Patrons’ Saints: Christians Turn to Patreon, Substack, and Kickstarter

As more evangelical figures embrace crowdfunding, is the format demanding too much of them?

To release her first contemporary Christian music album back in 2004, Beth Barnard signed a contract with Sparrow Records during her freshman year of high school.

Her 11-song debut was self-titled Bethany Dillon, a stage name she adopted at the recommendation of execs who thought her maiden name—Adelsberger—would be a mouthful. Through Sparrow (now Capitol Christian Music Group), Barnard spent most of her teen years recording music. Her hit songs were nominated for Dove Awards and appeared on WOW compilations.

She then married Shane Barnard—one Shane-half of Christian music group Shane & Shane—and realized that she wanted to stay at home with her family rather than record and tour. More than a decade and four kids later, Barnard sensed last year that she had another collection of songs to share. Only this time, she launched a Kickstarter campaign.

The crowdfunding site had allowed Barnard to release a worship album, A Better Word, in 2017. She turned to Kickstarter again in 2021 to bypass some of the business baggage she was happy to leave behind when she stepped away from the music industry years ago, like marketing efforts and hitting the road to promote the album.

Her fans remembered her and came through, giving more than $20,000 in the first 12 hours of the fundraiser in January.

“Thank you, thank you … not only for helping us meet the financial part of rolling this out, but also for what that speaks … that you’re behind this and excited about it,” Barnard told backers in a recorded video after her project was funded.

Kickstarter, where supporters can pledge for a one-time project, and platforms like Substack and Patreon, where they can pay to subscribe for content …

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Bible Museum Must Send One More Artifact Back to Iraq

Update: Judge rules epic of Gilgamesh fragment belongs in Iraq.

Update (July 29): Two years after federal officials seized the artifact, a judge ordered Hobby Lobby to officially forfeit a rare clay tablet containing a portion of the epic of Gilgamesh. The tablet will be returned to Iraq.

The Bible Museum, which was founded by Hobby Lobby owner and Bible collector Steve Green, has supported efforts to send the item back to its country of origin.

The ancient Mesopotamian text was purchased from Christie’s auction house in 2014 before being put on display in Washington D.C. in 2017. Hobby Lobby is now suing Christie’s, claiming the reputable auction house provided false information and provenance documents making it seem the tablet could be legally purchased, and was not looted during fighting in Iraq.

Hobby Lobby is also returning about 11,500 other antiquities to the Iraqi and Egyptian governments due to incorrect or incomplete documentation. Green has previously said he made a mistake, when he was building a collection for the Museum of the Bible, by trusting unscrupulous dealers.

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Original post (May 21, 2020): Another ancient document is causing controversy for the Museum of the Bible after a federal government prosecutor filed a claim that a six-by-five-inch clay tablet was stolen from Iraq. The US Attorney’s Office of Eastern New York says that Hobby Lobby legally purchased the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet for $1.6 million to loan to the museum, but the papers documenting the artifact’s purchase history were false.

“In this case, a major auction house failed to meet its obligations by minimizing its concerns that the provenance of an important Iraqi artifact was fabricated, and withheld from the buyer information that undermined the provenance’s reliability,” …

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Died: H. Eddie Fox, Who Urged Methodists to Share Their Faith

The ministry leader believed declining US churches could be revitalized by hearing Wesleyans “with a different accent.”

H Eddie Fox, who hoped to renew American Methodism through evangelism and increased connections with global Christianity, died on Wednesday at age 83.

Fox led World Methodist Evangelism for 25 years, teaching, training, and empowering Methodists and Wesleyans to share their faith, and encouraging churches to make evangelism a priority. He pioneered several new initiatives that were popular in United Methodist Church (UMC) congregations, and he helped American churches connect with fellow Wesleyans outside the United States, especially in formerly communist countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

From 1989 to 2014, when Fox directed the world evangelism program, Methodists increased around the globe by about 1 million per year, even as the US membership of the UMC declined by about 2 million overall. Fox saw a direct link between the theology of the church and its vitality.

“Wherever the church is faithful to the doctrine, the sound teaching, the Discipline, the way of life—which is the way you order your life—and the spirit, openness to the Holy Spirit, you’ll find a church that’s dynamic, contagious and alive,” he said when he retired. “And where that is not true, you’ll find a church to be a dead sect, having the form but not the power thereof. That’s been a focus of my ministry. It’s been a call we’ve stood on for many, many years.”

Fox taught more Methodists how to share their faith than any one else in his lifetime, and became, for many, the evangelistic face of Methodism. He also taught at the Billy Graham School of Evangelism at Wheaton College for 15 years.

“He was dynamic and alive with his passion for the gospel, especially evangelism,” …

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Simon Biles’s Critics Miss the Bigger Story of Bodily Abuse

Some see the Olympic gymnast as a self-serving athlete. But her withdrawal from competition is a model for how to honor rather than disdain our bodies.

The Olympics always hold surprises, and this first week of competition in Tokyo was no exception. On Tuesday, Simone Biles, captain of the USA Olympic Women’s Gymnastics team and the most decorated American gymnast of all time, withdrew from the team competition after uncharacteristic performances on both the vault and floor.

By Wednesday, Biles had stepped away from the individual all-round competition as well, citing the need to give attention to her mental wellbeing. With an almost guaranteed chance of dominating the games, Biles’s choice models something rare in both competitive sports and broader culture: the humility and courage to say, “Enough is enough.”

Although many supported Biles’s decision, others saw her choice as a failure. Conservative media voices like Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh, and Jenna Ellis deemed her a quitter, equating her focus on “mental health” with a softness or lack of emotional fortitude. They went so far as to accuse her of failing her team and even her country. Others recalled Kerri Strug’s gritty 1996 vault, in which Strug pushed through obvious injury for a second attempt and ultimately led her team to gold.

After all, isn’t the whole point of competitive sports to push the human body to its limits—or past what we believe its limits to be? Even the apostle Paul invokes the metaphor of subjecting the body to rigorous discipline, writing in 1 Corinthians 9 that “everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. … I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize” (vv. 25–27).
Although …

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28 Abducted Baptist School Students Freed in Nigeria

Parents reunite with sons and daughters at Bethel high school, yet more than 80 children remain with Kaduna kidnappers.

Armed kidnappers in Nigeria have released 28 of the more than 120 students who were abducted at the beginning of July from Bethel Baptist High School in the northern town of Damishi.

Church officials handed those children over to their parents at the school on Sunday. But Israel Akanji, president of the Nigerian Baptist Convention, said more than 80 other children are still being held by the gunmen.

So far 34 children kidnapped from the school on July 5 have either been released or have escaped from the custody of the gunmen. It is unclear when the other children will be released. The gunmen have reportedly demanded 500,000 Naira (about $1,200) for each student.

Akanji said the church did not pay any ransoms because it is opposed to paying criminals, but he added the church was unable to stop the children’s families from taking any actions they deem fit to secure their release.

A spokesman for the Nigerian Police, Mohammed Jalige, said security forces and civilian defense forces were on a routine rescue patrol July 12 around the forests near the village of Tsohon Gaya when they found three exhausted kidnapped victims roaming in the bush. Two other students escaped on July 20 when they were ordered to fetch firewood from a nearby forest. Jalige said they were undergoing medical examinations.

Gunman called bandits have carried out a spate of mass abductions from schools in northern Nigeria this year, mainly seeking ransoms.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who won election on hopes that he would tackle Nigeria’s security challenges, has not been able to do much in addressing the growing cases of mass abductions from Nigerian schools.

The BWA ranks Nigeria as the world’s second-most vulnerable country for Baptists …

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Faced with Allegations, Anglicans Want to Change the Trajectory of Abuse Response

Mishandled case in Wheaton has been a wake-up call for the relatively young denomination.

Priests and parishioners in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) are expressing grief and anger over sexual abuse allegations against a lay leader in the Diocese of the Upper Midwest and the revelation that its bishop waited two years to notify churches in the diocese about the reports.

Church leaders and advocates in Illinois and beyond see this case as a chance for the 12-year-old denomination to establish better practices for preventing abuse and to care well for survivors.

After admitting he made “regrettable errors” in the process, Bishop Stewart Ruch III requested a leave of absence this month as the diocese investigates whether he and other diocesan leaders mishandled abuse allegations against Mark Rivera, a former lay leader at Christ Our Light Anglican in Big Rock, Illinois, and longtime member and volunteer at Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois. Until his leave, Ruch was a pastor at Church of the Resurrection, the diocesan headquarters.

On July 1, more than 30 female clergy in the ACNA published an open letter expressing support for the survivors and pledging to help the denomination create better processes for responding to abuse allegations with “urgency, compassion, accountability, and transparency.”

The ACNA formed in 2009 when conservative churches broke with the Episcopal Church over disagreements on human sexuality. The denomination has about 1,000 churches and 127,000 members. Because it is still relatively young and small, it has the opportunity to make decisions in these early years to set a precedent for how it will handle cases of abuse. The incidents in the Diocese of the Upper Midwest are the most recent in a string of abuse cases to emerge in the ACNA within …

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Former Mars Hill Elders: Mark Driscoll Is Still ‘Unrepentant,’ Unfit to Pastor

Dozens of leaders from the preacher’s former congregation are calling for him to resign from The Trinity Church, where departing members are raising familiar concerns.

Nearly 40 elders who served with Mark Driscoll during the final years of Mars Hill Church are publicly calling for him to step down from his current pastoral position and seek reconciliation with those he has hurt.

“We are troubled that he continues to be unrepentant despite the fact that these sins have been previously investigated, verified, and brought to his attention by his fellow Elders, prior to his abrupt resignation” from Mars Hill, they wrote in a statement released today to CT. “Accordingly, we believe that Mark is presently unfit for serving the church in the office of pastor.”

Driscoll founded The Trinity Church in Scottsdale in 2016, two years after resigning from Mars Hill at the conclusion of an investigation into his leadership. In recent months, several former Mars Hill elders have heard directly from members leaving The Trinity Church over concerns around Driscoll.

The leaders who signed onto the statement say they felt a responsibility to clarify the charges against him as a way to warn current members of his church and continue to call the well-known preacher to the kind of repentance and restoration process he was never able to complete under Mars Hill.

“This letter isn’t new information. It’s just information that hasn’t been widely spread,” said Ryan Welsh, who had been pastor of theology and leadership at Mars Hill. “Our hope is not just to point a finger. Our hope is to protect people and, by the Spirit’s work, that Mark would respond.”

The 39 signatories represent the majority of the pastors who served at the church between 2011 and 2014, when formal charges were raised against Driscoll. The list includes former executive pastor …

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How Christians Are Rebuilding a Relationship with Colorado Springs

It’s one thing to tell the city that you’re there for its good. It’s another to show it.

Six weeks after Stu Davis left his job as pastor at one of Colorado Springs’s largest churches in 2013, most of his kitchen appliances broke. Then his car broke. When his employee health insurance ran out, all three of his children had to make separate visits to the hospital.

“There were definitely times when I was angry at the Lord,” Davis said. “It was just a super, super hard season.”

Those trials made Davis think differently about the role of the church in his city. He had helped build a large youth program at Woodmen Valley Chapel, an ambitious multiyear missions project to Swaziland, and, if he was being honest, a big platform for himself. But he hadn’t really focused on the problems of people struggling in Colorado Springs.

The experience changed him. He says the trials “dislodged” him. Now, Davis serves as the executive director of COSILoveYou, a Christian nonprofit that connects nearly 100 local churches to address suffering and promote flourishing in Colorado Springs.

In some ways, Davis’s story is the story of evangelicalism in Colorado Springs, the city of 464,000 that celebrates its 150th birthday this July. Evangelicals were really successful in the city starting in the 1980s, earning it the title of the “evangelical Vatican” as Colorado Springs became a platform for high-profile Christian leaders. Then there were some broken appliances—some dislodging—and the city’s evangelicals rediscovered the importance of caring for their local community.

“The majority of local churches that would describe themselves as evangelical churches have started to step back or dial back,” Davis said, “and focused a lot more on either …

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Cheer on These Christian Olympians from Around the World

Meet the women and men who make their faith a priority as they compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The Opening Ceremonies have just commenced, but the 2020 Tokyo Games already feel weird. The Japanese government made a last-minute decision to bar spectators, and a number of athletes had to drop out after testing positive for COVID-19 or quarantine after being exposed to those who have tested positive.

Like their fellow Olympians, Christian athletes have made sacrifices, worked through mental health crises, and pushed themselves to their physical limits to make it to the Games. But they’ve been able to do so with the conviction of where their ultimate identity rests. Many have also used their platform to share about God’s work in their life and to give back in response to what they’ve achieved. Here’s 14 athletes currently in Tokyo from around the world.

Lucas Lautaro Guzman, Taekwondo (Argentina)

@lucastkd94

In 2012, Sebastián Crismanich became the first Argentine to win a taekwondo gold medal at the Olympics. Lucas Lautaro Guzman hopes to become the second.

In 2019, he won a bronze medal at the 2019 World Taekwondo Championships in the men’s flyweight category. His achievement came just three months after his mother passed away from a brief battle with breast cancer. Though losing her has been hard, Guzman deepened his faith and today says he has much to be thankful for.

Just before the start of the Olympics, Guzman celebrated his 27th birthday in Kazakhstan. In a caption accompanying his “last photo as a 26-year-old,” he wrote, “I don’t feel I deserve all that I am experiencing. … I cannot ask God for anything more, because he gives me so much that I am more than complete and full. Regardless of all the external [success] that I am receiving, I must confess that …

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From Eric Liddell to Allyson Felix: Why Faithful Fans Are Drawn to Olympians

Christian athletes testify to the gospel in competition and beyond.

“I believe God made me for a purpose. But he also made me fast,” Eric Liddell wrote in a letter to his sister Jenny before competing as a sprinter for Great Britain in the 1924 Summer Olympics.

The 1981 film Chariots of Fire (for my money, the best sports movie ever made) follows the lives of the devoutly Christian Liddell and his Jewish teammate Harold Abrahams at the Paris Games, and actor Ian Charleson, playing Liddell, intones these lines over the film’s sublime final race scene.

Liddell wins the gold medal in the 400 meters, a race that the 100-meter specialist had never run at an international competition. The son of Scottish missionaries, Liddell refused to compete in the 100 meters, which was won by his friend Abrahams, because the opening heats had been scheduled for a Sunday.

Liddell’s decision to remember the Sabbath and forgo the 100-meter competition transformed this national hero into a role model for Christians around the world. This man of remarkable talents was willing to pass up his best shot at athletic glory for the opportunity to properly honor his Lord and Savior.

Certainly, many Christians had competed in the previous modern Olympiads, but none took such a public or principled stand for his faith. Following his Olympic triumph, Liddell returned to China, where he had been born during his parents’ mission in the country. He spent much of the rest of his life in China, serving the poor and teaching the gospel.

During World War II—the last time the Olympics were called off—Liddell was taken prisoner by Japanese forces and devoted the last two years of his life to ministering to his fellow inmates at the Weixian Internment Camp in Shandong Province. He died just a few …

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