread and other grocery items each month.

“It helps people like me that don’t have anything,” Batiste said.

Bridgewood Church of Christ members pray for a neighbor — whose husband recently got out of the hospital — during the congregation’s regular Saturday food giveaway.

Getting too comfortable

Church member Williams often prays with those helped.

“A lot of times in the churches, we tell people, ‘Just come to see us on Sunday,’” said the 52-year-old information technology professional, who teaches Bridgewood’s Wednesday night adult Bible class. 

“But it’s like going to the mall,” he added. “Have you ever done any window shopping? You see something that you like, and you make the choice to go in there.”

Through the pop-ups, Williams said, hurting people meet Christians who care and then decide to visit.

On a recent Saturday, a woman receiving help asked for prayers. She meant prayers in a general sense. But Williams bowed his head and lifted her up to God right then and there.

Members sometimes lament what Bridgewood has lost — in terms of numbers.

Williams takes a different view.

He tells fellow Christians: “Y’all are so focused on what we lost that you don’t look at what we’ve gained. If you just invite one person every week, we can rebuild.”

A guest picks up a free Bible during the regular Saturday food giveaway of the Bridgewood Church of Christ.

Christians have become “so comfortable in these benches that we stopped inviting people,” he said. 

The pop-ups cultivate conversations that lead to such invitations. And it starts with simple messages.

“Free Bread.”

“Free Bibles.”

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He traveled to Fort Worth to report this story. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

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“I remember I felt hopeless,” Fong told The Christian Chronicle. “I didn’t know what to do until someone came and lent us a helping hand. 

“I know what it is to need assistance.”

Now Fong, a preacher earning his master’s in education at Harding University, wants to provide victims of another Category 5 storm, Beryl, with the same hope he received 36 years ago.

The home of a church member in southern Jamaica was damaged as Hurricane Beryl passed.

Before the storm plowed into Texas, Hurricane Beryl skirted the southern coast of Jamaica, bringing damaging winds and flooding to the parishes of Saint Clarendon, Saint Catherine, Manchester, Saint Elizabeth and Westmoreland. The storm tore roofs from buildings, destroyed mango orchards, flooded farmland and knocked out power.

“We have never seen winds of 165 mph in our history in this time of year — never,” said Gladwyn Kiddoe, director of the Jamaica School of Preaching and Biblical Studies International in Kingston. “We have to be ready. It’s the new normal.”

The Bull Savanna Church of Christ in Saint Elizabeth was hit particularly hard, Kiddoe said. The homes of several church members were severely damaged. 

A Christian family in southern Jamaica receives a generator from relief workers.

Later this week, Fong will travel from Harding in Searcy, Ark., to Jamaica to work alongside Robert Darby and other church members in recovery efforts.

“We’re going to work until we can’t work anymore,” Fong said, inviting fellow Christians in the U.S. to join him. “We see this effort as benevolent and evangelistic. We want to show the world that the church believes what the apostle Paul said (in Galatians 6:10): ‘As we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.’”

Kiddoe and Francis Yorke, deputy director of the Jamaica School of Preaching, have served in disaster relief since Hurricane Gilbert. They have coordinated response teams and assistance from across Jamaica, the U.S. and the Caribbean. They even received aid from Christians in Ethiopia after Hurricane Gilbert, Kiddoe said.

Hurricane Beryl destroyed homes across southern Jamaica, including this one, the home of a church member.

Before Beryl swept by Jamaica, church members were assembling bags of food and making plans to help those in need, said Yorke, an evangelist for the Braeton Church of Christ in Jamaica. In the week since the storm, church members have assessed needs and made plans to send teams to hard-hit parishes.

In the past, Jamaicans have disregarded hurricane warnings, joking that “God is a Jamaican, so he will allow the storm to pass.” But people took Beryl seriously.

In the past, Jamaicans have disregarded hurricane warnings, joking that “God is a Jamaican, so he will allow the storm to pass,” Yorke said. But people took Beryl seriously, loading up on food and gas before the storm hit and boarding up their homes and businesses.

“This one was very emotionally and mentally taxing,” Yorke said.

The relief trip to Bull Savanna will be a homecoming of sorts for Fong, who was baptized in 1991 and graduated from the Jamaica School of Preaching in 2000. During his time at the school, he served on a mission team that planted the Bull Savanna congregation in 1996. The church’s first member was a blind man, Delgado Francis, who Jamaican Christians met at a funeral.

“Although he was blind, he could see he needed Christ,” Kiddoe said. Francis’ home was among those damaged by Hurricane Beryl. The relief team plans to repair it.

The home of Delgado Francis, the first convert of the Bull Savannah Church of Christ, sustained damage from Hurricane Beryl.

The Bull Savanna church met in a small, wooden building until 2004, when Hurricane Ivan flattened the facility. Church members built in its place a three-story cement building, which sustained only minor damage from Hurricane Beryl.

As hurricanes intensify and become more frequent, Churches of Christ should be ready to respond rapidly, to build back stronger and to show “the church at its best,” Fong said.

“We should be there,” he said. “The first thing they should see is us.”

A new believer emerges from the waters of baptism in Jamaica’s eastern parish of Portland. Churches of Christ conducted a gospel campaign in Portland despite the recent hurricane.

The Pangburn Church of Christ in Arkansas is collecting relief funds to help Christopher Fong’s mission team provide relief in Jamaica. Funds may be sent to Pangburn Church of Christ, PO Box 29, Pangburn, AR 72121.

The post Jamaican Christians want to show ‘the church at its best’ as they respond after Hurricane Beryl appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Everything was set for the ceremony. But the lights were still off.

Brandon Price, far right, and Matvei Bohomolov make last-minute arrangements to begin the Ukrainian Bible Institute’s graduation ceremony in an unlit room in Irpin, Ukraine.

“We decided to have no electricity to set the mood, so that you can’t see us crying,” joked Price, director of the Ukrainian Bible Institute, as administrator Natalia Maliuga translated his English words into Ukrainian.

“Completing UBI’s program has never been an easy task,” Price told the unlit room of smiling faces, “but obviously, given the last few years, it’s been even more challenging.”

“Challenging” has become routine for the graduates, who began their studies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Then came the war. Finally, after three years of study — sometimes online, sometimes without power — five students completed UBI’s ministry program.

At a Christian retreat center in Iripin, classroom windows are the only source of light as the Ukrainian Bible Institute’s graduation begins. Electricity returned a few minutes into the ceremony.

The institute honored the graduates — Ruslan Adamenko, Kostiantyn Bashtannyi, Dmytro Vorobiov, Roman Hadlevskyi and Larysa Dekhiarova — during a three-day retreat in Irpin that it hosted in cooperation with Texas-based Sunset International Bible Institute. The quiet, forested town was the scene of intense fighting in the early days of the conflict as the Russian army attempted to seize the capital, Kyiv.

The Russians have since changed tactics, concentrating on a ground war in eastern Ukraine while hitting the plants that power the capital with repeated missile strikes. Blackouts are common this summer, residents of Irpin told The Christian Chronicle. They dread the cold, dark winter ahead.

“How can I talk about the light when there’s no electricity?” asked Bashtannyi, a youth minister for the Vinograder Church of Christ in Kyiv. His classmates picked him to give a speech during the ceremony.

Kostiantyn Bashtannyi delivers an address on behalf of his fellow Ukrainian Bible Institute graduates.

“Every day, while we’re doing different ministries, we face this darkness,” he said. “It’s hard to break this darkness. I know that sometimes, when we shine, there’s no visible result. … This darkness is trying to influence us through a lack of faith, fear, war, COVID, other conflicts. Each of us goes through this.”

Jesus faced this same darkness, Bashtannyi told his fellow graduates.

“You were chosen for this particular mission,” he said. “You are not alone.”

‘Those Ukrainians really put us to shame’

Bashtannyi longs for the day when he doesn’t have to wait seven hours for the power to come on to make a cup of coffee, he said.

It could be worse. Reminders of how close the Russians came to seizing the capital are everywhere in Irpin. A block from the retreat center, bulldozers tore down the blackened frames of bombed houses. A few miles to the south, a bridge leading into Kyiv was destroyed by the Ukrainian army to hold back the invaders. It has become a memorial. So has a parking lot full of torched cars.

@christianchronicle IRPIN, Ukraine — The remains of a bridge that connects Irpin to Kyiv, Ukraine, have become a memorial to the lives lost in the two-year conflict with Russia. Ukrainian troops destroyed the bridge as Russian forces seized Bucha and much of Irpin in the early days of the invasion. Ukrainians have since built a new bridge. #ukrainianbridge #ukraine #ukrainewarrussia #destroyedbridge #ukrainememorial #irpin #bucha #bucharest #churchofchrist ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

A metal fence — pockmarked with bullet holes — stands across the alley from the hotel that housed U.S. Christians who came for the graduation. Russian troops occupied the hotel and used the fence for target practice, a neighbor said, though a hotel worker denied his account.

“We would never let Russians stay here,” she insisted.

Despite the omnipresent reminders of war, the Ukrainians’ sense of humor remains largely intact. That much was evident as the graduates shared a few words during the ceremony — a lot of jokes about online learning and playful jabs at each other and their teachers.

Dmytro Vorobiov unveils his sermon notes during the Ukrainian Bible Institute’s graduation ceremony.

Dmytro Vorobiov, who goes by Dima and works with the Pozniaky Church of Christ near Kyiv, said he had just a few remarks to share before unleashing a scroll of sermon notes that stretched down the podium and across the floor.

There were plenty of emotional moments as well. Roman Hadlevskyi, from Kamenskoye, southeast of Kyiv, was an orphan when he was baptized at age 13.

“I never knew my dad,” Hadlevskyi said. “I was like a leaf in the air. I didn’t see myself as a family man because I didn’t have that example.”

His instructors and fellow students changed all that, he said. Now he is surrounded by family members and role models.

“Thank you for your help, for your love,” he said. “We need to remember we are never alone.”

Larysa Dekhiarova receives her diploma from Ukrainian Bible Institute director Brandon Price. At left is fellow graduate Roman Hadlevskyi.

Larysa Dekhiarova has overcome addiction and other vices with the help of her Christian family. A member of the Obolon Church of Christ in Kyiv, she came to the institute “as a baby in Christ, newly baptized,” she said, adding that the opportunity to study was one in a million.

“In the beginning, I never thought I would be able to graduate,” she said. But the school’s staff, especially women such as Natalia Maliuga, helped her persevere. She was one of the institute’s top students, Price said.

“UBI is a spiritual school,” Dekhiarova said. “My spiritual personality was formed here.”

She got big, tear-filled hugs from the ceremony’s special guests — Jay Don and Mary Lee Rogers, who served in Ukraine for 19 years.

Mary Lee Rogers, left, greets Larysa Dekhiarova during breakfast at a Christian retreat center in Irpin, Ukraine.

“We are amazed by the dedication that is here,” said Jay Don Rogers, a former director of the Ukrainian Bible Institute. He and his wife now live in Texas, where they routinely visit congregations and talk about the Ukrainian’s faith.

“We tell them about your studies that you’ve gone through, and we also tell them about your dedication to go out and serve,” Jay Don Rogers said. “They say, ‘Those Ukrainians really put us to shame.’”

The former director led a prayer for the graduates, thanking God for their faith.

“When people here lost everything, they gained you,” he prayed, “and for that we are thankful.”   

Mary Lee and Jay Don Rogers, left, pray with Ukrainian Bible Institute students and their families.

Stars in a new normal

For Brandon Price, a former missionary to Ukrainian cities including Kharkiv and Mariupol, the graduation was his first chance to see some of his first-year students in person. Since the institute reopened in the fall of 2022, he’s taught classes online. The institute has 15 students, who live in Ukraine and countries across Europe.

Graduates, Ruslan Adamenko, Roman Hadlevskyi, Larysa Dekhiarova, Kostiantyn Bashtannyi and Dmytro Vorobiov hold their UBI diplomas.

The institute has endured exodus after exodus since its launch in 1997. Its first home was Donetsk, a predominantly Russian-speaking city in Ukraine’s eastern, coal-rich Donbas region — a thriving hub for Churches of Christ after the Soviet Union collapsed.

In 2014, as pro-Russian militants took over Donetsk, the institute moved to Kyiv. Eight years later, as missiles struck the capital, the students parted ways. Price and some of the students went to Poland, where they found refuge with a Church of Christ in Sopot and began to coordinate relief shipments. Students who stayed in the besieged country helped to transport relief to people near the front lines in the east. They also ferried women and children to the relative safety of western Ukraine, or across the border into the European Union.

Alexander Maliuga, right, a Ukrainian Bible Institute instructor, leads a prayer for students past and present.

Eventually, Price and his wife, Katie, settled in Košice, Slovakia, near the Ukrainian border. Rob Hindman, another former missionary to Ukraine, and his wife, Denyce, joined them to work with the institute. Their families and Slovak minister Peter Haluštok worship with a small Church of Christ in Košice. Price and Hindman make monthly trips into Ukraine to distribute humanitarian aid. 

As they settled into a new normal, Ukrainians continued to share their faith. UBI students and graduates have put their studies into practice, planting new congregations and regularly reporting baptisms.

“I thank you for what you’ve taught us,” Price told the graduates.

“When you look at the sky what do you see? Do you see all of that black up there? Are the stars distracting you from the beautiful black? No, you see the stars.”

He quoted the apostle Paul, who told the first century church in Philippi to shine like stars despite the “warped and crooked generation” that surrounds them (Philippians 2:15).

“My dad always said, ‘When you look at the sky what do you see? Do you see all of that black up there? Are the stars distracting you from the beautiful black?’

“No, you see the stars. You don’t pay attention to the blackness of space. Be the stars. Shine the light.”

Alexander Maliuga, right, leads a prayer during the Ukrainian Bible Institute graduation.

The post Sending the light, even when it’s dark appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

The nation of 38 million people, once part of the Soviet Union, was fertile soil for missionaries and church planters after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Since its independence in August of 1991, Ukraine has found itself increasingly at odds with its neighbor, Russia, and caught between the influences of East and West. In 2014 the tension turned violent as Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and pro-Russian separatists seized control of portions of eastern Ukraine.

Billboards along the road leading into Ivan-Frankivsk bear messages of support for Ukraine’s military and citizens.

The Christian Chronicle has covered the impact of the hostilities on Ukraine’s churches for more than a decade. When the first bombs fell on Feb. 24, 2022, the Chronicle published an explainer, “Why Ukraine matters to Churches of Christ,” detailing the history of the fellowship in this Eastern European nation.

Following are links to the Chronicle’s reports, filed from Ukraine, Europe and other parts of the globe. The most recent stories appear first.

Sending the light, even when it’s dark

Mary Lee Rogers, left, greets Larysa Dekhiarova during breakfast at a Christian retreat center in Irpin, Ukraine.

Despite two years of brutal war — and now, frequent blackouts — Ukrainian ministry students graduate and celebrate (from Irpin, Ukraine).

Where is God in a war zone?

Playground equipment stands in front of a battle-damaged apartment building in Irpin, Ukraine.

In besieged Ukraine, ministry leaders seek rest and inspiration amid ongoing grief and loss (from Irpin, Ukraine).

Insight: Why Ukraine still matters

Ukranian flags line Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), each honoring a Ukrainian who lost their life in the war with Russia.

After two years of war, we can’t forget our brothers and sisters in this war-torn nation (from Zosin, Poland).

Podcast: Reporting live from the streets of Ukraine

@christianchronicle Erik Tryggestad reports from Ukraine with translator Inna Kuzmenko in Episode 67 of the Christian Chronicle Podcast. #ccpodcast #churchofchrist #ukraine ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

Erik Tryggestad, Inna Kuzmenko and Richard Baggett discuss their experiences after a three-day ministry retreat and Sunday worship with a Ukrainian congregation (from Irpin, Ukraine).

‘Oldest Christian in Ukraine’ dies at 100

Anna Ivanova

Anna Ivanova survived the Nazis and the Soviets. She said she would only leave Ukraine if her next stop was heaven.

Podcast: Author Philip Yancey on ‘What Went Wrong’ in Russia and the path to Ukraine

The Christian Chronicle interviews renowned author Philip Yancey, whose works include ‘The Jesus I Never Knew,’ about his experiences in Russia and Ukraine at the end of the Cold War and the book he co-wrote with John A. Bernbaum, ‘What Went Wrong? Russia’s Lost Opportunity and the Path to Ukraine.’

Two lives lost in Ukraine

Igor Kozlovsky, left, receives a hero’s welcome at Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport after his Dec. 27, 2017, release from a prison in Donetsk, where he was held by pro-Russian separatists. Kozlovsky died Sept. 6. Artem Vinogradar, — with his wife, Valentina, at right — died in combat Aug. 15 while serving in Ukraine’s airborne assault unit.

A preacher-turned-soldier and a theologian who was tortured in captivity are mourned by Christians across the besieged nation.

Ukrainian Christians: Life in The Hague need not be a prison sentence

Sasha and Nastia Nikolaienko stand near a Ukrainian flag at the Gemeente van Christus Den Haag (Church of Christ in The Hague).

A Church of Christ in the Netherlands welcomes refugees as it celebrates Pentecost (from The Hague, Netherlands)

How a Russian immigrant came to serve Ukrainian refugees

Julia, right, holds her son Mark as she visits with Ukrainian refugee Aleksandra Hmyria and daughter Milana at the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston.

A Houston church develops a thriving outreach to families fleeing the war (from Houston).

Dam disaster adds to Ukrainians’ misery

In Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast (or region), a rescue worker carries a man out of an area flooded after a dam collapsed.

It is very emotionally hard,’ say Christians, tired yet resolved as they deliver aid to flood victims.

Insight: Five prayers for Ukraine

Victoria Virkhovska prays for soldiers, including her son, In Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, in 2022.

One year after the first Russian bombs fell on the Eastern European nation, Ukrainian Christians don’t want to merely survive. They want to thrive through ministry training and church planting.

‘I won’t leave them, too’

Andrii Bilokonnyi shares a message of hope and prayer for workers and refugees at a former boarding school in eastern Ukraine.

Despite the missiles that fall on a daily basis in eastern Ukraine, a Christian family keeps serving at-risk children — and adults.

Does God love Russians?

After Russia’s retreat, hungry Ukrainians in the city of Izium take loaves of bread delivered by Volunteer Brothers.

It’s a hurtful question but an understandable one, say Christians in Russia. Along with their Ukrainian brethren, they face an increasingly challenging task: loving their neighbor.

Where to next?

Viktoria Oshurko works as a translator in a Košice relief center. In the early days of the war, 2,000 Ukrainians per day came through the center. A native of western Ukraine, Oshuko came to Slovakia to study public administration at a university. “Mentally, it’s hard,” she said of the weight of the war.

It’s a difficult question for Ukrainian Christians as they find temporary shelter, and challenges, in the overstressed countries of Europe and the U.S. (from Košice, Slovakia).

‘We would sing louder than the shelling’

Only a few images from the church members’ seven-week ordeal remain, including this picture of one of the countless times they took refuge in their building’s hallway. As an evacuation corridor opened, most of the members deleted photos and videos of the siege from their phones, fearing that Russian soldiers would confiscate them.

Members of the Mariupol Church of Christ recall the 51 days they spent in ‘the valley of the shadow of death,’ huddled in their church building as Russian forces obliterated the eastern Ukrainian city (from Sopot, Poland).

A psalm of ‘our dwelling place’

Sasha Chekalenko takes notes during Sunday worship with the Sopot Church of Christ in Poland.

After surviving the siege of Mariupol, Ukrainian Christian shares a Psalm with a congregation of fellow refugees and their Polish hosts (from Sopot, Poland).

On a long, uncertain journey, a hotel of hope

As they get ready to watch a movie in the hotel, Ukrainian children make shadow puppets on a projected computer screen that reads “Pray for Ukraine!”

Polish and American Christians provide a place for Ukrainians to ponder a difficult question: ‘What next?’ (from Pabianice, Poland).

‘This is our Exodus’

The Kościoł Chrystusowy w Warszawie (Warsaw Church of Christ) meets in a rented facility in the Polish capital. Most of its members are refugees from Ukraine.

In Poland’s capital, Ukrainian refugees are ‘in each other’s faces, at each other’s throats’ — and are redefining what it means to be a church (from Warsaw, Poland).

Serving a church in exile

Yulian Parfenenko, 6, helps his mother, Alyona, with grocery shopping at the free resource center run by the Cluj-Napoca Church of Christ in Romania. The Parfenenko family fled Odessa, Ukraine, at the beginning of March.

Across the border from war-torn Ukraine, a Romanian congregation becomes family for traumatized souls (from Cluj-Napoca, Romania).

Insight: In Europe, border crossings and blessings abound

Multiple modes of transport can be seen at Ukraine’s border with Romania.

Erik Tryggestad reflects on The Christian Chronicle’s trip across the Romanian border into war-torn Ukraine (from Siret, Romania).

Weary travelers find rest, refuge

In Chernivtsi, Adi Voicu of Romania and Dennis Zolotaryov of Ukraine load Ukrainian- and Russian-language Bibles from Eastern European Mission for transport to Romania. The Bibles will be given to Ukrainian refugees.

A border town church in Ukraine becomes a hub of relocation and relief (from Chernivtsi, Ukraine).

A band of brothers drives Ukraine

Dima Grischuk, left, and fellow drivers with the Let’s Love ministry prepare for a journey to eastern Ukraine to distribute aid and to ferry back the displaced.

Christians who escaped the horrors of war journey back to the front lines to aid the hurting and share Jesus (from Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine).

Christians in U.S. check off ‘bucket lists’ for Ukraine

Paul Nance, coordinating minister for the Hillsboro Church of Christ, speaks on the Kelley Clarkson Show.

Churches across the nation gather supplies to help refugees in war-torn Eastern Europe — and get a $10,000 boost from TV host Kelly Clarkson (from Nashville, Tenn.).

Ukrainians count the days as they pray

A long line of Ukrainians walks toward the Polish border checkpoint, fleeing the war in their homeland.

Ukrainian-American family details their difficult journey from the Eastern European nation to the U.S. (from Oklahoma City).

Christians across U.S. find ways to support Ukraine

Members of the Grace Chapel Church of Christ in Cumming, Ga., hold signs at a prayer vigil for Ukraine.

Churches of Christ have strong connections to the Eastern European nation, now under assault from Russia.

Good news in Ukraine’s ‘real winter’

Bedding awaits Ukrainian refugees at the meeting place of the Sopot Church of Christ in Poland.

As Russian attacks intensify, Churches of Christ organize rescue missions, set up relief centers and experience baptisms.

Ukraine crisis: How to help

A separatist fighter carries a live artillery shell through the former meeting place of the Petrovsky Church of Christ in Donetsk, Ukraine. Militants seized the building in October 2014 and renamed the region the Donetsk People’s Republic.

A list of ministries associated with Churches of Christ and congregations collecting funds for Ukraine relief.

Why Ukraine matters to Churches of Christ

Members of the Church of Christ in the Kirovsky district of Donetsk, Ukraine, worship in 2003.

The Eastern European nation, now under siege by its Russian neighbors, has been fertile soil for the fellowship. As one young Ukrainian put it, ‘Christianity is the greatest treasure we have.’ 

The post War in Ukraine: Links to The Christian Chronicle’s coverage appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Two days earlier, the Category 4 hurricane devastated the island of Carriacou, population 9,600, which is part of the nation of Grenada.

Chrispin Hosten

“In half an hour, Carriacou was flattened,” Grenadian Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said in a news briefing.

Chrispin Hosten ministers for a Church of Christ on Carriacou that has about 30 in attendance on Sundays. He sent The Christian Chronicle images from the island that show near-total devastation.

“The whole island (lies in) destruction,” he said. “The members are in need of food, water and clothing.”

The church’s white, two-story building lost its roof, and most of the church’s members lost roofs or entire homes, Hosten said.

The meeting place of the Carriacou Church of Christ lost its roof and sustained damage as Hurricane Beryl swept across the island.

Churches of Christ in Grenada and other parts of the Caribbean are collecting aid for Carriacou, said Ossafa Gordon, minister for the Grand Anse Church of Christ on Grenada’s main island. Healing Hands International also is collecting funds for relief.

As it headed west from Grenada, Beryl ripped along the southern coast of Jamaica. Church members including Gladwyn Kiddoe, director of the Jamaica School of Preaching and Biblical Studies in Kingston, are assessing damage and needs. The storm also was expected to affect the Cayman Islands.

Damaged homes and downed trees can be seen across the island of Carriacou after Hurricane Beryl.

Church members survey hurricane damage on the island of Carriacou.

Hurricane Beryl tore off roofs and soaked the interior of homes across Carriacou.

Carriacou, population 9,600, sustained major damage from Hurricane Beryl.

This is a continuing story. Check back for updates.

The post Christians in Grenada lose homes, church building to Hurricane Beryl appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Not tired from the war or burnout, the Ukrainian minister insists.

Instead, Kolosha explains, “Being tired means not having enough resources in the moment … and having too many moments.”

Alexander and Olha Kolosha speak with The Christian Chronicle during a retreat in Irpin, Ukraine.

He spoke to The Christian Chronicle during a rare moment of tranquility, sitting at a picnic bench in a forested retreat center as his wife, Olha, translated his words from Ukrainian to English.

They joined more than 100 ministry leaders from Churches of Christ and their families in the northwestern suburb of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. For the second time in the past year, the Ukrainian Bible Institute sponsored a retreat to serve those who serve, providing three days of worship, meditation, resource sharing and rest.

The theme, “I Am With You,” came from Isaiah 43:2.

Brandon Price welcomes guests to the retreat and Ukrainian Bible Institute graduation as UBI administrator Natalia Maliuga translates his words into Ukrainian.

“How much joy, how much peace do we miss out on when we forget about the presence of God?” asked Brandon Price, director of the Bible institute, standing before a wooden, wall-mounted cross in the retreat center’s classroom. “If, for some reason, you can’t calm your heart and your mind, take comfort in the fact that he is here.”

God is here, even in the midst of war.

Reminders of the conflict, which has claimed the lives of more than 10,500 Ukrainian civilians, abounded in Irpin. Russian forces leveled buildings, torched cars and tortured residents here — and in the neighboring city of Bucha — before Ukrainians fought the invaders back across the border into Belarus in the war’s early days.

The pavilion where church members once practiced and performed Ukrainian-language hymns, left, now houses boxes of humanitarian aid. Across from the pavilion are tents bearing the logo of relief ministry Samaritan’s Purse.

The retreat center — used by Churches of Christ for singing schools in happier times — bore scars from the fighting. Boxes of humanitarian aid filled the pavilion where church members once joined their voices in Ukrainian-language a cappella hymns. White tents with the logo of Samaritan’s Purse and a massive bank of humming generators stood nearby.

“It’s our war, even though we don’t have bullets here,” said Alexander Kolosha, a graduate of Ukrainian Bible Institute. He and his wife oversee Slavic World for Christ, a ministry founded by Ukrainian evangelist Epi Stephan Bilak and based in Ternopil, a city on the Seret River, far from the current front lines. Initially, the ministry focused on Ukrainian-language speakers in the country’s west.

The Ternopil Church of Christ once numbered 60 members, but now is down to about 10, Olha Kolosha said. The church building, however, overflows with refugees from the predominantly Russian-speaking east. They come for food, provided by Ukrainian Bible Institute through its partnership with Texas-based Sunset International Bible Institute, and stay for worship. Some Sundays, the Ternopil church struggles to find enough chairs and communion cups for everyone.

Often, they find themselves low on relief to distribute, energy to distribute it and fortitude to help others cope with daily traumas, Alexander Kolosha said.

“But every time, somehow, we find ourselves full of resources,” he said. “Or we become resourceful.”

As the fighting drags on and the casualties rise, he added, “I accept that it will be like this. I understand that I will be tired, but I really believe that the Lord will prevent me from stopping.”

‘We don’t stop for sirens or explosions’

The attendees represented 25 Churches of Christ spread across Ukraine. The churches are part of a network that feeds, counsels and occasionally evacuates those in need. The Ukrainian Bible Institute coordinates and distributes the aid with funding from Sunset, which also covered transportation fees for the retreat.

Participants in a three-day conference and retreat in Irpin, Ukraine, visit as they wait for the retreat center’s breakfast room to open.

Some attendees made dangerous journeys from eastern Ukraine to attend.

The encouragement he received made the trip worthwhile, said Olexiy Ladyka, a musician, songwriter and preacher for the Kramatorsk Church of Christ. His congregation meets in Donetsk oblast (a state-like division) about 30 miles northwest of the battered city of Bakhmut, which fell to Russia last year.

Olexiy Ladyka, left, speaks with Inna Kuzmenko, a Ukrainian Christian and translator, during the retreat in Irpin.

“It’s normal, like birds singing,” Ladyka said of the air-raid sirens that blare constantly in Kramatorsk. The church didn’t meet for about a year after the war started, but eventually, about 20 members returned and began distributing food to their community.

Initially, people came for the food. 

“Now, they just come,” Ladyka said. “The people who receive, they love to be in the church.” 

In recent months, members have hosted Bible studies and celebrated a baptism.

As the church serves, Russian troops inch closer and closer to Kramatorsk.

Christians worship during a late-June Sunday service in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. “I was expecting six for worship in the frontline city of Kramatorsk, and God brought 60!” said Jeff Abrams, minister for the Tuscumbia Church of Christ in Alabama, who made a 20-hour train trip from western Ukraine to visit the congregation. At far left is a young man who rode his bike from Slavyansk, about 10 miles away, to worship with the church. Abrams works with the nonprofit Rescue Ukraine, which provides food, Bibles and support for Ukrainian Christians.

“The front line is coming,” Ladyka said.

But the church members have a plan. If the Russians reach the town of Chasiv Yar, he said, “We go together” to western Ukraine, most likely Lviv.

Vera Olefira came to the retreat with her husband, Igor. They live to the north, in Kharkiv.

Igor Olefira and his wife, Vera, right, visit with Inna Kuzmenko, a Ukrainian translator who worshiped with the Olefira’s congregation in Kharkiv before she moved to the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk.

“We hear explosions before we hear the sirens,” she said. Kharkiv, once Ukraine’s second-largest city, is less than 20 miles from the Russian border, the launch point for missile attacks. 

Igor Olefira preaches for a Church of Christ with about 35 members, though guests and aid recipients can swell Sunday worship past 150.

“We don’t stop for sirens or explosions,” Vera Olefira said. 

The couple remembered a visit by Nazar Semikoz, a young minister who lives in Kyiv and was a guest speaker for the Kharkiv Church of Christ. When explosions interrupted his sermon, Semikoz “was amazed that all the people didn’t blink,” Igor Olefira said with a chuckle. “He said, ‘The people of Kharkiv are made of steel and concrete!’”

@christianchronicle IRPIN, Ukraine — Nazar Semikoz, 21, of the Brovary Church of Christ, talks about the congregation’s decline and regrowth since the full-scale Russian invasion began in February 2022. Then Erik Tryggestad gives a quick look at the campus hosting the Ukrainian Bible Institute graduation. #ukraine #ukrainevsrussia #russiainvasion #irpin #ukrainianbibleinstitute #churchofchrist #brovaryukraine #brovary_city ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

To the south, Pavel Glinskiy worships with a Church of Christ in a small town near the city of Donetsk. About 10 to 12 Christians, plus guests, worship on Sundays, he said. Sometimes they hear explosions.

Pavel Glinskiy

When the war started, he took one of his daughters west to Ternopil, but he went back. Another daughter lives in Donetsk, which fell to pro-Russian separatists in 2014, the same year Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. In late 2022, Russia announced that it had annexed Donetsk.

Glinskiy gave a slight smile as he showed a picture on his phone of his 3-year-old granddaughter, Polina, in Donetsk. He’s never seen her in person.

“I stay because I rely on God,” Glinskiy said. Just as the Lord protected David from Goliath, he said, “God says that, even if an entire regiment is against me, do not be afraid.”

‘This can break you’

During the retreat, participants broke into small groups of men and women, delving into Scripture and sharing stories of times when they felt most disconnected from God — and times when they felt closest to him.

They sang, using lyrics shared through the Telegram messaging app on their phones rather than relying on PowerPoint and a projector amid frequent power outages.

@christianchronicle IRPIN, Ukraine — Stas “Tea” Kuroplatnykov leads a hymn during a three-day retreat sponsored by the Ukrainian Bible Institute. #churchofchrist #ukraine #godissogood #ukrainianhymn #acappella #ukrainewar ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

Glinskiy said that he came to the retreat because his church’s preacher could not. 

“His paperwork hasn’t come through,” the church member said, echoing a common refrain at the conference. 

Earlier this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a controversial conscription law in an effort to procure desperately needed troops. Ministers with exemptions — three or more children, a family member killed in combat, medical issues — must have government documentation to avoid forcible recruitment at military checkpoints or by roving patrols.

Stas Kuropiatnykov, minister for a Church of Christ in Lviv, Ukraine, leads singing during the retreat in Irpin.

Stas Kuropiatnykov, a preacher in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, led worship during the retreat — 14 days after he was released from military service to care for his newborn third child. He served for two years, sometimes on the front lines and sometimes in Lviv, where he also ministered to hundreds of internally displaced refugees alongside his brothers and sisters in Christ.

He encouraged Ukrainians to serve in the military if they can, and he urged all Christians to support those serving in the field and those who have returned, often injured and traumatized.

“I can’t express completely what I faced and what our brothers and sisters are facing,” Kuropiatnykov said, adding that his time in the service reminded him of a motto used by U.S. Navy SEALs: “The only easy day was yesterday.”

He remembers watching a fellow soldier drive a van — one used for carrying dead bodies from the battlefield — into a self-service car wash. Dutifully, the soldier opened the back and sprayed out the viscera and blood that had collected on the floor.

Playground equipment stands in front of a battle-damaged apartment building in Irpin, Ukraine.

Facing such a scene, “you’re not going to grow up to your expectations,” Kuropiatnykov said, quoting an ancient Greek truism. Instead, “you’re going to fall down to the level of your readiness and preparation.”

Kuropiatnykov, who grew up in the church, said he’s thankful for his firm foundation of faith and the support of fellow Christians. They helped carry him “through the valley of the shadow of death,” he said, quoting Psalm 23.

“This can break you,” Kuropiatnykov said. “This can break you for sure.”

‘Every war is spiritual’

Despite his abiding faith, Kuropiatnykov sometimes finds himself asking God, “Why? Why did you let this happen to my church, to my country?”

Many times in the past two years, he hasn’t felt the Lord’s presence, he told his brothers during the small-group session. 

At the Iprin retreat, Christian men discuss times when they’ve felt the presence of God in their lives.

“But I know that God is here,” he said, just as Job, in the midst of terrible suffering, said “I know that my redeemer lives” (Job 19:25).

The war has given Ukrainians a new sense of clarity as they approach Scripture, said Alexander Kolosha, the minister in Ternopil.

“Every story about war in the Bible … every story feels different,” he said. Through his studies, he’s come to realize that, despite the combatants, “every war is spiritual, between people and God.”

@christianchronicle Erik Tryggestad reports from Ukraine with translator Inna Kuzmenko in Episode 67 of the Christian Chronicle Podcast. #ccpodcast #churchofchrist #ukraine ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

He’s found strength in an unlikely place — Lamentations. The Old Testament book is a collection of poems mourning the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the decades of exile that followed. 

Amid its many laments are words of steadfast devotion to God: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).

“Every morning, for me, is Sunday — and resurrection.” he said. “Because tomorrow … who knows?”

The post Where is God in a war zone? appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Visiting minister Jon Hackett, who preaches for the Lomax Church of Christ in Hohenwald, Tenn., prayed for peace among warring nations.

Women visit before Sunday worship in Nazareth, Israel.

“Lord, help us to follow your example to love our enemies, to pray for them, to forgive them,” Hackett prayed in the presence of 10 others. “Lord, help us to live in peace.”

The Lomax congregation is a longtime supporter of the Nazareth church, having funded the work for more than 50 years, Hackett said.

Jon Hackett preaches for the Nazareth Church of Christ in Israel.

Located in northern Israel, the Nazareth church is less than 40 miles from the Lebanon border, where Hezbollah militants recently fired at least 30 rockets toward Israel — one of which killed a civilian.

In the south, the Israeli military continues its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 Israeli citizens and abducted 250 civilians.

At least 37,400 Palestinians have been killed over the past eight months, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

@christianchronicle NAZARETH, ISRAEL — Arab Israeli Christians gathered in Jesus’ hometown this morning to worship — and pray for their enemies. Visiting minister Jon Hackett, who preaches at the Lomax Church of Christ in Hohenwald, Tenn., prayed for peace among warring nations. “Lord, help us to follow your example to love our enemies, to pray for them, to forgive them,” Hackett prayed in the presence of 10 others. “Lord, help us to live in peace.” #israel #israelhamaswarupdate #israelhamaswar #hezbollahthreat #israelwar #nazareth #nazarethchurch #churchofchrist ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

About 80 living Israeli hostages remain in Hamas captivity, according to Israeli officials.

“I pray for all the those who have been affected with this war,” Hackett added. “Help it to cease soon, quickly. Give those who are hurting comfort.”

Photos of hostages and Israeli flags surround the Great Mosque in Tiberias, Israel.

The post In Jesus’ hometown, a prayer for peace appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

ITALY

ROME — Nearly two millennia after the apostle Paul came to the capital of the Roman empire in chains, Dr. Vittorio Vitalone and his wife, Tonia, serve Churches of Christ in this city of 3 million souls and congregations across Italy.

The couple recently traveled to Anzio, the site of one of World War II’s bloodiest battles, to encourage a Church of Christ there.

“This small congregation, 10 to 12 members, is doing their best to keep the flame of the faith burning,” the Vitalones said in a recent newsletter.

The Vitalones also visited congregations in the northern Italian cities of Pistoia, Prato, Vicenza and Bologna and spent time with members of their supporting congregation, the Lake Cities Church of Christ in Trophy Club, Texas.

In early summer, the Vitalones and Italian minister Franco Verardi hosted the National Retreat for Families in Italy.

“Compassion, Consolation and Comfort” was the theme, taken from 2 Corinthians 1:3-4.

“Each year is a great opportunity to catch up, strengthen each other’s spirits and study the Lord’s Word,” the Vitalones said.

KENYA

NAIROBI — Minister Patrick Wanyama went to sleep amid pounding rains and was awakened about midnight by kitchen utensils clinking against each other — as they floated. Wanyama discovered knee-deep water in his home and took shelter on the third floor of a nearby building.

“When he went down in the morning, some of his household items had been washed away,” said Nyabuto Marube, a fellow minister in Nairobi.

A woman in rural Kenya receives food aid from Healing Hands International.

Nairobi’s poor communities have experienced a double dose of misery amid recent torrential rains and flash floods. In the Mukuru kwa Reuben slum, where Wanyama preaches, two people died in a recent demolition. The church’s building survived the flooding and the demolitions, Marube said, but several church members lost their businesses.

Marube’s daughter, Abigail, and her friends collected clothing and blankets to take to those affected by the flooding and demolitions.

Flooding across Kenya has claimed more than 200 lives, according to news reports. Healing Hands International, a nonprofit associated with Churches of Christ, is providing relief.

See hhi.org/disaster/kenya-flooding-response/ to contribute.

Students and faculty at South Pacific Bible College take a class photo.

NEW ZEALAND

TAURANGA — This South Pacific nation, which had some of the toughest pandemic restrictions on the globe, has reopened its borders.

The easing of restrictions allowed four new students from South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and India to move to New Zealand to attend the South Pacific Bible College, which is associated with Churches of Christ.

The college also has two in-person visiting instructors from Abilene Christian University in Texas, Richard Wright and Kilnam Cha.

Christians gather outside the meeting place of the Chkupi Church of Christ in Zambia.

ZAMBIA

KABWEZA — The 38-year-old Chikupi Church of Christ meets in a rural community in this southern African nation.

But nearly four decades after its establishment by missionaries, the church struggles with low attendance and other issues, said Dennis Sabelo, director of Daybreak Bible College, a ministry training school near Zambia’s capital, Lusaka.

Recently three instructors and 10 students from the school visited the Chikupi church and pledged to help the congregation.

The post Around the World: Encouragement in Rome, flooding in Kenya and more quick takes appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

He had just asked me if I was a farmer since I live in Oklahoma. So this question seemed much less stupid.

“Kyiv,” I said.

“Why?” the guard asked, with a hint of snark in his voice.

“Preacher training school graduation,” I said. He waved us through.

Crossing the border into Ukraine felt different than it did two years ago, when Audrey Jackson and I accompanied a small group from Sunset International Bible Institute and the Program for Humanitarian Aid. Back then, as we approached the border near Siret, Romania, no fewer than seven uniformed men surrounded our van. Our driver, Adi Voicu, talked to them as I feared the worst. They’d spend hours looking through our bags of relief supplies, I thought.

But no. “These guys want to help us carry our bags to the border,” Adi said. They were volunteer firefighters and emergency workers. Along the path to the checkpoint, we saw tents manned by priests and aid workers offering coffee and sandwiches. When we returned to Romania the next day, they asked us if we were OK, if we had a place to stay.

Border volunteers in Siret, Romania, help a team of church members bound for Ukraine with their bags in April 2022.

Two years later, in Poland, we chose to cross at a small checkpoint in Zosin. Days earlier, Polish farmers had blocked a bigger checkpoint that leads to Lviv, Ukraine, in protest of the European Union lifting import duties on Ukrainian grain after the war with Russia began. “Ukrainian grain is flooding Poland,” one farmer told Al Jazeera, “and we’re getting poorer and poorer.”

@christianchronicle IRPIN, Ukraine — Erik Tryggestad traveled abouy 15 hours from Warsaw to reach this suburb of Kyiv, Ukraine, where he will cover a ministry meeting and graduation at the Ukrainian Bible Institute. #ukraine #irpin #warsaw #polandtoukraine #ukrainianrefugees #poland #churchofchrist #ukrainewar #ukrainerussia ♬ Song for Ukraine – SALSABILA

I came here to attend a workshop and graduation ceremony sponsored by the Ukrainian Bible Institute. I accompanied Richard Baggett of Sunset; Jay Don Rogers, who directed the Bible institute for 19 years; and Rogers’ wife, Mary Lee. Inna Kuzmenko, a Christian from the hard-hit town of Kharkiv, was our translator. Our drivers, Oleksander Sikorski and Philip Mocknuk, serve with Volunteer Brothers. For two years, workers with this ministry have driven shipments of relief supplies to churches and community centers near the front lines.

In the early days of the war, we were united in purpose. I didn’t know what to expect now. My Ukrainian brothers and sisters must be exhausted, I thought. And they have to know that support has wavered in the U.S. — that some politicians have called for my country to drop its financial support for Ukraine.

Would I find tired, resentful faces this time?

I underestimated my Ukrainian friends. More than anything else, they were grateful that we made the 15-hour journey from Warsaw to Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv that bears terrible scars from the early days of the war. The burned shells of cars form a makeshift memorial on the side of the road. The city’s cultural center is in ruins, festooned with promises that it will be rebuilt.

@christianchronicle IRPIN, Ukraine — A scrap pile of torched cars has become a memorial for the lives lost in this northern suburb of Kyiv during the 2022 Russian invasion. #irpin #ukraine #irpincars #russianinvasion #ukrainerussiaconflict #ukrainerussia ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

During the three-day conference, I talked to church members who made the dangerous journey from Kharkiv, Kramatorsk and the Donetsk region, just miles from the frontlines. Air raid sirens and explosions have become common, “like birds singing,” one woman told me.

But they keep on praying. They keep on helping those in need. They keep studying their Bibles and baptizing. When the power goes out, they worship in the dark.

“Air raid sirens and explosions have become common, ‘like birds singing,’ one woman told me. But they keep on praying. … They keep studying their Bibles and baptizing. When the power goes out, they worship in the dark.”

Prayers seem to mean more now. So do goodbyes.

On the first day of the war, I put together a piece titled “Why Ukraine matters to Churches of Christ,” drawing on the 20-plus years I’ve covered the fellowship in Ukraine. I wrote about how the free-thinking coal miners of eastern Ukraine provided a white field for harvest when the Iron Curtain fell. Ukrainian Christians have taken their zeal for the Kingdom across their country and, now, across Europe.

I don’t know when or how this war will end, but I’m so encouraged, so proud, to see God working through our Ukrainian brothers and sisters. Truly, this is faith under fire.

I said as much on this most recent trip when I presided over the Lord’s Supper for the Irpin Church of Christ. There were about 35 of us there. Several women had sons serving on the front lines. They shared photos and shed tears as they told us their stories.

The Irpin Church of Christ near Kyiv worships on a Sunday morning.

The church’s minister, Sergey Shupishov, told me about his brother, Dima, who’s also a minister. Dima was called into military service, and his unit went missing about four months ago. I’ll share that story — and many more — in future issues.

Before we left Ukraine, Sergey gave me a military patch from one of Dima’s uniforms. It reads “Simul ad Victorium” — “Together to Victory” in Latin. Sergey said it was a way to honor his brother and thank us for our visit, for remembering them.

I find myself stunned and speechless by this act.

A patch worn by Dima Shupishov on his military uniform reads “together to victory” in Latin.

Remembering is important. There are plenty of verses in the Bible about how important it is for us to remember what God has done for us. God also remembers us. When the children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt, God “heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24).   

I remember the words Ukrainian minister Yura Taran told me two years ago: “This is our Exodus. Soon, we will find the promised land.”

I will continue to remember. I will continue to pray.

Ukraine still matters.

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org, and follow him on X at @eriktryggestad.

PODCAST: Erik Tryggestad reports from Ukraine with Richard Baggett of Sunset International Bible Institute and Inna Kuzmenko of Kharkiv, Ukraine. Listen to Episode 67 of The Christian Chronicle Podcast.

Ukranian flags line Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), each honoring a Ukrainian who lost their life in the war with Russia.

The post Why Ukraine still matters appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

A military brat who spent time as a child in Japan as well as Florida and Tennessee, the father of three prepares his lesson in English. 

ChatGPT has helped improve missionary Leslie Taylor’s sermon preparation process.

Then he goes through his manuscript — sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph — to translate it into Japanese.

“That translation aspect can obviously be very difficult at times,” said Taylor, who earned a master’s degree in ministry from Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn. 

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot made by the company OpenAI, has helped improve the missionary’s process.

“I do as much as I can by myself, but sometimes it helps with particularly complicated sentence structures,” Taylor said of the AI program, “or I may ask it to explain a nuance, etc.

“It’s still necessary to know Japanese because sometimes it gives mistaken translations — or just slightly off my meaning — so I need to discern,” he added. “But it is a helpful tool in the process to be sure. I would never even consider it as a source for any actual content, however.”

Roughly 6,500 miles away, Dion Frasier, senior minister for the Reynoldsburg Church of Christ in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, relies on ChatGPT to translate his sermon into Creole.

“We have a growing Haitian population in our area, and they are starting to attend church regularly,” Frasier explained. “We translate and hand out copies to families each week.”

Above, missionary Leslie Taylor takes a selfie with his wife and children in Japan.

Translating the Bible at a faster rate

The number of languages with full Bible translations tops 700 — accounting for the native tongues of 80 percent of the world’s population, the American Bible Society notes. 

About 3,750 vernaculars lack full translations, but AI could help speed the process of taking the Bible from its original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek into more languages, according to ReligionLink.com.

A team at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute “is using natural language processing, which enables machines to understand and respond to text or voice data, to help increase the efficiency of Bible translation and allow for more languages to be reached at a faster rate,” reports Ken Chitwood, ReligionLink.com’s editor.

Christians in the U.S. express complicated feelings about AI, with 30 percent believing it is exciting but 34 percent seeing it as scary, according to a recent survey by the Barna Group in partnership with Gloo. (A Catholic advocacy group in California recently dismissed a robot priest who advised its followers to “baptize children in Gatorade.”)

Mary Nelson, a missionary with her husband, David, in Tauranga, New Zealand, identifies with both the enthusiasm and wariness toward AI.

“Myself, it makes me nervous — the whole AI arena,” Nelson said. “Automatically, our mind goes to all the different problems that can come about from AI and still may. But if there’s a tool that means we can get Bible lessons out quicker … I can’t think of why we should just say no.

“I think we put all the precautions in place and use the tool but use it intelligently,” she stressed. “If we use our own human intelligence to use this artificial intelligence, then I think it’s really good.”

“Myself, it makes me nervous — the whole AI arena. … But if there’s a tool that means we can get Bible lessons out quicker … I can’t think of why we should just say no.”

‘Maybe we should be using AI’

A decade ago, Nelson developed an online ministry called Mission Bible Class.

Now sponsored by the Memorial Road Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, the ministry provides free resources to teach children around the world. 

Nelson’s collection of more than 170 Bible stories — all in English — draws about 8,000 pageviews a day. For years, she has dreamed of making the materials available to the world’s roughly 500 million Spanish speakers.

To pursue that goal, she and a team worked with translator Tae Perkins — a former missionary to Chile who lives in Lubbock, Texas — to develop a plan estimated to cost $100,000 and take two years.

But then ministry supporters asked if they’d considered enlisting AI.

They had — and rejected it.

Still, they tried it again, unaware how quickly — and how much — the technology had advanced.

“We were basically just testing it out,” said Gina Nored, who works with Nelson in New Zealand through Memorial Road’s Helpers in Missions program. “The logic kind of was: Let’s give some reason to why we’re not using AI. And then we realized: Maybe we should be using AI.”

They discovered ChatGPT could translate the English lessons into Spanish in an easily editable format.

“It takes me about two to three hours to translate one of her lessons,” Perkins said of the previous manual process — which was followed by an additional hour for editing.

“By using AI, it allows us to be more efficient in projects that we feel passionate about.”

By comparison, AI requires less than 15 minutes to translate the same lesson before it goes to the human editor. Then, Perkins said, “It takes me about 30 to 45 minutes to edit one that’s been passed through the AI.”

Suddenly, the expected overall project cost dropped 75 percent to about $25,000. The anticipated timeline split in half to one year.

“By using AI, it allows us to be more efficient in projects that we feel passionate about,” said Nored, who earned degrees in ministry and elementary education at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. “But then it allows us to have more time and energy and resources spent on other things that we would otherwise have to put on the back burner or just not be able to do.” 

In a Zoom interview, Tae Perkins, top, and Mary Nelson and Gina Nored, bottom, discuss the use of artificial intelligence by the online ministry Mission Bible Class.

Better technology, lower costs

Veteran minister James Nored, Gina’s father, speaks just one language: English.

“I took Greek and Hebrew and all that, but I’m not all that fluent in another language,” said Nored, who holds degrees from Oklahoma Christian University, Harding School of Theology and Fuller Theological Seminary. 

But through the magic of AI, his voice can be adapted to numerous languages — from Arabic to Portuguese.

Nored serves as executive director of Next Generation for Christ, a Virginia-based ministry focused on evangelism, discipleship and missions. He wrote and produced the Story of Redemption Film Series, filmed in Israel and other countries. It’s available in more than 60 languages.

“Most of our languages for our Story of Redemption series have been done by humans and professional translators, who are often assisted by AI tools,” Nored said. “And we have found some really great, talented people to do voiceovers.”

But AI advancements allow the ministry to “quickly produce” computer-generated voiceovers for videos and subtitles, he said. That’s especially helpful, he noted, when faced with scarce funding, voice talent or time.

He cited a ministry to the blind in Albania as an example.

“We had the video series with subtitles, but that obviously would not be very helpful for this people group,” Nored said. “We were able to quickly produce an AI-generated Albanian voiceover, and it worked well.”

James Nored shoots a video in Israel for the Story of Redemption Film Series.

A sacred task

Back in Japan, Taylor stresses that his sermon represents more than words on a piece of paper.

When he stands before his multicultural congregation, which includes American, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Lithuanian members, he’s not just conveying information.

He’s sharing the Gospel.

“It’s sharing the heart of the text, obviously,” he said. “But I mean, if I really think about it, it’s very humbling because you’re really representing God to people. … And so I think it’s a sacred task that needs to be taken seriously.”

AI, he believes, can help with that task.

But it can’t replace the value — and necessity — of humans interacting intelligently with the Holy Bible.

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Ross writes the Weekend Plug-in column for ReligionUnplugged.com, where this piece originally appeared. He uses an AI program called Otter to transcribe his interviews. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

The post Christians use AI to share Jesus appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

But it didn’t.

As the Minnesota preacher sees it, the Lord still has a purpose for him.

After his brush with death, the longtime missionary from Nigeria has no doubt about that.

“I know that the hands of God are involved in this,” said Inyang, 49, who has served the Roseville Church of Christ for 15 years. “Even the doctor said, ‘With the nature of your injuries, you were really saved by a divine power.’”

Richard Inyang in his office at the Roseville Church of Christ in Minnesota.

Inyang wore special gloves — with just the tips of his fingers sticking out — as he shared his story. Underneath his clothes, a custom-made compression garment covered his fire-ravaged body.

Inyang first came to America nearly two decades ago to further his Bible education. He decided to stay and share the Gospel with Minneapolis-St. Paul’s fast-growing African immigrant population. 

“This is where God called me to come,” he told The Christian Chronicle.

Since the kitchen fire four months ago, Churches of Christ in the Twin Cities area have rallied around Inyang and his family: wife Emem, 17-year-old son Joseph, 12-year-old twin sons Ikoobong and Itembong and infant Edikan.

“What a blessing to see our congregation and other Churches of Christ in Minnesota praying for Richard and his family, bringing meals and making significant financial contributions to help offset medical costs,” said Ethan Bilbrey, who preaches for the Richfield Church of Christ, south of Minneapolis.

Said Russell Pointer, senior minister for the Minneapolis Central Church of Christ: “It was only by the grace of God that Richard is still here. I’m telling you, it’s a great story.”

Minister Richard Inyang receives treatment for grease burns at a Minnesota hospital.

Risking his life to do God’s work

A flashing marquee sign outside the Roseville church invites passersby to help care for Nigerian orphans.

The message reflects the deep commitment of the predominantly African immigrant congregation — with members from Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Togo — to serve children at the Solace Orphanage International Center, roughly 6,500 miles away.

United Nations of Faith: Read all the stories in the series

Inyang and the 50-member Roseville church started the orphanage in Akwa Ibom State in Nigeria’s coastal south in 2020.

Inyang still returns to his native Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon each year and takes his survival from the fire as a sign God wants him to keep doing so.

“That is why God brought me back to life … because I still have a lot to accomplish,” he said.

Richard Inyang, in the white T-shirt, distributes clothes on a past mission trip to Nigeria and Cameroon.

It’s not the first time, Inyang said, that God has surprised him by keeping him alive.

On a 2018 mission trip, he ignored the pleas of French soldiers and his own father and entered a war zone in Cameroon to deliver medical and educational supplies. 

“Should I stay back?” Inyang remembers asking his wife.

“No,” he said she told him. “If anything happens, I will take care of the children. But God will not allow anything to happen.”

Later, as guerrilla fighters shouted and aimed assault rifles at him, Inyang put his head on the dashboard of his rented truck, which blared Christian music from a loudspeaker. 

“Jesus, take my soul.”

“Jesus, take my soul,” he recalls saying as he prepared to die.

But the combatants let him and his driver pass safely through the checkpoint. Not long after that, he said he learned, they killed a Catholic priest. 

During his monthlong mission trips, he visits the numerous African churches he has planted, distributing medicine, glasses, clothes and Bibles and baptizing hundreds of new converts.

And he checks on the children and the orphanage’s facilities, including a three-story school for which he and his wife took out a second mortgage on their Minnesota home.

Inyang’s willingness to risk his life in a war zone — and tap into his family’s meager finances to help orphans — exemplifies his commitment to his Christian calling, Roseville member Stacy Sikes said.

“That was no fluke,” Sikes, a retired minister and chaplain, said of Inyang’s fraught Cameroon experience. “It’s his life. He’s a man that says, ‘I believe God will be with us, and let’s go for it.’”

The Inyang family poses for a photo by the Roseville Church of Christ sign. Richard Inyang has served as the congregation’s minister for 15 years.

‘The fire exploded all over me’

Inyang’s latest opportunity to put his life in God’s hands came Feb. 19.

Flames erupted that night after one of Inyang’s sons put oil in a pan to cook on the stove and then left to play a video game, according to church leaders. 

In the living room, the father of four talked on the phone with a person from the orphanage.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Inyang heard one of his children yell.

The shirtless minister ran to the kitchen and jerked the pan off the burner.

“The fire exploded all over me,” he recalled.

Inyang spent more than a month in the hospital and has undergone a half-dozen surgeries. Still fighting pain and battling to recover, he hopes to return to the pulpit soon.

Men in the church have stepped up to preach and teach Bible classes.

“It’s been really stressful for the congregation. Richard has a good heart for the Lord,” said Isaac Karmue, a 50-year-old Liberian refugee. “We all are just trying to support him in the best way possible.”

The Roseville church formed in 1963, but decades later, declining membership and rising maintenance needs prompted some Christian leaders to advise selling the building and donating the proceeds to mission work, Sikes said.

Inyang refused.

“He really looked at this location as being a place for God’s people, and it is,” Sikes said. “And so he and his wife both worked for Walmart in order to have an income.”

Their resoluteness and trust in God led to the multicultural influx. 

“We see no race line or culture line,” Karmue said of the Roseville congregation. “Christ is first. Everybody here — I can’t say a single bad thing about anyone. I see the presence of God.”

Roseville Church of Christ members pray on a recent Sunday.

‘Unity among the brethren’

Charlene May, a former American missionary to Haiti with her husband, David, organized meal deliveries for the Inyangs.

David and Charlene May, former missionaries to Haiti, wear African-style attire on a recent Sunday at the Roseville Church of Christ.

She relied first on Roseville members and later enlisted other area Christians.

“I have decided it’s one of my gifts to model how we take care of each other,” said May, who has attended Roseville since 2020. “I knew that family was going to need long-term help. And the mom, you know, she had that baby a month before this accident.”

Inyang praises God for all the support his family has received.

He enjoyed a hearty laugh as he reflected on a noninstitutional Church of Christ that helped.

“The congregation that they don’t believe you can eat in the building, they brought food to my house,” Inyang said with a thankful chuckle. 

“Really, I can see the unity among the brethren,” he added. “I can see their support, so we really, truly appreciate it and thank God.”

Richard Inyang speaks at the Roseville Church of Christ on a recent Sunday.

Confident in his calling

On a recent Sunday, Inyang stood at the front of the Roseville church and updated members on his progress.

“God is improving my health,” he reported.

“Amen!” members responded.

“Every day I see the power of God,” he added.

“Amen!”

He voiced hope that he could start driving again soon — and resume preaching in the not-so-distant future.

Even Inyang’s return to worship has made the church more joyful, said Ikoobong, one of his sons.

“Everyone misses him,” the 12-year-old said.

Richard Inyang and other Christians enjoy a fellowship meal at the Roseville Church of Christ.

After the assembly, the minister greeted fellow Christians at a multicultural fellowship meal that featured Nigerian-style coconut rice, egg rolls, pizza and fried chicken.

“Spiritually, I’m very, very strong,” Inyang told the Chronicle. “Physically, I’m still under recovery.”

But he’s pleased with his progress — and eager to fulfill God’s purpose for his life.

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He traveled to Minnesota to report this story. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

How to help

The Roseville Church of Christ is seeking to raise about $30,000 to fund Richard Inyang’s next mission trip to Nigeria and Cameroon.

Contributions may be sent to:

Roseville Church of Christ

241 Larpenteur Ave. W.

Roseville, MN 55113

Richard Inyang baptizes a woman during one of his mission trips to Africa.

The post ‘Divine power’ saves minister appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Another girl nearby mashed plantain with a stick, practicing how to make fufu — a Ghanaian culinary staple of pounded cassava, yam and plantain. 

Across the dirt road, volunteers from the village and the Bia Lamplighter College of Education — which is associated with Churches of Christ — mixed bags of cement with water. 

A 4-year-old girl practices cooking by boiling water and sand in a discarded Costa sardine tin in New Debiso, Ghana.

The material would form the foundation for the first girls’ boarding school for primary education in a region known as the Bia West District, according to Lamplighter founder Augustine Tawiah. 

The nearest alternative is 11 hours away in the capital city of Accra. 

Tawiah, who is also a Ghanaian parliamentary member for Bia West, is acutely aware of the educational challenges girls face in the rural regions. 

He grew up just a few miles down the road in Sefwi Asuopiri, a village so small that it can barely be located on a map. 

Augustine Tawiah, centers, discusses the construction of the New Debiso girls’ boarding school with laborers.

His parents, both farmers, never sent his sister to school. 

“I’ve been through these villages, trying to start churches, trying to campaign to be elected, and I’ve come across these young ladies,” said Tawiah, who attends Lamplighter’s campus Church of Christ in Sefwi Debiso and the Knutsford University Church of Christ when in Accra. 

“They don’t have any future,” he added. “They have sixth grade educations, ninth grade educations. They are going to be farmers condemned to this life to have many children. And what is the future of these children?” 

“They don’t have any future. They have sixth grade educations, ninth grade educations. They are going to be farmers condemned to this life to have many children. And what is the future of these children?” 

To address these concerns, he and his wife, Anita Lynn, founded the Lamplighter Community Academy, a Christian school for K-6 students, in 2006. The couple  established the college 10 years later to allow students — who may pursue secondary education elsewhere — a seamless transition into higher education. 

Yet the challenges with girls’ education persisted. 

In rural households with multiple children, most parents can only financially support the education of one or two of their children. Often, they choose boys. 

“Girls are basically the ones who do the chores around the house,” said Lynn Tawiah, an American who has a doctorate in education from Regent University in Virginia and a master’s in education from the University of Memphis. “And boys generally go to school.”

Disparities in education

The main determining factors that create educational disparities in this West African nation are poverty, gender and distance to school, according to UNICEF. 

Faustine Delely knows all three intimately. 

Delely, a recent education graduate who completed her teaching practicum at the Lamplighter college, sacrificed for her education. 

Waking up at 5 a.m. to make sure she arrived on time, the Debiso Church of Christ member walked two hours to school every morning.

The wife of a cocoa bean harvester in New Debiso, Ghana, stands outside her home in the afternoon.

She was determined to complete school for one simple reason. 

“I saw my parents suffer,” Delely said. 

Education was her opportunity to avoid a life of poverty. But like many in rural areas, she faced financial difficulties.

To convince her parents to fund her education, Delely carried goods — usually cured fish — with her every morning to sell on the streets after school. 

“I knew I had to help my mother to get to where I wanted to go,” she said. “There are some parents who, if you don’t help, there is no way they will waste resources on you.”

“I knew I had to help my mother to get to where I wanted to go. There are some parents who, if you don’t help, there is no way they will waste resources on you.”

While gender disparities in education have improved since the 1990s, retention rates often decrease among female junior high and high school students, UNICEF reported in 2020. 

This is, in part, due to the expectation that girls should take on more responsibilities around the home with their siblings — or their own children. 

“In the rural communities, they need to be at home,” Lynn Tawiah said. “And they’re, of course, dealing with puberty, the interest in young men. Maybe they get pregnant.”

A girl’s place

Augustine Tawiah’s great niece is one such example.

Sarah Mensah was 17 when she got pregnant with her son, Flavio, now 12. 

“It was not easy,” said Mensah, now a licensed nurse. “At first, I had no hope. But my mom encouraged me and said that when I gave birth, she would take care of my child, so I could go back to school.”

Her mother, who worked as a teacher, dreamed of being a nurse. Her grandmother, who never attended school, dreamed of receiving an education. Mensah had the opportunity to fulfill both dreams. 

But her son’s birth strained the household’s finances. 

The man who impregnated her refused to provide any monetary support. Rumors that Mensah’s father attempted to sell her spread between the neighbors. 

“People said, ‘Even though you went to school, you still came back and gave birth. Look at your case. There is no need for even going to school,’” Mensah recalled. 

“People said, ‘Even though you went to school, you still came back and gave birth. Look at your case. There is no need for even going to school.’”

Eventually, her family raised the cost of tuition — 500 cedis or about $33 — necessary for Mensah to return to school. 

But not all girls are so fortunate. 

Adam Kusi, a chaplain at J.A. Kufuor Senior High School in Kumasi, has worked with multiple pregnant students since joining the school’s staff in 2021. 

“In places like Kumasi, because it is more of a metropolitan area, we don’t have those cultural issues affecting education,” said Kusi, who attends the Oforikrom Church of Christ. “But when you travel up north, in some areas people still hold on to their belief that the place of girls in society is in the kitchen. And most of the people who even have the resources to sponsor education would rather it be one of their male children than a girl child.”

Children of a rural farmer in New Debiso, Ghana, stand beside drying cocoa beans harvested by their parents.

The full image of Christ

Yet in this rural village, people packed into the Church of Pentecost building for a meeting formally introducing the girls’ boarding school project. 

Elders dressed in their traditional regalia sat in front of the community, listening to Augustine Tawiah’s proposal. Customs agents in the pews warned the contractors of prosecution if they stole materials or funds. Women standing in the back tended to fussy children. 

The entire project could be built in five months if funded by private donors, Augustine Tawiah said. 

But with limited government funds available for private school partnerships with the state, construction often grinds to a halt — sometimes for years.

The total project will cost about 11,911,640 cedi or $800,000. The construction of the dormitory and school facilities will cost a total of $380,000, and the remaining $420,000 will cover utilities, transportation and a medical clinic that will serve both the school and community.

Koo Reed, foreman over the construction of the New Debiso girls’ boarding school, surveys the plot of land.

The school will specialize in STEM, which comprises fields where girls historically have been underrepresented in Ghana. Classes and school clubs will focus on science, technology, engineering and math. 

Addressing the village, Augustine Tawiah spoke on the importance of girls’ education. 

“We need to really let them grow into the full image of Christ without being hindered,” he said. “We are not in a Muslim country, where girls are forced not to go to school. If they want to go to school, we want to create an atmosphere that is very open, that is conducive for them to go without any hindrance.”

When complete, the school will house 315 students. 

Augustine Tawiah has a master’s and doctoral degree in educational leadership and policy from the University of Memphis, as well as degrees from Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn., and the Harding School of Theology in Memphis, Tenn.

He intends to hire teachers and staff who are members of Churches of Christ, some who — like Delely — may have graduated from the Lamplighter college only four miles down the road. 

The boarding school will not just be a place of education — it will also offer safety. 

Foreman Koo Redd, right, discusses the construction of a new girls’ boarding school in New Debiso with men from the surrounding area.

“I envision girls from all over, not just from the immediate area, who are just happy and really learning — actually reaching their potential,” Lynn Tawiah said. “Not worried about anything around them, not being at risk of molestation, or even at risk of their education being halted because they have to run home and do chores every other day.”

But Augustine Tawiah imagines more than the positive short-term outcomes. He hopes for future generations of women serving in government, scientific research and law. 

“We are given the opportunity to have dominion over the world,” Augustine Tawiah said, referencing Genesis 1:26. “And women, as I continuously say, have a big say in the shape and twist of our worlds. 

“If you educate a man, you educate one person,” he added, citing an African proverb. “If you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation.”

“If you educate a man, you educate one person. If you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation.”

AUDREY JACKSON is Managing Editor of The Christian Chronicle. Contact audrey@christianchronicle.org.

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I traveled to the poor Caribbean nation in 2018 to report on Healing Hands International, a Christian humanitarian aid organization, drilling water wells.

As water gushed from a new well in one remote mountain village, a woman gleefully splashed the clear, flowing liquid on her face. Little boys and girls giggled as they cupped their hands under the spout, taking big gulps before filling plastic buckets to take home.

I witnessed a similar exuberant scene in a community near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

In a country beset with challenges, I saw hope. So much hope. And so much promise.

But now?

Heavily armed gangs have overtaken Haiti. Fatally weak political institutions have collapsed. Kidnappings and homicides have surged, as noted by a United Nations report.

Just last week, an American missionary couple — Davy Lloyd, 23; and his wife, Natalie Lloyd, 21 — were killed in a gang ambush in Port-au-Prince.

They died along with Judes Montis, 47, a Haitian father of two who worked for more than 20 years with Oklahoma-based Missions in Haiti Inc. Davy’s parents, David and Alicia Lloyd, founded the faith-based organization in 2000.

“It wasn’t Haiti that killed our children, it was selfish evil men who only have evil purposes, they do not represent Haiti,” a post on the organization’s Facebook page declared Thursday. “Haiti continues to cry for help and prays the world doesn’t continue to turn their backs on the terrible conditions that these wicked men are making a country live through. Continue to pray for God’s deliverance.”

As tears flow, Jason and Jennifer Carroll keep praying for the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

A decade ago, the couple moved to the developing island nation to work with Healing Hands, which is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, but funds clean water projects around the world. The nonprofit is associated with Churches of Christ.

The Carrolls quickly fell in love with the people and one boy in particular — a newborn named Edyson whose mother had died in childbirth. They took in “Edy,” now almost 10, and began efforts to adopt him. (Years later, they’re still engaged in that arduous process.)

I met the family — including two of their three biological children — on my 2018 trip.

In 2018, the Carroll family poses in front of Healing Hands International trucks in Haiti. Pictured, from left, are Cole, Callie, Edy, Jason, Jennifer, Chantry and Edy’s sister, Rogeline.

They returned home to Kentucky the next year.

“It was just getting really bad,” Jason said of the security situation. “Jen and all the kids had to evacuate out by helicopter. So it was just getting too dangerous.”

Jason served as Healing Hands’ water project coordinator in Haiti, where the nonprofit drilled 350 wells. Back home, he rebuilds municipal water filters. Jennifer works as a dental assistant.

Bowling Green, where the Carrolls attend Hillvue Heights Church, is roughly 1,500 miles — and a world away — from Port-au-Prince.

Still, news of the slayings of the Lloyds and Montis hit the couple hard.

“It’s just a horrible, horrible, horrible thing,” Jennifer said in a telephone interview.

“I know they must be absolutely broken. Please pray for their family.”

“I took Edy to school there four days a week,” she said of Missions in Haiti’s Christian preschool, about 15 minutes from Healing Hands’ gated complex north of the capital.

Jennifer knew Davy Lloyd’s parents and had met Montis. She describes David and Alicia Lloyd as “sweet, kind people who really had a heart for Haiti.”

“I know they must be absolutely broken,” she wrote on Facebook. “Please pray for their family.”

Jason told me: “It’s just really hard because we’ve still got friends and family (of Edy’s) there. It’s just really sad that the country is in such turmoil and chaos, and the gangs have taken over everything.”

Despite the sadness, the Carrolls maintain their faith in God.

In 2018, a Haitian girl pumps a water well drilled by Healing Hands International.

They pray that the situation in Haiti will improve, even as they work to help loved ones — including Edy’s biological father and brothers — leave the country. His older sister, Rogeline, 22, already is in the U.S.

Jennifer urges fellow people of faith to keep lifting up Haiti to the Lord.

“Yes, there’s a tremendous amount of gang violence and everything,” she told me. “But there are so many good, good, good Haitians that are just caught and just struggling daily to get food, get water, take care of their family, take care of their children.

“And we pray that someday our missionary friends who want to return can go back there,” she added, “because so many of them really made a difference.”

Jennifer’s voice choked with emotion as she spoke.

“I just hope and pray,” she emphasized, “that God will make a way.”

“There are so many good, good, good Haitians that are just caught and just struggling daily to get food, get water, take care of their family, take care of their children.”

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged, where this piece originally appeared. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

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But this one, Ukrainian Christians said, feels like a triumph.

Anna Ivanova

Anna Ivanova, who survived the Nazi occupation in World War II and nearly seven decades under the Soviet Union, died May 14 in her home in Kramatorsk — about 10 miles from the front lines of Russia’s invasion. She was 100.

She may have been “the oldest Christian in Ukraine,” said Jeff Abrams, minister for the Tuscumbia Church of Christ in Alabama.

Anna Ivanova takes notes during a Bible study in Kramatorsk, Ukraine.

“She refused our many offers to evacuate to a safer area,” said Abrams, who makes multiple trips to the Eastern European nation each year and directs Rescue Ukraine, which provides shelter, heat, food and medical assistance to Christians in Ukraine and refugees spread across Europe and the U.S. 

“She said she survived the Germans and would survive the Russians,” Abrams said of Ivanova, who also told the minister, “my next stop will be heaven.”

Ivanova grew up under Soviet atheism. “Her true love died during World War II,” Abrams said, “and she never married anyone but Jesus.”

She responded to the Gospel message when missionaries from Churches of Christ began working in eastern Ukraine after independence in 1991. Abrams baptized her in her bathtub in 1995.

Anna Ivanova and Jeff Abrams.

“She refused our many offers to evacuate to a safer area. She said she survived the Germans and would survive the Russians (and that her) next stop will be in heaven.”

Kate Gladkykh, a member of the Church of Christ in Kramatorsk, remembered asking Ivanova why she decided to get baptized. 

“She said that once she realized how sin is all about death and God is all about life, there was no doubt in her mind she wanted to be with God,” Gladkykh said.

Anna Ivanova chats with fellow Ukrainian Christians during a fellowship meal in Kramatorsk, Ukraine.

Ivanova was part of the first generation of Churches of Christ in what minister Oleksandr Rodichev called “post-atheist” Ukraine. Christianity was new and missionaries from America were a novelty. Many Ukrainians were baptized.

“But not all of the first ones kept the faith,” Rodichev said. “Many of the first ones passed away a long time ago. Not all showed diligence, and not all grew spiritually as they should.

“‘I’m thankful for those who have been faithful before me because they are why we have Christians in Ukraine now. Anna is an excellent example of a servant who loved the church and was involved in the church’s hospitality.”

“This is the last picture of me and Anna,” said minister Oleksandr Rodichev, left. He visited Ivanova at her home in Kramatorsk after a bomb attack. “Her home was entirely undamaged.”

In Kramatorsk, Ivanova cooked meals for the congregation and maintained dozens of flower arrangements in the church building.

“Every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday she’d be at the building checking on everything and making sure it was taken care of,” said Gladkykh, who now lives in Alabama and worships with the Tuscumbia church. “Then, when she started getting sick more often, I remember her writing all of the rules of how to take care of our flowers and plants.”

Anna Ivanova celebrates her 100th birthday in January 2024 with the Kramatorsk Church of Christ.

The end result was a “pretty big notebook” of rules, Gladkykh said, and Ivanova decided to give the instructions to a young Christian named Rita. Ivanova “wanted somebody really responsible and involved, so not so many candidates were suited for this position. But Rita was!” 

When the Russian invasion began, many church members fled west to Ukrainian cities farther from the front lines or to the nations of the European Union. Ivanova decided to stay, despite the pounding of artillery shells. 

A block away from her apartment, buildings lie in ruins. 

An apartment building stands in ruins one block away from Anna Ivanova’s home in Kramatorsk, Ukraine.

On Jan. 25, the church members who remain in Kramatorsk celebrated her 100th birthday.

She admired Abrams and Kramatorsk minister Vladimir “Vova” Paziy for “their ability to bring God’s Word to people’s hearts,” Gladkykh said. “I remember one time seeing her getting emotional about one of Jeff’s sermons. To me it was surprising, because Jeff talked about how sinful we all are and how we need to confess our sins to each other and to God. 

“I remember (Ivanova) saying how true that is,” Gladkykh said, “but, honestly, she is the purest person I have ever known!”

Anna Ivanova sits between ministers Vladimir Paziy, left, and Vitaly Rodichev in Kramatorsk, Ukraine.

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The initiative — led by James Michael Crusoe, Edward Keyton and Quintessa Hathaway — began in February during Black History Month after the Somebody Must Come Preaching podcast featured the trio on an episode titled “Their struggle is our struggle.”

Crusoe

“We didn’t take a position, per se, to say one group is right and the other group is wrong,” Crusoe said. “This is more about peace. How do you bring two parties together?”

The minister for the Arlington Road Church of Christ in Hopewell, Va.,  said 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 specifically spoke to him:

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

“Through Christ there is forgiveness,” Crusoe said. “Christ is redemption. That was our objective — not to point the finger at the Israelis or the Palestinians, not even to point the finger at the United States’ involvement in it, but to ask: What can the church do to bring peace and reconciliation?”

Hathaway

Hathaway, a member of the Jackson Street Church of Christ in Nashville, Tenn., and a former Democratic congressional candidate in Arkansas, acknowledged the controversy around the Israel-Hamas war. 

“We have to be willing to even touch upon issues that are controversial,” said Hathaway, whose preacher, Christopher Jackson, is among the signatories. “Jesus tells us to address matters such as these things. Jesus was a revolutionary. Jesus was an activist. He stood up against the Roman government. As true followers of the gospels, the Holy Bible, we have this same charge.”

The letter states that the “life and legacy of Christ requires followers to go into all the world teaching and preaching the Gospel and that the Great Commission is not limited to the church house. The Church of Christ is participating in an international reconciliation conversation.”

Hathaway hopes the document will motivate Christians to speak up about social issues — and perhaps even influence the president. 

“Our goal and objective is that the Biden administration hears that the Church of Christ is concerned about this matter, that we have our finger on the pulse of the problem,” she said. “We also seek for our fellowship, for members of the body and for ministers to go out and be about the business of spreading the word when it comes to what’s happening on domestic and international issues.”

The Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 Israeli citizens and abducted about 250 civilians. Nearly eight months later, more than 130 still remain in captivity, though a quarter are believed to be deceased, according to Israeli officials. 

Israel’s offensive actions — which have included the bombing of hospitals, a refugee camp and an aid caravan — have killed at least 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. Palestinian children represent 37 percent of the reported deaths.

The deaths of innocents are what motivated Warren Blakney Sr., minister for the North Peoria Church of Christ in Tulsa, Okla., and former president of the Tulsa chapter of the NAACP, to sign. 

The petition started by Black church leaders.

“I think one thing we probably would all agree on for the most part is that the killing of children and babies and the bombing of hospitals in this kind of culture and time is not what we would accept as Christians,” Blakney said. 

The document states, “What is happening in the Holy Land is genocide, inhumane, and is not reflective of Christian values.” 

Other signatories include Dwight Brownlee of Memphis, Tenn.; Perry Johnson of Tampa, Fla.; John Marshall of Anderson, S.C.; Roosevelt Johnson of Savannah, Ga.; Loyd Harris of Little Rock, Ark.; Joe Woodley of Hopewell, Va.; Marvin Bailey of Emporia, Va.; and Ruben Pillay of Durban, South Africa.

Keyton

The death toll also disturbs Keyton, minister emeritus for the Bouldercrest Church of Christ in Atlanta. He denounced Israel’s military response and said he believes most people want the nation “to cease and desist from this level of brutality.”

“I’m thinking about human lives — not so much Israeli lives or Palestinian lives — but people’s lives in general, because we all bleed,” Keyton said. “I just want to see it come to a stop.

“Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,’” he added. “And I would not want any entity blowing up my children, blowing up my infrastructure and killing people that had nothing to do with the conflict.”

AUDREY JACKSON is the Managing Editor of The Christian Chronicle. Contact audrey@christianchronicle.org.

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They shared more than a meal, said Mike Pruitt, a longtime missionary in Recife, a coastal city about 340 miles east of Cajazeiras.

Pruitt spoke on the event’s theme, “Hear and Obey,” using the story of Christ washing his disciples’ feet in John 13.

“Knowing he came from God and was returning to God, Jesus stooped to wash the disciples’ dirty feet,” Pruitt said, “leaving us an example of selfless service to follow.”

The event gave Pruitt and his wife, Aureni, the chance to catch up with Rivaldo Café, an evangelist who exemplifies Christ’s selfless service, the missionary said.

“When I first met him at his conversion, he was a professional soccer player. God called him from winning games to winning souls.”

“When I first met him at his conversion, he was a professional soccer player,” Pruitt said of Café. “God called him from winning games to winning souls.”

Café’s decision to leave futebol, as it’s called in Brazil, was unexpected, said his wife, Leila. When missionaries invited him to study at a Bible school in Recife in 1988, Café had just received an offer to play for a team in Portugal.

Mike Pruitt, left, and Rivaldo Café recently caught up at the Great Supper.

“He was waiting for the businessman to arrive with the club’s documentation so he could discuss the contract,” Leila Café told The Christian Chronicle, “and he gave it up, to everyone’s surprise. He was a true athlete of Christ, who called him to preach the Gospel.”

The Cafés and the Pruitts worked together to plant a congregation in Paulista, a northern suburb of Recife.

Paulista now has two Churches of Christ. The churches are among more than 20 launched in the Recife metropolitan area since missionaries arrived in 1980, Mike Pruitt said.

About 20 years ago, a mission team invited the Cafés to help them plant a church in Cajazeiras, a city of about 63,000 people. There, Rivaldo Café created a futebol program for impoverished communities, “rescuing young people and children from the world of drugs,” said Rebecca Café, one of Rivaldo and Leila Café’s four daughters, “and so he brought many young people to be servants of Christ.”

The Cajazeiras Church of Christ now has about 80 members.

“We were never rich, but we had God’s love, and that was enough to never give up as a family.”

“We were never rich, but we had God’s love, and that was enough to never give up as a family,” said Rebecca Café, now a medical student in Argentina, “and we never gave up on saving people for Christ.”

Mike Pruitt recalled one example of Rivaldo “washing feet.” A family in Cajazeiras had a sick infant who required treatment in Recife.

Rivaldo made the journey, which takes a full day each way, multiple times as he drove the parents and their 5-month-old son to the doctor.

Sadly, the child passed away, Pruitt said, but the love Rivaldo showed led to the baptism of the baby’s grandmother, “who was deeply moved by the church’s unwavering support and love.

Rivaldo Café created a futebol program for impoverished communities in Cajazeiras.

“The families involved often express profound gratitude for a type of love and support previously unknown to them, exemplifying the profound impact of Christ’s example.”

Rivaldo, now 60, suffers from early onset Alzheimer’s disease, Mike Pruitt said.

“Though his memory is failing him, he remains a sweet and loving servant of our Lord,” the missionary said. “He is a beloved figure in the community. His enduring, kind nature and the unwavering support from Leila, their four daughters and the congregation underscore the themes of fellowship at the heart of the Great Supper.”

Despite memory loss, Rivaldo has “just one speech” that he repeats regularly, his wife said: “Repent and be baptized to be saved and live with Jesus eternally.”

“He goes out on the streets,” she said, “handing out candy to people and saying, ‘Jesus loves you and your family and wants to meet you.’”

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is president and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org, and follow him on X @eriktryggestad.

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AUSTRALIA

LONGFORD — The Northern Midland Church of Christ, which meets in this colonial town on the island of Tasmania, hosted a five-day outreach series with guest speaker Mitchell Rutherford from the city of Gympie in Australia’s Queensland state. Six visitors attended.

Rutherford’s uncle, Kevin Rutherford, is scheduled to speak at a similar event in July in George Town on Tasmania’s northern coast. Kevin Rutherford, who was born in Zambia, grew up on the mission field in Tasmania and now serves as dean of admissions for the Memphis School of Preaching in Tennessee.

Church members in Cúcuta, Colombia, practice pedicures.

COLOMBIA

CÚCUTA — Christians in this South American city seek to be the hands and feet of Jesus by concentrating exactly on that — hands and feet.

The Cúcuta Church of Christ trains women to give professional manicures and pedicures. “It’s a job that will allow them to be able to provide for their families,” church members said in a recent social media post. The congregation serves many low-income families, including refugees from neighboring Venezuela.

Karen Swan, director of Redwood Montessori School in Lebanon, Ind., helps a student prepare a “fire stick” for Malawi.

MALAWI

LILONGWE — Christians in this African nation soon will receive a shipment of toilet paper rolls stuffed with shredded paper and candle wax — all in the name of saving trees.

The Malawi Project, an Indiana-based nonprofit supported by Churches of Christ, hopes to provide people in rural villages with a means of starting and maintaining cooking fires without contributing to the problem of deforestation.

“Malawi, and much of central Africa, is fast running out of trees,” workers with the Malawi Project said in a recent blog post.

As much as 88 percent of Malawi’s 20 million people don’t have access to electricity, according to the World Bank.

Wilson Tembo, executive director of The Malawi Project’s Action for Progress program, will work with a village in a pilot program for the “fire sticks,” as the nonprofit has dubbed them.

Villagers will use the toilet paper rolls rather than trees or limbs for their cooking fires for 30 days. If successful, the nonprofit will mass produce the fire sticks.

Participants pray during the Romania Lads to Leaders conference.

ROMANIA

VALEA DRAGANULUI — In this mountainside Transylvanian village, Romanian Christians took a brief break from evangelism and their ongoing ministry to Ukrainian refugees to watch their children lead singing, give speeches and perform puppet shows.

About 75 believers from nine Churches of Christ met for the annual Lads to Leaders convention. Missionary David Gibson brought the youth program to Romania about 11 years ago.

The convention is “just the reward that the kids receive after a whole year of learning and studying the Word of God,” said Sorina Vintilă, the mother of participants in this year’s convention.

“I have seen children so nervous and introverted that they could barely open their mouths or look at the audience, and now they are leading songs in their local church — or prayers or short devotionals.”

Vintilă and her husband, minister Dragos Vintilă, serve the Church of Christ in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

“I have seen children so nervous and introverted that they could barely open their mouths or look at the audience,” Sorina Vintilă said. “And now they are leading songs in their local church — or prayers or short devotionals.”

Dragos Vintilă and Ukrainian Christians are discussing the possibility of launching a Lads to Leaders program across the border in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.

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I was not yet 9 years old when my family arrived, sight unseen, in Perth. We came to the city on the western coast of Australia to join a mission team of other American families, Rudy and Melodee Wyatt and Ron and Fay Durham. We traveled halfway around the globe in hopes of starting a Restoration Movement congregation in this city of 750,000.

Over the years the Lord blessed this commitment with the establishment of the first nondenominational Church of Christ in the western third of Australia — followed by another, and then others. Our parents, Marvin and Dot Phillips, eventually handed the preaching baton to a young and eager Aussie evangelist, Ron Bainbridge, fresh out of Sunset International Bible Institute in Texas.

Our family returned “home” to a new mission challenge in Tulsa, Okla., a work that would later be known as the Garnett Church of Christ.

Middle, Ron Durham, Marvin Phillips and Rudy Wyatt, the original American missionaries to Perth, in the early 1960s.

But Perth never strayed far from my heart.

My brother, Mark, and his family served a brief stint as missionaries in Perth. I served for a decade on the staff of Mission Resource Network, directing South Pacific church planting. My sister’s family invests in kingdom partnerships in southern Africa. Our parents have passed away, yet their influence keeps us connected to the mission in Australia.

After two years of planning, Mark and I recently embarked on a month-long, bucket-list trip back to Perth, now a metropolis of 2.3 million people. We returned to sites, tastes and friendships of our youth. But our main reason for visiting was to see what the Lord has done in the past 60 years.

We consulted the personal journals that our father kept in his library. These writings guided us to reconnect with some of the families of faith from the 1960s and those that have come along since.

Worship on a Sunday at the Malaga Church of Christ in Perth, Australia.

We worshiped with the Malaga Church of Christ, one of the largest and most diverse congregations in Australia. Nearly 200 gathered on each of the three Sundays we attended. The church meets in debt-free facilities and is led by four elders — two of African descent and two Aussie nationals, sons of first-generation Christians from those church-planting years. Tears flowed as I watched one of the elders, Roger Tyers, lead children in singing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”

We got to know Eddie Legg, the church’s minister. He moved here from the U.S. and has served the church for 18 years with his wife and their two children. The Malaga congregation provides their support with no American funding. When we visited his home, brother Legg joyfully told us that he’s not seen here as a foreign missionary, “but rather as simply one of the Aussie evangelists.”

A number of smaller churches meet in western Australia, some in rented facilities and some in homes. We met with about 25 people for a Wednesday night Bible study led by George Funk, a native of South Africa who launched the well-known Gospel Chariot ministry. He and his family live in Perth, where he trains and competes in triathlons. He shares his faith with fellow athletes.

We also reunited with one of the most effective Aussie evangelist couples over the past half-century, Ron and Moya Bainbridge. Ron took over my father’s role as preacher in Perth in 1970. Ron helped to launch other congregations in the area. His radio and internet work, A Better Life Ministries, reaches around the world. We shared a video greeting from Rudy Wyatt, the American missionary who baptized Ron in 1964.

On our final Sunday in Perth, the Malaga church’s elders invited me to share a few thoughts. I realized that six decades prior, my father was sharing the saving message of Jesus with a tiny band of seekers gathered in a small, rented hall in Perth. Now I was speaking to a much larger audience, some of them first-, second- and even third-generation believers, in their own facilities, under the servant leadership of faithful, respected elders.

“The seed does not return void. For ‘He Holds the Whole Word in His Hands.’”

Indeed, the seed does not return void. For “He Holds the Whole Word in His Hands.”

ALAN PHILLIPS is stewardship officer for The Christian Chronicle. He and his wife, Donna, worship with the New Hope Church of Christ in Edmond, Okla. Contact alan@christianchronicle.org.

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The honors, presented Friday night at the ACP’s annual convention in Chicago, recognized stories ranging from ethnically diverse churches across the U.S. to a special-needs ministry in North Carolina to a chronic-pain support group in Oklahoma.

Scroll to the bottom for a full list of winners, celebrated for work produced in 2023.

The Christian Chronicle has won 177 awards from the Associated Church Press since 2007.

“This is the best team I’ve ever worked with, and they’re doing the best work we’ve ever done,” said Erik Tryggestad, the Chronicle’s president and CEO, who joined the staff as a reporter in 2001. “I’m thrilled that the judges recognized their hard work. None of them gets the credit they deserve for their service to the kingdom, and no award can convey that.”

The Chronicle has placed in the ACP contest 18 years in a row, winning 177 awards from the religious press group since 2007.

“We strive hard to produce high-quality journalism that honors God and serves our readers,” said Bobby Ross Jr., the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, who came to the Chronicle in 2005. “We are extremely grateful for the recognition from the ACP.”

Tryggestad, who has filed Chronicle stories from 90 countries and territories, attended this week’s convention, held at the historic Fourth Presbyterian Church in downtown Chicago.

“The ACP is a diverse, eclectic group of journalists who serve publications for Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, AME churches, Baptists, Mennonites — the list goes on,” Tryggestad said. “We don’t have the same beliefs, but we’re all dedicated to telling the stories of our fellowships and getting them right. I was impressed and humbled by the level of respect they have for what we do at The Christian Chronicle.”

“Covering Conflict in a Polarized World” was the meeting’s theme. Speakers covered topics including the use of artificial intelligence in reporting, statistical data that contradicts popular narratives about migration and immigration, and how faith-based publications can use vertical cellphone video to reach new generations through social media apps including TikTok and Instagram reels. 

Tryggestad joined Chris Herlinger and Gail DeGeorge of the Global Sisters Report, a project of the National Catholic Reporter, to present a class on “Covering Global Conflict for Faith-Based Publications.”

Gregg Brekke, center, serves as executive director of the Associated Church Press. He attended a session on “Covering Conflict in a Polarized World” that included The Christian Chronicle’s Erik Tryggestad.

The Christian Chronicle’s Erik Tryggestad, right, with Gail DeGeorge and Chris Herlinger of the Global Sisters Report.

Herlinger, who has traveled extensively to locales including Haiti, Sudan and, most recently, Ukraine, shared advice for reporters who cover their faith groups in conflict zones: Know the history. Minimize your presence in your writing. Don’t romanticize the assignment.

“I shared how I had learned most of Chris’ lessons the hard way,” Tryggestad said. “I gave some examples from my trip to Ukraine after the war started in 2022 and talked about finding stories of God at work even in the midst of chaos. It was great meeting another faith-based reporter who has been through some of the same things I’ve experienced.” 

The Chronicle’s award winners:

First place

• Local reporting (short format): Audrey Jackson for “Making Jesus more accessible” from Raleigh, N.C.

Judge’s comment: “This is everything good reporting should be — timely topic, well researched, strong personal angle with great quotes. It’s a superior effort.”

Quentin Germain, who has low muscle tone, sings with the praise team at the Brooks Avenue Church of Christ in Raleigh, N.C.

• • •

• Denominational politics: Cheryl Mann Bacon for “One hurricane, two churches” from Malibu, Calif.

Judge’s comment: “Denominational politics doesn’t naturally lend itself to excellent writing since the background can take so long to explain, and it’s often mired in details, yet here’s a simple tale told expertly with its deeper meaning belying the ease of reading. If only more denominational quandaries could be unraveled in this style.”

The Waves Church meets on a Sunday night in Stauffer Chapel.

• • •

• News story (short format): Bobby Ross Jr. for “‘It’s the same Jesus'” from Chicago.

Judge’s comment: “As an old news writer turned minister, I really enjoy well-done feature stories. This has it all. Really well done. Congrats.”

Christians enjoy a potluck meal at the Northwest Church of Christ in Chicago.

• • •

• Theme issue, section or series: Bobby Ross Jr. and Audrey Jackson for “United Nations of Faith.”

Judge’s comment: “A thoroughly reported exploration of where the church meets a world without borders. The stories stand very well independently but truly come to life when held together. A fantastic series that is commendable and exemplary.”

Pedestrians cross the street in front of the hostel where the Upper West Manhattan Church of Christ meets.

• • •

• Service journalism: Bobby Ross Jr. and Audrey Jackson for “A lifeline for people who hurt — all the time” from Woodward, Okla., and related column “What it means to live in pain.”

Judge’s comment: “A fantastic piece rooted in data, carefully researched and presented. The recount of stories of pain, the inclusion of medical experts, the rawness of the room where people bare their souls — it’s all here as a wonderful illustration of a space the church must meet. This is a wonderful example of why religious journalism still matters.”

The Broken & Mended support group meets at the Woodward Church of Christ in Oklahoma.

• • •

Second place

• International reporting (short format): Bobby Ross Jr. for “How a Russian immigrant came to serve Ukrainian refugees” from Houston.

• Humor, written: Erik Tryggestad for “Words I had to look up at the Christian Scholars’ Conference.”

Third place

• International reporting (short format): Audrey Jackson for “‘If they go into full-time ministry, they’ll go back to poverty'” from Benoni, South Africa.

• Convention or meeting coverage: Erik Tryggestad for coverage of the Luso-Africa Global Gathering in Angola.

• Theme issue, section or series (tie): Bobby Ross Jr. and Audrey Jackson for “No Limits.”

• Theme issue, section or series (tie): Bobby Ross Jr., Audrey Jackson, Cheryl Mann Bacon and Calvin Cockrell, for “Sacred Calling.”

• Single photo with article or cutline: Audrey Jackson for “Kerusso Experience trains high schoolers to fill empty pulpits.”

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The post Christian Chronicle wins a dozen national ‘Best of the Church Press’ Awards appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

The island, 250 miles east of southern Africa, also is “one of the most underrated surfing destinations in the world,” according to SurferToday.com. Madagascar’s southwest Toliara region has 12 sites that the website designates as “world-class” for catching waves.

Eliakim Monista, a native Malagasy, learned how to surf from an Australian friend. Monista picked up the skill quickly and started giving lessons himself.

Eliakim Monista baptizes a new believer in the Indian Ocean.

Unlike other instructors, however, Monista ended each session with a seaside Bible study.

Monista also was a quick study when it came to Scripture. In 2011, when he was in high school, he began corresponding with Vicki Murphy, a member of the Christian Chapel Church of Christ in Milport, Ala., through World English Institute.

“My plan was just to learn English only,” Monista told The Christian Chronicle. But as he studied the Bible lessons in the institute’s curriculum, he encountered a truth that went beyond grammar and sentence structure.

He asked to be baptized, Murphy said, and “he came up out of the ocean teaching others.”

Many people in southern Madagascar claim to be Christian, but they mix in elements of animism and ancestor worship, Eliakim said. His insistence that they worship God exclusively stirred up opposition. Nonetheless, a small group of believers responded to Monista’s teaching. They began meeting in a high school classroom before moving to a rented house.

Christians worship with a Church of Christ in Toliara, Madagascar.

“Thanks to God, we have our own house for meeting now,” Monista said.

Murphy and her husband, James, have traveled to Madagascar to work with Monista and Malagasy evangelists that Monista baptized. The Dalraida Church of Christ in Montgomery, Ala., supports the work.

“Eliakim is not only converting others,” Vicki Murphy said, “he is teaching them to teach others.” As a result, at least four Churches of Christ now meet in the Toliara region.

Vicki Murphy meets her World English Institute student, Eliakim Monista, in Madagascar.

Funding the work is a challenge. Madagascar is one of the poorest nations in the world, with three-fourths of its 29.6 million people living below the national poverty line, the World Bank reports.

Monista is unable to teach surfing now, partly because he doesn’t have access to a boat, he said. He’s also busy conducting Bible studies and following up with other World English Institute students.

In late 2023, one of his students, a high school physics teacher, traveled nearly 400 miles by bus so that he could be baptized by Monista. The physics teacher hopes to start a new congregation in his home village.

“Many people are being baptized,” Monista said, “and we keep teaching and planting churches in the countryside.”

Christians in Toliara, Madagascar hold a surfboard bearing the name of their congregation.

The post Surfing for souls in Madagascar appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

CROATIA

CRIKVENICA — More than 100 people met on the coast of this Central European nation for a spring camp hosted by the Varaždin Church of Christ and the Next Generation for Christ ministry. 

Christians from Fairfax, Va., and Liberty, Mo., helped to coordinate the camp, as did Next Generation representatives from the United Kingdom (Mark Hill) and Eastern Europe (Joel Petty). Refugees from Ukraine were among the attendees.

Croatian minister Mladen Dominic baptizes a new believer at a spring camp.

“The retreat is their national conference, but it really has become an evangelistic event in addition to building up the Christians here,” said James Nored, coordinator of the Next Generation ministry. The retreat resulted in one baptism and several requests for Bible studies from Ukrainian refugees who took part in the event.

CUBA

PALMA SORIANO — In a three-month period, a small Church of Christ in this small town in eastern Cuba experienced 45 baptisms, minister Bryan Gonzalez said. 

In 2022, Gonzalez trained with the Gospel Share/Gospel Chariot ministry in the Four Fields Discipleship method, said the Fernando Toledo, Latin American coordinator for Gospel Share. Now the church is “harvesting everything they planted for two years,” Toledo said.

A congregation packs the pews in eastern Cuba.

SOUTH KOREA

SEOUL — The Bible Correspondence Center, a ministry of Churches of Christ, hosted a two-week program featuring guest lecturers Phil Sanders of the TV show “In Search of the Lord’s Way” and Greg Tidwell, editor of Gospel Advocate.

More than 20 students, in person and online, studied the book of Philippians and the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. The correspondence center’s director, Sang Yang, interpreted. Sanders described Yang as “a humble, compassionate and true servant of the Lord.”

Korean minister Sang Yang translates for Greg Tidwell during a training course at the Bible Correspondence Center in Seoul.

TAIWAN

HUALIEN — A 7.4-magnitude earthquake, the biggest in 25 years, shook this city on Taiwan’s eastern coast, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 900. 

Boaz Wang told The Christian Chronicle that he and the other members of a small Church of Christ in Hualien survived. Wang and his wife, Ruth (who named themselves after the biblical couple), have served for three decades as volunteers in retirement homes, conducting Bible studies, worship services and baptisms for those who request baptism. 

Other church members across Taiwan reported minor damage, said William Chen, a former minister in Taiwan who teaches online for Chinese Bible School.

THAILAND

CHIANG MAI — Preachers in this Southeast Asian nation, especially those who don’t preach full time, often worry that they’ll say something wrong or that their understanding of Scripture is incorrect, said Ryan Binkley. So the missionary hosted a workshop for 12 lay preachers in northern Thailand. 

“My goals were to give some skills that make preparing a sermon more simple,” Binkley said, “and to instill confidence in them that they can bring a word from God when they get up to preach.”

Each attendee was assigned a passage, and the group shared ideas for organizing sermons based on that passage.

“My goals were to give some skills that make preparing a sermon more simple, and to instill confidence in them that they can bring a word from God when they get up to preach.”

UNITED KINGDOM

CUMBERNAULD — Forty-four men from across Scotland participated in the recent Men’s Day hosted by the Cumbernauld Church of Christ.

Speakers were Derek Brown of Castlemilk,  Johnson Olusola of Cumbernauld, Jon Galloway of East Kilbride and John Mooney of Livingston. The men spoke on the resurrection of Christ. 

“The singing was superb,” said coordinator Graham McDonald, “and the time of fellowship and mutual encouragement was much needed and appreciated.”

NEWSMAKERS

APPOINTED: Tom Montgomery, Humberto Mendoza and Toby Sharpe as elders of the Berry’s Chapel Church of Christ in Franklin, Tenn. They will join Mike Hayes, David Lankford, Steve Meeks and Keith Thomason. Scott Latham as chairman, Stephen Estes as vice chairman and John Dodd as secretary for the Freed-Hardeman University board of trustees in Henderson, Tenn.

BAPTIZED: Braxten Pisula at the North Terrace Church of Christ in Zanesville, Ohio. London Hughes at the Madison Park Church of Christ in Seattle. Wayne Mullin at the Leawood Village Church of Christ in Joplin, Mo. Chip Goble at the Ravenswood Church of Christ in West Virginia. Bonnie Julian at the Church of Christ at Grissom in Peru, Ind. Addison Amos at the Antioch Church of Christ in Halls, Tenn. Angie Gillispie at the Fayette Church of Christ in Alabama. Sidonie Matthew at the East End Church of Christ in Toronto. Sadie Garrett at the Willow Avenue Church of Christ in Cookeville, Tenn. Conner Boles at the New Hope Church of Christ in Celina, Tenn. Andrés Godínez, Michelle Gonzales and Maikel Almenares with the Barva Church of Christ in Heredia, Costa Rica. Dillon Scott at the Spokane Church of Christ in Washington. Lenayah Carthens at the Grand Central Church of Christ in Vienna, W. Va. Audrey Pratt at the 7th and Mueller Church of Christ in Paragould, Ark.

HIRED: Kelly Sims as youth minister at North Tuscaloosa Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa, Ala. 

The post Around the World: A baptism and Bible studies in Croatia, an earthquake in Taiwan and more quick takes appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

That’s how Eduardo Vásquez described his adopted home — Uruguay, a teardrop-shaped nation sandwiched between Brazil and Argentina. He and his wife, Odalis, moved here from Venezuela in 2015 with their two children.

The couple, who met at the Mérida Church of Christ in western Venezuela, left their homeland in the midst of the political and economic turmoil that followed the death of President Hugo Chávez. The family made a new life among the 3.3 million souls in this sun-drenched republic, which has enjoyed a stable democracy since the mid-1980s while avoiding the controversies and corruption that plague its neighbors.

@christianchronicle MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Uruguay’s got talent! A street performer named Santi spins soccer balls and juggles knives — all while unicycling. Erik Tryggestad is reporting on the Iglesia de Cristo (Church of Christ) in this South American capital and happened upon this performance (and gave the performer some well-earned tip money) #uruguay #montevideo #streetperformer #unicycle #iglesiadecristo #juggling #uruguaysgottalent ♬ What a Year – Inner Circle

The nation also has the highest cow-to-human ratio in the world, nearly 4 to 1. 

Here, grilled meat is an art form.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, the Vásquezes joined a host of joggers, cyclists and dog-walkers along Montevideo’s Rambla, a palm-lined avenue on the Río de la Plata.

Joggers, dog walkers and volleyball players enjoy a sunny Saturday afternoon on Montevideo’s Rambla, a pedestrian avenue that winds along the Río de la Plata.

“It’s an estuary, actually, not a river,” said Eduardo Vásquez, who earned a master’s in geoscience here. Now he teaches for a university. His wife, who has degrees in English, does billing for the University of Utah Hospital. She works from their home, a small apartment atop a massive shopping complex. Shoppers can enjoy yoga classes, a grocery store with self-checkout and a theater showing “Kung Fu Panda 4” in IMAX.

The Vásquezes’ kids, ages 15 and 13, opted not to join their parents on the Rambla. Instead, they got a pizza from the Sbarro in the mall’s food court.

The family misses Venezuela, of course, but they’ve carved out a good life in this Switzerland of Latin America, as it’s known. Uruguay welcomed them the same way it welcomes refugees and immigrants from across the region.

Only one aspect of life here failed to exceed their expectations — at first, anyway.

The church.

A once-thriving church

For all the peace and prosperity that the country enjoys, Uruguay may be the continent’s most secular state. Rates of atheism and agnosticism are high compared to the rest of South America. The country has rebranded religious holidays, replacing Holy Week with Creole Week, celebrating the heritage of the gaucho, a kind of Latin American cowboy and folk symbol.

The El Chaná coffee building in Montevideo once was home to a growing Church of Christ.

In Venezuela, the Vásquezes were part of a congregation with a vibrant young adults ministry. In Montevideo, they found a 30-member Church of Christ made up largely of aging widows. They met in a huge, historic building that was falling into disrepair.

“It was depressing,” Odalis Vásquez said.

It wasn’t always that way. Three decades ago, Churches of Christ spread across the city. One congregation had 200 members and sponsored a choral group.

Myriam Irgoyen has stacks of photos from those days. After a recent Sunday worship, she and her daughter, Ximena Ramírez, shared them with a few of the church’s Uruguayan members.

Irgoyen, 83, was one of the early converts after pioneering missionary Evert Pickartz and evangelist Juan Urriola came from Chile. Urriola was preparing to become a Catholic priest when his studies led him to a different understanding of the Gospel — and to Churches of Christ. In Montevideo, Urriola got to know Luis Ramírez and invited him to church. Ramírez asked Irgoyen to join him. They were dance partners in an intercultural program that practiced traditional folk dances by the Río de la Plata.

Photos from a collection of longtime church member Myriam Irgoyen show the Montevideo Church of Christ in its heyday in the 1990s.

The couple married, and Irgoyen was baptized in 1969. Four years later, folk dances became illegal after a military coup. Decades of dictatorship followed — much of which Irgoyen and her husband spent in another South American nation, Paraguay, as missionaries.

Democracy returned to Uruguay in 1985. Two years later, Herrera died and Irgoyen returned to Montevideo. By then, missionary Dan Coker was working with church leaders to purchase the former corporate offices of coffee company El Chaná.

Dan Coker in his Toluca, Mexico, office in 2001.

Coker, a cultural anthropologist known among Churches of Christ as “the dean of Latin American missions,” envisioned the facility as the future home of a Christian university for all of South America. Coker’s alma mater, Abilene Christian University in Texas, used the building to house students in its study abroad program. In 1993, new missionary families — the Elliotts, the Roanes and the Sparks — arrived from the U.S.

A decade later, most of the missionaries had returned home — and a few Uruguayans had joined them. Others passed away, some drifted away and only a handful remained to carry on the work. By the time the Venezuelans arrived, the small congregation was unable to maintain its large facility, and the city’s strict historic preservation laws made it impossible to renovate.

After intense discussion and prayer, the congregation made the gut-wrenching decision to sell the building. A few heartbroken members left the church, but most remained. They worshiped together in a temporary facility — a karate dojo — as they looked for a new home. ACU found a new facility for its students.

Myriam Irgoyen looks over a collection of photos from the Montevideo Church of Christ’s heyday.

Irgoyan’s daughter, Ximena, remembered the childhood years she spent in the El Chana building. The decision to leave was painful, she said, but so was “seeing it decay the way it had.”

Her mother, meanwhile, found herself asking God, “Now what are you going to do with us?”

Finding peace beyond logic

Perhaps God helped the church find its new facility, a four-story storefront across the street and a few doors down from the El Chana building.

Eduardo Mesa unlocks the meeting place of the Montevideo Church of Christ before Sunday worship.

On a recent, sunny Sunday, church members waited outside for Eduardo Mesa, a native Uruguayan, to pull up on his motorbike and unlock the gate. Inside, an upturned wooden pallet, adorned with flowers, welcomed visitors with Jesus’ words taken from John 1: “Antes que tu amigo te invitara, yo te vi.” (“Before your friend invited you, I saw you.”)

Soon, the first-floor auditorium held nearly 60 Christians — kissing each other’s cheeks in greeting. The church’s new evangelist, Manuel Herrera of Venezuela, led hymns, including “Te pido la paz para mi ciudad” (“I ask you for peace for my city”).

@christianchronicle MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Welcome to the best-kept secret in South America. Uruguay, a small nation of 3.4 million people nestled between Argentina and Brazil, enjoys a good standard of living and political stability that can be elusive in other countries on the continent. It’s also one of South America’s most secular societies, with higher percentages of people who identify as atheist or agnostic than its neighbors. The Montevideo Iglesia de Cristo had more than 60 worshippers on when The Christian Chronicle visited Sunday — from Uruguay, Venezuela, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and even India. Enjoy this hymn from the Sunday service and look for more coverage soon in the Chronicle. #montevideo #uruguay #acappella #sundayworship ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

Carlos Pérez, a refugee from Cuba, delivered the sermon — part of a six-month study of Ephesians. The book tells how the peace of Christ broke down cultural barriers between Jews and Gentiles in the early church.

Carlos Péerez Fernández, second from right, and fellow church members gather to pray and prepare before Sunday worship at the Montevideo Church of Christ.

“The peace we get is outside of human logic,” Pérez said. “That’s why the world can’t understand how we can praise and sing and give glory to God, even in the difficulties.”

“The peace we get is outside of human logic. That’s why the world can’t understand how we can praise and sing and give glory to God, even in the difficulties.”

After the sermon, church members passed the unleavened bread and fruit of the vine to commemorate the Lord’s Supper. Then Mesa led a prayer for the church’s newest attendee — Ayshrya, newborn daughter of Anush and Sravanthi Saramekala. They moved here from Hyderabad, India, to work for a software company. 

Church members waited patiently as Anush Saramekala typed out a message of thanks on his phone and translated it to Spanish. Before they left, a church member gave the couple a gently used pack-and-play crib for the baby.

Eduardo Vásquez welcomes Ayshrya, the newborn daughter of Anush and Sravanthi Saramekala. The couple moved to Montevideo from India about two years ago. Anush reads the words of welcome through a translation program on his phone.

“These people have become family for us.” Sravanthi Saramekala said as her husband slung the collapsed crib over his shoulder.

‘We didn’t feel like aliens’ 

Most of the members stayed after worship for a time of reflection, prayer and snacks. They stepped away, a few at a time, to talk to The Christian Chronicle as Odalis Vásquez translated. 

Marcia Altagracia Liriano

Marcia Altagracia Liriano moved here in 2014 from the Dominican Republic. Her son-in-law followed, and then her daughter. Two of her sisters moved to Uruguay as well. She loves the mix of nationalities in the church, she said. She was baptized in her home city, Santo Domingo. Her sisters weren’t. They began attending the church in Montevideo and were baptized here.

 “She just keeps bringing people,” Odalis said with a laugh.

 Pérez, who preached the sermon, was baptized in Santa Clara, Cuba. He and his family made a long, perilous journey here through Mexico, Panama and Brazil in 2022. Cuba’s faltering economy was the reason for their move, said Pérez, a physical therapist.

“But we didn’t want to give up our faith,” he added. In the Montevideo church “we didn’t feel like aliens or outsiders. … They involved us as if they had known us our whole life.”

“We didn’t want to give up our faith. We didn’t feel like aliens or outsiders. … They involved us as if they had known us our whole life.”

Mesa, who unlocked the church gate, and Emanuel Peraza, who taught the youth group’s Bible class, are natives of Uruguay. They remember the heyday of the Montevideo church in the 1990s.

While they’ve experienced a few hiccups and misunderstandings as they’ve transitioned to a multinational, multicultural church, the effort has been worthwhile, Mesa said.  

“I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter where you come from,” he said. “The Word of God is the same, and we are all the same.”

Fanny Muñoz and her husband, Emanuel Peraza.

When Peraza was asked how he’s adapted to his foreign brothers and sisters, he couldn’t help but grin. A few minutes later he introduced his wife, Fanny Muñoz, a Venezuelan. They married about two years ago.

When the Venezuelans arrived, “we were going through a downfall, passing out, passing away,” Peraza said. “The immigrants brought with them something warm. And I believe that is essential for Uruguayans to understand the Gospel.

“Right now, with Uruguayans, they don’t want to hear about church. But we are open to discussions of faith in general.”

Herrera, the church’s new evangelist, plans to use material from ministries including Apologetics Press to reach out to people in his adopted home.

Evangelist Manuel Herrera prays after leading the hymn “Èste es el Día” (“This is the Day”) during the Montevideo Church of Christ’s Sunday worship service.

“I believe that apologetics is a good way to make us think,” Peraza said, “but the solution will be the warmth.”

For example, “We have a friend; his name is Jesús — a flesh-and-bone one!” Peraza said with a laugh. When Jesús, an immigrant, had extra food, he took some to his Uruguayan neighbors.

“And they were weirded out by it,” Peraza said. “We don’t do that in Montevideo!” 

But when Uruguayans receive hospitality, he added, they feel compelled to return the favor.

An ‘urge to work’ and grow

Nearly a decade after their arrival in Montevideo, the Vásquezes still miss Venezuela. 

But they are encouraged by their small-but-growing congregation.

And while Irigoyen misses the church’s old days in the El Chaná building, she sees the immigrants as an answer to her prayers.

“Thanks to the disgrace of another country,” she said, “they came here with this urge to work for the church and to help it grow.”

Leonardo Sanchez passes a communion tray during the Montevideo Church of Christ’s Sunday worship service.

Patricia Lazaga, another of the church’s longtime Uruguayan members, takes a more reserved approach.

“There’s a lot of work to do — with our kids and the youth — for this legacy to continue,” she said. The past decades have taught her that it’s better to “stand by ourselves” than to rely on “expectations of support” from abroad.

Eduardo and Odalis Vásquez stand by the first letters of their names on Montevideo’s Rambla, an avenue on the Río de la Plata.

Rather than seeking support, the church is working in partnership with Georgia-based Latin American Missions in an effort to revitalize a Church of Christ in Salto, a small city in western Uruguay. Only a handful of members remain, but the ministry plans to send a ministry student from Mexico to work in Salto later this year.

“There are Christians in other parts of Uruguay, not just here,” Lazaga said. “It’s our task to help find them so that we can keep growing together.”

“There are Christians in other parts of Uruguay, not just here. It’s our task to help find them so that we can keep growing together.”

The post ‘Peace for my city’ appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

It might not be human, one of the Turkish drivers reassured the One Kingdom disaster relief staff.

Yet standing on top of what used to be multiple apartment complexes, the team from the White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ ministry in West Monroe, La., had its doubts. 

“You know that it’s not just rubble,” said Beverly Dobbs, a One Kingdom staff member who traveled nearly 7,000 miles to document relief efforts. “You’re standing on people’s lives, everything that they had and — for many of them — their loved ones. It is really overwhelming.”

Since a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake last year killed more than 53,000 people and displaced some 3 million residents according to Turkey’s Interior Ministry, recovery has been slow. 

Buildings, unstable and deteriorating, await bulldozing. Broken concrete forms piles where families used to live. People — bodies unidentified or unfound — remain missing.

Ramazan Arkan, minister for a church that received financial support from One Kingdom, helped pull people from the rubble after the Feb. 6, 2023, quake. 

“Everywhere smelled like death,” Arkan recalled. “When we were in the camp providing food for people that first week, maybe every five minutes there was some scream and people crying. They’d heard the news that their mom or dad or somebody is dead.”

More than a year later, the city is quiet, often only disrupted by the sound of construction equipment. 

Nearly 106,000 buildings inspected by Turkey’s Environment and Urbanization Ministry in the 11 provinces affected by the earthquake were destroyed or irreparably damaged, the ministry reported. 

In Antakya, the seat of Hatay Province, 80 percent of buildings were deemed structurally unsound and slated for demolition, according to Hatay Mayor Lutfu Savas.

“In this community, it’s profoundly silent,” Dobbs said. “I think that part of what overwhelms me was the lack of joy. You wonder how in the world do you restore hope in a community that’s lost so much.”

“In this community, it’s profoundly silent. I think that part of what overwhelms me was the lack of joy. You wonder how in the world do you restore hope in a community that’s lost so much.”

‘The church worked through us’

Yet, hope grows among the survivors.

Women visit in the streets of temporary housing established by İlk Umut Derneği — First Hope Association in English. Children ride bicycles and kick soccer balls in between the container homes after school. 

The faith-based nonprofit also offers clinics and mental health counseling to the temporary housing residents. It is one of several foreign ministries supported by One Kingdom, which formed with the 2017 merger of White’s Ferry Road Relief and World Radio.

Turkey has a minuscule Protestant and evangelical Christian population of 7,000 to 10,000 members among the 83 million population, according to 2022 estimates from the U.S. State Department. Still, Christians were among the first to mobilize in response to the disaster.

Workers with İlk Umut Derneği aided in search and rescue, established a field hospital with Samaritan’s Purse and provided mobile hygiene units. 

Demokan Kileci, İlk Umut Derneği’s chairman of the board and a Christian, was one of the first to respond to the destruction in Antakya, driving through aftershocks to reach devastated areas. 

Robert Ables, co-director of One Kingdom, was shocked when he contacted Kileci from the U.S. upon hearing news of the disaster.

“He answered me on FaceTime, and he was in the car,” said Ables, who is also a White’s Ferry Road elder. “I was seeing him, seeing his face, as he was struggling to comprehend what he was going to be facing. He was already on the road within an hour and a half. The sun hadn’t even come up yet.”

Kileci wasn’t alone — churches from across Turkey sent volunteers to aid İlk Umut Derneği, the Turkish Red Crescent and AFAD, the country’s disaster management agency.

“The church worked through us, believe it or not,” Kileci said, noting the volunteers from Arkan’s church — the Antalya Evangelical Church — and other congregations.

“Christians, we are called to respond any time there is a need,” he added. “Because those are the times that we have the opportunity to reflect Jesus Christ. There are no actual agendas for us. Our only agenda is to reflect his love and heart.”

“Christians, we are called to respond any time there is a need. Because those are the times that we have the opportunity to reflect Jesus Christ. There are no actual agendas for us. Our only agenda is to reflect his love and heart.”

A new foundation 

Arkan and another minister with the Antalya Evangelical Church, Özgür Uludağ, spent weeks living out of their church’s van while volunteering.

For six weeks they camped in Adıyaman, a city with a majority Kurdish population, spending their days passing out aid and their evenings drinking tea with people in the tent communities. 

“Because we sat around the same fire together, we smelled like them,” Uludağ said. “We were sleepless just like them. We looked homeless.

“They said, ‘The other organizations treat us like we have a contagious disease,’” Uludağ recalled. “‘They just leave bags over there. You came to us to drink tea, to talk with us.’ 

“Many people mentioned that no one was listening to them,” he added. “They felt truly alone and helpless. Even the fact that we listened to them and prayed was a great support.”

The Antalya ministers plan to partner with the Diyarbakır Protestant Church to plant an evangelical  congregation — the first in the city. 

“The earthquake happened in the eastern part of Turkey, one of the hardest parts of Turkey for sharing the gospel message,” Arkan said. “The earthquake opened the way for churches to be a witness in that area, for many people to receive help from us, and that changed the reputation of the church.”

Yet most of the Turkish Christians said they don’t expect to see mass conversions anytime soon.  

“A lot of people lost their lives,” Kileci said. “There’s a lot of pain and agony, and we share that. I think in the midst of everything, God is really revealing himself with good work, good deeds, right now, and more individual results will come out of this.

“Right now it’s the period where we throw the seeds,” he added. “It’s in his season and in his timing that we will see those sprout and grow.”

But human timing does not concern the One Kingdom team.  

Compassion must come first in a disaster, Dobbs said.

“When they see and feel the love, then down the line, there’s time for conversation,” she said. “I can’t go in there with the intention of assessing where they are spiritually first. We have to meet their needs first — and sometimes meeting their needs takes a long time.”

“When they see and feel the love, then down the line, there’s time for conversation. I can’t go in there with the intention of assessing where they are spiritually first. We have to meet their needs first — and sometimes meeting their needs takes a long time.”

AUDREY JACKSON traveled to Turkey to report this story through a partnership between The Christian Chronicle and ReligionUnplugged.com. Contact audrey@christianchronicle.org.

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Hear from the Chronicle’s journalists, Metaleap Creative’s José Reyes and — as a bonus — the editors of two student newspapers at universities associated with Churches of Christ.

Listen now.

This is a mockup of how a recent edition of The Christian Chronicle would have looked with the new design. Compare it to the old look.

• • •

OKLAHOMA CITY — “The next issue will surprise you and hopefully delight you,” Bailey McBride wrote in the April 2000 print edition of The Christian Chronicle. “We will have a sharper, more contemporary look. We will, however, strive even harder to report all the news of all the Churches of Christ.”

Twenty-four years later, the Chronicle staff is making the same promise.

A long-overdue redesign debuts in the May 2024 issue of the Chronicle, complete with new features and new fonts.

Instead of the Second Front, Across the Nation, Around the World, Currents and Partners sections, the paper will classify news under the headings of Matter of Fact (top stories), National, International and Life Matters, which will feature opinion content, Q&A interviews and reviews.

Along with the print redesign, the Chronicle’s social media and web presence are undergoing a refresh, with new logos, fonts and other design updates. Readers may have noticed some of these changes already.

The Chronicle’s new logo will identify the newspaper alongside its new masthead.

Erik Tryggestad began working for McBride, then the editor of the Chronicle, in 2001. At the time, the newspaper’s current design was less than a year old.

“Traditionally, newspapers redesign about every five years,” said Tryggestad, now the Chronicle’s president and CEO. Though some readers may not remember a design before the current one, “as you look back through the archives at The Christian Chronicle, you realize this, in fact, is not the way it’s always been.”

“Traditionally, newspapers redesign about every five years. As you look back through the archives at The Christian Chronicle, you realize this, in fact, is not the way it’s always been.”

The new design was born out of necessity.

“Our fonts actually expired,” Tryggestad said. “I did not know that fonts could expire much like a gallon of milk. And yet, here we are. Our fonts simply do not work on the latest versions of our operating software.”

The Chronicle hired Metaleap Creative, an award-winning design agency in Atlanta that has redesigned faith-based publications including Christianity Today, World and Sojourners.

Months of consultation followed with Metaleap’s design team, headed by José and Nikolle Reyes, and with the Chronicle’s printer, Gannett.

Working closely with Chronicle staff to retain the newspaper’s purpose and identity, Metaleap developed the new design to be organized, professional, engaging — and, most importantly, trustworthy.

Previews of the Chronicle’s new design.

“The result is a design that I believe will be easier to read,” Tryggestad said. “It makes better use of space and doesn’t feel as crowded as our current design has become.”

Tryggestad assured readers that their favorite aspects of the Chronicle — including the games pages and monthly Brenton cartoon — aren’t going away.

And the newspaper’s commitment to “real news that honors God,” as its masthead reads, hasn’t changed, said editor-in-chief Bobby Ross Jr.

“As far as our mission of informing, inspiring and connecting members of Churches of Christ, that won’t change. We will still be traveling all across the United States and around the world to pursue important and interesting stories.”

“We’ll keep pursuing the same kind of stories because we feel like our readers like what we do,” Ross said. “As far as our mission of informing, inspiring and connecting members of Churches of Christ, that won’t change. We will still be traveling all across the United States and around the world to pursue important and interesting stories and trends. It’s just a matter of packaging.”

Scott LaMascus, the Chronicle’s former managing editor, echoed the same sentiment when he introduced the current design — which has undergone slight tweaks in the past 24 years — in April 2000.

“Our new design brings us up to the same national standards in design which Charlie Marler, professor of journalism at Abilene Christian University, brought to the Chronicle nearly 20 years ago,” LaMascus wrote. “A global outlook and an inclusive spirit will remain the markers of our identity.”

Mastheads of The Christian Chronicle — in production since 1943 — are shown through the years.

AUDREY JACKSON is Associate Editor of The Christian Chronicle. Reach her at audrey@christianchronicle.org.

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Featured image (above): Jauna Reeger hugs a newly baptized sister in Christ at Hacienda of Hope in Tabacundo, Ecuador.

Jauna Reeger hugs a newly baptized sister in Christ at Hacienda of Hope in Tabacundo, Ecuador.

The ministry, associated with Churches of Christ, launched in 2002 to provide for children who need a safe place to call home.

The Hacienda also offers education and spiritual formation to at-risk children. Recently, two teenage mothers served by the ministry decided to give their lives to Christ in baptism.

“These girls affirmed that they know that, wherever they are, they will always have Jesus with them now — and someone to help guide them as mothers to their daughters,” the ministry posted to social media.

Reeger and her husband, Justin, work with Hacienda of Hope. See haciendaofhope.org.

SPOTLIGHT

PARIKA, Guyana — Churches of Christ meet on both sides of the mighty Essequibo River in this South American nation. Getting between them requires a big, slow-moving ferry or a small, fast-moving boat.

They’re usually fast, anyway. The one Brian Hall was riding in had engine failure mid-journey.

“We drifted awhile … until a replacement boat pulled up beside us,” said Hall, director of Go Teach the Word Missions, who accompanied a team from Spring Hill, Tenn., led by Chris Keiffer.

As the passengers switched boats, the vessels “bobbed up and down and slammed into each other,” Hall said. He wondered how Peter felt as he attempted to walk on water in Matthew 14.

Moses Budhai

The team worked with Guyanese ministers at four congregations, including 22-year-old Moses Budhai, preacher for the Parika Church of Christ and a graduate of Good Hope Bible School in Guyana.

Hall makes visits to Guyana with ministries including Amerindian Missions and Guyana Christian Medical Missions. Hall’s ministry provides Guyanese churches with song books, class curriculum, workbooks, reading glasses, communion supplies and more.

“I feel a big need to help the small village congregations that do not have electricity, internet,” he said. Go Teach the Word provides materials for 81 congregations across Guyana plus three Bible schools and Hope Children’s Home.

WEBSITE: goteachtheword.org

AUSTRALIA

MELBOURNE — After a five-year hiatus, due mainly to pandemic restrictions and concerns, the fourth Asia-Pacific Elders, Deacons and Spouses (APEDS) forum brought 109 participants to Melbourne for fellowship, instruction, singing and prayer.

Attendees came from 27 congregations in Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore and the U.S. The Belmore Road Church of Christ hosted the event.

“It was wonderful to be surrounded by so many godly men and women from around Australia, New Zealand and Asia,” Kate Jennings, a member of the Canberra Church of Christ in Australia, told InterSections magazine. “The whole experience was incredibly refreshing and nourishing and also gave me so much encouragement about the future of the Lord’s church.”

Justin Dauner

FRANCE

LYON — Justin Dauner returned to the city where he was born to preach for the Lyon Church of Christ during a recent open house event. Dauner, the son of missionaries Max and Prisca Dauner, and his wife, Alicia, serve as part of mission team in Marseille, France. Sixteen visitors attended the open house, said Lyon missionary Arlin Hendrix.

MONGOLIA

ULAANBAATAR — As a result of depression, alcoholism and a traditionally nomadic lifestyle, many children in this Asian nation grow up without stable, loving families, said Dale Taylor, executive director of Agape Asia. Some youths turn to crime and are incarcerated.

Agape Asia, a nonprofit supported by Churches of Christ, has served more than 100 children in Mongolia through its work in a correctional facility and through sponsorship of children in family-based care.

Recently, two visitors from Lipscomb University encountered a young man who had been served by the ministry while he was in prison.

“He expressed his gratitude for the support and encouragement he received during his darkest moments,” Taylor said. “With Agape’s assistance, he gained the confidence and strength to pursue his studies and successfully gained admission to a university.” The ministry helped to pay for his first year of studies. See agapeasia.org.

MALAWI

SALIMA — As they learn to sow gospel seeds in this southern African nation, preachers also learn to sew fabric. The Malawi International Bible Institute, which trains evangelists for Churches of Christ, recently launched training initiatives in tailoring and computer repair.

Across Africa, congregations struggle to support their ministers, so many preachers must work secular jobs — sometimes on Sundays, said Jim Dillinger, a member of the institute’s board. With vocational training, preachers “can go into business and set their own hours,” he said.

The school plans to send its students on evangelistic campaigns in April and throughout the summer months.

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“My father told me that, when I was born, the family was going through tough times. They were in financial crisis. My dad wasn’t working. They needed a way to get out of the situation — a plan, a method. So, to them, I was the method.”

Though he grew up in poverty, Moyo discovered a method to pursue a passion he harbored from age 8 — studying God’s Word. He enrolled in NationsUniversity, an online school associated with Churches of Christ that offers free education in theology and ministry.

“Within six years, he had finished his fourth degree at the university,” said John Baxter, the university’s president. “He has taken all 85 courses the university has to offer.”

Most recently, Moyo completed a Master of Divinity degree in 2021. He also has trained through Bear Valley Bible Institute International.

Method Moyo

Moyo, 32, preaches for a Church of Christ in Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, Bulawayo. He and five other ministers there have launched a church-planting effort in rural areas, though funds for transportation and food are a challenge, he said.

Last year, Moyo took on a pastoral role at Cure Children’s Hospital of Zimbabwe, a ministry of Cure International. The hospital serves children with disabilities.

“Africa has, for a long time, considered disability as a bad thing … something that comes as a result of an ancestral curse, witchcraft or some wrongdoing in the family,” Moyo said. “It is unfortunate that many Christians continue to hold on to this belief — to the extent that they believe that people with disabilities have spirits working in them. This belief has hindered the inclusion of people with disabilities in the church.”

As part of his ministry, Moyo conducts “Theology of Disability” seminars to help church leaders turn their congregations into “communities of belonging.” The seminars dispel myths about disabilities, using lessons from Jesus’ encounters with the disabled, and suggest methods of greater inclusion for all people. More than 300 church leaders have completed the program.

“We all bear the image of God,” Moyo said. “That is not determined by what one can or cannot do.”

He’s thankful for the emphasis NationsUniversity instructors place on the Great Commission — a mandate “to go out there and change my world,” he said.

His family name, Moyo, means “heart,” he said.

As for the name his father gave him, Method, “I consider myself a person who provides a way.”

Website: nationsu.edu

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is president and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. He is a deacon of the Memorial Road church. Reach him at erik@christianchronicle.org.

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