Transubstantiate

Overall church membership is up by nearly 10 percent in the region.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a fixture of the religious landscape in the American South, where grits, Republican politics, and SEC football are king. But the region where you’re most likely to find a growing Southern Baptist church is the land of lobster rolls, progressive politics, and Boston Red Sox baseball: New England.

A new analysis by Lifeway Research found that the area spanning Connecticut to Maine was the only place to see an uptick in SBC church membership over the past five years. But the growth in the Lifeway report was miniscule—a 1 percent increase in a region with fewer than 1 percent of SBC churches—compared to the widespread decline across the denomination.

Southern Baptist membership decreased everywhere else during the same time period, with the biggest drops in the Pacific (down 22%) and West North Central (down 14%) regions.

Still, for pastors in the region with 358 of the SBC’s 47,198 churches, the growth in New England was “an absolute encouragement, an affirmation of what God is doing here,” said Aaron Cavin, Send City missionary for Boston with the North American Mission Board (NAMB)’s Send Network.

Cavin recently shared the data with local church planters at a training session, and “it was a celebration,” he said. “It almost makes us a bit more resolute.”

According to NAMB, Southern Baptists have planted 1,018 churches in the Northeast since 2010, an average of around 44 churches per year. That includes New England along with New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

While the Lifeway statistics measured church growth only among existing congregations that reported membership numbers in 2017 and 2022, hundreds of SBC churches …

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While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war.

Americans awoke this morning to reports of war in the Middle East, as the terrorist group Hamas attacked the state of Israel in unspeakably brutal ways. As our screens fill with imagery of fire raining down from the skies, of families grieving the kidnapping and murder of their loved ones, we know that—just as for our own country in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks—this evil day is just the beginning of what is to come. As we pray for peace at the beginning of this war, American Christians should do so with the moral clarity to recognize Israel’s right and duty to defend itself.

Some might assume that evangelical Protestants automatically support Israel based on eschatological views that cast the modern state of Israel in some role in biblical prophecy. For some, this is indeed the case. Many of us, though, don’t share those beliefs. We believe the promises of God are fulfilled in Christ, not in the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence. Many of us are quite willing to call out Israel when we believe it is acting wrongly. We don’t believe the Israeli Knesset is somehow inerrant or infallible.

But even with those disagreements, American Christians should be united in support of Israel as it’s under attack.

Some Christians, to be sure, are pacifists who believe any military action to be wrong. Most Christians throughout church history, however, have held to some form of just war theory, which holds that war is always awful, but—under certain, very limited circumstances—can be morally justified.

Jesus interacted with soldiers (Matt. 8:5–13) and called them, as others, to repent of sin. But he never spoke of military service itself as a sin. …

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Theologian Michelle Lee-Barnewall reflects on her ethnic identity and her identity in Christ.

We live in a world where race relations receive near-constant attention. Conversations about race permeate our politics, schools, universities, sporting events, concerts, health services—and our churches as well. And yet in public discourse, complex and wide-reaching issues of race are often reduced to the simple binary of Black versus white.

But where does this leave other ethnicities that don’t fit into this reigning dichotomy? Asians, to take one example, make up around 7 percent of the American population and around 10 percent of the British population. Yet the public discourse about race often overlooks them.

As a British Singaporean, I am therefore grateful for Michelle Lee-Barnewall’s new book A Longing to Belong: Reflections on Faith, Identity, and Race. A New Testament professor at Biola University, Lee-Barnewall weaves her personal story as a South Korean growing up and living in the United States with a practical exploration of the Bible’s themes of identity, community, and diversity.

Part 1, “Created to Belong,” begins with Lee-Barnewall’s childhood, emphasizing her struggles to fit in at school as a South Korean growing up in Minnesota. I’m sure many children can relate to her experience of desiring to been seen as “normal,” fearing classroom mockery, and enduring the pain of rejection by peers.

Lee-Barnewall then dovetails her autobiographical anecdotes with the Bible’s teaching that we are created as intrinsically relational beings who are wired to yearn for community. Furthermore, as she points out, Christians are called to something greater than personal repentance and discipleship; we are called to be interdependent …

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Even in states where regulations were severe, most congregations moved on quickly.

Jeff Schoch was ready to be done with COVID-19 health safety regulations.

Like most ministers in the US, the pastor of Crossroads Bible Church in San Jose, California, did his best to comply with the many pandemic rules imposed by state and local governments. But as soon as they were lifted, he wanted to put them all behind him. He quickly tore down the state-mandated signs about social distancing, hand washing, and masks.

“I got rid of every visual reminder in the church,” Schoch told CT. “I was anxious, personally, to make that a memory.”

Across the country, Protestant congregations are dealing with the long-term impacts of the pandemic. A new, extensive study by Arbor Research Group and ChurchSalary, a ministry of Christianity Today, found that a lot of pastors are still in crisis. Some furloughed staff members haven’t gone back to work. And even when attendance numbers have rebounded, there are still people missing from many congregations. Christian leaders will likely be grappling with the fallout from COVID-19 for years to come.

But, surprisingly, state-level pandemic restrictions had no measurable, lasting impact on American churches. Even in places like San Jose—where the county government imposed some of the strictest rules in the country, the restrictions changed frequently, and authorities aggressively went after churches they said failed to comply—pastors like Schoch were able to just move on. The data doesn’t show any adverse effects from the government regulations.

Eric Shieh, a research consultant for Arbor Research, said that surprised him.

“You would think that the restrictions made things tougher for churches. They didn’t meet as much, and so you’d …

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The Atlanta-area pastor has said he affirms a New Testament sexual ethic, but his words and deeds have muddled that message.

Late last month, North Point Community Church hosted the Unconditional Conference, billing the gathering as an event “for parents of LGBTQ+ children and for ministry leaders looking to discover ways to support parents and LGBTQ+ children in their churches.” It would stake out a “quieter middle space” on a contentious topic, the organizers said.

As critics were quick to note, the Atlanta-area conference featured speakers who are either in same-sex relationships or supportive of those who are, and on Sunday, North Point pastor Andy Stanley preached a sermon responding to criticisms of the event. That message is now available online. (Stanley delivered it twice, and outside recordings of both services have been posted elsewhere.)

Stanley spent much of the sermon providing the backstory to the conference, which was developed to meet pastoral needs both of young people in the church wrestling with same-sex attraction and parents in the church whose children (who themselves were often—but not necessarily—adults) were coming out to them. He argued that this pastoral purpose warranted involving these particular speakers, outlined what he teaches about sexual ethics, and spoke to how churches can move forward on this issue. Unfortunately, though Stanley articulated a commitment to a New Testament sexual ethic, he also seriously undermined that very teaching.

Stanley outlined his understanding of Christian sexual ethics with three directives:

1. Honor God with your body.
2. Do not be mastered by anything.
3. Do not sexualize any relationship outside of marriage.

Biblical marriage is between a man and a woman, he said, noting that every New Testament text addressing homosexuality teaches that it is a sin. “It …

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Instead of flashy religiosity, Tim Wakefield had a privately influential faith.

With the regular season over and playoffs beginning today, the baseball world is honoring retiring Tigers hitter Miguel Cabrera and Guardians manager Terry Francona, while mourning the deaths of Orioles great Brooks Robinson and beloved Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield.

Wakefield had a long career, winning 200 major league games from 1992 to 2011. He had a short life, dying at age 57 following surgery for brain cancer. And one line in his Wikipedia bio is most important: “Wakefield became an evangelical Christian in 1990.”

There’s a lot behind that sentence, and yet I was a little puzzled that none of The Boston Globe’s four stories about him Sunday evening mentioned his faith—nor did articles on ESPN or in The Athletic.

They did report his stats and his biggest win, receiving the Roberto Clemente Award in 2010—which goes to only one major league player each year and is said to represent baseball’s best through sportsmanship and community involvement.

Red Sox principal owner John Henry spoke of Wakefield’s “warmth and genuine spirit,” as well as his “remarkable ability to uplift, inspire, and connect with others in a way that showed us the true definition of greatness.”

Team chairman Tom Werner said, “It’s one thing to be an outstanding athlete. It’s another to be an extraordinary human being. Tim was both.” Likewise, Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy said Wakefield “exemplified every humanitarian quality in the dictionary.”

But how did Wakefield’s Christian faith underlie all those good qualities? None of the business leaders connected the dots, at least in their press release statements.

Betsy Farmer …

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Each had unique translation philosophies, diction preferences, and intended audiences in mind, frameworks that informed how they approached their all-consuming work.

In the early morning of August 1, 1895, a brutal incident occurred in Fujian province, China. Hundreds of rioters ambushed a group of foreign Christian missionaries who were vacationing in the mountains, resulting in 11 deaths and five injuries. Among the martyred were several women and children, including a 13-month-old baby.

Coincidentally, on the same day the tragic news reached England, the British and Foreign Bible Society received a letter from a pastor from Fujian, pleading for the publication of a Bible written in a local dialect. The next year, the sister of one of the victims helped publish this Bible, and relatives and friends of the martyrs donated toward the publication costs in remembrance of the massacre.

The Kienning Colloquial Bible is only one of numerous Bible translations that began to appear starting in the 19th century and into the beginning of the 20th, due to the painstaking work of many Western and Chinese translators. The translators were often men, and no one knew how hard they worked better than their wives, who had to force their husbands to eat and sleep because of their never-ending ruminations.

Some of these projects focused on producing a literal word-for-word version of the Bible while others sought a colloquial style. In 1872, a team of 16 Western missionaries and several Chinese Christian experts began work on the Chinese Union Version (CUV) with the intent that it be “in the national language (not local vernacular), simple enough to be understood by people from all walks of life, and faithful to the original text without losing the rhythm of the Chinese language,” as Kevin Xiyi Yao, an expert in world Christianity and Asian studies, wrote for CT.

Below, we highlight 12 of the …

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We live in a world haunted by sin and suffering. But it’s also one that points us to a glory beyond imagining.

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

I rarely frequent the app formerly known as Twitter for long enough to be angered by anything, but I was last week.

A friend of mine posted a prayer request for her son, hospitalized for schizophrenia, with which he’s been grappling a long time. Most of the responses were what one would expect—expressions of love and concern.

One, though, was from a Christian man telling my friend that she could solve this problem quite easily: by taking away “secular” TV and music and video games. That response would be repulsive enough, but then I went and looked at some of this person’s other posts.

One of them, from sometime past, warned people about thinking about matters such as the Holocaust. He cited a famous Christian musician who went to Auschwitz and lost his faith in Christ. It’s better to think instead, this man recommended, about things that are lovely and pure.

Even Job’s friends had better counsel. Yes, many people have lost their faith—or never come to it—because they could not reconcile a good God with the atrocities and suffering they see in the world. Think of Dostoevsky’s chilling arguments from the mouth of Ivan Karamazov, for instance. The sort of willed ignorance to grave evil is hardly, though, a Christian response to such questions.

If this posture were just the ramblings of some random person online, I wouldn’t have given it much thought. But the sentiment expressed on that account—albeit crudely and rudely expressed—is one that many people unwittingly take: If I just remain very still and don’t think about what’s lurking out there, it will go away.

A few …

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Even by the standards of other missionaries, the Irish woman’s ministry to sexually exploited children was intrepid.

Kneeling bedside, three-year-old Amy Carmichael begged God to make her eyes blue. Sadly, for the toddler, the prayer didn’t spark a miracle.

But decades later as a grown woman, after she had left Ireland to make her home in the then-British occupied India, she remembered her prayer as a child. With her fair skin, she would never truly blend in with the locals. But her brown eyes matched those of the people she lived among—and that was one less distraction when trying to build relationships as a missionary.

Carmichael moved to India at the age of 27 and never left. Much of her ministry was marked by disrupting cultural norms on temple prostitution. Her prayer life, a constant of her ministry and well-documented in her books and personal writings, revealed her boldness, stubbornness, and grit in circumstances that deeply challenged her—characteristics she needed in her efforts to share the love of Christ with hundreds of women and children over her lifetime.

“Go ye”

The oldest of seven children, Amy Carmichael (1867–1951) was raised in a well-to-do Christian family in Millisle, Northern Ireland. She came to faith in Christ as a teenager while attending a Wesleyan Methodist boarding school in Yorkshire, England. But her time at school was cut short when she was forced to return home due to her family’s financial difficulties.

The family moved to Belfast for business, where her father died of pneumonia. Carmichael threw herself into serving others, beginning with her siblings—a pattern of self-sacrifice that would carry through to her dying day. Such hardships caused Carmichael to cling to the Word and cry out to God in prayer, not only for comfort but for practical help.

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God will be faithful to our children, and we can trust him no matter where they go to school.

I never intended to homeschool our kids. When we started, it wasn’t for religious reasons. Well, maybe a little. In our rural district, my kindergartner had an hourlong bus ride to school, which meant she was gone from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., five days a week. It was a good school, and she had a great teacher. But she was so tired when she got home that there was little room for the family discipleship I envisioned I would do.

We decided to try homeschooling—just her and just for a year. But as we prepped our second child for kindergarten, some red flags flew up around his health and learning needs, and we decided that it might be easier to homeschool both that school year. After that, the rhythm of homeschooling just fit with our family. My husband ’s job has seasons of intense hours as well as seasons of more time at home, and we were able to customize our family life around that fluctuation.

People often asked us if we would always homeschool. I’d say we were going “kid by kid, year by year.” Homeschooling felt like a big curve ball God threw our way. I didn’t dare presume I knew what God had for us next.

That’s not to say I came easily to a posture of trust and humility around schooling decisions. I went through my arrogant phase, my exasperated phase, and a phase where I hit my stride. But in education discussions with fellow parents and others in our community, I found that it was often Christians—sometimes even myself—who showed little grace, no matter which side they were defending. I was an arrogant public-school mom, turned an arrogant homeschool mom, turned a humbled let-the-Lord-lead mom. That final phase was hard won, and it’s one I hope to help other …

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