Then again, it’s not trying to be.

The church plant — which grew out of the Hermitage Church of Christ, a half-century-old congregation that closed in 2018 — seeks to reach a new generation with the Gospel.

Located about 20 minutes east of downtown Nashville in Hermitage, New Garden meets in a middle school auditorium. A member of the praise team strums a guitar. Women as well as men speak from the stage.

New Garden Church members partake of the Lord’s Supper each Sunday.

“We often say that too many churches are known for what they’re against, but we want to be known for what we’re for,” lead minister Michael Clinger explains in a video on the church website.

“We may be small in number, but we are a group of people from different generations who are committed to being in relationship with God, with each other and with our community,” adds Madeline Clinger, Michael’s wife and a part-time ministry staff member.

In just a few years, New Garden — which averages Sunday attendance of about 70 — has become known for serving its community.

Five times a year, the church feeds hundreds of neighbors through a large mobile grocery giveaway. 

Members provide back-to-school supplies and volunteer as mentors at DuPont Tyler Middle School, the low-income school where the church worships.

In addition, New Garden organizes holiday meals and year-round snacks for the teachers and helps with special events for the community.

“I truly cannot say enough about what a blessing they are to our faculty and staff,” assistant principal Dawn Roberts said. “The love of Christ most definitely shines through in all they do.”

The praise team leads worship at the New Garden Church, which meets in a school auditorium in Hermitage, Tenn.

Growth and decline

The Hermitage Church of Christ formed in the 1940s on the outskirts of Nashville.

By 1967, when members opened a large new building at a busy intersection, average Sunday attendance approached 500.

“The building site chosen by the Hermitage congregation is considered by planners to be one of the most ideal church locations in the Nashville area from the standpoint of accessibility and growth potential,” The Christian Chronicle reported in February 1967. “The Hermitage community, which will be served by the congregation, is one of the fastest growing areas in Davidson County.”

Eventually, the Sunday count topped 800, said Andy Borchers, a former Hermitage member who made the transition to New Garden, about a half-mile away.

But by the mid-2010s, Hermitage — like a lot of churches nationwide — found itself in decline. 

The flock grayed. The membership number fell to a few hundred. The cost to maintain the half-century-old facility rose.

Andy Borchers, pictured outside the school auditorium where the New Garden Church meets in Hermitage, Tenn., reflects on the congregation’s history.

“We were looking at $3,000 a week just to open the doors and not really seeing a lot of ministry,” Borchers said. 

“We had maintenance issues. We had roof leaks. We had mold in the building,” he added. “We were just scraping by, and the bank account was always tight.”

“We had maintenance issues. We had roof leaks. We had mold in the building. We were just scraping by, and the bank account was always tight.”

The Hermitage church faced tough decisions about its future, said Blair Bryan, board chairman for Heritage21, a consulting ministry that helps congregations with financial and legal issues.

“Instead of waiting until the congregation had lost all momentum and could only serve itself while their building slowly deteriorated around them,” Bryan said of Hermitage leaders, “they determined to be proactive and become a congregation that could effectively impact their community for Christ.”

Ja’ziyah and Lily, both 3 years old, greet each other before the New Garden Church’s Sunday assembly.

Reinvesting resources

Hermitage closed in 2018 and sold its building for $1.65 million in 2019 to the Mount Gilead Missionary Baptist Church, according to property records.

The congregation used the proceeds to benefit various ministries, Borchers said, from Kairos Church Planting to World Christian Broadcasting to Healing Hands International.

And Hermitage reinvested some of the funds to launch New Garden, including spending $100,000 to renovate the DuPont Tyler school auditorium, he noted. In exchange, the school district gave the church five years of free rent.

The new cushioned seats replaced old wooden folding chairs that were in poor condition.

“It’s a win-win deal,” Borchers said. “So now the school has band concerts in a nice place. And we have a place on Sundays for church.”

After its former minister took a new job, New Garden became a branch campus earlier this year of Nashville’s Woodmont Hills Church, which also has a heritage in Churches of Christ.

“For Hermitage” bumper stickers reflect the New Garden Church’s devotion to serving its community.

“We did not have a strategic plan to seek out additional campuses,” said Jeff Brown, Woodmont Hills’ lead minister. “We do, however, hold the crucial commitment to pay attention to what God might be up to.

“When New Garden approached us about a partnership, we listened through that lens,” Brown added. “At every phase of discernment, we found ourselves leaning in to know more. … We decided we can do better work together than we can apart.”

“At every phase of discernment, we found ourselves leaning in to know more. … We decided we can do better work together than we can apart.”

Josh and Olsa Whitson serve as the shepherding couple assigned to the New Garden campus. The former Hermitage members made the move to New Garden.

“That was a tough journey to go through,” Josh Whitson said of the transition from Hermitage to New Garden. “But I think we’re a healthier church on this side than we were on that side. 

“We’re not too big,” he added. “But that doesn’t always mean you’re a healthy church. We’re very close-knit. We’re very active in this community and in this school.”

A sign outside the school welcomes worshipers to the New Garden Church in Hermitage, Tenn.

Accommodating culture?

New Garden’s approach — including instrumental music and increased women’s roles — concerns leaders such as Phil Sanders, speaker for the national television ministry “In Search of the Lord’s Way.”

Such innovations depart from Scriptural teachings, those leaders believe.

“I can just see lots of problems … with regard to how they worship,” Sanders said. “Even if they’re baptizing according to the Scriptures — for the forgiveness of sins — their worship is going after the modern way and not after the Scriptures. I only see it as accommodating culture.”

John Mark Hicks, a retired Bible professor at Lipscomb University and an expert on the Restoration Movement, offers a different perspective.

While some of New Garden’s practices vary from more traditional churches, the congregation represents “an authentic heir of what we call Churches of Christ,” Hicks said.

“This is a new expression of the trajectory of Restoration churches,” Hicks said. “Few of those churches want to disconnect from the original heritage of congregationalism and the believer’s baptism and the weekly Lord’s Supper.”

Members and guests gather in the school lobby before a Sunday assembly of the New Garden Church in Hermitage, Tenn.

Instead, he suggested, leaders of such churches look at the older tradition and say: “I value that because I grew up in it. It formed me. I love the people there. … But the mission of the kingdom has led us to seek a new expression of that old common ground.”

Over the past 20 years, Kairos has worked with 40 church plant projects across the U.S., executive director Bruce Bates said.

Church planters view innovation as a means — and a necessity — to fulfill the Great Commission in the modern era, Bates said.

“I think those approaches, which New Garden and other churches are bravely trying, have Matthew 28 at the heart of them,” he said. “I’m proud to stand with them.”

But Sanders said “Search” receives calls each week from seekers — including young people — drawn to the same simple teachings that helped Churches of Christ grow decades ago.

“The thing that is so interesting,” he said, “is that more often than not, it is the distinctive doctrinal things that we are teaching that are attracting them rather than pushing them away.”

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

The post Is this church plant innovative or unscriptural? appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Then again, it’s not trying to be.

The church plant — which grew out of the Hermitage Church of Christ, a half-century-old congregation that closed in 2018 — seeks to reach a new generation with the Gospel.

Located about 20 minutes east of downtown Nashville in Hermitage, New Garden meets in a middle school auditorium. A member of the praise team strums a guitar. Women as well as men speak from the stage.

New Garden Church members partake of the Lord’s Supper each Sunday.

“We often say that too many churches are known for what they’re against, but we want to be known for what we’re for,” lead minister Michael Clinger explains in a video on the church website.

“We may be small in number, but we are a group of people from different generations who are committed to being in relationship with God, with each other and with our community,” adds Madeline Clinger, Michael’s wife and a part-time ministry staff member.

In just a few years, New Garden — which averages Sunday attendance of about 70 — has become known for serving its community.

Five times a year, the church feeds hundreds of neighbors through a large mobile grocery giveaway. 

Members provide back-to-school supplies and volunteer as mentors at DuPont Tyler Middle School, the low-income school where the church worships.

In addition, New Garden organizes holiday meals and year-round snacks for the teachers and helps with special events for the community.

“I truly cannot say enough about what a blessing they are to our faculty and staff,” assistant principal Dawn Roberts said. “The love of Christ most definitely shines through in all they do.”

The praise team leads worship at the New Garden Church, which meets in a school auditorium in Hermitage, Tenn.

Growth and decline

The Hermitage Church of Christ formed in the 1940s on the outskirts of Nashville.

By 1967, when members opened a large new building at a busy intersection, average Sunday attendance approached 500.

“The building site chosen by the Hermitage congregation is considered by planners to be one of the most ideal church locations in the Nashville area from the standpoint of accessibility and growth potential,” The Christian Chronicle reported in February 1967. “The Hermitage community, which will be served by the congregation, is one of the fastest growing areas in Davidson County.”

Eventually, the Sunday count topped 800, said Andy Borchers, a former Hermitage member who made the transition to New Garden, about a half-mile away.

But by the mid-2010s, Hermitage — like a lot of churches nationwide — found itself in decline. 

The flock grayed. The membership number fell to a few hundred. The cost to maintain the half-century-old facility rose.

Andy Borchers, pictured outside the school auditorium where the New Garden Church meets in Hermitage, Tenn., reflects on the congregation’s history.

“We were looking at $3,000 a week just to open the doors and not really seeing a lot of ministry,” Borchers said. 

“We had maintenance issues. We had roof leaks. We had mold in the building,” he added. “We were just scraping by, and the bank account was always tight.”

“We had maintenance issues. We had roof leaks. We had mold in the building. We were just scraping by, and the bank account was always tight.”

The Hermitage church faced tough decisions about its future, said Blair Bryan, board chairman for Heritage21, a consulting ministry that helps congregations with financial and legal issues.

“Instead of waiting until the congregation had lost all momentum and could only serve itself while their building slowly deteriorated around them,” Bryan said of Hermitage leaders, “they determined to be proactive and become a congregation that could effectively impact their community for Christ.”

Ja’ziyah and Lily, both 3 years old, greet each other before the New Garden Church’s Sunday assembly.

Reinvesting resources

Hermitage closed in 2018 and sold its building for $1.65 million in 2019 to the Mount Gilead Missionary Baptist Church, according to property records.

The congregation used the proceeds to benefit various ministries, Borchers said, from Kairos Church Planting to World Christian Broadcasting to Healing Hands International.

And Hermitage reinvested some of the funds to launch New Garden, including spending $100,000 to renovate the DuPont Tyler school auditorium, he noted. In exchange, the school district gave the church five years of free rent.

The new cushioned seats replaced old wooden folding chairs that were in poor condition.

“It’s a win-win deal,” Borchers said. “So now the school has band concerts in a nice place. And we have a place on Sundays for church.”

After its former minister took a new job, New Garden became a branch campus earlier this year of Nashville’s Woodmont Hills Church, which also has a heritage in Churches of Christ.

“For Hermitage” bumper stickers reflect the New Garden Church’s devotion to serving its community.

“We did not have a strategic plan to seek out additional campuses,” said Jeff Brown, Woodmont Hills’ lead minister. “We do, however, hold the crucial commitment to pay attention to what God might be up to.

“When New Garden approached us about a partnership, we listened through that lens,” Brown added. “At every phase of discernment, we found ourselves leaning in to know more. … We decided we can do better work together than we can apart.”

“At every phase of discernment, we found ourselves leaning in to know more. … We decided we can do better work together than we can apart.”

Josh and Olsa Whitson serve as the shepherding couple assigned to the New Garden campus. The former Hermitage members made the move to New Garden.

“That was a tough journey to go through,” Josh Whitson said of the transition from Hermitage to New Garden. “But I think we’re a healthier church on this side than we were on that side. 

“We’re not too big,” he added. “But that doesn’t always mean you’re a healthy church. We’re very close-knit. We’re very active in this community and in this school.”

A sign outside the school welcomes worshipers to the New Garden Church in Hermitage, Tenn.

Innovative or unscriptural?

New Garden’s approach — including instrumental music and increased women’s roles — concerns leaders such as Phil Sanders, speaker for the national television ministry “In Search of the Lord’s Way.”

Such innovations depart from Scriptural teachings, those leaders believe.

“I can just see lots of problems … with regard to how they worship,” Sanders said. “Even if they’re baptizing according to the Scriptures — for the forgiveness of sins — their worship is going after the modern way and not after the Scriptures. I only see it as accommodating culture.”

John Mark Hicks, a retired Bible professor at Lipscomb University and an expert on the Restoration Movement, offers a different perspective.

While some of New Garden’s practices vary from more traditional churches, the congregation represents “an authentic heir of what we call Churches of Christ,” Hicks said.

“This is a new expression of the trajectory of Restoration churches,” Hicks said. “Few of those churches want to disconnect from the original heritage of congregationalism and the believer’s baptism and the weekly Lord’s Supper.”

Members and guests gather in the school lobby before a Sunday assembly of the New Garden Church in Hermitage, Tenn.

Instead, he suggested, leaders of such churches look at the older tradition and say: “I value that because I grew up in it. It formed me. I love the people there. … But the mission of the kingdom has led us to seek a new expression of that old common ground.”

Over the past 20 years, Kairos has worked with 40 church plant projects across the U.S., executive director Bruce Bates said.

Church planters view innovation as a means — and a necessity — to fulfill the Great Commission in the modern era, Bates said.

“I think those approaches, which New Garden and other churches are bravely trying, have Matthew 28 at the heart of them,” he said. “I’m proud to stand with them.”

But Sanders said “Search” receives calls each week from seekers — including young people — drawn to the same simple teachings that helped Churches of Christ grow decades ago.

“The thing that is so interesting,” he said, “is that more often than not, it is the distinctive doctrinal things that we are teaching that are attracting them rather than pushing them away.”

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

The post Why a Tennessee congregation sold its building and moved into a school appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Fifty years later, my fond memories of that time remain strong.

I was reminded of that experience as I perused the booths at last week’s inaugural Polishing the Pulpit conference in Branson, the popular vacation destination in the Ozark Mountains.

More on that in a moment. But first, a bit of background: Polishing the Pulpit began with three preachers — Allen Webster, Mark Howell and Floyd Bailey — getting together to brainstorm sermons 30 years ago.

Now, 5,500 men, women and children gather each August in Sevierville, Tenn., at the edge of the Smoky Mountains. The weeklong event has become so popular that organizers added a second Polishing the Pulpit this July in Branson, nearly 700 miles west of the East Tennessee location.

“The thought was that we would take some pressure off the Sevierville location because we’re maxing it out,” said minister Todd Clippard, who spoke to The Christian Chronicle at the request of Polishing the Pulpit’s directors. “And second, the Polishing the Pulpit in Sevierville is always the third week of August, and you have a lot of parents who can’t come because their kids are in school.”

A giant “PTP” sign — short for “Polishing the Pulpit” — greets attendees at the inaugural conference at the Chateau on the Lake Resort Spa and Convention Center in Branson, Mo.

Clippard, who preaches for the Burleson Church of Christ in Hamilton, Ala., characterizes Polishing the Pulpit as a spiritual feast.

The Branson conference featured more than 150 speakers and 500 classes for various age groups. Special tracks were geared toward preachers, elders, women, teens and children. Worship assemblies brought together the entire crowd for singing, prayer and preaching.

“You’ve got 2,000 people who are all on the same page, all striving toward the same goal,” Clippard said of the Branson gathering, which drew 1,944 attendees. “You see people — from newborns to 100 years old — who are still fighting the good fight.”

Dan Winkler preaches during the inaugural Polishing the Pulpit conference in Branson, Mo.

A minister’s ‘getaway’

Doug Gregory, pulpit minister for the West Side Church of Christ in Elkton, Ky., drove 420 miles to Branson with his wife, Annetta, and three sons.

Doug Gregory preaches for the West Side Church of Christ in Elkton, Ky.

Gregory, who recognized me from my picture in the Chronicle, calls Polishing the Pulpit his “getaway.”

“The minister stands in the pulpit every week and is supposed to be a well and pour out,” he said. “But if you don’t pour something in, you ain’t got nothing to pour out.”

He shared how last year’s Polishing the Pulpit in Sevierville galvanized his ministry.

Until then, he spent most of his workweek in his church office. But a series by Chris Donovant, evangelist for the Kensington Woods Church of Christ in Hattiesburg, Miss., changed his perspective.

“To sum it up … Jesus went around to meet physical needs to gain an opportunity to meet spiritual needs,” said Gregory, whose church has launched an addiction recovery ministry and turned its former parsonage into a refuge for the homeless.

Producing gospel preachers

Preaching is, of course, a focus at Polishing the Pulpit.

I couldn’t help but notice all the booths for preaching schools — from the Georgia School of Theology to the Bear Valley Bible Institute in Denver.

The Chronicle has reported extensively on the minister shortage in Churches of Christ, so I was eager to hear from the preaching school representatives.

Tom Moore, who has preached for 40 years, serves as dean of students for the Texas School of Preaching.

I talked to Tom Moore, dean of students for the Texas School of Preaching, a ministry of the BCS Church of Christ in the Bryan-College Station area. Now in its third year, the school graduated its first class of five last summer.

“We want to prepare people to be bold in the pulpit,” Moore said. “We just want to produce gospel preachers.”

“We want to prepare people to be bold in the pulpit. We just want to produce gospel preachers.”

I talked to Ethan Tate with the Tri-Cities School of Preaching and Christian Development — which started in 2001 and has its own building by the Stoney Creek Church of Christ in Elizabethton, Tenn. 

Tri-Cities serves about a dozen on-campus students and more than 50 in distance learning classes.

“Our focus is not just training men to preach the Word of God,” Tate said. “We want to train ladies to be Bible class teachers. … We want to help men become more mature in their position, wherever they serve in the church. 

“We want to help equip all Christians,” he added, “to be able to do the work for Jesus and for God’s glory.”

David Deagel with the West Virginia School of Preaching reports that recruiting students has been difficult.

‘We need students’

I talked to David Deagel with the West Virginia School of Preaching. The 30-year-old school is sponsored by the Hillview Terrace Church of Christ in Moundsville, about 70 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.

Lately, recruiting has been a challenge for the school, which has six students enrolled for the fall.

“You’ve probably seen all the ads you’ve been running in The Christian Chronicle where there are so many churches that need preachers,” Deagle said. “And we need students. But things have been kind of light the past couple of years (in terms of) men taking up that mantle to preach the Gospel.”

I talked to Caleb Griffith, a graduate of the Brown Trail School of Preaching in Bedford, Texas. The 20-year-old serves as a field representative for the school, which opened in 1965 and has six students.

Caleb Griffith serves as a field representative for the Brown Trail School of Preaching in Bedford, Texas.

“We believe there’s a shortage of quality preachers,” Griffith said. “We’re focusing less on turning out the quantity of men so much as the quality of men.”

I talked to Jackie Walker and Wayne Rodgers with the Memphis School of Preaching in Tennessee. Walker, whose late husband, Don, taught at the school, works with admissions and the library. Rodgers and his wife, Cindy, started 4:16 Ministries (based on Ephesians 4:16), which is partnering with the school on stateside mission work. 

Founded in 1966, the school expects about 50 students this fall.

Wayne Rodgers and Jackie Walker work with the Memphis School of Preaching in Tennessee.

“We have a preacher shortage — a sound preacher shortage — and we get calls all the time for preachers,” Walker said. “A lot of preachers are staying at congregations a long time, so the littler ones are struggling to find good preachers.”

I talked to Trent Kennedy and Steven Lloyd with the Southwest School of Bible Studies in Austin, Texas. The school, started in 1974 and sponsored by the Southwest Church of Christ, ranges between 12 and 25 students at any given time.

“There are more pulpits than there are men who want to preach,” Kennedy said. “In rural congregations, the salary is not real high, so a lot of those men will need to work part time and do a secular job of some sort to support themselves and their family.”

And I talked to Brian and Jagie Kenyon with the Florida School of Preaching, hosted since 1969 by the South Florida Avenue Church of Christ in Lakeland.

Brian Kenyon started as a student at the school in 1989 and has directed it since 2009. 

“I’m just full-out fired up about Jesus,” said Kenyon, who grew up in a nonreligious household and found his Christian faith after going through drug rehabilitation.

Brian Kenyon, pictured with his wife, Jagie, directs the Florida School of Preaching.

If everyone shows up, the school will have eight students this fall.

“The foundation you get at a preaching school — the Bible foundation — is something you can use no matter what you do in life,” said Kenyon, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn. 

“Even if you don’t preach, it’ll make you a better husband,” he stressed. “It’ll make you a better elder or deacon in the church. It’ll make you a better employer or employee. It’ll just make you better.”

“The foundation you get at a preaching school — the Bible foundation — is something you can use no matter what you do in life.”

Why choose a preaching school?

In Churches of Christ, four basic criteria help explain the appeal of preaching schools, according to Carlus Gupton, director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn.:

• Cost: “Preaching schools are much less expensive.” Most charge no tuition.

• Sense of trust: “Preaching schools are viewed by those who attend and the churches who hire their graduates as being more in line with their understanding of what constitutes sound teaching.”

• Curriculum: “Preaching schools often cover the entire canon of Scripture and related topics and are often focused strictly on those areas instead of requiring other subjects that may be helpful but not necessary for ministry roles.” 

• Community: “Preaching school cohorts are often small and tight-knit, with everyone taking the same classes and often living near each other for a few years. This is part of the reason their lectureships are strongly supported in that they allow friends to reconvene.”

On my 300-mile drive home from Polishing the Pulpit in Branson, I called my 79-year-old father, who still preaches for a rural congregation in North Texas.

While living in West Monroe, La., in the mid-1970s, the Rosses pose for a photo. Pictured are Bob and Judy with son Scott, daughter Christy and son Bobby.

We reminisced about the two years Dad spent at the since-closed White’s Ferry Road School of Preaching, devoting late nights to Bible study, making lifelong friendships and going on evangelistic campaigns across the U.S. — often taking along the entire family.

Ah, the precious memories.

“It was one of the highlights of our lives,” said my father, who later earned a Bible degree from Freed-Hardeman.

Amen, Dad.

Mike Vestal, minister for the Westside Church of Christ in Midland, Texas, poses for a photo with Bobby Ross Jr. during the Polishing the Pulpit conference in Branson, Mo. Vestal attended Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn., with Bob Ross, Bobby’s father.

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

The post Polishing the Pulpit puts the focus on preaching appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

But until this past weekend, that category of memories did not burden our children and grandchildren. Other tragedies have. Columbine. The Oklahoma City bombing. 9/11. Sandy Hook. Too many others. 

But more than four decades had passed since an assassination attempt on a current or former U.S. president — at least since one that was known to the public, one that happened on live TV.

For a time, we told ourselves these events brought us closer as a people. We recall 3-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s casket and President George W. Bush grabbing a bullhorn to thank first responders digging through the 9/11 rubble. We find bizarre comfort in nostalgia.

But in reality we are a flawed and cynical people, suspicious of all who see things differently. We have not mastered the lessons of history, much less the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount.

We forget that Christians with no political power whatsoever, believing in a risen Christ who never sought nor espoused any earthly power, changed the world in a generation.

They did it without a bully pulpit, without a 24/7 news cycle, without social media.

Amid war, disease and disaster, they fed the hungry, rescued abandoned babies and created hospitals to care for the sick and dying.  

The Romans didn’t change. Christians loved their neighbors anyway.

Heed that lesson.

Your community has hungry people in it. Go feed them.

Former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday in Butler, Pa.

Your state has neglected, abused and unwanted children. Take care of them. 

Your community has immigrants and refugees — legal and otherwise — who are frightened and lonely. Welcome them. 

In the process, you’ll almost certainly discover that someone working next to you votes differently than you do. Let them. Love them. Don’t waste your breath berating them. 

Just work together to help the hurting person in front of you. One of you will lose the election. One will win. Keep serving together anyway.

Paul told the Corinthians, “Christ’s love compels us.”

As we process the violence in Pennsylvania that killed a retired fire chief, Corey Comperatore, and wounded at least three others, including the former president, don’t be consumed with anger. Don’t get caught up in the blame game. “It’s his fault. It’s their fault. It’s the media’s fault.” 

The only path back to sanity is consistently choosing to follow in the steps of the Savior — a path of sacrifice, compassion and generosity to one another.  

Because Christ’s love compels us.

The Hashemis and the Kluvers pose for a group photo at the Afghan refugee family’s Oklahoma home. Christians, including the Kluvers, have helped the Hashemis acclimate to life in America.

CHERYL MANN BACON is a Christian Chronicle contributing editor who served for 20 years as chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University. Contact cheryl@christianchronicle.org.

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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.

For most, the rising temperatures signal a more relaxed time of year, characterized by lazy days playing in the water, road trips to see loved ones and all sorts of fun and games.

For many members of Churches of Christ, the warmer months bring beloved traditions that go back years and even decades. Teens crowd into church vans and travel to areawide youth nights. Church ladies prepare cookies and Kool-Aid to serve at Vacation Bible Schools. Preachers hit the road to speak at Wednesday night sermon series.

Pharaoh faces off against Mario during an Exodus-themed Vacation Bible School at the Northside Church of Christ in Mayfield, Ky., in 2023.

We do our best at The Christian Chronicle to report on exciting news happening in Churches of Christ across the U.S. and around the world.

But summertime reminds us just how big our God is — and just how unequipped we are to reflect the full range of blessings he bestows.

So we provide snapshots that we pray provide an inkling of the Lord’s work in us and among us.

Picture the McAdams family from the McDermott Road Church of Christ in Plano, Texas. Nearly 600 miles from home, they enjoy singing, fellowship, fun, eating, Bible learning and encouragement at Camp Blue Haven in Las Vegas, N.M.

Hollee McAdams listed some of her favorite parts of the week: “(Son) Noah’s best friend putting on Christ, visiting on the porch with fellow teachers, (son) Malachi coming up and talking to us throughout the week and him praying over his dad (Wes), both boys leading prayers during devos, our class of great kids, learning a new song, ‘Gratitude,’ and being with my hubby all week.”

Noah McAdams sticks out his tongue as a staff member snaps a photo at Camp Blue Haven.

Picture Adam Metz, a minister for the Alum Creek Church of Christ in Lewis Center, Ohio, laboring alongside young people at the 20th annual Central Ohio Work Camp.

“We’ve painted nearly 150 houses in those years,” Metz shared. “Excited for the crew I get to work with.”

Picture sister congregations in Middle Tennessee meeting as one racially diverse body for four straight weeks — for the third summer in a row — for a special unity emphasis dubbed Greater Together.

Christians worship a Greater Together service at the Tusculum Church of Christ in Nashville, Tenn., in 2022.

Greater Together’s theme this year: “Broken but Beautiful.”

Picture hundreds of teens from predominantly African American congregations converging on a college campus in Louisville, Ky., for the 72nd annual National Youth Conference.

“We are grateful to be a part of this storied summer tradition,” said Lamont Ross, senior minister for the Marsalis Avenue Church of Christ in Dallas. “We are indebted to Orum Trone Sr., who established the National Youth Conference in 1952, and all of the dedicated men and women who have served … so that generation after generation can participate in this unique experience.”

The same could be said about countless other traditions, from mission trips to preacher training camps to big gatherings like Polishing the Pulpit and the Red River Family Encampment. All help bring the faithful together this time of year, and we praise God for them.

Ah, summertime.

“We are grateful to be a part of this storied summer tradition.”

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

The post Sun and blessings: God is working appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Then, someone put him on a bus and sent him 1,400 miles farther north, to America’s third-largest city.

“We didn’t know anyone here,” said Daviel, speaking through a translator, as he stood in the small foyer of the Northwest Church of Christ in Chicago. A church member, Barbara Foucher, helped the Venezuela native fill out paperwork to receive help through the congregation’s food program.

Sacks of vegetables line the stairs in the foyer of the Northwest Church of Christ. Workers with the church’s food pantry distribute the sacks to clients who wait outside. Near the sacks, a sign advertises the church’s upcoming Vacation Bible School.

Daviel’s brother, Albert, stood nearby, silent. Albert suffers from “a kind of paralysis” and is nonverbal, his brother said. Bringing Albert on the journey was dangerous, Daviel said, but their parents could no longer care for him. And the gang warfare and medicine shortages that plague Venezuela gave him few alternatives.

The brothers were among 70 families who made a pilgrimage through Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood on a sunny Saturday afternoon, past dog walkers and Little Leaguers, to the church’s food pantry. Christians and volunteers from a nearby high school loaded sacks of fresh vegetables, canned goods and loaves of bread into their cars, vans or backpacks as airplanes soared overhead, landing at O’Hare International.

Some of those in need came here from distances even greater than Venezuela. For Ukrainian Anastasia Sokolova, Chicago was her third move in less than a decade. Her parents died when she was 7, and she grew up in an orphanage in the eastern city of Donetsk. In 2014, pro-Russian separatists took over the region, sparking a long, bloody conflict. She went for nearly two years “without money, without food,” she said, before she fled west to Kyiv. Then, in 2022, Russia rained missiles on Ukraine’s capital as it launched a full-scale invasion.

Ivan Shutenko and Anastasia Sokolova, refugees from Ukraine, receive assistance from the Northwest Church of Christ’s food pantry.

She evacuated through Russia — “I hate Russia,” she stressed — and eventually settled in Germany. Her godfather, who lives in Chicago, invited her here. She arrived three weeks ago. Another Ukrainian refugee, Ivan Shutenko, drove her to the Northwest church. The food she received will help her as she waits for permission to work.

The conflicts she’s endured (“my two wars,” as she called them) have strengthened her resolve to carry on, Sokolova said. “I never, never give up.”

‘The weirdest and worst-possible time’

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic subsided, sending Chicagoans back to work, Churches of Christ experienced a spike in need, representatives of two churches with food pantries told The Christian Chronicle.

Skyscrapers including the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), right, rise above downtown Chicago — as seen from the 360Chicago observation deck in the John Hancock Tower.

Since 2022, the Windy City has welcomed more than 30,000 Ukrainian refugees, including Sokolova and Shutenko. Most have integrated into the city’s preexisting Ukrainian communities, where blue and yellow flags still fly from balconies two years after the invasion. Meanwhile, U.S. politicians argue over continued spending for Ukraine.

More problematic for Chicago, however, is the influx of more than 19,000 Venezuelans, including Daviel and Albert. Few have families here, and many arrive on buses sent from Republican-controlled border states. Under Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the Lone Star State has bused more than 100,000 migrants to cities run by Democrats, including Chicago.

J.P. Grosser, right, speaks with volunteers as they unload and shelve food in the basement of the Lakeview Church of Christ in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood.

Although J.P. Grosser certainly has his opinions about the politics of the surge, he said he does his best simply to serve the souls at his doorstep. He coordinates the food program for the Lakeview Church of Christ in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, about five miles east of the Northwest church.

The influx of migrants “caught us at the weirdest and worst possible time,” Grosser said on a recent Wednesday as he supervised the unloading of a large shipment from an area food bank. The city already had a housing crunch and a homeless problem, he said, and has struggled to find places for the new arrivals.  

@christianchronicle CHICAGO — Members of the Lakeview Church of Christ in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood stock their expanded food pantry. The chuch has experienced an uptick in people needing help as busloads of migrants are bused from Republican-controlled border states to Democratic-led cities. The church doesn’t delve into the politics of the surge, focuing instead on meeting needs. #migrantsurge #chicagomigrants #chicagofoodpantry #churchofchrist #uptownchicago #foodministries ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

Uptown once had a reputation for gang activity and violence, second only to Chicago’s South Side, said Grosser, who moved here from southern Illinois in 2019. He remembers hearing gunshots down the street from his home.

Since the pandemic, the neighborhood has gentrified and prospered. The local ward also has become the temporary home for one of the largest groups of Latin American immigrants in the city, said Christa Pierce, wife of Lakeview minister Walter Pierce and Grosser’s sister. The student body of the local school district doubled. Uptown residents routinely see immigrant families asking for help outside Costco Wholesale and Starbucks.

Theatris Cobbins, minister Walter Pierce and a new volunteer, Maury, take a water break as they unload a shipment of food for the Lakeview Church of Christ’s food pantry.

The church brought in translators to help with its program, Krista Pierce said, and contributed coats to help the migrants weather the winter months. She and her husband attend community meetings for updates on the migrants. At a recent meeting, city officials reported a decrease in buses sent from the border states. One alderman said, cynically, that he expects another surge in August just as the city hosts the Democratic National Convention.

A development grant helped the Lakeview church expand its basement food pantry. As Grosser took inventory, church members sweated through their shirts as they unloaded large crates of milk, Brussels sprouts and an unexpected gift — multiple boxes of frozen vegan pepperoni pizzas. 

Audrey Bowen looks for space to store vegan pizzas in an already packed refrigerator.

Volunteer Audrey Bowen called on her Tetris-playing skills as she worked the pizzas into freezers already stuffed with brown-and-serve sausages.

On Saturdays, those in need line up and make quick shopping trips to the church basement. The brief interactions, plus the language barrier, make it tough to share Jesus with the migrants, Grosser acknowledged.

Artwork lines the streets and the sides of buildings in rejuvenated Uptown Chicago, including a mural commemorating the lunch counter sit-ins of the civil rights era.

But perhaps the best way to feed people spiritually, he said, “is to lead by example and to let them see how we are toward them.”

“We do feel the urgency, the desire and the importance of serving God,” he added. “God has blessed our family so much, it’s ridiculous. So we know we have a lot to give back. And we’re honored to do it.” 

Scenes from a giveaway

At the Northwest church, interactions may be even shorter than those at Lakeview.

The congregation doesn’t yet have the facilities to accommodate indoor shoppers, so it still follows protocols used during the pandemic. Nonetheless, a few of the church’s clients have attended worship services, and some have helped out with the pantry, minister Patrick Odum said.

Clients park their bikes and cars outside the Northwest Church of Christ on a Saturday afternoon to receive food from the church’s pantry ministry.

During the Northwest church’s Saturday distribution, Odum met recipients as they stood by their cars or on the church’s freshly mowed lawn. He entered their information on his phone and did his best to remember — and pronounce — the names of repeat customers, who came to Chicago from Latin America, Vietnam, the Philippines and elsewhere. Then volunteers brought out the food, presorted into individual crates.

A few of those who came to receive food spoke with the Chronicle. Some declined to give their last names.

Abdiel Estrada loads food into the car of a client at the Northwest Church of Christ’s food pantry.

Barbara, who moved here from a small town near Krakow, Poland, more than two decades ago, said she has come to the Northwest pantry for at least seven years. “The food service is amazing,” she said, adding that she always shares what she’s given.

She doesn’t think she’ll ever return home, especially since her town is less than three hours from the Ukrainian border. She’s worried that, should Ukraine fall, Poland may be next.

Laticia Soto, originally from Mexico, works at a textile factory. Lately the company has cut back her shifts, and the food from the church helps her make ends meet. Two other Mexicans, Luis and Jorge, said they’ve had the same problem at the plant where they work. The food allows them to save money to send back home.

Daviel, the Venezuelan, preferred that the Chronicle not use his last name nor take his photo, said his interpreter, Abdiel Estrada, whose father preaches for the church’s Spanish service.

Volunteer John Cobbins carts donated food up the wheelchair ramp for the Lakeview Church of Christ’s food ministry.

Instead, a Chronicle reporter and Estrada prayed with Daviel and his brother before Estrada invited them to visit the church’s clothes closet. As they browsed, volunteers retrieved a box of food for the Venezuelans.

During their 5,000-mile journey to the U.S., the danger often seemed too much, Daviel said as he loaded the produce into his backpack. But each time, before he turned back, he remembered the political Armageddon and economic desperation that he and Albert had left behind in their homeland.

Going north, he said, at least there is hope.

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

The post Church food pantries respond to increased need amid migrant surge appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

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• • •

OKLAHOMA CITY — My parents must be so proud.

I’ve finally arrived.

That’s right: I’ve reached cartoon status in an international Christian newspaper.

Over the past 19 years, I’ve written more than 150 Inside Story columns for The Christian Chronicle. Readers have become accustomed to seeing my mugshot on Page 3.

“You look just like your picture in the paper,” I’ve heard repeatedly in my reporting travels.

Bobby Ross Jr.

But now my photo is gone — replaced with a professional artist’s rendering of my, um, interesting face.

My first reaction was: Is that what I really look like? My wife, Tamie, said no. My adult children shared giggles and disparaging remarks in the family group chat.

Then I showed the image to my granddaughter, Norah, who is almost 3. She recognized the face immediately.

“That’s Papa,” she said without hesitation.

Well, if a toddler can see the resemblance, I guess we’ll go with it. It could be worse. My cartoon could picture a guy in serious need of a beard trim (sorry, Erik). 

Bobby Ross Jr.’s cartoon rendition.

All joking aside, change can be hard.

This edition of the Chronicle marks the launch of our first major redesign in 24 years. The headline fonts and text styles are new (our old ones had outlived the technology we use to lay out the paper). The page sizes are slightly taller and thinner (I wish I could say the same of myself).

As we previewed last month, the Chronicle hired Metaleap Creative, an award-winning design agency in Atlanta that has redesigned faith-based publications such as 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.

I first met José and Nikolle at the Evangelical Press Association convention in Lancaster, Pa., last year. In a workshop, they noted that most publications engage in a redesign process at least once every five years. Suffice it to say that we were a bit overdue.

Working closely with Chronicle staff to retain the paper’s purpose and identity, Metaleap developed the new design to be organized, professional, engaging — and, most importantly, trustworthy.

We hope you like the new look. We expect you’ll find it cleaner, less crowded and easier to maneuver. No longer will you need to flip all over the place to find stories that jump from the front. This should make for a more cohesive and enjoyable reading experience.

And here’s the best part: Our commitment to “real news that honors God” remains the same. Our journalists — devoted to the Lord and the Chronicle’s loyal audience — will keep pursuing our mission of informing, inspiring and connecting members of Churches of Christ. 

Here’s the best part: Our commitment to “real news that honors God” remains the same. Our journalists — devoted to the Lord and the Chronicle’s loyal audience — will keep pursuing our mission of informing, inspiring and connecting members of Churches of Christ.

That’s evidenced by the stories in this month’s pages, from Audrey Jackson’s cover story from earthquake-ravaged Turkey to my National section piece on a Nebraska conference offering hope for small churches to Erik Tryggestad’s International section feature highlighting a revitalized church in Uruguay. 

Keep thumbing, and you’ll find all your favorite content — from the crossword puzzle, games and Brenton cartoon to Erik’s column, the book review and the editorial. Speaking of the editorial, Erik will share an additional thought or two on the redesign there.

So here’s our humble request: Please give our new packaging a chance? If you’d like to share feedback on it — positive or negative — feel free to email us at letters@christianchronicle.org.

And if you’re so inclined, go ahead and weigh in: What do you think of my new cartoon face? 

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

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The post Be honest: What do you think of my new face? appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Esther was probably about 15 when she uttered those words.

Yes, she was queen of an empire that stretched from modern-day Greece to the western bounds of India — and queen to a king who could have her killed for entering his court without being summoned. Not exactly Victoria or Elizabeth.

She was also a sexually exploited, orphaned exile. The sanitized version of Esther that’s been the subject of countless Sunday School lessons doesn’t do her justice.

To review, Xerxes had ditched Queen Vashti because she refused to parade about in front of his friends. So a search began for another queen — and only the beautiful need apply.

After a year of beauty treatments, the candidates got a one-night stand with the king. We don’t know how many young women of Persia were summoned before they were sent on to the concubines’ harem. We just know that Esther pleased the king, and he made her queen.

Meanwhile Haman, a really bad guy and the king’s right-hand man, was outraged that Esther’s cousin Mordecai would not bow down to him. So naturally Haman persuaded Xerxes to annihilate the Jews.

Enter Mordecai and his plea to Esther:

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

Mordecai was persuasive. Esther did not remain silent. She risked everything, and not only did she persuade the king to save her people, but in the process, Haman was sent to the gallows.

The call of God is seldom a call to play it safe. Nor is the call to serve confined to Old Testament tales of a teenage queen or Balaam’s talking donkey or Moses and a burning bush.

Paul writes to the Ephesians, and to us, about such opportunities when he says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

This month’s Christian Chronicle is full of stories about Christians who find themselves in such a time. Christians who serve not just their fellow believers but their broader communities. Who serve not just the safe and sanitary but the downtrodden and abused. Who serve not just family but strangers and aliens.

The Canadian Church of Christ prays Sunday after a wildfire hit the Texas Panhandle town.

We tell stories about Christians involved in relief efforts for families who lost everything to a relentless fire. About Christians feeding hungry people they don’t know. About Christians caring for young people who, through no fault of their own, are sent far from their families.

We tell stories about victims of gun violence. Victims of nature. Victims of political upheaval.

We are confronted daily by those who insist Christians’ call is to make America great. To march in protest of those whose politics are different from our own. To lobby for safety and protection of our views, religious and otherwise.

God makes no such call.

Our call is to walk into danger to save others, at such a time as this.

CHERYL MANN BACON is a Christian Chronicle contributing editor who served for 20 years as chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University. Contact cheryl@christianchronicle.org.

The post Editorial: At such a time as this, we are called to serve appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

That’s not a bad day’s work for the more than 80 Christians who gathered in the gym of the Pleasant Valley Church of Christ in Van Buren, Ark., to help feed children and their families across Central America.

Members of the Pleasant Valley church worked alongside members of the Rena Road Church of Christ and the Mulberry Church of Christ and students from the Lions for Christ ministry at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith to assemble easy-to-transport packets of rice, vegetables and nutrients.

“We all felt a sense of joy and accomplishment as we worked together serving God,” Pleasant Valley elder Lonnie Meyers told The Christian Chronicle.

Kids Against Hunger, a ministry of Misión Para Cristo, sponsored the event. The nonprofit, founded by Church of Christ members Benny and Donna Baker, began in 1997 when the Bakers, working with one evangelist and a congregation of 12 members, helped to open a medical clinic in Jinotega, Nicaragua. Now the mission works with 24 Iglesias de Cristo (Churches of Christ) and has a staff of 82. The nonprofit serves more than 2,500 children and 12 schools.

Volunteer Eli McCoy shows off completed meal packets at the Kids Against Hunger event.

In 2013, working with One Child Matters, the ministry launched a child sponsorship program, later named Kingdom Kids, and helped to create child development centers operated by churches and schools. The ministry sponsors children at eight locations in Nicaragua.

In 2017, Misión Para Cristo entered into a partnership with the Good Samaritan School in Catacamas, Honduras. The school started the current academic year with 371 students. In 2022, the ministry began partnering with Christ School in Duty, Haiti. Kingdom Kids now serves more than 200 children in three countries.

Since January 2022, Kids Against Hunger has packed more than half a million meals. Four additional packing events are scheduled for 2024, Benny Baker told the Chronicle.

At the Van Buren event, “it was great to see multiple churches working together to pack food for children,” said Mulberry church member John Callahan, “and having fun while doing it.”

Members of three Churches of Christ and a campus ministry pack meals for Misión Para Cristo.

Multiple age groups volunteered at the event, including seventh grader Katelyn Roe.

“I had a great time,” Roe said. “I met new people and got to visit with my congregation and other congregations. The most important part was I did it for the Lord. I’m ready to do it again next year.”

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.

The post Nutritious meals for Kingdom Kids appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

On this Friday afternoon, the usual, angelic a cappella gives way to the guitar riffs of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Volunteers wearing hairnets, plastic gloves and T-shirts that say “Jesus You” congregate around plastic tables.

Mitch Wilburn

In unison, the crowd proclaims, “PROTEIN! VEGETABLES! SOY! RICE!” as they fill and seal plastic bags labeled MannaPack.

“You just missed the most amazing moment of my ministry ever,” declares minister Mitch Wilburn, who’s also clad in a hairnet — for reasons that aren’t immediately apparent. The follically challenged preacher points to the far side of the auditorium. A truck driver, who just left, received a standing ovation for delivering the food the crew was packaging for people in need.

“He was wearing a Coors hat,” Wilburn says. And, at the moment they announced his name, the unmistakable synthesizer chords of Van Halen’s “Jump” came over the loudspeakers.

As Wilburn walks away to resume his work, he yells over his shoulder, “Don’t print that in The Christian Chronicle.”

But he forgot to say “off the record.”

The Tulsa congregation set a goal of producing 180,000 MannaPack bags in one weekend.

“And that’s going to take 800 volunteers — from the community and within our church,” says Tori Thomas on a brief break while coordinating the event. “And this is just the start. We hope for this to impact not only Tulsa but also communities around the world.”

Students from Union High School in Tulsa prepare rice for the MannaPack work stations.

The MannaPacks are bound for impoverished families in the West African nation of Burkina Faso and the Central American nation of Guatemala through nonprofits Convoy of Hope and Buckner International. Feed My Starving Children, another nonprofit, supplies the MannaPacks to organizations that distribute them around the globe — including war-torn nations like Haiti and Ukraine.

Minnesota-based Feed My Starving Children developed the recipe of white rice, textured soy and dehydrated vegetables in consultation with nutritionists. With six cups of boiling water and 20 minutes of prep time, one bag can feed six people.

As the volunteers carefully measure and pour the ingredients into the bags, church members including Debbie Loney and Gayla Garren gather in a room just off the auditorium. They take turns praying for the health and safety of the families who will receive the MannaPacks — and for the volunteers who are first-time visitors to the church.

Feed My Starving Children hosts events like this one, called MobilePacks, at locations across the nation, says Knox Huffman, the owner of Tulsa’s Tacos 4 Life, a quick-service Mexican restaurant with about 30 locations in the U.S. The chain donates a portion of each item purchased — be it a mango habanera taco or a fried chicken burrito — to the nonprofit.

“When we partner with somebody … we want people who represent God in a great way. The people of this church literally live that out”

“When we partner with somebody … we want people who represent God in a great way,” Huffman says. “The people of this church literally live that out. Every step of the way it was just love, love, love, love, caring. You can see Jesus spill out of them.”

Months before the packing event, all of the volunteer spots were filled, Huffman says. Some volunteers are members of The Park church, but others are from the community, including the track team from Tulsa’s Union High and members of the school’s student council.

Kenna Kellam, left, interviews a volunteer during the MobilePack.

With a microphone in hand, Kenna Kellam cheers on the volunteers, announcing updated totals of MannaPacks completed. She puts down the microphone to speak to the Chronicle, straining a bit to be heard over the music and cheers.

“It’s cool to see people use their specific gifts, given to them by the Lord, to just bless others,” says Kellam, a youth minister for The Park who works with young women in grades six through 12. “I have not packed a single thing, but I feel like God’s given me the gift of encouragement!”

Tori Thomas

Thomas, who grew up at The Park church, participated in her first MobilePack event about 10 years ago when she was a student at Jenks High School and a member of the track team. Her father, Allan Trimble, was the school’s longtime, legendary football coach. He brought student athletes to Anthem Church in nearby Broken Arrow to volunteer.

“There’s nothing that can grow a team dynamic like serving together,” Thomas says. “You get to know the people that you’re serving alongside, and you’re making a difference at the same time.”

Trimble knew about team building. In 22 seasons he led the Jenks Trojans to 13 championships in Oklahoma’s highest classification, making him the most successful high school coach in state history.

But his mission went far beyond football, his daughter says. The former elder of The Park church was all about “growing the Lord’s kingdom, doing it with people you love and with people you don’t know that you learn to love.”

Trimble, 56, died in December 2019 after a three-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS. His funeral drew more than 3,000 people to Oral Roberts University’s Mabee Center in Tulsa.

Feed My Starving Children provides sinks and detailed hand-washing rules at MobilePacks.

He would be “absolutely ecstatic” about today’s packing event at The Park, says his daughter, who’s now 26.

“When I spoke at his funeral, one of the things I said to describe my dad was, ‘There’s always room for more.’ Having all of those people there truly was a reminder … that any interaction you have with anyone could change their life forever and could impact them and their salvation.

“That’s the way that I try to live my life — there’s always room for more when it’s bringing people toward the kingdom of God or changing people’s lives around the world.”

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.

The post Team building, outreach and a side of rice appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

The largest wildfire in state history made a mess of this small ranching town in the Texas Panhandle, forcing the Canadian Church of Christ to delay its planned Missions Giving Sunday.

“We’ve had to put it off because of our community,” said church member Ruth Ward, who lost her own home in last week’s fire. “And it just breaks my heart.”

“These missionaries are relying on these funds,” added her husband, Kelley Ward, the elder over the church’s missions program. 

The 300-member congregation had hoped to raise $115,000 for sharing the Gospel in places such as Brazil, Chile and South Africa — all mission fields the Wards have visited.

Kelley and Ruth Ward stand in front of a bulletin board highlighting the Canadian Church of Christ’s mission efforts.

But the elders postponed the special contribution after the Smokehouse Creek Fire burned more than 1 million acres in Texas and Oklahoma — an area 25 times the size of Washington, D.C. The blaze has destroyed as many as 500 homes and other structures and caused two deaths, according to state officials.

The fire touched around 70 percent of Hemphill County, where Canadian is the county seat, and displaced 47 families, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at a news conference. Abbott cited a need for hay, fencing materials and cattle cubes.

“Whenever there is some tragedy like this, you see Texans pulling together,” he said. “It is heartwarming to see the way that Texans respond. The tragedy of what has been lost is nothing short of catastrophic.”

“It is heartwarming to see the way that Texans respond. The tragedy of what has been lost is nothing short of catastrophic.”

The Wards are among three Canadian Church of Christ families whose homes burned to the ground. A fill-in preacher and his wife from Canadian lost their house, too.

Other Canadian members sustained smoke damage at their residences. The cattle death toll at one member’s ranch hit 600. (“These cows you see dead are worth between $2,500 and $3,000 apiece,” another rancher told The Associated Press.)

As the congregation and community, about 100 miles northeast of Amarillo, focus on disaster recovery, leaders postponed Missions Giving Sunday for three weeks.

“That’s maybe going to be a more difficult goal for us now,” preaching minister Jake Perkins said of the $115,000 target.

But with God’s help, the congregation can bless fire victims at home and sustain mission efforts around the world, he told fellow Christians.

“We’re going to be blown away by what God does,” Perkins said.

Smoke and then flames

Elkward Ranch — a moniker that combines the Wards’ former business raising elk with their last name — comprises about 320 acres northwest of Canadian.

The retired couple lived in a log house built in 1988. 

A bear, a javelina, a white-tailed deer and other trophies from Kelley Ward’s bow hunting successes hung on the walls.

Kelley, 69, has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema from working in the fuel business before becoming a rancher, his wife said. 

When smoke filled the area near their home Tuesday, she became concerned. 

“I was scared to death,” said Ruth, 59. “I couldn’t get him to leave … and the smoke just kept coming and coming, and I was watching it. It was about noon, and I knew he was hungry, and I wasn’t in any shape to cook a meal. So I said, ‘Let’s go into town and eat.’”

They loaded their border collie Asher, their Maltese named Coconut and their cat Kenneth into the car with Ruth. Kelley grabbed two shotguns by the back door and put them in his pickup. They took both vehicles — and their Bibles — just in case the fire spread.

The largest wildfire in state history burns in the Texas Panhandle.

The scorched ground can be seen outside a burned-out home in Canadian, Texas.

Kelley didn’t bring anything else with him, but Ruth packed a few changes of her clothes, some treasured pictures and her late father-in-law’s World War II medals.

“And that’s what I lie in bed thinking about — what did I forget that I shouldn’t have?” said Kelley, wearing a new western shirt and jeans. “Of course you second-guess everything.”

By the time the couple made it to Valentino’s Italian restaurant in Canadian, their security cameras showed flames in their yard.

“We hadn’t been gone 15 minutes,” Kelley said.

The Canadian Church of Christ prays Sunday after a wildfire made a mess of the Texas Panhandle town.

Help in time of need

Insurance will cover the Wards’ financial loss, and they joke that they needed to downsize anyway.

On a more serious note, they voice appreciation for their community and fellow Christians who have stepped up to help.

“Just everywhere I’ve gone in the past five days, I see people from our church — my brothers and sisters in Christ — and they give me a hug. And that’s so comforting to have.”

“Just everywhere I’ve gone in the past five days, I see people from our church — my brothers and sisters in Christ — and they give me a hug,” Ruth said. “And that’s so comforting to have.”

She went to the Red Cross to get a shovel and found Natalie Zenor, a youth group member, volunteering. 

At the Hemphill County Exhibition Center — where houses of worship, including the Canadian church, are distributing food, emergency supplies and animal feed — she ran into her prayer partner Ryahn Whitson sweating along with other helpers.

“Going down to the exhibition center, I just needed king-size sheets — and I saw half the people in my (church) life group there,” Ruth said.

Church member Heather Sawyer teaches at Canadian High School. With classes canceled because of the fire, she called and asked how she could help.

She took charge of organizing donations delivered to the exhibition center, including a tractor-trailer rig full of boxes from Nashville, Tenn.-based Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort.

Church member Heather Sawyer, right, visits with minister Jake Perkins at the Hemphill County Exhibition Center, Canadian’s disaster relief hub.

Boxes of food and emergency supplies from Nashville, Tenn.-based Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort are stacked high at Canadian’s distribution site.

“And then when the families started coming,” Sawyer said, “we had to make sure they understood, ‘Please take this. It’s for you. Don’t feel bad. Please come back for more.’”

A dozen people offered the Wards places to stay. They chose a vacant house owned by Kelley’s 95-year-old aunt. 

Stephanie Oatman, a Canadian member, lives across the street.

“She’s one of my really good friends here in the church,” Ruth said. “She said, ‘You can use my washer and dryer anytime. Come over for a cup of coffee.’ I mean, it’s just nice knowing the proximity of people.”

Kelley said the couple probably won’t build a new home. They’re more likely to buy a fifth-wheel trailer and park it on their property.

“Then when we do want to travel, we can just hook it up and go,” he said. “But it won’t be that expensive, and it won’t be just something there to burn down again.”

Volunteer Martin Ocasio uses a forklift to organize animal feed at the Hemphill County Exhibition Center, Canadian’s diaster relief hub.

Overwhelming love

Little boys in cowboy boots and girls in dresses prayed and read Scriptures as the Canadian church gathered for Sunday worship after the fire.

“Jesus, thank you for protecting us, and we just pray that you will help those people that lost their homes,” one child said.

“Heavenly Father, thank you for this day,” another prayed. “Please help all the people that lost cattle and grass.”

“Jesus, thank you for protecting us, and we just pray that you will help those people that lost their homes.”

Member Ronnie Porter’s belongings mostly escaped the fire intact, except for his tractor, which burned. Members Jason and Mallori Wilhelm, Porter’s son-in-law and daughter who have five children, lost their home.

Porter shared with the church how he and his wife, Libby, stopped on the way to worship to talk with a neighbor whose house burned. 

She showed them a sign she pulled from the debris: “Love.”

Church member Ronnie Porter shows a video of the wildfire raging near his home.

“The paint was burned off, and it was warped,” Porter said.

But it survived the blaze.

“So Libby and I got to talking about it on our way into town, and through all of this, through everything, is God’s love,” Porter said. “And man, that was really overwhelming.”

Teenager Tate Wilhelm’s family lost their home in the fire. But somehow the church member managed to start his Volkswagen after the blaze.

The sign at the Canadian Church of Christ after the fire.

Perkins tweaked his originally planned sermon on “The Hour of Darkness” to ask, “Where is God in a fire?”

The minister said he doesn’t believe God caused the fire.

“But I do believe the good news that God is in the fire,” he said. “He is redeeming it. He didn’t send it. God didn’t create death. But you know what God does with death? He resurrects it. He turns it around. He rolls stones away.”

God can be seen, Perkins suggested, in the hearts and souls of Canadian members volunteering in the relief effort.

And he can be seen, the minister said, in the hundreds of calls and texts from Christians across the U.S. asking how they can help.

“So here’s what we do, what we hold to,” Perkins told the church. “In the hour of darkness, God is revealed in Jesus saying, ‘Come unto me, you who are weary and heavy laden.’”

The Canadian Church of Christ prays Sunday after a wildfire hit the Texas Panhandle town.

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

The post Trusting God in the fire appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

He’s director of guest experience for Oklahoma-based Sonic, which has 3,540 drive-in restaurants across the U.S.

Chris McKeever

But he had no desire to franchise his church, opening up satellite campuses across Oklahoma City.

Neither did his 23 fellow elders of the Memorial Road Church of Christ, a 60-year-old congregation with 2,500 members and weekly attendance of about 1,900.

“We never wanted to be a megachurch. That’s not us,” McKeever said as he stood in the auditorium of the Heritage Church of Christ. Moments earlier, minister Travis Akins presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the congregation’s brand-new meeting place.

Memorial Road members planted the Heritage church six years ago to reach north Edmond, abrim with new homes, a new Braum’s ice cream shop and a giant new Crest Foods supermarket.

Although it meant losing a core group of their active and financially supportive members — including Akins, a former Memorial Road minister — the church’s leaders had few reservations about launching the new congregation, McKeever said.

“The only hesitation we had,” he said, “was doing two at once.”

Travis Akins preaches during the grand opening service of the Heritage Church of Christ.

Memorial Road was itself a church plant. Members of the Edmond Church of Christ launched the congregation, originally named the College Church of Christ, in 1963 to reach the students at nearby Oklahoma Christian University.

Since then, the church has adapted to serve university graduates and their families. In the past two decades, Memorial Road has remodeled its two-level nursery school wing and added a youth building, the Summit, complete with a full-size kitchen and basketball courts.

In the early 2000s, members heard story after story of declining membership among Churches of Christ. Young adults learned that the rural churches they grew up in were closing their doors. Downtown congregations in big cities were dying, too. And some members, their talents not fully utilized by the church, were slipping through the cracks.

Memorial Road’s leaders invited Joe Bright to speak. Bright, then minister for the Sunset Church of Christ in Springfield, Mo., talked passionately about the church’s need to reproduce itself. The Sunset church, whose attendance was less than half of Memorial Road’s, had nonetheless launched two new congregations in a five-year period.

Inspired by Bright’s words, Memorial Road sent 70 of its members to plant a church in Oakdale in October 2010. The community, about six miles southeast of Memorial Road’s building, was home to the first Church of Christ in Oklahoma, a congregation that had long since moved away.

“We wanted to have a presence east of I-35,” said Darrel Sears, who moved from Kansas to serve as preacher for the Church of Christ at Oakdale. “There weren’t really any churches over in this area — at least Churches of Christ.”

‘Not a lot of it happened the way we thought it would’

The new church met in the middle school commons of Oakdale Public School, across the street from Oakdale Baptist. That meant a weekly ritual of setting up chairs and audio/visual equipment and taking it back down.

“One thing we tried to do from the very beginning is be an autonomous congregation financially,” Sears said.

Members of the Oakdale Church of Christ stand on stage while members of the Memorial Road Church of Christ pray for them during the church’s sendoff ceremony in 2010.

The church purchased property but prayed for nine long years as members struggled to raise enough money to start construction. Their prayers were answered in 2019 when Oakdale school superintendent Kim Lanier told them that his congregation, Oakdale Baptist, was preparing to move. Would they like to buy the building?

They would. The Oakdale Church of Christ sold its property and moved across the street.

“Though we were not nearly where we needed to be financially to build, we had enough money in the bank to buy Oakdale Baptist’s building outright,” Sears said. “It’s been a true blessing to not have a mortgage payment.

Darrel Sears

“We had a lot of ideas of how we thought a church plant would go,” he said. “Not a lot of it happened the way we thought it would, but everything happened the way that God wanted it to.”

The church averages 300 or so on Sundays during the school year.

“We see Memorial Road as a big part of our beginning,” Sears said, “but we’re kind of our own identity now.”

Oakdale has, however, inherited its parent’s desire to replicate. It seeks to be “a church plant that plants churches,” Sears said. “We said that when we got to 300 to 500 we would start thinking about that.”

“We had a lot of ideas of how we thought a church plant would go. Not a lot of it happened the way we thought it would, but everything happened the way that God wanted it to.”

A ‘true plant,’ not a transplant

Five years after the Oakdale launch, Memorial Road formed a team to ponder sites for a second church plant. The team identified two locales: burgeoning north Edmond and historic Midtown Oklahoma City. The latter, just north of the city’s business district, is a center of urban renewal with walkable neighborhoods of art galleries, gastropubs and upscale apartments for young couples.

Both seemed like ideal locales for a church, said Akins, then Memorial Road’s young adults minister. They presented both to the elders.

Despite some reservations, Akins recalled, the elders “came back and said, ‘That’s a great idea. Let’s do it.’”

Both of the new congregations met as small groups in the Memorial Road building — just as Oakdale had — and prepared for their inaugural services. While the Heritage church headed north to worship in the cafeteria of Heritage Elementary School, the Serve Midtown Church of Christ headed 12 miles south to Brown’s Bakery, an iconic Oklahoma City eatery owned by Memorial Road members.

Worshiping while surrounded by the scent of pastries was delightful, said Bob Carpenter, a Memorial Road elder who works with the Midtown church, “but there was no place for a classroom. Our children’s class met on the floor near the women’s bathroom.”

Members of the Serve Midtown Church of Christ gather for fellowship and games at the church’s meeting place, Cross and Crown, in Oklahoma City.

The church found space for growth one mile west at Cross and Crown, a nonprofit that operates a food pantry, legal clinic and other services for the disadvantaged. Members continued to bring in donuts and pastries from Brown’s, however, until the bakery closed in late 2023.

The current venue fits with the church’s mission, Carpenter said. On the third Sunday of the month, members conduct “Serve Sundays,” distributing meals to those in need in their community. Then they go to Cross and Crown for worship.

Members of the Serve Midtown Church of Christ participate in a community giveaway project called “Feed His Sheep.”

Corey Baird, preaching minister for Serve Midtown, described the congregation as “less a transplant and more a true plant” of Memorial Road.

“It’s a seed from Memorial Road,” Baird said, “but it’s not necessarily the same type of energy or structure you would get at Memorial Road in any capacity.”

The Gospel ‘right where we are’

In addition to the three church plants, Memorial Road launched an inner-city work in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Oklahoma City, including a free medical clinic and a predominantly Spanish-speaking Church of Christ. The church also supports multiple mission points in locales including Austria, Honduras, Brazil, Kenya and New Zealand.

“Samaria and the ends of the earth do not replace Jerusalem. The best way to counter churches closing their doors is to open new ones. Every new congregation is a kingdom outpost, regardless of its location.”

Terry Fischer, Memorial Road’s community outreach minister, said that, with each church plant, the number of members who came into the church from outside of Memorial Road grew to outnumber those who came from the planting church within three to five years.

Phil Brookman

And each time it has planted, Memorial Road has grown back “slowly and steadily” in terms of members, contribution and volunteers, said Phil Brookman, Memorial Road’s preaching minister.

“Certainly, large congregations need to think about strategic plants elsewhere in the U.S. and the world,” Brookman said, “but this does not preclude our role to spread the Gospel right where we are.”

He cited Jesus’ message to his disciples in Acts 1:8 that they would be his witnesses “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

“Samaria and the ends of the earth do not replace Jerusalem,” Brookman said. “The best way to counter churches closing their doors is to open new ones. Every new congregation is a kingdom outpost, regardless of its location.”

Members of the Heritage Church of Christ and visitors gather before the church’s grand opening worship service in Edmond, Okla.

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is a deacon of the Memorial Road Church of Christ. Tiane Davis provided additional reporting.

The post Planting churches, two by two appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

The casually attired guests chatted for a few minutes before enjoying freshly baked lasagna, salad, four-layer chocolate dessert and other goodies.

After the meal, everyone took seats on the sofa or other comfortable chairs and shared prayer and praise requests before discussing that morning’s sermon at the Walnut Street Church of Christ.

Minister Chris McCurley leads a discussion during a Connect Group meeting at his Tennessee home.

For the 140-year-old congregation about 40 miles west of Nashville, the new year brought a change in the long tradition of Sunday night worship.

Instead of gathering at the church building, nearly two dozen “Connect Groups” of about 10 to 12 people each meet in individual homes. A traditional assembly at the building is offered, as always, for those who prefer that option.

“We’re looking at new ways to grow our people and reach the community,” said Chris McCurley, Walnut Street’s preacher.

The church averages Sunday morning attendance of about 750, but fewer than half typically returned for the evening service.

Walnut Street’s experience mirrors that of many churches.

“In many places, our Sunday night worship gatherings have woefully waned in attendance,” McCurley said. “While the message cannot change, we should always be willing to adapt and adjust the method — within reason and within the bounds of what is Scriptural, of course, and with the ultimate goal of drawing people closer to God and to one another.”

COVID-19 accelerated change

For Churches of Christ, Sunday night services can be traced to the earliest days of the American Restoration Movement, which began on the U.S. frontier in the 1790s and called for Christians of all denominations to follow the Bible only.

“Multiple meetings on Sunday were common from the beginning, including some in the evening for prayer and Bible study,” said John Mark Hicks, a Restoration scholar and retired theology professor at Lipscomb University in Nashville.

Related: More feedback on Sunday night trends

“Revivalism in the late 19th century and the rise of better lighting encouraged Sunday evening gatherings for evangelistic preaching, and then shift work during WWI and WWII encouraged Sunday evening offerings for those who missed, including the Lord’s Supper,” Hicks added. “This became standard in the 1940s.”

But in recent decades, poor attendance led an increasing number of congregations to end Sunday night activities or try approaches such as small-group meetings or service projects instead of regular assemblies.

In recent decades, poor attendance led an increasing number of congregations to end Sunday night activities or try approaches such as small-group meetings or service projects instead of regular assemblies.

For many, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that trend as churches stopped Sunday night services and never resumed them, a survey by The Christian Chronicle found.

“We did have an evening service with an attendance of 35 prior to the COVID pandemic, but it was fading out before COVID,” said Kevin Bethea, minister for the East Baltimore Church of Christ in Maryland, which has Sunday morning attendance of about 225.

Related: Share your Sunday night experience

Patrick Odum preaches for the Northwest Church of Christ in Chicago. Its Sunday morning assemblies in English, Spanish and Korean have an average combined attendance of about 150.

“We had a Sunday night service, attended by just a few people and only in English, until COVID,” Odum said. “After COVID restrictions were lifted, we have not resumed Sunday night.”

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

Several leaders across the nation said eliminating Sunday night services allowed their congregation to reassess its mission and approach.

“We used to have Sunday night services every week,” said Tracy Moore, minister for the Vero Beach Church of Christ in Florida. “Now we will do a few weeks on a study that may pertain to a sermon series or special activities like a meal, a special singing, etc. It isn’t every week but only times we believe it would be beneficial to what we are doing.”

The McDermott Road Church of Christ in Plano, Texas, reserves one Sunday afternoon or evening a month for small-group meetings.

On the other weeks, the church plans special events such as a fifth Sunday singing, a New Year’s chili cookoff, a Memorial Day picnic, Trunk or Treat, a father-daughter banquet or an areawide service.

Other Sundays feature ministry committee meetings or training for outreach efforts such as FriendSpeak or World Bible School.

“So now our Sunday afternoons and evenings are dedicated to unique events and things that serve the current needs of the church,” involvement minister Mark Bryson said.

Walnut Street minister Chris McCurley, center, prays during a small-group meeting at his Tennessee home.

Breaking bread together

Back in Dickson, a growing town of about 16,000 just off Interstate 40, the new Connect Groups involve more than 300 people per week. Meanwhile, about 200 still worship at the Walnut Street building, church leaders said.

In both settings, the Lord’s Supper is provided for those who missed it that morning.

Jack and Mary Lane Story welcomed Walnut Street’s introduction of Sunday night small groups.

“In essence, we’ve increased our Sunday night participation by close to 200 people,” McCurley said, praising the elders’ decision not to force the small-group approach on anyone.

One Sunday night per month, everyone still gathers at the building, as in the past. In addition, the Connect Groups will take a two-month break during the summer to avoid burning out the participants, who take turns hosting the meetings.

Jack and Mary Lane Story, Walnut Street members in their 20s, welcomed the change.

The Connect Groups appealed to them as an opportunity to develop closer relationships with fellow Christians and share the Gospel with friends.

“I think it’s evident in the Bible that this is what they used to do — break bread together and have conversations,” Jack said.

Mary Lane’s father, Robby Harmon, serves as one of Walnut Street’s 14 elders.

“It’s easier to invite someone to someone’s home,” she said. “It’s more casual, personal, people hanging out.”

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

“It’s easier to invite someone to someone’s home. It’s more casual, personal, people hanging out.”

Take our survey

What is your church’s approach to Sunday nights? Share your experience.

The post A new Sunday night tradition appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Here is more of their feedback:

“Sunday night is really Sunday morning ‘lite’ in my opinion. Other than the singing night or a special presentation (for example, a congregational meeting, special guest), the Sunday night attendance is quite poor. I wish we would do more and plan more for Sunday night services if we are going to have them.” — Ross Mitchell, minister, Fort Walton Beach Church of Christ in Florida

“I think we held on to Sunday nights for too long out of a sense of obligation, even though deep down we knew it was just a tradition. Once we let go, we never regretted it.” — Kerry Jones, minister, Buffalo Gap Church of Christ in Texas

Coach Patrick McCarthy and his wife, Katie Beth, share a hug in the press box
overlooking the baseball field at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala.

“We have life groups, and most meet on Sunday night. I think they used to have Sunday evening services, but that was before we placed membership 14 years ago. Life groups have completely grown our relationships with our church family and changed the trajectory of our family’s spiritual lives.” — Katie Beth McCarthy, member, Landmark Church of Christ in Montgomery, Ala.

“While attending twice on Sunday is a decision for local elderships, I cannot see good coming from meeting, studying and worshiping less. Grant it, there are other ways to replace what typically takes place on Sunday night, but to shut down Sunday night with no plans for more teaching and fellowship is, in my judgment, a terrible mistake. I have yet to meet the Christian who spends too much time studying and fellowshipping with God’s people.” — Steve Higginbotham, preacher, Karns Church of Christ in Knoxville, Tenn.

“Our Sunday night died with our oldest members. We let it fade away — probably should have been more intentional.” — Roger Woods, elder, Walled Lake Church of Christ in Michigan

“Our congregation is scattered across a metro area. Getting people to attend Sunday night service was becoming difficult.” — John Rakestraw, elder, Northwest Church of Christ in Westminster, Colo.

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“I think it’s a very unfortunate trend for churches to dismiss Sunday evening services. I think it adds to the Scriptural lack of knowledge and increasing influence of secularism among members.” — Park Linscomb, minister, Rock Hill Church of Christ in Frisco, Texas

“I would strongly prefer that churches host some kind of a body life/social activity on Sunday night rather than a repeat of the Sunday morning service. Our life groups do provide communion for those who were not present Sunday morning.” — Dan Cooper, elder, Pitman Road Church of Christ in Sewell, N.J.

“We have a lot of elderly who have trouble driving at night. They don’t come Wednesday nights either, especially in winter.” — Dean Kelly, minister, Highland Home Church of Christ in Alabama

“I focus Sunday nights on those who don’t make it to Sunday mornings. It’s not that I don’t want morning people to show up at night — it’s just that I measure success based on having folks that are unable to come or who are not church people. At least half of our evening worship is that group of non-attenders from the morning.” — Jeff Strite, preacher, Logansport Church of Christ in Indiana

“Personally, I find it sad we have canceled Sunday evenings in so many congregations. We have literally canceled one-third of the opportunities to be together and worship God. How can this make our congregations and individual members stronger in their faith and walk with God? Personally, we attend a Sunday evening worship service at another local congregation.” — Richard Combs, minister, Main Street Church of Christ in Walnut Ridge, Ark.

Lamont Ross

“I think it is important for each congregation to consider their ‘why’ for Sunday evening services. If the primary reason for evening worship is something other than worship, then leaders should consider if Sunday evening worship is the best way to accomplish that goal. Often, evening service is a training ground that provides opportunities for youth and newer Christians to lead worship and deliver sermons. Congregations without evening services should still offer training opportunities and develop people to lead the people of God.” — Lamont Ross, minister, Marsalis Avenue Church of Christ in Dallas

“This may not be entirely on topic. However, we changed our Wednesday night Bible study into a weekly churchwide service project called ‘Branch Out’ since the pandemic, and it has been very successful in fulfilling congregants’ spiritual needs, blessing the community and appealing to new Christians.” — Houston Haynes, preaching minister, Centerville Church of Christ in Ohio

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

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Take our survey

What is your church’s approach to Sunday nights? Share your experience.

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No one seemed to mind.

On the contrary, the 296 church members and visitors spent part of the morning celebrating their children, crumbs and all, as they dedicated Heritage’s new facility.

Members of the Heritage Church of Christ and visitors gather before the church’s grand opening worship service in Edmond, Okla.

Bobby Kern, a founding member of the 6-year-old church plant, gathered the youngsters on stage for the weekly Kids Message Time. The church is one body with many parts, he told them as he pointed out a few of their individual gifts. Wiley has the gift of inclusion. Lilly has the gift of encouragement. Josiah, Kern’s son, has the gift of energy. Lots of energy.

“Every single one of you is a part of this body,” Kern said as the children sat — a few, including Josiah, squirming — around the pulpit. “You are not the church of tomorrow. You are the church of right now.”

@christianchronicle EDMOND, Okla. — Members of the Heritage Church of Christ sing “Shout Hallelujah” during the grand opening worship service in their newly completed building. The congregation, planted by the Memorial Road Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, met in the cafeteria of a nearby public school for nearly six years as the facility was built. #edmondoklahoma #edmondok #visitedmond #heritagechurchofchrist #churchofchrist #memorialroadchurchofchrist #memorialroadokc #churchplant #shouthallelujah ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

Among the guests were members of the Memorial Road Church of Christ, which meets seven miles south of Heritage’s new, 12,750-square-foot building. Memorial Road planted Heritage to reach the growing suburb of north Edmond, abrim with new homes, a new Braum’s ice cream shop and a giant new Crest Foods supermarket.

“We never wanted to be a megachurch. That’s not us,” said Chris McKeever, a Memorial Road elder who attended the Heritage opening. Neither did he nor his 23 fellow elders want to launch a satellite campus of their 60-year-old, 2,500-member church.

Minister Travis Akins, right, elders of the Heritage Church of Christ and a representative of the company that built the church building cut a ribbon during Heritage’s grand opening service.

Although it meant losing a core group of their active and financially supportive members — and, eventually, one of their ministers, Travis Akins — Memorial Road’s leaders had few reservations about launching the new congregation, McKeever said.

“The only hesitation we had,” he said, “was doing two at once.” 

Churches that plant churches

Memorial Road was itself a church plant. Members of the Edmond Church of Christ launched the congregation, originally named the College Church of Christ, in 1963 to reach the students at nearby Oklahoma Christian University. Over the decades, Memorial Road has adapted to serve university graduates and their families. In the past two decades the church has remodeled its two-level nursery school wing and added a youth building, the Summit, complete with a full-size kitchen and basketball courts.

In the early 2000s, as weekly attendance topped 2,200, members heard story after story of declining membership among Churches of Christ. Young adults learned that the rural churches they grew up in were closing their doors. Downtown congregations in big cities were dying, too. And some members, their talents not fully utilized by the church, were slipping through the cracks.

Harold Shank, an elder of the Memorial Road Church of Christ, gives a congregational blessing to the members of the Church of Christ at Oakdale plant during a sendoff ceremony at Memorial Road in 2010.

Memorial Road’s leaders invited Joe Bright to speak to the congregation. Bright, then minister for the Sunset Church of Christ in Springfield, Mo., talked passionately about the church’s need to reproduce itself in a way that inspires future growth — churches planting churches that will plant churches. The Sunset church, whose attendance was less than half of Memorial Road’s, had nonetheless launched two new congregations in a five-year period.

Inspired by Bright’s words, Memorial Road sent 70 of its members to plant a church in Oakdale in October 2010. The community, about six miles southeast of Memorial Road’s building, was home to the first Church of Christ in Oklahoma, a congregation that had long since moved away.

Members of the Oakdale Church of Christ stand on stage while members of the Memorial Road Church of Christ pray for them during the church’s sendoff ceremony in 2010.

“We wanted to have a presence east of I-35,” said Darrel Sears, who moved from Kansas to serve as preacher for the Church of Christ at Oakdale. “There weren’t really any churches over in this area — at least Churches of Christ.”

The new church started out in the middle school commons of Oakdale Public School, across the street from Oakdale Baptist. That meant a weekly ritual of setting up chairs and audio/visual equipment and taking it back down.

“One thing we tried to do from the very beginning is be an autonomous congregation financially,” Sears said. The church purchased property but prayed for nine long years as members struggled to raise enough money to start construction.

Their prayers were answered in 2019 when the Oakdale school superintendent told them that his congregation, Oakdale Baptist, was preparing to move. Would they like to buy the building?

Darrel Sears

They would. Oakdale sold its property and moved across the street.

“Though we were not nearly where we needed to be financially to build, we had enough money in the bank to buy Oakdale Baptist’s building outright,” Sears said. “It’s been a true blessing to not have a mortgage payment.

“We had a lot of ideas of how we thought a church plant would go,” he added. “Not a lot of it happened the way we thought it would, but everything happened the way that God wanted it to.”

Now the church averages 300 or so on Sundays during the school year.

“We see Memorial Road as a big part of our beginning,” Sears said, “and we love to partner with them when we can. But we’re kind of our own identity now.”

Oakdale has, however, inherited its parent’s desire to replicate. It seeks to be “a church plant that plants churches,” Sears said. “We said that when we got to 300 to 500 we would start thinking about that.”

Youths from the Oakdale Church of Christ play Uno at the Baxter Institute in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, during a mission trip.

Two-at-once planting

Five years after the Oakdale launch, Memorial Road formed a team to ponder sites for a second church plant. The team identified two locales: burgeoning north Edmond and historic Midtown Oklahoma City. The latter, just north of the city’s business district, is a center of urban renewal with walkable neighborhoods of art galleries, gastropubs and upscale apartments for young couples.

Both seemed like ideal locales for a church, said Akins, then Memorial Road’s young adults minister, who served on the team. Rather than choose, they presented both to the elders.

“We kind of thought they would say no,” Akins said. “They came back and said, ‘That’s a great idea. Let’s do it.’”

The promotional video from 2016 presents the ideas behind church plants in north Edmond and Midtown Oklahoma City and ends with elder James Hill asking, “What if we did both?”

Both of the new congregations began meeting as small groups in the Memorial Road building — just as Oakdale had — and prepared for their inaugural services as stand-alone churches. While the Heritage church headed north to worship in the cafeteria of Heritage Elementary School, the Serve Midtown Church of Christ headed 12 miles south to Brown’s Bakery, an iconic Oklahoma City eatery owned by Memorial Road members.

Members of the Serve Midtown Church of Christ gather for fellowship and games at the church’s meeting place, Cross and Crown, in Oklahoma City.

Worshiping while surrounded by the scent of pastries was delightful, said Bob Carpenter, a Memorial Road elder who works with the Midtown church, “but there was no place for a classroom. Our children’s class met on the floor near the women’s bathroom.”

The church found classrooms and space for growth one mile west at Cross and Crown, a nonprofit that operates a food pantry, legal clinic and other services for the disadvantaged. Members continued to bring in donuts and pastries from Brown’s, however, until the bakery closed in late 2023.

The current venue fits with the church’s mission, Carpenter said. On the third Sunday of the month, members conduct “Serve Sundays,” distributing meals to those in need in their community. Then they go to Cross and Crown for worship.

“This is part of the story that fits in with Serve Midtown’s core identity,” Carpenter said.

Members of the Serve Midtown Church of Christ participate in a community giveaway project called “Feed His Sheep.”

Corey Baird, preaching minister for Serve Midtown, described the congregation as “less a transplant and more a true plant” of Memorial Road.

“It’s a seed from Memorial Road,” Baird said, “but it’s not necessarily the same type of energy or structure you would get at Memorial Road in any capacity.” 

The following video gives an update on the Midtown and north Edmond churches five years after planting.

‘Everyone needs to be doing something’

Unlike Serve Midtown, which may or may not purchase or build a meeting place in its pricey, developed Oklahoma City neighborhood, a building always was part of the Heritage church’s plan, elder Jeff Bingham said. The Memorial Road church purchased 9.5 acres of land next to an under-construction subdivision and gifted it to Heritage.

Children play on the floor of a yet-to-be furnished classroom during the Heritage Church of Christ’s grand opening.

Heritage’s building committee had its first meeting in March 2020. Two days later, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s home game against the Utah Jazz was canceled at the last minute after a player tested positive for COVID-19. For Oklahoma, it was the unofficial start of the pandemic.

The virus shut down schools and moved church services online. It also drove up building costs and delayed construction about a year, Bingham said.

It also brought the Estes family to the congregation.

The Estes family — Morgan, Jessica and Joanna — says hello during the Heritage Church of Christ’s grand opening.

Morgan and Jessica Estes, members of Memorial Road, needed a safe place for their daughter, Joanna, who was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a soft tissue cancer, in 2021. The large cafeteria at Heritage Elementary, plus the public school’s masking requirement, made the Heritage church a nice alternative to worshiping exclusively online, Jessica Estes said.

The church’s children’s ministry did meet online, and Joanna became a regular attendee. As her friendships grew, her parents became increasingly involved.

“This is about the size of the congregation I grew up in in California,” Morgan Estes said. “Everyone really knows everyone.”

His wife added, “and everyone needs to be doing something for the church to work.”

Members of the Heritage Church of Christ write messages and Scriptures on the building’s frame during the summer of 2023.

That “something” for the Estes parents was teaching the third and fourth grade class, which they didn’t think they’d be good at. “We enjoyed it more than we thought we would,” Jessica Estes said.

Joanna, now 12, is part of the fifth and sixth grade class, LiveWires, which has nine kids. She said she enjoys the tight-knit family. The class participates in service projects, including an upcoming dinner and game night they’ll host for the “Classics” class.

Among the church’s “classics” is Jack Rowe, a longtime church member from San Diego. Rowe, 93, led the communion devotional during the grand opening service.

Jack Rowe leads a Lord’s Supper devotional during the Heritage Church of Christ’s grand opening service.

“As we dedicate this building today, we hear a voice … beyond time and distance,” Rowe said. “The voice is from the very heart of God, and it was delivered to us in the person of his son and our savior. Hear him now as he declares, ‘This is my body, given for you.’”

Focus on the source 

Standing on the Heritage church’s brand-new stage, Akins preached about the Israelites crossing the Jordan in Joshua 4 and placing stones to remember what God had done for them.

Travis Akins preaches during the grand opening worship service of the Heritage Church of Christ in Edmond, Okla.

He also quoted from “At the Blue Hole: Elegy for a Church on the Edge” by Jack Reese, one of his professors at Abilene Christian University in Texas. The book laments the rapid decline of Churches of Christ in the U.S.

But Reese also cites the example of the Blue Hole, a tiny spring from which flows the life-giving San Antonio River. The source of that spring is the massive Edwards Aquifer that, though unseen, spans much of the state.

Churches, like springs, get all of the credit, all of the attention, Akins said. “We’ve got to maintenance it. We’ve got to take care of it. But it is not the spring that gives life. It is the water that lives beneath it.”

Instead of focusing on a building, or the Cheez-It crumbs on its floor, he urged his church to “stop maintenancing the springs … and live knowing where the water comes from.”

Cheez-It crumbs adorn the floor of the Heritage Church of Christ’s auditorium during its grand opening service.

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.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: Tiane Davis

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My mom reached over and plucked one of the creatures off my head to feed it Esbilac, an artificial milk replacement, from an eyedropper.

Audrey Jackson, pictured at age 5, holds a three-toed box turtle.

The year was 2001. I was 3 years old, and we were raising a brood of orphaned fox squirrels in our Little Rock, Ark., home. 

Another box nearby held a nest of sleeping juvenile cottontail rabbits she had already fed.

Hosting unconventional animals in our home wasn’t uncommon — my mom, Carol Jackson, has been a licensed wildlife rehabilitator with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission for 24 years. 

Despite the wildlife label, that job is tame compared to her prior experience. 

She volunteered at the Little Rock Zoo before I was born. Starting as a docent in 1990, she led educational tours, fed animals and cleaned enclosures. Five years later, she applied and received a Federal Rehabilitator Migratory Bird and Raptor Permit. 

Then, when I was a year old, she applied to be a licensed wildlife rehabilitator.

One has to wonder what she was thinking when she chose to add the care of orphaned wildlife to the mix with a child under 1. I’ve always just assumed I was wild enough that she simply thought, “What are a few more animals?”

Carol Jackson, pictured at age 24, cares for an injured northern cardinal.

Carol Jackson, pictured at age 52, cares for a barred owl that got tangled in barbed wire.

She certainly passed along her passion. My seasonal “pets” — usually captured in spring and released in fall — ranged from the common snapping turtle to a Texas brown tarantula. 

On Easter my mom swapped the usual candy contents of plastic eggs with caterpillars, frogs, pill bugs and millipedes she’d found around the garden. 

Because of her, nearly all of my favorite childhood memories are connected to nature. 

By the time I was 8, I’d read every biology textbook we owned, memorized most sections of the “Field Guide to North American Birds” by the National Geographic Society and could identify every species of snake native to Arkansas.

Stacks of VHS tapes held recordings of informative TV shows — most notably “Zoboomafoo,” a PBS show led by a ring-tailed lemur, and “The Crocodile Hunter,” an educational (and entertaining) show on Animal Planet hosted by Steve Irwin. 

As young as I was, the latter also happened to be my first introduction to Australia. 

At nearly 9,000 miles away, Australia seemed like a mythical land of animals and laid-back people (both of which are true, by the way). Visiting seemed unattainable. 

But then as an adult I began working for The Christian Chronicle. Our interests aligned.

It seems that my boss, Bobby Ross Jr., enjoys sending me away to far-flung nations just as much as I like traveling. Yet, as my coworkers at the Chronicle can testify, any animal — regardless of where — can command my attention. 

Audrey Jackson, pictured at age 25, pets an eastern grey kangaroo at the Australia Zoo.

On safari in South Africa I was chided by my cohorts for being equally as entertained by a stray cat at dinner as I had been with a bull elephant mere feet from our vehicle hours before. 

So, naturally, when I had a day off while on a recent reporting trip in Brisbane, Australia, I had only one goal: visit the Australia Zoo.

Founded by Irwin’s family, the zoo started as a wildlife sanctuary for rehabilitated and non-releasable wildlife until it eventually grew to become one of the most notable zoos in Australia, largely due to Irwin’s international reputation as a contagious TV persona. 

It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience — I got to check petting a kangaroo off my bucket list — rooted in something deeply familiar. 

Irwin and I share what I consider a determining factor in our love for wildlife: our moms. 

Neither of us grew up in fear of wildlife simply because it was never presented as an option. Irwin’s mother, Lyn, raised him beside orphaned joeys in her care, much like my mom raised me. 

Carol Jackson holds Winston, an orphaned striped skunk, in 2020.

Having the opportunity to experience such a variety of God’s creation at the Australia Zoo felt like the actualization of dreams — both mine and my mom’s — that started so many years ago in a far more humble location. 

I like to believe we occasionally get insight into what a perfect world might have been. 

If a glimpse into the Garden of Eden ever did exist, I’m convinced it was there that one chilly morning in my family’s basement. 

AUDREY JACKSON is Associate Editor of The Christian Chronicle. Reach her at audrey@christianchronicle.org.

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The Christian teen would like to serve as prime minister of Australia.

“That’s my goal,” said Black, who attends Redlands College, a K-12 school associated with Churches of Christ. “I want to study law and justice. I want to be a lawyer. But ultimately, I really want to be a politician.”

Jada Black reviews her test results during a class at Redlands College.

Mike Shepherd, one of the school’s top administrators, praises the 16-year-old aspiring world leader as “a symbol of resilience and service.”

He predicts a bright future for her, regardless of whether she ever lives at The Lodge in Canberra or the Kirribilli House in Sydney — the two official residences for the nation’s prime minister.

Despite losing her 40-year-old mother, Alicia, to cancer in 2021, Black has stayed active in spiritual life activities and community service projects.

“Known for her empathetic nature, she has become a beloved and influential figure, especially following the personal adversity of losing her mother,” Shepherd wrote in nominating Black for the 2024 Redlands Coast Australia Day Awards. “This experience has profoundly shaped her commitment to positively impacting those around her.”

Nikki Coker, who teaches biology at the 1,440-student school, echoes Shepherd’s assessment.

“When you meet students, sometimes straight off the bat you just see something special,” said Coker, a member of The Point Church of Christ in the Brisbane area. “When she came into the class, she was always very aware of others. And she is very kind and thoughtful.”

“When you meet students, sometimes straight off the bat you just see something special. When she came into the class, she was always very aware of others. And she is very kind and thoughtful.”

‘Humble and focused’

Brisbane, the capital of the state of Queensland, ranks as Australia’s third-largest city, behind Sydney and Melbourne. It has a population of 2.5 million and will host the 2032 Summer Olympics.

The Redlands Coast Australia Day Awards celebrate outstanding citizens in a suburban area of Brisbane. Australia Day on Jan. 26 marks the Oceania nation’s history and achievements.

Jada Black displays the certificate she received as a finalist for Redlands Coast Young Citizen of the Year.

At a ceremony Thursday night, Black was honored as one of three finalists for Redlands Coast Young Citizen of the Year. 

Shepherd, who served as the school’s director of formation and mission before a recent promotion to special assistant to the principal, does not expect the recognition to change Black’s outlook.

“Despite her numerous achievements, Jada remains humble and focused on serving others,” he told the selection committee. “This service-oriented mindset has been a cornerstone of her work, from local community initiatives to international service projects.”

Black, who has attended Redlands College since age 4, recalls her mother as a devoted Christian who taught her God has a plan for her life. 

That lesson inspires Black as she and her family — including her father, Stuart, and 13-year-old sister, Sophie — process lingering grief. 

“My faith is just like an everyday thing,” Black told The Christian Chronicle in an interview between classes. “I mean, God got me through with what I dealt with, with my mom. So I’ve got a lot of trust in him, and I carry that trust everywhere. Before I do anything, I’ll just quickly pray about it.”

Honest talk about faith

At Redlands College, Black has served as a spiritual life captain.

For her senior year, she was chosen along with a male counterpart for her school’s overall top student leadership position.

She enjoys promoting faith-based opportunities on campus but avoids forcing her beliefs on anyone. 

In Australia — as in the United States — identification with Christianity has declined sharply in recent decades. Many of Black’s classmates eschew religion, despite attending a school with mandatory Bible classes and chapel assemblies.

Jada Black, right, talks during a meeting about Redlands College’s 2024 student mission trip to the U.S. Black was baptized at Lipscomb University during a 2023 mission trip.

Scandals, including highly publicized misdeeds involving the global megachurch Hillsong, based in Australia, have intensified the “church hurt” some feel, Black said.

Marching through the hallways declaring “Jesus loves you” would not be the best approach, in her view.

“I usually wait for my friends to, like, ask me questions and stuff about it,” Black said of her faith. “That’s usually how I approach it. And I just try to be honest because people have seen the dark side of Christianity, and you can’t ignore that.

“And so people often come to me, almost in a confrontational way, like saying, ‘How can you be a Christian?’” she added. “It’s that sort of thing. And I try just not to put it in people’s faces, but also, I try to be really open to talking about it.”

A passion to serve

Among her accolades, Black has excelled at sports, winning state and national judo championships.

At the same time, she devotes her energies to causes close to her heart, such as fighting cancer. She and her maternal grandmother, Charmaine Brown, have worked alongside each other to help patients and their families.

Just a few months ago, Black traveled on a Redlands College medical mission trip to the South Pacific island of Fiji. While there, she and her friend Imogen Meyers distributed Bibles and prayed with patients after their dental work or medical procedures.

Jada Black, right, listens to a classmate receive feedback on an recent end-of-year exam.

“She’s amazing,” Meyers said. “We’ve both helped each other to grow our faith.”

Both teens traveled with a Redlands group to the United States last year. They stopped and helped at various charities along the way, from a soup kitchen in New York to a food bank in Los Angeles. 

And they attended the faith-based Impact camp at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. At a nightly worship gathering, Black and Meyers both came forward to be baptized.

“I’m really passionate about politics and stuff. I appreciate how multicultural Australia is, but I feel like there’s a lot more work to go. … I feel like there’s a need in a lot of areas where I could represent people.”

Until the Impact experience, Black said, “I didn’t really understand the importance of being baptized. Just being there, there were some verses that stuck out to me. And it just felt like the right time.”

Her future goal?

She wants to make life better for this diverse nation of 26 million people.

“I’m really passionate about politics and stuff,” she said. “I appreciate how multicultural Australia is, but I feel like there’s a lot more work to go. … I feel like there’s a need in a lot of areas where I could represent people.”

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

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Claudia Rodríguez, who grew up in the pews of a congregation in the small Central American nation, became the country’s first female president on Dec. 1, albeit in an interim capacity as El Salvador’s elected president and vice president step down to run for a second term. 

Rodríguez will serve as chief executive until the president’s term expires on June 1, 2024. 

Claudia Rodríguez de Guevara speaks during her tenure as director of municipal works in El Salvador.

She was known as “Juanita” in her youth group, said Carlos Inglés, a native of El Salvador who also grew up in Churches of Christ. 

“She was a great servant, a faithful member, attending all the youth programs (and) Sunday Bible school,” said Inglés, who left El Salvador at age 18 and trained for ministry at Baxter Institute in Honduras. He served as a missionary in Colombia before moving to Houston, where he is bilingual minister for the Impact Church of Christ.

The Christian Chronicle contacted the minister for the church Rodríguez and her family attend in El Salvador. The minister contacted Rodríguez for comment but said that the new president preferred not to share details about her church family, citing privacy and security concerns. 

Rodríguez’s appointment is unusual — and controversial — in Salvadoran politics. Presidents are elected to five-year terms, and the country’s constitution forbids them from serving consecutive terms. 

Nayib Bukele, a politician and businessman, was elected in 2019 as El Salvador’s 43rd president. In 2021, Bukele appointed judges to the country’s constitutional court who reinterpreted the laws banning consecutive terms. The court ruled that a president can run again if he or she steps back from the presidency six months before the inauguration, The Economist reports.

Rodríguez, who trained in accounting, served as a finance manager for the municipality of Nuevo Cuscatlán while Bukele was its mayor. She continued to work for Bukele as he ascended to the presidency. In 2021, Bukele appointed Rodríguez president of the board of directors of El Salvador’s Directorate of Municipal Works. A year later, Rodríguez became Bukele’s personal secretary.

Bukele

On Nov. 30, the legislative assembly selected Rodríguez as El Salvador’s acting president after it granted Bukele and vice president Félix Ulloa a leave of absence to focus on the 2024 campaign.

Critics argue that Bukele’s actions violate Salvadoran election laws despite the court’s recent interpretation of those laws.

Bukele enjoys widespread support among Salvadorans, due largely to his crackdown on gang activity, the Associated Press reports. Gang violence plagued the country in recent decades, sparking waves of Salvadorans — many of them unaccompanied minors — to flee for the United States, creating crises on the U.S./Mexico border.

Violence has claimed the lives of church members, including minister Antonio Lara. In 2010, Lara was shot multiple times as he stood in the doorway of the El Platanar Church of Christ in San Miguel, El Salvador, just before Sunday worship. Five years later, El Salvador attained the infamous distinction of the world’s murder capital, with 107 homicides per 100,000 people, The Washington Post reports.

In March 2022, Bukele declared a state of emergency in El Salvador, allowing authorities broad powers to arrest suspected gang members — sometimes based on tattoos or anonymous phone calls. 

“Even Bukele’s critics seem to concede that his actions have functionally destroyed the criminal street gangs that drove the country’s astounding crime rate,” Megan McArdle wrote in an opinion piece for the Post.

But those actions also have created one of the worst human rights crises since El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war, according to a recent report by Amnesty International.

“Even Bukele’s critics seem to concede that his actions have functionally destroyed the criminal street gangs that drove the country’s astounding crime rate.”

The watchdog group claimed that the almost 74,000 people jailed in the crackdown — many with little evidence of wrongdoing — were subjected to “systematic use of torture and other mistreatment.”

Members of Churches of Christ in El Salvador told the Chronicle that their country is safer now than it has been in decades. Missionaries who travel to the Central American nation said the same.

In early December, as Rodríguez assumed the presidency, Orlando Reyes was in La Palma, a city in the mountains near El Salvador’s border with Honduras, working with Salvadoran minister Yimi Sayes. Reyes is minister for the Monett Church of Christ in Missouri, one of several churches that supports Sayes’ work, which includes a Christian school.

During the trip, Salvadoran church members prepared 34 bags of eggs, vegetables, fruits and children’s clothing to give to needy families in La Palma. The LaVergne Church of Christ in Tennessee provided funds to feed 100 people. 

“The parents and children are blessed to receive,” Reyes said, “and the smiles on our faces are very great!”  

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But first, he had to pick up his car.

His wife, Jemma, gave the minister and the reporter a brief ride through the lush, hilly community of Princes Town on the island of Trinidad. It was about an hour before start time at “the royal congregation,” as Clarke calls it, the Princes Town Church of Christ. 

Clarke

Jemma Clarke stopped in front of a small house with multiple cars in the yard. She dropped off Clarke and the reporter and left to run errands before Bible class. 

The mechanic, in a well-worn T-shirt, wiped grease from his hands as Clarke made a hasty introduction: 

“This is Brian Brooks. I want him to be the next preacher of the Princes Town church. I met him in prison.”

‘Rum shops and religion’

Brooks promised to share his story later as Clarke got behind the wheel of his car, which the mechanic had once again restored to life.

The minister is grateful for the wheels. He’s spent much of the past three decades traversing the steep hills of Princes Town on foot. 

“Normally I would walk, walk by myself,” he said, laughing, “just walkin’, walkin’, doing door-to-door knockin’, trying to encourage people, ‘You better come to the Lord.’”

The community of about 30,000 souls, seven miles east of San Fernando, got its name after a visit by Queen Victoria’s grandsons, Princes Albert and George (later King George V) in 1880, when Trinidad was a British colony. 

Religion abounds here. It’s easy to find Hindus, Muslims and a host of Christian groups, from Catholic to Pentecostal, plus syncretic faiths that combine elements of Christianity with traditional Afro-Caribbean practices.

“There are two businesses in Trinidad: rum shops and religion,” Clarke said. “Once you start a religion anywhere in Trinidad, you get followers.”

“There are two businesses in Trinidad: rum shops and religion. Once you start a religion anywhere in Trinidad, you get followers.”

Clarke wanted little to do with any of it. He was jaded and skeptical about religion when a Church of Christ minister knocked on the door of the house he shared with Jemma in the 1980s. But she took interest and started studying the Bible. She urged Clarke to accompany her to worship.

“I told her I didn’t want to go to the Church of Christ,” Clarke said. “They think they know it all.”  

Eventually, he agreed to go, but he asked her not to be upset with him if he “disrupted the proceedings.” 

He tried to do just that, asking question after question during Bible study. Every time he asked, the preacher patiently said, “Mr. Clarke, turn in your Bible to …” responding with book, chapter and verse.

“I’ve never, never seen that before,” Clarke said. “I’m seein’ these things for the first time. Nobody took you to where the Bible said those things.”

“All are welcome to worship in truth with us,” reads the sign of the Princes Town church.

A reluctant call to preach

Clarke and Jemma married and were baptized. He studied his Bible as he worked in maintenance for a food service company. 

After eight and a half years, there was a “major retrenchment,” he said. He was laid off. New jobs were hard to come by. To feed his three children, he sold his car.  

Then Parker Henderson, a longtime missionary to Trinidad, offered Clarke the chance to attend the Trinidad School of Preaching while he looked for a job. There he’d get a $100-per-month stipend.

“I said, ‘Something is better than nothing,’” Clarke recalled. “I told him, ‘I’ll come, but I’ll leave if I get a job.’”

After the first month of classes, Clarke changed his mind. Jemma got a job to help support the family as Clarke trained for ministry. After graduation in 1994, he began canvassing the streets of Princes Town, offering the same invitation he’d been so hesitant to answer. He did this all on foot. It was 10 years before he got another car.

When Clarke was baptized, there were some 250 members on the congregation’s rolls, making it one of the largest Churches of Christ in Trinidad. But “too many internal struggles” took a toll on the congregation, he said, as did the shutdown of a large sugar refinery in 2003. Only a few members were left when he started preaching in Princes Town. Now Sunday attendance hovers around 30 to 40.

Medical offices, a gym and pharmacies comprise a commercial center in Princes Town, originally named Mission de Savanna Grande.

“Evangelism here is very difficult because of the many, many perverted gospels,” Clarke said. 

But he knows that more stubborn, spiritual seekers like him are out there, waiting to hear the truth.

That’s where his mechanic comes in.

‘The cross became so heavy …’

After a quick tour of Princes Town, including a stop for the city’s signature coconut ice cream, Clarke arrived at the church building. 

Brooks, the mechanic, followed close behind in a blue button-up shirt. He borrowed the minister’s office to share his story with the Chronicle as members trickled in for the Bible study.

He grew up in a Catholic household and trained to repair diesel engines. He smoked marijuana, and the habit escalated to cocaine and crack during the 1980s. “That’s when I started getting locked up,” he said. “I went to prison four times. In 2008, I was arrested and sentenced to 25 years.

“In prison, you hold your corner. If you’re greedy, if you like to eat, like to smoke, people will take advantage of you.” 

Brian and Debbie Brooks’ marriage weathered his years in prison.

As Brooks spoke, the words of a hymn floated into the office from the auditorium. “The cross became so heavy, I fell beneath the load.” Bible class students were singing “Follow Me,” a hymn that compares the trials of Christian living with the suffering Jesus endured at his crucifixion. 

In prison, Brooks learned to deny himself, to curb his urges. He spent time in prayer. One day, while he was in the prison chapel, he saw evangelists from the Church of Christ enter the facility. He asked a fellow inmate about them.

“If you go to that study, you’re going to like what you hear,” whispered the inmate, who seemed to be hiding from the church members. Brooks later learned that the inmate had been baptized through the ministry and didn’t want the church members to know that he was back behind bars.

Brooks went to the Bible study, and “right then I knew that this was the church,” he said. He was baptized, and “when I got out of the prison, I came right here, and I never turned back.”

‘Sinners … of who I am chief’

After sharing his story, Brooks joined his wife of 34 years, Debbie, at the Bible study. During his long years of addiction and incarceration, she took care of their three children.

“They were aware of their father’s problems,” Debbie Brooks said. “I used to carry them to Narcotics Anonymous meetings so they would understand that it is a disease. Any time he was sober, he would tell them how much he loves them. He was one of those addicts who, when he used, did it away from the house so they would not see him at his worst.”

She was skeptical when she learned of her husband’s conversion. He had been baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church before, but that commitment didn’t last. This time, “there was a kind of joy and light that was emanating from him.”

“I used to carry them to Narcotics Anonymous meetings so they would understand that it is a disease. Any time he was sober, he would tell them how much he loves them. He was one of those addicts who, when he used, did it away from the house so they would not see him at his worst.”

To be honest, “it made me pretty jealous,” she said. “I wanted that also — that joy, that sweetness.”

She studied the Bible and was baptized. A few months ago, after “burning the candle at both ends,” she and her husband, ages 61 and 63, graduated from the Trinidad School of Preaching. Their kids attended the ceremony, and Brian Brooks’ sister flew down from Connecticut to cheer them on.

As the class concluded, Brian Brooks read from the apostle Paul’s first letter to his protege, Timothy: 

“This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.”

Junior Clarke, left, teaches a Thursday night Bible study for the Princes Town Church of Christ.

Both Junior Clarke, the skeptic turned true believer, and Brian Brooks, the convict who became a convert, see themselves in those verses. Together, they face an uphill battle as they preach the Gospel to a people jaded and distracted by multiple faiths proclaiming conflicting truths. 

But Brian Brooks has faith that the King of Kings who saved him can guide the people of Princes Town to the Prince of Peace.

“I thank God for what he did,” he said. “Nothing is impossible for him. He can pull you out of a pit that has no bottom.” 

The post A skeptic and a convict discover the King of Kings in Princes Town appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

No, it’s not Amazon — it’s Harvest House, a Texas food ministry founded by the Nichols Street Church of Christ in Bay City, 75 miles southwest of Houston.

Glenn Organ and a few other members of the congregation started feeding about 25 families per week out of the garage of a church-owned apartment in 1993 — a year before Jeff Bezos founded the online retail giant out of his garage in Bellevue, Wash.

Glenn Organ, left, accepts a delivery of food from the Food Bank of the Golden Crescent.

And while Harvest House may not boast Amazon’s $500 billion revenue — or any, for that matter — Organ is proud that the ministry now feeds an average of 300 families every week, providing them with about 5,000 pounds of food.

That makes it the largest food pantry in Matagorda County, with a population of about 36,000 — nearly a quarter of whom live below the poverty level, according to U.S. Census data.

The pantry mostly operates a weekly Wednesday drive-up or walk-up food distribution. One week each month, it runs a mobile food distribution on Thursday instead in nearby Van Vleck, Texas.

“We are trying to do as Christ admonished us to do in Matthew, when he depicts the final judgment, and one of those number of people who will be congratulated in that judgment are those who have fed the hungry,” Organ told The Christian Chronicle.

The 88-year-old former Harvest House director and church elder now serves as the associate director, having stepped down in 2015.

Five food ministries become one

Much of Harvest House’s growth came in the past few years under director Willie Rollins, a Nichols Street elder who succeeded the previous director, David Carol, in 2018.

Under the 74-year-old’s leadership, the food pantry joined forces with other churches in the area, each of which had been operating its own food ministry — First Methodist, First Presbyterian, Calvary Baptist and First Baptist — to form an independent nonprofit.

That was Carol’s wish — or what Rollins called his “manifesto” — before his death from brain cancer.

Willie Rollins, far right, and other volunteers for the Harvest House accept a donation check from HB Zachary Care Team.

Each partnering church contributes $1,125 per quarter and has a seat on the board of directors.

Beyond the combined resources, Rollins told the Chronicle that independence has allowed Harvest House to accept donations from local companies that could not contribute to faith-based institutions and to form a greater partnership with the Food Bank of the Golden Crescent — a nonprofit 70 miles west in Victoria, Texas, that supplies the majority of the pantry’s food.

Frances Santellana, the food bank’s chief operations officer, remembers when Organ and another Nichols Street elder would drive a small bobtail truck to pick up food from the bank in the early days.

Now, the food bank delivers box trucks full of pallets of food to Harvest House.

“There’s no words to describe the gratitude that we feel towards them,” Santellana said of Harvest House volunteers, “because they’re out there with our team of volunteers, whether it’s raining, storming … just giving their hands to our community, to our staff that distributes the food out there.

The Food Bank of the Golden Crescent delivers a truckload of food to Harvest House.

“So it just shows their true servant’s heart,” she added. “You know, they have a compassion and a true servant’s heart to help the community.”

Independence also allowed the pantry to apply for and receive an $873,000 grant from the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs for the construction of a new 3,500-square-foot facility — a significant upgrade from the current 1,200-square-foot facility.

A digital model shows the new planned facility for Harvest House, set to be completed in 2025.

The new building will include a walk-in freezer and refrigerator, a waiting room for families signing up or renewing their services — who currently have to stand outside, rain or shine — and a public meeting area.

Harvest House plans to break ground in March and have the facility ready in 2025.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden

While the pantry’s independent status does bring some restrictions on evangelism, Rollins said the families it serves still know to give the glory to God.

“That’s probably the worst kept secret in Matagorda County,” he said with a chuckle. “You know, it’s not a ministry, but it is a ministry because they’re all faith-based organizations that are participating in this process.”

“It’s not a ministry, but it is a ministry because they’re all faith-based organizations that are participating in this process.”

Volunteers have a devotional each Wednesday, and they can still pass out Christian materials to food recipients, Rollins said.

Additionally, the new facility will be located right next to the Nichols Street church building, on an acre of land donated by the church — the current operations are further down the street.

Organ sees God at work through the Harvest House now more than ever.

“It’s really amazing to see what God is doing with this and causing a better spirit of understanding and working together among churches in this community,” he said.

“The Church of Christ has had a reputation in communities that they thought they were the only ones going to heaven, and they avoided churches as having the plague — we’re trying to change that reputation,” Organ added. “We’re not changing what we believe. We’re not sacrificing any principles. We’re simply working together for a common cause to do what this community really needs.”

Rollins echoed that sentiment on partnering with churches outside the fellowship of Churches of Christ.

Local kids volunteer at Harvest House, putting together food for needy families.

“I understand there has been a tradition of that separating, but we don’t ascribe to that, particularly when it comes to serving mankind,” he said. “I don’t think Jesus would say, ‘OK, you’re Church of Christ. You can’t serve these poor people if you’re a Baptist or you’re Methodist.’ I don’t think the Jesus we serve would have a problem with it.”

More churches have shown their support for Harvest House, too — the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church, recently pledged to donate 10,000 pounds of food.

But despite all the community support, recent food shortages have affected Golden Crescent and made securing supplies more difficult, while also creating a greater need for food among those already struggling.

That’s why Harvest House has at times been forced to buy additional food from grocery stores — at several times the cost of that provided by the food bank — and why Harvest House has been soliciting support from more organizations in the area.

Regardless, the members of the Nichols Street church plan to continue ministering to the hungry through the food bank — even if it’s not technically a ministry anymore — and setting an example for other Christians.

“I think it would be a shining light not only in our community but throughout the brotherhood and throughout the nation to see what some churches are doing to meet a common need,” said Organ, the former director. “There are ways in which we can work together successfully and not only get to know each other but come to appreciate each other — and who knows what God will do with this?”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Willie Rollins, 74, died Dec. 6 after this article was reported. Rollins had battled leukemia successfully for years but was diagnosed with pneumonia before his death, preacher Matt Springfield said. “He loved serving the Lord and the community and was a wonderful shepherd for our congregation,” Springfield said. “Keep his lovely wife, Audrey Rollins, covered in prayer.” Memorial donations in Rollins’ name can be made to the Harvest House.

DONATIONS to the Harvest House can be made through PayPal to @harvesthousepantry or mailed to 1200 Nichols Ave., Bay City, TX 77414.

The post A cause all believers can agree on: Feeding the hungry appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Featured image (above): Preachers pore over Scripture in well-worn Bibles during the first day of the Tanzania Leadership Conference at the Andrew Connally School of Preaching. The annual seminar brings ministers from across East Africa to the school in Arusha, Tanzania, which is named after a longtime missionary who first came to Tanzania (then called Tanganyika) in the 1960s. In 2001, the school began its partnership with Denver-based Bear Valley Bible Institute International, which trains ministers for Churches of Christ on campuses around the globe.

For more information, see tanzaniamissions.com.

SPOTLIGHT

BATAM, Indonesia — Winston Bolt first began to think about God after he plucked a small leaf from a tree. It was simply too complex, too perfect, to happen by chance, he thought to himself.

For the first time, “I saw God’s grand design,” he told The Christian Chronicle during a 2015 interview.

Winston Bolt worships with the Church of Christ in Batam.

That tree, by the way, was in the courtyard of the Fulton County jail in Atlanta, where Bolt was doing time for selling guns illegally.

Bolt’s revelation set him on a path to baptism and parole — followed by four decades of ministry in the Southeast Asian nation of Indonesia.

He founded the Batam Bible College, which prepares ministers for work in Churches of Christ across the nation of 273 million souls, 87 percent of whom claim Islam as their faith.

At age 80, he still actively mentors young preachers and growing churches in Indonesia, said Herbin Simanjuntak, Bolt’s longtime coworker at the school.

The pair recently hosted a group of visitors from the Pasir Panjang Church of Christ in nearby Singapore. They also spent time with Indonesian Christians talking about plans for the next five years — including a discipleship program at the school and “how to equip the graduated students to impact the growing churches in Indonesia. both in quantity and quality,” Simanjuntak said.

ISRAEL

JERUSALEM — Netivyah, a ministry led by Jewish followers of Jesus, sent a van of supplies — including headlamps, cell phone charges and utility kits — into the Gaza Strip for troops in Israel’s Golani Brigade, said Yehuda Bachana, the nonprofit’s deputy director, who also serves with a paratrooper unit.

“They were hit hard on Oct. 7 (the day of the Hamas attacks that sparked the current conflict) and are fighting hard now,” Bachana said.

Healing Hands International, a nonprofit associated with Churches of Christ, is partnering with Netivyah to provide humanitarian aid. See hhi.org/disaster/israel-response.

MEXICO

ACAPULCO — First came the hurricane. Then came the looters.

Members of a Church of Christ in this seaside resort city survived Hurricane Otis, the strongest ever to hit Mexico’s Pacific coast. But the Category 5 storm damaged the church’s building and members’ homes as it made landfall in late October, said Moisés Medina Varón, the congregation’s treasurer.

Hurricane Otis damaged the building of the Acapulco Church of Christ.

“We are fine, thank God,” Medina told La Cronica Cristiana, a Spanish-language church publication. “We have only lost materials. But (people) have looted shopping centers. There is no electricity or gasoline.”

In addition to killing dozens and causing billions of dollars in damage, the storm sparked widespread crime, prompting Mexico’s government to deploy National Guard troops.

Mexican churches gathered relief supplies in Chilpancingo, about 65 miles north of Acapulco. One of the vehicles sent to retrieve the supplies broke down, Medina said, and had to be towed back to Acapulco.

UKRAINE

KYIV — More than 700,000 Ukrainian children have been taken from Ukraine to Russia since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its Eastern European neighbor began in February 2022, according to Russia’s government.

Churches of Christ in the U.S. are providing food and supplies to groups in Ukraine that shelter and relocate children, including the orphaned and abandoned, from the front lines of the conflict.

John Kachelman Jr. of Ukraine Missions shared a message from one such group in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, that is preparing to move 500 children west to the city of Lviv for the winter. “Thankfully, there is a sports center that has agreed to house children,” Kachelman’s contact reported.

“Your assistance in feeding these children makes this possible.”

Ukraine Missions is a ministry of the Dalraida Church of Christ in Montgomery, Ala. See kachelman.com/ukraine.

The post Around the World: A prisoner turned missionary, relief efforts in Israel and Ukraine, and more quick takes appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Afterward, about 250 spiritual brothers and sisters ate fellowship meals piled high with beans grown at a church-owned farm.

The Versalles Church of Christ, about 60 miles east of Havana, hosted the joyous areawide gathering at a time of extreme economic crisis for this Caribbean island nation. 

Cuban minister Tony Fernandez baptizes Liliana Valdés Milián at the Versalles Church of Christ in Matanzas.

In such a stressful time, minister Tony Fernandez, 50, said he focuses on sharing the bread of life with fellow Cubans who often do not have enough bread.

“There have been very tough times, but God has always provided a solution and allowed us to continue moving forward,” said Fernandez, whose growing congregation meets in a government-authorized, open-air auditorium behind a former residence.

“There have been very tough times, but God has always provided a solution and allowed us to continue moving forward.”

Born to serve

After Fidel Castro rose to power in the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the relationship between the government and the churches became quite tense in this socialist state 90 miles from Florida.  

For decades, restrictions were placed on Christian churches, leading many religious leaders to leave the island. Worship services could only be held in officially registered buildings. 

Before 1959, more than 100 Churches of Christ formed on the island, but only six met in authorized places of worship. After the revolution, most of the congregations were forced to stop meeting. 

But the societal upheaval did not stop Fernandez’s parents, Jose Antonio and Hilda, from teaching their son — their only child — to love Jesus.

“The three of us would meet very discreetly in our house because worshiping God was forbidden at that time,” recalled Fernandez, speaking through a Spanish-language interpreter.

Eighteen years of prayers preceded the boy’s 1973 birth.

Herald of Truth’s Tim Archer visits with a family at the Versalles Church of Christ in Matanzas, Cuba.

“It was very much a Samuel situation,” said Tim Archer, Fernandez’s co-worker with Herald of Truth, an evangelistic outreach ministry based in Abilene, Texas. 

In the Old Testament, a woman named Hannah asks God to bless her with a son. She promises to give him “to the Lord for all the days of his life,” as 1 Samuel 1:11 recounts.

Likewise, Archer said, “When Tony was born, his parents dedicated him to the Lord. And he feels that calling.”

Tony Fernandez speaks as the Versalles Church of Christ in Matanzas, Cuba, gathers for an areawide worship assembly.

Gospel spreads quickly

Most Sundays, Fernandez preaches at the Versalles church and then drives to a half-dozen mission points throughout the province of Matanzas — an area slightly smaller than Connecticut.

For the minister, a typical Lord’s Day starts at 8 a.m. and ends about midnight as he travels roughly 350 miles round-trip to share God’s word. 

In all, he has helped plant 52 congregations in the province. Most are small groups meeting in homes. He drops off other leaders to preach at different locations along his route.

“I believe that Cuba is a country that has great potential for the Gospel. There’s a lot of spiritual need, and when people receive the Gospel, it’s with great respect, and it spreads very quickly.”

“I believe that Cuba is a country that has great potential for the Gospel,” he said. “There’s a lot of spiritual need, and when people receive the Gospel, it’s with great respect, and it spreads very quickly.”

During the week, he shuttles church members to medical appointments and checks on crops — such as beans, corn, peanuts and sweet potatoes — at the 114-acre farm the church operates south of the provincial capital.

The 15-year-old farm started small and grew after Fernandez baptized a rural couple who had lost two adult sons — one in a bicycle accident and another who died by suicide.

Their third son, Jorge Sanchez, was “living a wild life of drinking and chasing women,” the minister recalled.

Farm manager Jorge Sanchez, left, visits with minister Tony Fernandez.

Sanchez, now a devoted Christian, manages the farm.

“No turning back, no turning back,” he sang gleefully in Spanish on a recent Saturday as he trekked through a field.

With money short, the farm pays helpers with produce.

“One worker calculated the value of the food and told me, ‘You’re overpaying me,’” Sanchez said with a chuckle. “I told him, ‘We don’t calculate in money. We calculate in love.’”

Producing crops to feed church members as well as orphans and elderly people in the community has become more difficult with the recent theft of oxen.

“The only thing I ask,” a frustrated Sanchez said, “is that you be praying for us.”

Outpourings of love

Fernandez drives a 2005 Hyundai H-1 van. The motor is shot, but the minister can’t find a new one. 

A longstanding U.S. trade embargo limits the availability of newer vehicles and car parts on the island. As a result, decades-old Buicks, Chevys, Fords and Pontiacs — kept running as long as possible — transform the island’s highways into a classic car show.

Cuba blames the U.S. sanctions for its economic problems, while the U.S. cites its aim to restore democracy and respect for human rights. The COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the troubles for the island of 11 million people.

“It’s beautiful to see when people are sharing not from their excess but from things that they may need in the future.”

Fernandez rolls down his Korean-made van’s windows rather than run the air-conditioner because the impaired motor can’t handle the strain. 

Despite Cuba’s challenges, he remains dedicated to his native country — and inspired by the outpourings of love he witnesses.

“At the end of every church service, we have a time where we ask the members to help one another with a certain medication someone’s looking for,” Fernandez said. 

“It’s beautiful to see when people are sharing not from their excess but from things that they may need in the future,” he added. “Just to see someone offer up an aspirin to somebody else — it’s a beautiful thing.”

A classic car crosses a bridge in Matanzas. Decades-old vehicles are a common sight on Cuban roads because of a longstanding U.S. trade embargo.

Dual passions

Besides raising Fernandez to serve Christ, his parents fostered his talent as a musician. 

At age 10, he began attending a school of arts and playing the bass violin. 

Four decades later, the dual passions — ministry and music — galvanize the preacher and professional chamber orchestra performer.

“Tony sees music as a sort of therapy for him — a way to recharge his batteries,” said Archer, Herald of Truth’s director of international ministry and a speaker on its Spanish broadcasts. 

“He works with hundreds of church members, and hardly anybody else has a car,” explained the Texan, who also serves as an elder of the University Church of Christ in Abilene, which is active in Cuba missions. “So his car is an ambulance. It’s a hearse. It’s a transport to the doctor. And people call him at all hours of the night. 

“So he needs that time to unwind and do something creative,” Archer added, “and that’s what music is to him.”

Tony Fernandez poses with his bass violin at a concert hall in Matanzas, Cuba.

The Bible bolsters Fernandez’s faith, but Beethoven and baroque music — not to mention modern Cuban tunes — soothe his soul.

“Years ago, I tried just doing ministry and not being involved in music, and I almost fell into depression,” Fernandez said. “An artist or anyone who has received a gift from God has to use that their entire life. Otherwise, they are not going to function well.”

When he’s feeling overwhelmed, playing the bass violin revives him.

“I come up with the best solutions when I’m at a rehearsal or giving a concert,” he said.

As a bonus, his orchestra work helps him connect with leaders of the city of Matanzas, a Cuban cultural hub of music, art and architecture.

Fernandez’s love for symphonic music has not lessened his appreciation for a cappella singing in worship — the practice in most Churches of Christ, including his own.

Bienvenido Quintana sits in his living room in Matanzas, Cuba. Quintana was minister Tony Fernandez’s boyhood music teacher and is now his brother in Christ.

“I’ve been able to use the best instrument that God gave me, and that is my voice,” he emphasized. “Nobody has complained about not having instruments, and we have a very lively, happy worship service on Sundays. Great musicians come and participate with us, and they feel right at home.”

One of the musicians converted by Fernandez is Bienvenido Quintana, the minister’s boyhood music teacher and now his chamber orchestra’s conductor.

A few years ago, Quintana’s daughter joined an exodus of Cubans to the U.S., and his wife followed her there to help care for their two young grandchildren. But he remains in Matanzas, responsible for his elderly mother.

Quintana praises Fernandez as one of the best bass violinists in Cuba and “the model of what a human should be.”

“It’s easy to get discouraged at a time like this,” Quintana said, speaking through an interpreter. “But I’ve found the church to be a refuge where I can find hope. 

“Now the church is my family,” he added. “Tony is my family.”

A street view in Matanzas, Cuba, a port city about 60 miles east of Havana.

Public expressions of faith

In 1993, while performing with an opera, Fernandez, then 20, traveled to Spain and met fellow members of Churches of Christ. 

“A lot of the other musicians defected and stayed in Spain,” said Archer, who visits Cuba three times a year. “But he understood that he had a commitment to the church and to working with his father and restoring the church.”

Related: Listen to our podcast interview with Tony Fernandez

His friends warned him, “If you go back to Cuba, you’ll never be able to leave.”

But he didn’t want to leave.

He wanted to spread the Good News in his home country.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s main ally, had prompted Castro’s government to ease restrictions on public expressions of faith. 

In 1992, Cuba amended its constitution to recognize religious freedom. However, the law doesn’t grant the right to build churches or other religious structures. Such construction requires government approval.

The U.S. still designates Cuba as a “country of particular concern” for severe violations of religious freedom.

“I think, depending on the religious organization, you’re seeing different levels of participation and acceptance and presence on the island,” said Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado, the daughter of Cuban exiles and a religion scholar who serves as provost of the University of Scranton, a Jesuit institution in Pennsylvania.

A boy helps collect the offering at the Versalles Church of Christ in Matanzas, Cuba.

On one trip to Spain, Fernandez connected with Juan Antonio Monroy, an evangelist who in 1985 had become the first Church of Christ missionary to enter Cuba since Castro’s rise to power.   

Monroy chose Fernandez to oversee Herald of Truth’s work in Cuba and follow up on contacts made via shortwave radio broadcasts from outside the island.

“I was very young, but Juan saw something in me,” said Fernandez, who has worked with Herald of Truth since 1995. “People would write to the church’s post office box. They would be asking for New Testaments and Bible study courses. But I’d always look for a way to go to their house and meet them.”

Christians worship during a Sunday assembly at the Versalles Church of Christ.

An artist in the family

Fernandez’s father died about 20 years ago. His mother, now 90 years old, remains a faithful Christian.

After the revolution, his dad worked as a sewing machine repairman.

He brought the Gospel with him into homes.

“When his father was alive, the church had a lot of seamstresses,” Archer said, pointing to his evangelistic zeal. “And with Tony, they’ve brought in a lot of musicians.”

And now, the church just might become a haven for artists.

Susana “Gio” Fernandez, the 18-year-old daughter of Tony and his wife, Liudmila, is an artist specializing in fine arts photography. She just opened her own studio in Matanzas. 

Like her father and mother, who coordinates Texas International Bible Institute’s ministry in Cuba, Susana intends to use her talents for the Lord.

“I really believe that art is a way to share the Gospel,” she said. “I want young people to see that there are other ways to have fun besides just going out and dancing and drinking or whatever. I want to focus on art as a way to glorify God.”

Susana “Gio” Fernandez at her art studio in Matanzas, Cuba.

Susana “Gio” Fernandez, left, works on an art project with children in Matanzas.

Susana “Gio” Fernandez, left, displays a piece of art at her Matanzas studio. With her are Herald of Truth’s Tim Archer and her parents, Tony and Liudmila.

As a young girl, Susana tried playing the piano and guitar, but she said she lacked her father’s musical prowess.

Still, she benefited from his example.

“I always saw him and how he is worried about helping his neighbor,” she said. “And that made me want to do the same. 

“And I always said that the first work of art I sold, I wanted to use the money to help other people,” she added. “So that’s what has marked my decisions, my life as an artist.”

That charitable approach has marked her father’s ministry as well.

Given the hardships Cubans face, he finds his music especially helpful now.

“Jesus said that we have to weep with those that weep,” Fernandez said. “Here in Cuba, we have to be there to hug people and be with people, and the music prepares me for that.”

“I pray that abundance never comes to the island because people will stop seeking God.”

But Fernandez seeks salvation for his nation, not material riches.

“I’ll never forget what he told me one time,” Archer said. “He said, ‘I pray that abundance never comes to the island because people will stop seeking God.’ I thought that was very profound.”

Minister Tony Fernandez prays with four of those baptized on a recent Sunday. Another decided to be baptized a few minutes later.

Guest speaker Tim Archer of Herald of Truth preaches in Spanish at the Versalles Church of Christ.

A worshiper at the Versalles Church of Christ focuses on the Scriptures during a Sunday assembly.

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

The post For Cuba, a time of stress — and salvation appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

Through the nursery glass echoed the sweet sound of the Cold Springs Church of Christ singing the familiar tune.

Derek and Della Souder softly mouthed the words of the beloved hymn as they changed their newborn’s diaper and soothed his tears. 

No Limits: Read all the stories in the series

Della lost her eyesight during a lengthy battle with COVID-19, so the famous lyric “was blind, but now I see” presents a certain irony. Still, the 34-year-old mother has no doubt amazing grace has led her through “many dangers, toils and snares.”   

Samuel — 7 pounds, 14 ounces and 21 inches long — arrived a few weeks before the recent Sunday morning assembly. His Sept. 21 birth blessed a Christian family that had endured two years of tribulation before the unexpected pregnancy.

“This was not planned at all,” Della said with a chuckle. “In July last year, we gave the baby bed away. We donated everything, even all the infant toys. And then in February, we found out we were having a baby.”

Derek Souder changes Samuel’s diaper with help from his wife, Della, and older son, Ely.

For the Souders, who also have an 8-year-old son, Ely, Samuel came as a miracle to remind them of the goodness of God.

The family’s home congregation, with deep roots dating back to 1845 in this community about 15 miles south of Dallas, shared in their joy.  

“Blessings come out of tragedies for sure,” Della said.

“Blessings come out of tragedies for sure.”

A fight to survive

Two and a half years before Samuel’s birth, a severe winter storm crippled Texas’ energy grid, leaving millions without power. 

When the Souders’ pipes froze, they headed to the home of Derek’s parents, Suel and Patty Hilton. 

“And while we were there, I got really sick,” Della said.

That was in February 2021 as the recorded COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. surpassed 500,000. Coronavirus vaccines did not become widely available until later.

After testing positive for the virus, Della — a third-grade teacher — was hospitalized, intubated, hooked up to a respirator and later kept alive by an ECMO machine.

At times, her family feared they might lose her.

Della’s mother, Leslie Barker, a fellow member of the Cold Springs church, recalled receiving a 2 a.m. call from the hospital.

“They said, ‘Your daughter’s bleeding internally, and we can’t stop it, and we want to know if it’s OK to give her blood,’” said Barker, 59. “I said, ‘Yes, whatever you need to do to save her.’”

After hanging up, Leslie’s voice trembled as she turned to Della’s father, Roy Barker.

“I told him, ‘I think we’re losing our little girl,’” Leslie said. “He said, ‘I know. We just need to pray.’ And we just started praying. … And I called everybody I could think of and said, ‘Please pray for Della.’”

Della Souder worships at the Cold Springs Church of Christ surrounded by family.

Relying on God’s strength

Della survived COVID-19. But just barely.

After 84 days in the hospital, she returned home in May 2021. But after so much time in bed, she had to learn to walk again. And the illness had robbed her of the ability to see.

“I did go through the stages of grief with my eyes: Why? Why me? What did I do wrong?” Della said of her blindness. “But I’ve also seen the strength that God has given me through all of this.”

“I did go through the stages of grief with my eyes: Why? Why me? What did I do wrong? But I’ve also seen the strength that God has given me through all of this.”

Her husband, 41, works as a diesel mechanic. They exchanged wedding vows 13 years ago. He tested positive for COVID-19 at the same time as his wife but never experienced any symptoms.

While Della likes to talk, Derek has a reputation as a man of strong convictions but few words.

“My faith has grown … after dealing with all of this,” he said, “just kind of seeing what you can go through and be put through.”

Derek Souder hands his wife, Della, communion while she holds their infant son Samuel.

Losing her father

Della’s loved ones — including her parents, in-laws, husband and brother, Nathan — devoted themselves to her recovery.

“A nurse came to the house one time, but physical therapy never came,” Della said. “So by God’s grace, he gave my family wisdom to help me learn how to walk again.”

But within a few months, the caregiver role was reversed as Della’s parents tested positive for COVID-19. 

With Della still in a wheelchair, Roy and Leslie ended up hospitalized and fighting for their lives.

“We could go see my mom because she got cleared of COVID,” Della said. “But my daddy, he was in a quarantine room, and we were not able to see him at all.”

They could talk to him on the phone on the other side of the glass. But they couldn’t touch him or hug him.

Roy did not survive.

He died Aug. 24, 2021. He was 61.

Despite losing her husband, Leslie said she trusts in God.

“I know that Roy is happy and at peace now,” she said before Samuel’s birth. “He’s not hurting or worried about stuff. … And I know that he’s already met Samuel. So everything is good. God has taken care of us.”

Samuel Souder at his first church service at the Cold Springs Church of Christ in Lancaster, Texas.

Not a broken woman

At first, Della’s fellow Christians worried her ordeal might cause her to question God.

Her battle with COVID-19, her father’s death, her blindness — all were major blows.

“When Della came back to church, I was thinking I would find a broken woman and someone who was ready to turn her back on God,” said Mark Hancock, a former missionary to Japan who has served as Cold Springs’ minister since 2010. 

Said Mayumi Hancock, Mark’s wife: “Before she got ill, she was a faithful member — she always came to church and all that — but she was very emotional.”

Mark Hancock, minister for the Cold Springs Church of Christ, preaches a sermon about identity.

Rather than weaken her faith, though, Della’s rocky road fortified it, the Hancocks said.

“A person I thought was so fragile had actually become a warrior in some ways,” Mark said. “I was amazed how God had used that experience to strengthen her.”

Once home from the hospital, Della began a telephone Bible study group.

“I wanted to know: What does God expect from me as a woman, as a wife, as a mother and as a child of his?” she said of her motivation. “So my first member is sitting right here: I called Momma, and I was like, ‘Do you want to do this with me?’ And then I got some other people on.”

“I wanted to know: What does God expect from me as a woman, as a wife, as a mother and as a child of his?”

No limits

Della gives God all the credit for her physical and spiritual progress.

Despite her blindness, she said she does “everything I did previously, except drive a car.”

“I mean, it might be altered a little bit,” she said of her new lifestyle. “For instance, whenever you cook, say you’re cooking chicken, you can look and see if it’s done. I use a thermometer that talks to me.”

Moreover, she chops vegetables. Operates a sewing machine. And mows her back yard (recalling the layout between the fence helps guide her as she pushes the mower).

Della Souder uses her white cane to navigate the auditorium of the Cold Springs Church of Christ during worship.

She even got behind the wheel of a golf cart and maneuvered it between trees (with her father-in-law beside her and giving directions).

Della has not returned to teaching but hopes to become a vocational rehabilitation counselor to “help people get back to their lives like I have.”

She sees an eye specialist and has not given up hope that God might restore her vision.

For now, she said, “I do the same things everybody else can do and everything I was doing before. But it’s not me. It’s God and his grace and his mercy. That’s why I’m even still here. That’s why any of us are still here, honestly.”

Della Souder sings to her baby during worship with the Cold Springs Church of Christ.

Derek and Della Souder hold hands during a church service in Texas. The couple is still learning to navigate Della’s blindness and raise an infant.

‘Don’t give up on God’

When Della learned she was pregnant, she asked God to help her name the baby.

She wanted a name that would glorify the Lord.

While studying the Old Testament, she believes she found it.

1 Samuel 1 describes how Hannah asked God to bless her with a son, whom she promised to give “to the Lord for all the days of his life.” Hannah named her baby Samuel, saying, “Because I asked the Lord for him.”

Della Souder, who is blind, feels for her infant son’s mouth to feed him during worship at the Cold Springs Church of Christ.

“I was lying there listening to it, and I came to Hannah,” Della said. “And when I heard her story and the baby’s name and what it meant, I just had this feeling come over me. I was like, that’s my baby’s name. His name is Samuel.”

Eli — the priest to whom Hannah presents Samuel — has the same name as Derek and Della’s son Ely. 

But Della said she just liked the name Ely. 

She didn’t realize the biblical nature of their older son’s name until later.

Della Souder prays with her 8-year-old son, Ely.

“So yeah, I’ve got an Ely and a Samuel right out of 1 Samuel,” she said with a laugh.

Della prays that her story — her family’s story — will inspire others faced with difficult journeys.

“Don’t give up on God,” she said. “He will never leave you, never forsake you. You might go through trials, tribulations, but he will be there holding your hand the whole way.”

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

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After the mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, the surviving victims needed a place to resume learning…and a place to try to recover. Nearby Brentwood Hills Church of Christ opened its building and its hearts to them. Ministers Amy Bowman and Jonathan Seamon talk about what it's like to love neighbors who are grieving and recovering from unimaginable horror.

'The Blind' is a motion picture that reveals the true story of Phil and Miss Kay Robertson and their family of 'Duck Dynasty' fame. Their oldest son, Al Robertson, talks about what it was like to make the movie and what his family hopes it will accomplish for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.

Retirees Chris and Connie Stinnett call in from their RV, where they live full-time and travel the country. They tell the stories of showing up unannounced at more than 13 Church of Christ congregations in ten states.

Segment One: How Brentwood Hills Church of Christ is loving its neighbors who are victims of a mass school shooting (Amy Bowman and Jonathan Seamon)

Link to The Christian Chronicle’s coverage of Church of Christ congregations and members responding to the Covenant School shooting

Segment Two: The Blind (Al Robertson)

Link to The Blind movie website

Link to an archive of The Christian Chronicle’s coverage of Duck Dynasty, the Roberston family, and West Monroe (Louisiana) Church of Christ

Link to The Christian Chronicle’s review of The Blind

Link to Duck Dynasty

Link to Duck Commander

Link to Phil Robertson’s Unashamed Podcast

Segment Three: Showing up unannounced and uninvited at 17 churches in 12 states (Chris and Connie Stinnett)

Link to The Christian Chronicle story about Chris and Connie Stinnett’s travels

View the full archive of stories at christianchronicle.org

Donate to The Christian Chronicle at christianchronicle.org/donate

Send comments, ideas, and questions to podcast@christianchronicle.org

https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2111187/13903732/transcript

TAGS

Covenant School, Covenant School shooting, school shootings, mass shootings, Brentwood Hills Church of Christ, Brentwood, Nashville, Tennessee, Erik Tryggestad, Amy Bowman, Jonathan Seamon, church building, neighbors, loving neighbors, community, recovery, Tennessee Titans, Will Levis, Ryan Tannehill, Nashville Predators, Vanderbilt Commodores, Nashville Sounds, Wynonna, Wynonna Judd, Macon

This episode is brought to you by Freed-Hardeman University Church Leadership Workshop, September 27 – 28, 2024, at Mid-South Youth Camp in Henderson, Tennessee. FREE for all church leaders who register in advance.

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The Israeli soldier and his paratrooper unit canvassed the Jewish settlements near Gaza “to clear the area from hostiles and to collect casualties,” he said. The action followed a wave of violence on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants, backed by a barrage of missiles fired from Gaza, launched a surprise attack on Israeli towns and an outdoor music festival.

The militants gunned down civilians and soldiers, killing at least 250 people and wounding 1,500 more, the The Associated Press reported. In addition, Hamas took between 100 and 150 hostages.

“We completed our mission with success,” Bachana said. Despite the horrors that he witnessed, “as a believer in Yeshua, my personal strength comes from above.”

Bachana is one of four members of the Ro’eh Israel (“Shepherd of Israel”) congregation called into active duty after the attacks, which fell on the Sabbath holiday of Simchat Torah — and a day after the 50th anniversary of Israel’s Yom Kippur War.

The paratrooper, who serves as an elder of the congregation, is deputy director of Netivyah, a Jerusalem-based ministry led by Jewish followers of Yeshua (Jesus).

Netivyah serves a network of Messianic Jewish congregations, one of which lost the son of its minister in the fighting, said Joseph Shulam, Netivyah’s founder. Shulam receives support from Churches of Christ and is a sought-after speaker on Christian campuses, including Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn.

In a video posted from Nashville, Shulam and his son, Barry, asked for prayers and for support. In addition to its feeding programs and “Houses for Healing,” an apartment ministry for families of patients in an Israeli hospital, Netivyah supplies Israeli soldiers with headlamps, cell phone chargers and utility kits.

“The poison that Israel is eating today, tomorrow is going to be served to people in Nashville and Atlanta and Miami and Washington.”

Healing Hands International, a relief and development ministry associated with Churches of Christ, is working with Netivyah to provide humanitarian aid.

The attacks are the result of “deep-sown, satanic hatred” for Jews and Christians alike, Joseph Shulam said. Without military intervention, “the poison that Israel is eating today, tomorrow is going to be served to people in Nashville and Atlanta and Miami and Washington.”

Prayers in Jesus’ hometown

As Israel prepares to invade Gaza — a small strip of land, controlled by Hamas, that borders Israel and Egypt — Christians across the nation of 9.3 million souls are praying for peace.

Visitors gather outside the church building in Nazareth in early 2022.

That includes the 50-member Nazareth Church of Christ. The congregation, composed primarily of Arab believers, meets in the hometown of Jesus, which today comprises Greek Orthodox and Catholics as well as a growing Muslim population.

“Thank you for your concern. We are safe in lower Galilee,” Sandro Jadon, a member of the Nazareth church, told The Christian Chronicle.

The Nazareth Church of Christ has hymnals with English and Arabic lyrics.

Although Nazareth is about 100 miles north of Gaza, it is relatively close to Lebanon and the Golan Heights, the focus of territorial disputes between Israel and Syria. Church members fear attacks by Hezbollah, a heavily armed Islamist militant group based in Lebanon that “will not allow Hamas’ destruction,” an analyst told AP. 

Israeli Brig. Gen. (Res.) Nitzan Nuriel, a counterterrorism expert, briefs journalists including The Christian Chronicle’s Bobby Ross Jr. in the Golan Heights during a 2019 reporting trip.

‘This whole situation needs the Prince of Peace’

Tensions also are high in the West Bank, a landlocked territory comprising 165 Palestinian enclaves and Jewish settlements. The Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by the political party Fattah, governs the enclaves.

“If they join their brothers in Gaza, this could be a problem,” Dr. David Vanderpool said of militants in the West Bank. Particularly at risk are about 20 disabled children served by LiveBeyond, a ministry the Christian surgeon and his wife, Laurie, launched in 2005.

A child in LiveBeyond’s Johnny’s Kids program shows off some original artwork.

LiveBeyond, which is supported by Churches of Christ, sends medical teams and provides aid to developing nations including Haiti, Honduras, Mozambique and Ghana. In 2018, LiveBeyond expanded its Johnny’s Kids program to the West Bank, providing rehabilitation services and therapy for Palestinian children. The program takes its name from Laurie Vanderpool’s brother, Johnny Stallings — the son of legendary football coach and Church of Christ member Gene Stallings. Johnny Stallings, who had Down syndrome, died in 2008.

With permission from the Israeli and Palestinian governments, LiveBeyond built a facility on the outskirts of Ramallah, the capital of Palestine. The administrator is an Arab Christian, and the facility’s staff offers speech and occupational therapy to children whose families sometimes consider them to be a mark of dishonor due to their disabilities, David Vanderpool said.

LiveBeyond constructed a facility for Johnny’s Kids near Ramallah.

“These children, who have never walked before, are now walking,” Vanderpool told the Chronicle. Their parents are thrilled, he added, and the ministry seeks “to integrate these children into the community as much as possible.”

Vanderpool cited John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

“Everybody deserves that shot,” he said.

Now, that all could be in jeopardy. Schools and public transit in the West Bank have shut down as Arab and Jewish communities prepare for possible attacks.

“This is Israel’s 9/11,” said Vanderpool, who had to cancel his plans to travel to Jerusalem, where he and his wife spend about five months per year. “It’s hard for Americans to understand how much hate there is.

“This whole situation needs the Prince of Peace. We need to be praying for the peace of Jerusalem, praying for Christians who live there. They’re being persecuted.”

A sign in the Garden Tomb, a place of pilgrimage for Christians who visit Jerusalem, quotes Psalm 122.

‘Israel is standing in the gap’

Although the attacks by Hamas were unprecedented, there is nothing new about them, Joseph Shulam said.

In his video message, the Bulgarian Sephardic Jew, who immigrated to Israel in 1948, traced the history of his people. He began with God’s promise to Abraham and the years in the wilderness when Moses led the children of Israel to the Promised Land.

Street art in Tel Aviv, Israel, depicts a young boy flying an Israeli F-15 like a kite.

As the Israelites abandoned God, Shulam said, God allowed them to fall victim to their neighbors, ultimately resulting in their exile to Babylon. In the book of Nehemiah, when King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild Jerusalem’s walls, they faced opposition from Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arab.

Thousands of years later, “nothing has changed,” Shulam said. “There is a resistance by the same elements that resisted Israel returning from Babylon. They’re now resisting the Jewish people returning back to the land that God gave them as an everlasting inheritance according to Genesis 13:15.”

Now “Israel is standing in the gap for all of us,” he said. “If Israel folds and allows these terrorist elements to continue flourishing, the virus is going to hit you wherever you live.”

To contribute to Israel relief contact Healing Hands International or Netivyah.

A Jewish woman leans against the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem in 2022.

The post ‘This is Israel’s 9/11’ appeared first on The Christian Chronicle.

But the tune was the same as “At the Cross,” making the lyrics easy to translate in my mind.

“At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away, it was there by faith I received my sight. And now I am happy all the day!”

Audrey Jackson, The Christian Chronicle’s associate editor, and I visited North Bronx on a reporting trip focused on the diversity of New York City congregations.

On our short walk from the subway station, we passed families enjoying the pre-dusk breeze and drug dealers plying their trade under a darkening sky.

My pace quickened as we got closer to the church building. 

A couple dances on the sidewalk outside the North Bronx Church of Christ.

“Welcome,” minister Paul Oppong said after meeting us at the door. “In our language, we say, ‘Akwaaba.’ Thank you for visiting us.”

He introduced us to church leaders, including George Asiedubah, Emmanuel Gyamfi, Frank Adjei and Alfred Koomson. We enjoyed saying hello, too, to Seth Kofi Amankwah, who works with the church’s media team.

Later, after Audrey went outside to take a few pictures, she had to ring a buzzer to come back inside. Security is crucial in this neighborhood.

Members of the North Bronx Church of Christ worship on a Wednesday night.

Ghanaian and U.S. flags adorn the front of the auditorium. Women in colorful, African-style dresses join their families in the bright red, cushioned seats. 

A shiny pulpit emblazoned with the church’s modern logo and a communion table engraved with “This Do In Remembrance Of Me” sit between bouquets of pink, yellow and white flowers.

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

Outside, neighbors played loud music and drank beer and whiskey at a curb as the congregation bowed in prayer.

“This place, there are a lot of drugs and other things,” Oppong said. “So that is New York for you.” 

Men drink whiskey mixed with apple juice outside the doors of the North Bronx church.

The congregation works to feed hungry neighbors in the Bronx.

Even though North Bronx members normally worship in English, reaching non-Ghanaians with the Gospel is a major challenge, the preacher said. He praises God that the church was able to teach and baptize a French-speaking immigrant from Benin.

The minister, 63, served in his native Ghana from 1985 to 2009 before immigrating to the U.S. with his wife, Diana Adobea, and three children, Walter, Clara and Ivan. The couple’s fourth child, 11-year-old Seth, was born in New York.

“He was a surprise,” Adobea said with a chuckle. “So we call him the pension baby.”

A child plays in the back pews of the North Bronx church during a Bible study.

Founded in 2015, the North Bronx church met for years in rented spaces. But two years ago, the congregation purchased its own $1.5 million building where about 130 men, women and children gather for worship each Sunday. A Bronx branch of the Jehovah’s Witnesses previously owned the facility.

The congregation partnered with the Solomon Foundation, a nonprofit that helps Restoration Movement churches with loans and investments, to acquire its permanent home. North Bronx paid an initial down payment of $200,000. 

The North Bronx congregation gathers on the stage at the front of the auditorium.

Oppong showed us the baptistry that members keep ready to welcome new souls into the Lord’s body and the studio where he broadcasts live “NBC-TV” sermons via Facebook on Monday and Thursday nights. (That’s “North Bronx Church TV,” if you didn’t get it.)

The preacher’s wife and other church ladies offered us juice and fresh croissants prepared especially for our visit.

“We are going to sing in Twi so you can see the diversity,” Oppong told me before worship started. 

“Awesome,” I replied.

And it was.

After over an hour of singing and Bible study, Oppong invited me to the podium to share a few words. I did not have anything prepared to say, but I thanked the congregation for its kindness and warm welcome.

I noted that I had worshiped with the Nsawam Road Church of Christ in Accra, Ghana’s capital, during a 2009 reporting trip. I recalled my experience at a Ghanaian immigrant congregation in Amsterdam on that same trip. 

The North Bronx church’s energy and love for Jesus could be seen in its full-throated praise and radiant smiles.

“When you worship in your native language, your spirit comes out,” Oppong said. “Everybody’s edified, and everybody understands everything.”

“When you worship in your native language, your spirit comes out. Everybody’s edified, and everybody understands everything.”

Amen.

At the same time, the connection between Christian brothers and sisters transcends any language barrier:

“At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away, it was there by faith I received my sight. And now I am happy all the day!”

My heart was full, my spirit lifted — and if I’m honest, my guard up — as we trekked back to the subway station.

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

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The writer of Hebrews said, “Do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”

And the apostle Paul wrote, “But since you excel in everything — in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you — see that you also excel in this grace of giving.”

People who raise money for a living know that often the hardest gift to obtain is the first one. Because generosity is a habit — those who have given, give. Generosity is not the sole province of the wealthy nor of the poor. Neither is miserliness. Generosity begets generosity.

We know that the spiritual disciplines require, well, discipline. Making a habit of prayer, Bible study, meditation, worship and more must become a daily practice. Habits inherently require repetition. Generosity requires a habit of giving.

Volunteers with the Greenbank Church of Christ load food into grocery carts.

• Give broadly. Develop the habit of giving, not just at church on Sunday or monthly through an online draw or credit card charge. Give when you see a need. And keep your eyes open to need.

• Give to feed the hungry and clothe the poor. Give to support other causes you care about. Give to Big Brothers Big Sisters, to your local Little League, to the cancer society or a nursing home. Buy shoes and clothes and medical equipment and school supplies.

Rose Williams sorts piles of donated items for the Renew Common Goods ministry.

• Give to the pregnant teenager and the people who will care for her and help her care for her child. Give to the elderly neighbor and the organizations that provide rides and companionship and nursing care. Give to support midnight basketball leagues and neighborhood gardens. Give to bring beauty and art and music into your community. Just give. Without condition.

• Give from your abundance. Give when you think you can’t. Give quietly. Give as an example to your children. Just give. Without a lecture. Without regret.

As is often the case, studies by sociologists and in the health professions confirm what we know spiritually: Giving is good for us. Giving literally makes us feel good.

Volunteering can help us live longer. But that’s not why we should give.

The misguided advocates of a prosperity Gospel too often cite Ecclesiastes 11:1, “Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again,” as though getting things back is the incentive for giving — a promise-reward sort of ratio. But they miss the writer’s point.

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

Receiving in abundance is just a natural outcome of generosity, not the motivation for it.

The time of year is approaching when nonprofit organizations make their appeals for year-end gifts, for gifts to help others during the holidays, for gifts to make budget.

And yes, The Christian Chronicle will be asking readers and friends to support the very important work we do here. Paper and postage and travel and writers cost money. Our stories may be free to you via Facebook or our website. But they’re not free. Someone has to give generously to make all that happen. We hope you’ll be among those someones.

But the most important thing we can say about giving is not, “Give to us.” But, “Give. Just give.” — Cheryl Mann Bacon, for the Editorial Board

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Featured image (above): Danielle and Randolph Joseph at the Caribbean Lectureship.

SPOTLIGHT

SAN NICOLAS, Aruba — When Randolph and Danielle Joseph came to this Caribbean island in 2018, the Church of Christ had 27 members. Through baptisms and restorations, that number grew to 55.

Then came the pandemic, and “a good 90 percent of our members became unemployed,” Randolph Joseph said.

Despite the hardships they faced on this tourism-dependent island, church members Julia Richardson and her daughter, Imelda, “recognized that they had some neighbors and colleagues that were affected to the point that they did not have any food,” Joseph said, “and so both of them began feeding them up to three times a week. And they did that out of pocket.” The congregation joined in, and soon the church was feeding 60 people.

“Today, we are still recovering,” Joseph said. The church continues to feed 18 people, including senior citizens. The church also has distributed groceries to about 500 families. During the pandemic Aruba experienced a rise in substance abuse just as programs were cut. The church hopes to help. In addition, the congregation’s building has deteriorated to the point where it’s no longer a safe place to meet.

The island has two Churches of Christ, the English-speaking San Nicolas congregation and the Tamarijn Church of Christ, which worships in the island’s indigenous language, Papiamento. Church members in Aruba host the annual Caribbean Lectureship for Churches of Christ in 2024.

TO CONTRIBUTE to the San Nicolas church’s relief and rebuilding efforts, contact the Broad Street Church of Christ in Lexington, Tenn., at
broadstreetcofc.org or (731) 968-6688.

AUSTRIA

POYSDORF — Middle Easterners who came to Europe as refugees five years ago now serve Ukrainian refugees with food, medicine and the Word of God.

Reggy Hiller, of the Pohlgasse Church of Christ in Vienna, and new Christians Jamal, Narges, Saba, Zahra and Mahmoud made a return visit to this northern Austrian town recently.

“Almost half of those we used to meet with had returned home to Ukraine or were moved to other shelters much farther away,” Hiller said. “Some left messages behind … to let us know how much they appreciated how we had cared for them, providing them with physical necessities as well as spiritual nourishment.

“We repeated our lesson on the Armor of God from Ephesians 6 and reminded our friends about God’s plan of salvation for us.”

LIBERIA

FOYA — As they sang “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus,” students, teachers and the director of a new ministry training school marched through the streets of this West African village holding a banner advertising the school.

The parade preceded a graduation ceremony at the school, directed by J. Fallah and associated with Mississippi-based 21st Century Global Missions (21stcgm.com). Donald Roberson attended the graduation and similar events at schools in Liberia’s Lofa County and Gorblee. The graduations had large turnouts and resulted in new enrollments at the schools, Roberson said.

UGANDA

MBARARA — “Being In Jesus Christ and in His Ministry” was the theme of the Churches of Christ National Conference, hosted by the Mbarara congregation and attended by more than 200 believers from across the East African nation.
“It was a great conference that was loaded with lots of lessons to learn,” said Kampala, Uganda, minister Isaac Sanyu.

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