Page 1852 – Christianity Today (2024)

HarperCollins Publishers today announced it was buying Christian/inspirational publisher Thomas Nelson "for an undisclosed sum." It's a huge move since the company will now reportedly control about half of the Christian publishing market.

The question now is how the acquisition will play with Zondervan, Thomas Nelson's chief competition. HarperCollins, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, acquired Zondervan in 1988. (It also owns religion and spirituality imprint HarperOne.) Thomas Nelson says it is reportedly the largest Christian publisher in the world and the seventh largest trade-book publisher in the United States. Zondervan says it is the world's leading Bible publisher.

In 2009, then-Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt reported that his publisher and Zondervan control half of the Christian publishing market–a percentage that had held relatively steady over the previous few years.

It's been a long road for Thomas Nelson, which was founded in Edinburgh in 1798 and gained religious prominence in the U.S. through the publication of the American Standard Version and Revised Standard Version of the Bible. In 1960, it merged with The Thomson Organization (which later merged with Reuters), but was bought out by eager Lebanese-American Bible publisher Sam Moore in 1969. Moore ran the company until Hyatt succeeded him in 2004.

By then Thomas Nelson had gotten into and out of the music business, swallowing Christian publishing powerhouse Word, Inc. in the early 1990s. In 2006, the company, which had been publicly traded since Moore's Royal Publishers was first listed on the exchange in 1961, was bought for $473 million and began operating as a private company. Private equity firm Kohlberg and Company acquired a majority ownership last year, and put former HarperCollins Worldwide CEO Jane Friedman on its board.

Moral Apologetics for Contemporary Christians

Pushing Back Against Cultural and Religious CriticsMark Coppenger (B&H Academic)

Mark Coppenger believes Christians should not shy away from our ethical heritage when defending Christian truth claims. Instead, we should consider the ways in which a Christian ethic intersects with Christian apologetics. If true ideas bring life to society, one should expect life and culture to flourish where Christianity is embraced. Coppenger’s writing is feisty and persuasive as he argues for Christianity’s moral superiority.—Trevin Wax

Beautiful Outlaw

Experiencing the Playful, Disruptive, Extravagant Personality of JesusJohn Eldredge (FaithWords)

The newest book from John Eldredge seeks to surprise readers with the powerful per-sonality of Jesus. Eldredge is at his best when describing the awe-inspiring nature of Christ’s incarnation and humility. Unfortunately, he tends to pit Christ’s immanence against God’s transcendence, as well as Jesus against the church. The end result is largely a “me and Jesus” Christianity.—Trevin Wax

The Accidental Revolutionary

George Whitefield and the Creation of AmericaJerome Dean Mahaffey (Baylor University Press)

Jerome Dean Mahaffey’s new biography is about a major Founding Father whose first name was George. No, not the man from the Mount Vernon, the one whose visage adorns the dollar bill, but George Whitefield, the British itinerant whose preaching propelled the First Great Awakening. Whitefield did not aim to rock the boat politically. Throughout his life, he pledged loyalty to the crown and the Church of England. But Mahaffey shows how Whitefield’s bold challenge to settled religious doctrines and hierarchies helped coax the colonies in the direction of independence.—Matt Reynolds

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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Shoshon Tama-Sweet has learned that for every coffee shop and independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, there is a dimly lit backroom where children are sold for sex. “The Bedroom, Good Times, the Five Dollar Pub—that’s a huge joint—and the high school’s across the street,” he says as we cruise 82nd Avenue, Portland’s prostitution “track,” on the eastside. “You’ve got the church on the corner, Rite-Aid Pharmacy, and JD’s Bar and Grille, the pink-lettered strip club.”

Like many Westerners, Tama-Sweet, 36, had long considered trafficking an overseas problem. When doing development work in the coastal town of Mombasa, Kenya, he’d see teenage girls standing on the docks, waiting for tourists. “I’d read about trafficking in places like Cambodia and India,” says Tama-Sweet, the son of hippie atheists. “I really didn’t imagine it was a problem here. It just doesn’t fit the idea of what Portland is.”

That idea—of green parks, copious bike lanes, and a bubbling arts scene—recently landed Portland the tagline, “Where young people go to retire.” In 2005, Tama-Sweet and his now wife left the grimy City of Angels for the City of Roses. Stephanie had just completed a master’s in intercultural studies at Biola. The couple had considered missionary work in the 10-40 Window, but Portland’s “sense of optimism and opportunity” drew them, says Tama-Sweet. “It attracts a lot of young people who want to change the world.”

His own optimism, however, faltered when the couple moved to Cully, a neighborhood south of the airport littered with strip clubs and p*rn shops.

“I would see prostitutes walk down my street Sunday morning when my wife and son and I were getting in the car to go to church,” he says as we drive through Cully. He points to a “juice bar,” a new establishment for an 18+ crowd who can’t drink but can watch p*rn and nude dancing. “So if you’re a high-school student, welcome to the Sugar Shack. They’re open 24/7.

“When you have this evil—people who enslave another human being’s body and turn it into something sexually exploited on a daily basis for financial gain—this is the antithesis of what God wants. This is the antithesis of a beloved community.”

Yet it is precisely this community that Tama-Sweet—in a network of Christians living in one of the least-churched states—has loved enough to begin transforming. Under Tama-Sweet’s leadership, the Oregon Center for Christian Voices (OCCV) has in four years become Oregon’s flagship nonprofit for passing laws that make it harder to sexually exploit children. In the same four years, two Christians in Portland’s leading assault advocacy group and police department have created a unique model for assisting underage victims. Their model earned their county a $500,000 federal grant that created a special committee on CSEC (“commercial sexual exploitation of children”). Around the committee table are several committed Christians.

International Justice Mission (IJM) says these believers signal a trend among American Christians, who are wedding their longstanding emphasis on direct ministry to preventative efforts. In courtrooms, police stations, and the meager offices of tiny nonprofits, these Christians labor to end the vicious cycle of child trafficking before it starts.

Legalized Licentiousness

Portland’s trafficking problem goes back, inadvertently, to Oregon’s 1857 Constitution, which contains one of the most liberal free speech clauses in the country, says Mike Hogan, IJM’s Pacific Northwest director of church mobilization. For decades, legislators have interpreted, “No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion …” to block all attempts to regulate the adult entertainment industry. Free from zoning restrictions, strip clubs and other “creative expressions” are peppered throughout the city, often near schools and parks. Joslyn Baker, a CSEC specialist with Multnomah County, says 65 percent of all Portland schools are within a mile of a strip club.

“We’ve had trainers come and say, ‘Show us your track. Show us where your sex industry is,’ ” says Baker, a Christian. “I say, ‘I have to drive you around the whole town.’ It’s everywhere.”

Baker says most Portlanders accepted the ubiquitous strip clubs as part of their premium on individual freedom—until February 2009, when the FBI swept the Portland-Vancouver area and found seven underage girls, the most in any FBI raid at the time. With the ensuing national media coverage, Portlanders began realizing that their lucrative sex industry is the main “gateway” for pimping children.

“The strip clubs will deny it, but everybody I know who’s a victim or survivor says that’s where they started or interfaced,” says Tama-Sweet. As we eat at a Popeye’s Chicken at the intersection of 82nd Avenue and Fremont, he points across the street to Honeysuckle’s Lingerie, which looks like a decrepit one-bedroom house with a fenced backyard. Tama-Sweet believes it’s a trafficking point. He tells the story of a 13-year-old who was driven from Washington State across the Willamette River to Columbia Boulevard, near the I-5 Corridor, the West Coast “track” running from Vancouver to Tijuana. She was raped out of a van behind strip clubs during her middle school’s lunch hour. Then, she was driven back to catch the bus home.

‘We’ve had trainers come and say, “Show us your track. Show us where your sex industry is. ” I say, “I have to drive you around the whole town.”‘—Joslyn Baker, Multnomah County CSEC specialist

“In Oregon, it’s illegal for an 18-year-old to serve a cup of coffee if she doesn’t have a food handlers card,” says Tama-Sweet. “Yet that girl can be hired as an ‘independent contractor’ and strip in a private room that’s dead-bolted from the outside, at 3 A.M., with no oversight, no class, no license.”

Such grave imbalances compelled OCCV four years ago (then led by Gordon-Conwell graduate Stephanie Ahn Mathis) to make trafficking its advocacy focus. OCCV’s first victory came in 2009, when the legislature passed a Victims Confidentiality Bill, keeping victims out of Portland’s public Internet database (and the hands of pimps). Then in 2010, it won permission to send orange stickers listing the National Human Trafficking Hotline number to all 11,000 liquor-serving and -selling establishments in Oregon.

IJM, which began partnering with OCCV is 2009, says the six-year-old nonprofit has helped Portland’s Christians do much more than send money to IJM. “Knowing the local legislation and being able to have events in Salem to get people to do something—they’re a phenomenal partner,” says Hogan.

Stacy Bellavia, 32, started volunteering with OCCV in 2009, when she returned from an IJM project in India. She testified in Salem, the state capital, on behalf of the hotline bill. “I’ve learned how much power constituents have. The fact that I can testify before a human services committee on behalf of a bill is wild. There’s enough information for all Christians to speak passionately about it.”

OCCV saw three more of its bills become law this summer. The first increases fines for purchasing sex from a minor from $800 to $10,000. The second outlaws the “age defense” in court (“But she said she was 18” is no longer a legitimate defense). And the third changes the very definition of prostitution. It used to be that “a 50-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl were technically guilty of the same crime,” says Tama-Sweet. “We separated it out, allowing us to treat victims as victims and help shift the psychology around prostitution. This is not an egalitarian transaction 99.9 percent of the time.”

Escaping the ‘Epicenter’

For weeks, Sergeant Mike Geiger was peeved at Dan Rather. In a 2010 Dan Rather Reports series dubbed “p*rnland,” the seasoned anchor led cameramen along 82nd Avenue to expose the “seedier side” of the “model American city,” labeling it “the epicenter of child prostitution.” Other reporters, including Diane Sawyer (who called Portland “the national hub for child sex trafficking”), repeated the e-word.

“As you can imagine, that generated some attention,” says Geiger, who says he spent weeks taking calls from shocked Portlanders. A wiry, straight-shooting police officer for 22 years, Geiger spends his days behind a desk leading Portland’s trafficking unit, one of the few of its kind in the U.S. The Rather series spotlighted his detective unit, which is currently working to find Portland’s 150 known or suspected underage victims.

Geiger was frustrated that Rather overlooked his department’s innovative response to victims. In early 2009, Geiger campaigned to move prostitution out of the bureau’s drugs and vice unit into the sex crimes unit. So where buying a prostitute used to be a “vice”—and the john and prostitute were equally guilty under law—the shift turned soliciting sex from a minor into a major crime for a detective to investigate. And a simpler crime, since only the john was now pursued.

“Gone are the days when you view a child as complicit—’she engaged in consensual sexual conduct in exchange for a fee,'” Geiger says. “Our children are not complicit. It’s not just a policy shift. It’s a whole shift in thinking.”

After a series of institutional changes, Geiger’s detectives now work closely with the FBI to track down victims throughout Oregon and match them with advocates and shelters. In the past month, his team has identified four underage victims on BackPage.com, a Craigslist-type site that doesn’t screen ads for illicit content, and rescued one 14-year-old the month this article went to press.

Tama-Sweet says the Portland Police Bureau is “way ahead of the national average” thanks to Geiger’s leadership. “I view myself more as a father than a police officer,” says Geiger, the father of three. “When we talk about these vulnerable people, my faith dictates that we protect and nurture them. Jesus’ warning about the millstone highlights the inherent value of all children.”

Esther Nelson, 29, is program manager of the human trafficking division at the Sexual Assault Resource Center (SARC), Portland’s most respected advocacy group. She says Portland has earned the “epicenter” label precisely because “our service provision has done a great job,” which has “skyrocketed” the number of victims.

When she joined SARC in 2008, Nelson and Geiger created a victim-centered response model: Every child brought in off the streets receives (1) a detective to track down the pimp; (2) a child welfare specialist to find shelter; and (3) a SARC advocate who helps victims leave their abusers.

Having an advocate changes everything.

“When we interviewed them as a victim of a crime, reframing their information as ‘you’re a survivor,’ the outcomes were so different. The kids stopped cycling, and some of them got into shelters where they stayed put,” says Nelson. (Due to the trauma bond pimps create, most victims return to abusers immediately.) “The kids had different directions put in place because they were afforded rights as victims.”

With bursting caseloads under the model, in 2010 Portland Police and SARC received a three-year federal grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. That $500,000 created the CSEC Committee, where the FBI, district attorneys, child welfare, Nelson, Geiger, survivors—and, most recently, the church—work to ensure Portland never becomes an actual hub.

The City Welcomes the Church

For three years, Nelson kept her full-time job under wraps at Portland’s best-known evangelical church. Meanwhile, Imago Dei Community, pastored by Rick McKinley, wanted to “fight trafficking” but didn’t know how. Little did they know a direct link to a city-wide conversation was sitting in their pews.

“There were no places of engagement,” says Ken Weigel, 31, Imago’s pastor of ministry development. “We’d watch all these movies and host events … getting a few thousand people riled up for no purpose.” Imago had run Scarlet Cord, a Friday night dinner for prostitutes, since 2009. But like the dozen or so other direct-service ministries in Portland, it was disconnected from the CSEC Committee and social services.

Until the city needed the church. Last summer, Nelson asked Weigel to meet her at Three Friends Coffee House, around the corner from Imago. She needed counsel on how to better live her faith in a non-Christian workplace. As they talked, recalls Weigel, “I’m figuring out what she does, and I’m like, ‘One of the leading people on this goes to my church. This is crazy.'”

Nelson invited Weigel to join the CSEC committee, making Imago the first church at the table. A surprising number of believers are on the committee, but Weigel has become the bridge linking city and church.

“I’m much more about us going in and blessing” what’s already working, rather than building something new, says Weigel, who relocated SARC’s trafficking unit to Imago this summer. “People of salt and light [should be] infiltrating every one of these institutions. We want to be part of the solution, as opposed to coming only if we are leading the discussion.”

One solution came from Imago’s sizable artist community. Martin French is an illustrator whose client list includes the Olympic Games, Nike, and The New York Times. He moved to Portland in 2005 to teach at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Right away he plugged into Imago, because “engagement in the city is much of what I moved here for.” After hearing McKinley preach through the Book of Matthew this January, French was struck by the theme of exile and landed on the Exile Poster Project concept.

“Portland is a poster-oriented town, a huge music scene,” he says. “But I wanted to go deeper into what was going on in the city—a very non-Christian city—to create dialogue.”

In talks with Weigel, French decided that the project’s theme would be trafficking; victims are often exiles from their home countries and families. French invited professional artists, designers, and six of his students to contribute 20 unique pieces. The Exile Poster Project debuted this April in Imago’s art gallery, located in the hip Pearl District. Now several are posted along 82nd Avenue and other troubled streets, and more went up in schools, City Hall, and the Capitol this fall.

One poster reads like a giant sticky note delivering a to-do list for Portland: “Be bike-friendly.” “Make coffee roasting cool.” “Open a million food carts.” “Stop having sex with the kids.” Only the last item isn’t crossed out.

“If that can elicit an emotional response,” says French, “that can lead to that viral, person-to-person change that says, ‘We’ll do this fundraiser. We’ll go and help this nonprofit.’

“That’s what’s going to change Portland, because city government has been clear that their mechanisms [aren’t] making much change. It’s going to take individuals.”

More Than a Bed

Anti-trafficking insiders hope that churches’ engagement goes beyond mercy ministry. To varying degrees, Tama-Sweet, Nelson, Geiger, and Baker are wary of Christian ministries providing victim services, such as on-street rescue and psychological counsel. About a dozen such ministries operate in Portland.

Tama-Sweet says such ministry has its place but “has to be linked to structural changes. Direct service falls into a historical charity model that churches understand and do well. But it’s just half the picture.”

That’s where Weigel comes in. After the poster project, Weigel says, the CSEC committee asked him to spearhead a new subcommittee on prevention. Besides rebranding the decidedly boring “CSEC Committee,” Weigel is now creating prevention education for schools, churches, and businesses to use by early 2012. This August, he organized a breakfast where pastors of black, Hispanic, and white congregations could ask Senator Ron Wyden, a leader in anti-trafficking legislation, “What can we do to help?”

“With sex trafficking, unless you are a trained social worker, FBI agent, or DA, there’s not much for you to do on the front line,” says Weigel. “I’m creating places where people don’t insist that they have to be on the front line, but still see they are helping.”

Insiders are eager to see churches provide kids mentors and a sexual ethic that emphasizes their God-given dignity.

“The church is in the best position to take the lead on morality issues in a way that government can’t,” says Baker. “At the end of the day, we put the bad guy away and get [the girl] clothes and health treatment. But who loves her? Who tells her a story other than, ‘The only thing you’re good for is selling your body’?”

“When girls think they have no value to where they are selling themselves, something has been missed along the way,” says Geiger. “This is something the church can do.”

Rep. Andy Olson (R-Albany) has worked with OCCV to try to amend Oregon’s Constitution. A Christian, he calls trafficking a “family values issue.” “When a 12- to 14-year-old runs away from home, and next thing you know she’s on the train—you have to ask, why did she run away from home?”

Meanwhile, Bellavia has found ways to engage fellow Christians at Mosaic Church, located in the Hollywood District. Bellavia was appointed Mosaic’s anti-trafficking organizer last year, and is putting her experience at OCCV and IJM to work. She and other members regularly visit a K-8 school and a high school in Cully, with hopes that role models will bolster students’ sense of self-worth, thereby adding a layer of protection against pimps. She also leads training sessions at Mosaic on how to organize meetings with politicians, testify in Salem, write opeds, and raise awareness through social media.

“It’s not just about rescue, it’s also about prevention,” says Bellavia. “Sometimes that’s hard because it’s not exciting or notable. But you’re having a long-term and probably more significant impact investing in a 9-year-old boy who doesn’t have a good role model.

“If it’s just about building a shelter, people think the only way to contribute is financially. I’m encouraging the faith community that they can be involved, even though it doesn’t look like it’s directly involved.”

“The church has something special: We have the Good News,” says Tama-Sweet as we leave Popeye’s so he can join his wife and 2-year-old at home. “We have a vision of the way the world is supposed to be. And it doesn’t include the rape of children on our streets.

“When you realize that God loved every victim when they were born, that he’s with them every day they’re traumatized—it’s incumbent on believers to protect them, to help them become whole, and to insist that, in our society, we are not going to tolerate the antithesis of God’s beloved community.”

Katelyn Beaty is associate editor at Christianity Today magazine and editorial director of the This Is Our City project. Additional reporting provided by CT video director Nathan Clarke.

Go to MoreCT.com/Shoshon for a short documentary about OCCV’s executive director.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

An acidulous report on a sensational murder trial.

We have all been reading the remarkable life of Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs’s level of success was so high it’s hard to find a standard of comparison—people used names like Edison or Ford.

He was a visionary genius who revolutionized six different industries. His legacy includes Mac computers, Apple retail stores, Pixar studios, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, iPad. There is a biography about him called iCon. He was the inventor or co-inventor on 342 patents or patent applications.

He changed the way we think about computers, phones, music, movies, and retail stores. He made technology cool, intuitive, elegant, and easy to use. His passing leaves a crater.

Somebody said ten years ago we had Bob Hope, Johnny Cash, and Steve Jobs; now we have no Hope, no Cash, and no jobs.

In the 1800s the American dream was being born in a log cabin and growing up to be president. In our day it’s a kid starting a company in his parents’ garage that will change the world. That kid was Steve Jobs.

Then he died.

How successful is successful enough?

That same week he died, we read about another icon named Al Davis.

He was a kid from Brooklyn. Not a particular gifted athlete, but by sheer tenacity he became the head coach and general manger of the Oakland Raiders at a younger age than anyone else in professional football.

In an occupation full of the toughest people in the world, nobody was tougher than Al Davis. Just win, baby. He willed the Raiders to five Super Bowls. He achieved such prominence that followers around the country called themselves “Raider Nation.”

NFL Films rated the top 10 feuds of all time, and #1 was Al Davis vs. the whole National Football League.

He could be extraordinarily generous, but was not given to false modesty or self-doubt. When NY Yankees boss George Steinbrenner died, about a year ago, Al Davis said: “I judge sports figures based on individual achievement, team achievement, and contributions to the game. George was right up there with me at #1.”

Then he died.

How much winning is enough?

On the same day that Al Davis passed away, we read about an artist.

Roger Williams was the first pianist to have his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

He was called ”Pianist to the Presidents”; he played for nine of them. He was the only pianist to have a #1 song on Billboard charts. He was the best-selling pianist of all time, with 18 gold or platinum records.

(If you are not old, a record was a round thing they used to record music on.)

Not only that—he won a boxing championship in Navy during WW II.

How talented is talented enough?

For it is by grace you are saved, Paul said.

Human beings cannot stop longing for salvation. Even if we don’t believe in God, we want to be delivered or rescued from the something inside us that cannot be satisfied. I sometimes think in our day we have just secularized salvation. We have made it economic and therapeutic. Our hope for salvation lies in being successful enough or happy enough. We’re not there yet. But maybe with a little more work … a little more success.

And I wonder, in the church world, if we don’t end up spiritualizing a kind of salvation by works approach to ministry.

How big is big enough?

How fast is fast-growing enough?

How sold-out is sold-out enough?

How creative is creative enough?

I wonder if maybe some of us who work at churches or lead ministries or teach the Bible ought to start every day with those words: For it is by grace I am saved …

Ours can be such a strange little Christian subculture, where success consists in baptizing musical or cinematic or publishing trends from the broad culture and making them palatable for the faithful.

And we can look for our own smaller and safer versions of Steve Jobs, or Al Davis, or Roger Williams whom we think have reached “enough.”

What if Paul’s words mean there is no enough? At least not on this side. At least not on our own.

What if pastors and church leaders became the most grace-filled, grace-powered, grace-eased people in the neighborhood?

It’s all gift, Paul says. Grace is a gift received by faith. And faith too is a gift.

It will turn out, in the end, that nobody had anything to boast about.

That will be our joy.

That will be our pain.

That will be the death of us.

And that will be our salvation.

John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership Journal and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in the Bay Area of California, where Steve Jobs and Al Davis made their mark.

Copyright © 2011 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

All pastors have defining moments, critical times that alter the course of their ministries. Often we only understand these moments in retrospect. After the fact we see how they changed our lives, formed our ministries, and shaped our thinking.

Many such moments come to mind for me, but one stands out. It came early in my ministry. It taught me the importance of recognizing what I now call “the caution light.”

I lead Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, a historic church in the inner city of Chicago. It’s a church body with a rich legacy. In the 1960s Martin Luther King, Jr. preached at our church, and throughout the years FMBC has been a catalyst for the transformation of individuals and society. Being an inner city congregation, we deal with some tough situations. We know firsthand the difficulties of aligning dreams for the future with harsh realities of the present.

When I took the pastorate in 2000 at the age of 24, I was eager to make big changes. I succeeded our church’s founding pastor, who led our church for 50 years, a man the whole community celebrates as a spiritual father. Stepping into his position, I found myself surrounded by wonderful seasoned people. Many of them were three times my age, and most of our traditions were older than all of us.

I believed I had a fresh vision to revitalize an aging church, inspire a new generation, and impact the city. But it wasn’t going to be easy. I faced a host of strong personalities, dated methods, and entrenched agendas. On the other hand, a new generation brimming with energy and expectation was hopeful that I would bring change.

It was a combustible mix, a recipe for ecclesiastical disaster. Forging ahead too quickly had the potential to split the church. Even more importantly, I sensed that I didn’t have a green light from God for many of the things I wanted to do. Not that I wasn’t ready. I wanted to stomp on the gas and speed forward for God’s kingdom, like a Holy Spirit-fueled Ferrari! But I sensed God was putting a caution light in my path. I had to evaluate the consequences of taking immediate action. Jesus said, “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost?” (Luke 14:28). I was beginning to appreciate just how applicable that principle is to ministry.

Yet I also knew God wasn’t giving me a red light. He didn’t want me to stand still, or permanently shelve my plans. He wanted me to proceed, but incrementally and with caution.

For me “estimating the cost” wasn’t just about assessing finances. I had to think about human capital. I had to weigh my moral authority. As I began to evaluate the possibilities of what we could accomplish, I learned that there were areas in which I could make great strides, just not at record speed. I began to pursue “now is the time” projects while identifying “not right now” initiatives. For example, there were traditional segments of our worship service that I held off changing, and antiquated programs I left in place temporarily because they were meaningful to a few church members. I also postponed plans to launch a second campus. I needed to ensure we were secure emotionally and that the congregation was confident in my leadership before launching a second site. When I did begin to initiate change, I had to hold more meetings, have more conversations, and provide more explanations for what I was doing. Among the guidelines I found helpful:

• If the vision sat with you, let it sit with them.
• Don’t expect a harvest in places where you have not sown seed.
• Seek reinforcements before finding replacements.

We all have limitations. Some are internal, arising from the natural boundaries set by our skills and personalities. Other limitations are external, imposed by our ministry context. Acknowledging limitations does not mean accepting defeat. God can allow us to make great headway, even as we face limitations.

It’s been more than 10 years since I came to FMBC. It’s been an incredible journey. Lives have been transformed. Neighborhoods have been impacted. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t get in the way of what God had planned by rushing ahead with my plans prematurely.

God’s timing is always right. When I’m sensitive to his leading, he will produce results beyond what I could imagine.

Charles Jenkins is pastor of Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago.

Copyright © 2011 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Once, when my wife, Gail, and I were hiking the high meadows of the Swiss Alps, we saw two farmers cutting the high-standing mountain grasses with scythes, a hand-mowing tool that has been around since ancient times. Their broad-sweeping movements seemed like the synchronous movements of dancers.

Drawing closer, we noticed that both paused periodically and produced from their pockets something resembling a flat stone. Then in the same graceful manner, they now drew the stones back and forth across the scythes’ blades. The purpose? To restore sharpness.

The sharpening done, each returned to the cutting.

Gail and I observed them repeat this process—cut and sharpen, cut and sharpen—several times: ten minutes (give or take) of cutting followed by five minutes of sharpening.

A dumb question: why waste five minutes sharpening the blades? We’re talking here about 20 minutes of unproductive time each hour. Why not keep cutting, get the job finished, and head home at an earlier hour?

Answer: because with every swing of the scythe, the blade becomes duller. And with the increasing dullness, the work becomes harder and less productive. Result: you actually head home much later.

Lesson learned: cutting and sharpening are both part of a farmer’s work.

Lesson applied: In my earliest pastoral years, I didn’t appreciate this cutting/sharpening principle. I’m embarrassed to admit that I usually gave attention to the sharpening (or the spiritual) dimension of my life only when I needed something beyond my natural reach or when I found myself knee-deep in trouble.

The cumulative results of a life lived like this became alarming. It led to dullness of the soul.

While talking a lot about God, I had very little practice in listening to him.

My work fell prey to mission-creep. I tended to become bogged down in matters of secondary importance, neglecting truly important things.

I often complained of fatigue: not only physical fatigue, but spiritual and emotional emptiness.

Sometimes I became flooded with temptations to envy, impatience, ambition, discontent, wandering thoughts.

I was too sensitive, easily rattled by criticism, disagreement, and the slights of people who seemed not to be on my side.

I often did not feel I was doing my best. I seemed to give God and the people a B- effort.

My prayers were shallow, not reflective of a man who was supposed to “walk with God.”

While most people complimented me as a good preacher and pastor, the fact was that I was not influencing many people toward a deeper commitment to Jesus Christ.

As time passed and I hit one too many “walls,” I began an earnest search for what was missing at the center of my life. If I could not identify it, I feared that I was not going to last. It was then I discovered a most important biblical law: Sabbath—holy time when the soul is sharpened.

Somehow the Sabbath idea had not come alive to me before. Sabbath was perceived as a wild Sunday of spell-binding preaching, growing crowds, and successful programming. I never imagined a Sabbath experience of majestic worship, joyful quiet (instead of noise), interior “conversation” and a reordering of the pieces of my life. No wonder I felt so messy. I knew none of these.

All this is the result of a wide-spread reluctance to take God seriously when he says there are times when work in the world must stop (really, really stop!) and be replaced by work in the soul.

Imagine what a Sabbath pause might look like. There would be 24 hours of relative quiet in which to escape the unrelenting busy-ness in order to listen to God; 24 hours of intimacy with those one loves the most; 24 hours to appraise the recent days and count one’s blessings and resolve one’s regrets; 24 hours to look forward and re-order one’s priorities and sense of direction; 24 hours to reaffirm true belief and obedience to God the Creator; 24 hours to rest, laugh, study, and play.

Simply imagining it causes me to breathe deeply and ask: What keeps me from this?

I was in my early thirties when this Sabbath-sharpening idea began to make sense. And it started not with Protestant or Catholic sources but by acquainting myself with Jewish thinkers.

Author and playwright Herman Wouk, an observant Jew, describes in his book This Is My God his life of faith and makes it clear that the Sabbath was at the core of his way of life.

Strength, Refreshment, and Cheer

“I can now tell (the reader),” Wouk wrote, “that (the Sabbath) day is the fulcrum of a practicing Jew’s existence and generally a source of strength, refreshment, and cheer.” That line certainly caught my attention.

“The great difference between the Puritan Sabbath and the even more restrictive Jewish Shabbat is an impalpable but overwhelming one of spirit. Our Sabbath opens with blessings over light and wine. Light and wine are the keys to the day. Our observance has its solemnities, but the main effect is release, peace, gaiety, and lifted spirits.” (italics mine)

Reread Wouk’s last four descriptors. When was the last time you ended a Protestant Sabbath (Sunday) and described yourself in such a fashion?

Wouk went on to describe a typical Sabbath in his Jewish family. Each week he arrived home—a New York City apartment—by sundown on Friday night.

“Leaving the gloomy theater (where Wouk worked), the littered coffee cups, the jumbled scarred-up scripts, the haggard actors, the shouting stagehands, the bedeviled director, the knuckle-gnawing producer, the clattering typewriter, and the dense tobacco smoke and the backstage dust, I have come home. It has been a startling change, very much like a brief return from the wars.”

Notice the description of the theater and its echo of the larger world in which he (and we) live. And then notice the ordered world found in his home.

His wife and his boys awaited his arrival. Soon after the family sat down to a splendid dinner “at a table graced with flowers and the Sabbath symbols.” Then—and I love this—Wouk touches each of his sons and blesses them. All of this is followed by eating, singing, conversation, and prepared questions. “For me,” Wouk says, “(Sabbath) is a retreat into restorative magic.”

Restorative magic: what a term.

Saturday, Wouk adds, is passed in much the same manner. There is a synagogue gathering and the embrace of the worshipping community. There is play in the park. There is togetherness. “On the Sabbath, he says, “(our boys know) that we are always there. They know too that I am not working, and that my wife is at her ease. It is their day.”

“It is my day too,” Wouk writes. “The telephone (think Blackberry here) is silent. I can think, read, study, walk, or do nothing. It is an oasis of quiet.”

When Wouk returns to the theater on Saturday night after Sabbath has ended, someone says to him, “I don’t envy you your religion, but I envy you your Sabbath.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his book Faith in the Future, writes not dissimilarly about his Sabbath: “Imagine the experience of coming home on Friday afternoon. The week has flown by in a rush of activity. You are exhausted. And there, in all its simplicity and splendor is the Sabbath table: candles radiating the light that symbolizes shalom bayit, peace at home; wine, representing blessing and joy; and two loaves of bread, recalling the double portion of manna that fell for the Israelites in the wilderness so that they would not have to gather food on the seventh day.”

Then, get this.

“Seeing that table you know that until tomorrow evening you will step into another world, one where there are no pressures to work or compete or distractions or interruptions, just time to be together with family and friends.”

Come to think of it, no one that I remember ever envied my Sabbath. Maybe it was because I had no consistent or well-ordered personal sharpening experience for anyone to envy.

An elder in one of my congregations once said to me at the end of a long, very busy Sunday morning: “I’m sure glad that God only insisted on one Sabbath each week. If he’d required two, I’d have a nervous breakdown.”

By contrast, Senator Joseph Lieberman, an observant Jew, writes in his book The Gift of Rest, “For me, Sabbath observance is a gift because it is one of the deepest, purest pleasures in my life. It is a day of peace, rest, and sensual pleasure.”

Explaining that last word, Lieberman writes: “When I said the Sabbath is sensual, I meant that it engages the senses—sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch—with beautiful settings, soaring melodies, wonderful food and wine, and lots of love. It is a time to reconnect with family and friends … with God, the Creator of everything we have time to ‘sense’ on the Sabbath. Sabbath observance is a gift that has anchored, shaped, and inspired my life.”

Is there anything about the way most of us Protestants and Catholics “do church” these days that can be likened to what Wouk, Sacks, and Lieberman have said?

In my younger days of inner disorganization, the nagging question became: if God intends there to be experiences of release, peace, gaiety, a lifted spirit—then how can I experience them?

I wish I could answer this question by telling you that I regularly take full 24-hour Sabbaths. That would be untruthful. But I have learned to insert genuine Sabbath “sharpenings” into my life even if they have usually been briefer than 24 hours.

The Personal Side of Sabbath

There are two sides to Sabbath: the personal side and the communal or public side where one engages with friends and congregation. Here I can only reflect on the first of the two.

In our home over the past many years, the starting point for each day has been a Sabbath-silence. We have learned the value of time in a private place. No noise, no interruptions, no distractions. In the past when there were children in our home, we simply arranged to find this time in morning’s earliest hours before they awakened. This, of course, meant going to bed earlier). And it actually worked for us.

Over the years I have come to guard those quiet moments as among my most precious treasures. Each morning the time is spent differently. But the goal is always the same. Again to quote Herman Wouk: “to find release, peace, gaiety and a lifted spirit.” The larger purpose? To prepare to walk through the coming day obedient to Jesus, useful to people, embedded (not insulated) fully in the larger world.

Thomas a Kempis said of reflective moments: “Be faithful to your secret place, and it will become your closest friend and bring you much comfort. In silence and stillness a devout person grows spiritually and learns the hidden things of the Bible. Tears shed there bring cleansing. God draws near to the one who withdraws for a while. It is better for you to look after yourself this way in private than to perform wonders in public while neglecting your soul.”

In these private Sabbaths, I have found a number of activities that are essential to my own day-to-day sharpening. They are my spiritual version of the sharpening of the farmer’s scythe.

• Vigorous repentance. I must start here because repentance is life-saving and heaven-opening.

I once thought that repentance simply meant that when you do something bad, you mention it, say that you’re sorry, and move on. But a revisiting of the Bible on this subject has moved me to understand that repentance is, first and foremost, an acknowledgement of that deeper pool of evil that lies resident in every one of us and which is ready to explode at any moment.

What a noisy life I live. How many unfinished thoughts fly away, never to be remembered again.

A deeper repentance means that I must examine my heart for such potential waywardness and renounce the tendency to compare myself with others, to explain away my failures, and to stop whining if someone isn’t merciful to me.

Repentance means that I have to present myself to God and speak the equivalent of Isaiah’s words, “Woe is me; I am a broken man.” This has required a painful humility, a regular readjustment. There remain many moments when a rebellious part of me still tries to avoid owning and assessing my own messiness (active and potential). The Sabbath experience—the sharpening of the blade—means this cannot be avoided.

• Immersion in the Bible. Each day I push myself to read it not as a preacher preparing talks for others, but as one hungry (sometimes desperate) for God’s kind and searching words.

I confess an unbridled love of the Bible’s stories, especially those of Jesus and his disciples.

And there are life-long favorite places such as the oft-read Psalm 23. I often sit quietly and repeat this Psalm over and over again.

With each repetition, I pause and brood over individual words: cool waters … darkened valleys … rods, staffs … banqueting tables … the qualities of goodness and mercy (what powerful words to a sinner like me). I love to imagine the great shepherd, Jesus himself, going before me: urging calmness in those green pastures, assuring me of his presence amid danger, swabbing my wounds with oil, serving me a healthy dinner while my “enemies” look on powerless to do anything.

• Reading the great spiritual masters. I’d never had time for those strange folk when I was young. But now I read them with great appreciation: Augustine, Lawrence, Fenelon, Fox, Thomas a Kempis. They speak to my soul. Quakers, Catholics, Puritans, monks, mystics. Each brings a fresh perspective and builds into me a balance of understandings of this immense God who will not be fully captured by any one tradition or theological perspective.

• Reflection. What a noisy life I have lived. How many unfinished thoughts have flown through my mind never to be remembered again. How many experiences have gone unevaluated in the past? How many times did I fail to take inventory of the day and squeeze events and conversations that might morph into wisdom? How often have I forgotten to express thanks? Reflection is the act of gathering these things and squeezing meaning and message out of them.

• Journaling. Among the most important daily exercises I ever undertook was the day (December 17, 1968) when I began describing myself on the pages of a notebook. Over the years these journals have included records of each day’s experiences where I heard (or missed) God’s voice, what was delightful or regrettable. My journals include prayers, quotes, Bible references, and comments made to me by “angels” in the course of the day. Just as Israel built memorials to God’s great acts and revelations, so my journals have been a memorial to God’s grace in my life.

• Worship. In Sabbath one must kneel before the Lord, assume that prayerful posture and reaffirm once again the words: “Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, the sheep of His pasture.”

In the act of worship—exalting God’s character, his mighty acts, and reliable promises—we are appropriately upsized or downsized, depending on who we think we are at the moment. More than once I have been painfully reduced to true size by a God who will not tolerate my self-centeredness. Then there have been times when I have been so low and this wonderfully gracious God has lifted me out of “that slimy pit” and filled me with a new song.

• Sabbath imagining. It’s often unappreciated, but the heavenly Father has provided us an imagination (an inner theatrical stage, if you please) where we can visualize scenarios of possible futures for ourselves. The long future (what sort of man might I be in ten years?) and the short one (for what must I prepare today?).

During my Sabbath moments, I quietly dream through the conversations I am scheduled to have. I often think about the tasks that populate my to-do list. As I imagine, I ask questions: How could I be useful in that situation? What might I say if he or she … Can I be a better listener? What word from God might come through me? It is in these imagining moments that God’s Holy Spirit paints possibilities on our minds.

And so it is with my Sabbaths. The inner blade is sharpened, and one re-enters the larger world with greater focus and spiritual energy.

I love the words of Rufus Jones, a biographer of George Fox, founder of the Quaker movement: “In all his planning and arrange-ments he exalted the place of hush and silence, and he taught his followers to prize the times of quiet meditation in their gatherings for worship, so that he left behind him a fellowship of persons who knew how to cultivate the interior deeps within themselves and who had discovered how to make their own approach to God without external helps.”

Along with Gail and me, George Fox would have loved those Swiss farmers.

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership Journal and chancellor of Denver Seminary.

Copyright © 2011 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

I snuggled up close to my daughter as we each cracked open our brand-new books, ready for some quiet reading time. It lasted about 30 seconds.

“Listen,” Greta said. “You’ll love this.” She launched into the description the narrator—a 10-year-old boy named Zach—gave of himself:

And I guess I’ve always been sort of interested in weird stuff. Stuff like werewolves and vampires and zombies and houses where you go into the bathroom and turn on the faucet and out comes blood. Stuff like that.

“He’s just like you, Mama!”

My children know me well. Indeed, I share Zach’s interest in weird stuff. Not so much the blood out of the faucet, but the monsters and spooky houses? Yes. Love it. At least in stories. In fact, I’ve written about my love of the “ooky-spooky” here at Her.meneutics, and have defended my love of Halloween and all the accompanying creepiness as things that actually draw me closer to God.

So you can imagine my delight discovering that not one but two new books—Night of the Living Dead Christians: One Man’s Ferociously Funny Quest to Discover What It Means to Be Truly Transformed (Tyndale House) by Matt Mikalatos, and The Zombie Killers Handbook: Slaying the Living Dead Within (Thomas Nelson) by Jeff Kinley—were hitting the shelves this month, and also propose that monsters can play a key role in our spiritual development.

In Night of the Living Dead Christians, Mikalatos—a Portland-based speaker, writer, and Cru staff member—takes readers on a fictitious journey through days in the life of narrator Matt and his troubled friend and neighbor, Luther the Werewolf. In this funny, campy quest to rid Luther of his wolfiness (without out-and-out killing him, the way yet another man wants to do), Matt discovers a neighborhood and church full of other monsters, including out-of-control, life-sucking vampires and believe-whatever, brain-dead zombies.

In The Christian Zombie Killers Handbook, Kinley—pastor and founder of Main Thing Ministries in Little Rock—mixes fiction with nonfiction to point out the “zombies” in our lives. Instead of using zombies as “brain-dead” churchgoers, as they are in Mikalatos’s book, Kinley uses zombies to symbolize the sin that eats us alive. Kinley intersperses didactic chapters—explaining the power of sin as well as the need to confront it—with the gory tale of Ben Forman and his family’s quest to stop a global zombie epidemic. The book’s target audience is teenagers, so it should not surprise that I—someone two decades beyond teenage-dom—related to and enjoyed it less than Mikalatos’s book.

Both books compel readers to take a hard look at the monsters that lurk deep—or not so deep—in each of us. And each offers a glimpse at the good that ultimately can come from doing this, of examining our own souls. As Kinley writes,

Until you look in that dungeon soul mirror and see the grotesque image staring back, you will never really understand what Jesus did for you …. To rappel down to that pit of your heart is the best field trip you could ever take. It’s where you truly come face-to-face with your sin-self. But the good news is that it’s also where you find your desperate need for a Savior.

At the end of an otherwise gore-free book, Mikalatos dishes up the gruesome in a scene where Luther the Werewolf learns what dying to Christ can really feel like: “He took hold of my snout and forced his fingers between my teeth, and with a terrifying speed and surprising strength, he yanked my jaw open, then pushed it further until I felt my jay begging to crack. I tried to shout, to tell him to stop, but he kept going until my jaw snapped like old firewood … I felt a hand in my side where they knife had wounded me, and then the excruciating pain of the tearing there.”

Later, we see Luther literally rising from ashes, reborn, a werewolf no more. And yet before the book ends, we also see Luther huddled against his house in the rain, trying to wrap his former wolf pelt around himself. “He was crying … saying that he wanted [his wife] back and he thought that everything would be wonderful when he was born again, but he was wrong. It’s not all wonderful. It’s worth it, but it’s not wonderful.”

If more of us told these stories about ourselves—about our own rappelling trips down into the dungeons of our souls, or about the nights we too tried to tie our own, sin-fueled lives back on—we wouldn’t be so disturbed by the creepy stories and images so prevalent this time of year. With enough honesty and grace, we might begin to see that the real monsters are often the ones looking back at us in the mirror—and that, as Luther the Werewolf learned, Jesus alone is the one who can make beauty out of our beasts.

I say let’s welcome Halloween and the creepies of life as ways to help us talk about and confront the darkness that lurks within ourselves. Because if we can’t face and admit what lurks about the dark, it’s hard to appreciate and talk about the One who shines the light.

Caryn Rivadeneira is the author of Grumble Hallelujah: Learning to Love Your Life Even When It Lets You Down(Tyndale, 2011) and a regular contributor to Her.meneutics. Visit Caryn at http://www.carynrivadeneira.com.

Is social justice an essential part of the gospel? The question has been raging for decades, and in some circles the matter was settled long ago. But a new generation of evangelicals with a strong inclination toward social engagement is reviving the debate. But I'm increasingly convinced that we are framing the debate incorrectly, and missing the point as a result.

The latest example came last week when Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (my alma mater) hosted Jim Wallis and Al Mohler to debate the role of justice in the mission of the gospel. Wallis, the president and CEO of Sojourners, affirmed the centrality of social justice in the gospel, while Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said it was an implication of the gospel but not part of it.

Disagreeing with Mohler's point of view, Wallis said, "If justice is only an implication, it can easily become optional and, especially in privileged churches, non-existent." He cited the examples of "atonement-only" churches in America that were on the wrong side of the Civil Rights movement, and churches in South Africa that defended the apartheid regime.

In a post-debate blog post, Wallis wrote, "Conversely, churches that have been on the side of justice, such as black churches both in the United States and South Africa, were always the ones to say that justice was integral to the meaning of the gospel and not just an implication of it. That should tell us something,"

Mohler opposed Wallis by noting that we must be careful how we define terms in the debate. Equating social justice with the gospel is a road that follows 20th century liberal Protestantism into a watered down message of salvation. Still, Mohler did affirm the goodness of social action on the part of Christians:

"The larger theological frame is that God is glorified when His fallen creation is to any degree rectified … that is drawn into a closer alignment with His own justice, His own righteousness, His own attributes. We should celebrate every good thing that is done in Christ's name. Christ's people must be agents of human flourishing precisely because flourishing was God's intention for His human creatures in Creation."

The Mohler-Wallis debate caught my attention in part because I hosted a very similar conversation between Jim Wallis and Mark Dever two years ago for Leadership Journal. You can watch the conversation here:

Dever took the same position as Mohler–justice is a good implication of the gospel, but not essential to it. The concern again is that the message of the gospel remain uncluttered; a clarion call to faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

Rather than wade into the debate with my opinions alone (and I have plenty), I'd like to share a few reflections by John Stott. Of course Stott was one of the pillars of 20th century evangelicalism, and the theological heavyweight behind the Lausanne Covenant. He wrestled mightily with the question of gospel proclamation versus demonstration, and the role of social justice in the mission of the church. In his book Christian Mission in the Modern World (IVP, 1975), he outlines three ways of understanding the relationship between evangelism and social action:

1. Social action as a means to evangelism. This view sees social engagement as PR for the gospel. It turns the soil and positively predisposes individuals or a community to receive the good news. But as Stott says, "In its most blatant form this makes social work the sugar on the pill, the bait on the hook, while in its best forms it gives the gospel credibility it would otherwise lack. In either case the smell of hypocrisy hangs round our philanthropy."

2. Social action as a manifestation of evangelism. Evangelicals have become very fond of Francis of Assisi's line about always preaching the gospel, and using words when necessary. That's how Stott defines this manifestation model. Social justice is a means of proclaiming the gospel, or a way gospel-people manifest their identity. This is very close to the the implication view held be Mohler and Dever-it is an outflow of the gospel. But Stott says:

"It leaves me uneasy. For it makes service a subdivision of evangelism, an aspect of proclamation. I do not deny that good works of love did have an evidential value when performed by Jesus and do have an evidential value when performed by us (cf. Matthew 5:16). But I cannot bring myself to accept that this is their only or even major justification. If it is, then still, and rather self-consciously at that, they are only a means to an end. If good works are visible preaching, then they are expecting a return, but if good works are visible loving, then they are ‘expecting nothing in return' (Luke 6:35)."

Stay tuned for Part 2 where Skye discusses Stott's third way of relating social action and evangelism, and why the current debate is missing the point.

With Mitt Romney and discussion of Mormons in the headlines, the LDS church has recruited an interesting choice for an ad campaign to “educate the public” about its beliefs: Brandon Flowers, lead singer of the rock band The Killers.

In a 4-minute video, Flowers discusses his faith and his family; it even includes pictures of the singer playing with his infant son. It’s part of a larger publicity campaign to make Mormonism look “hip” to a younger generation. Flowers looks into the camera and says, “I’m a father, I’m a husband, and I’m a Mormon.”

Check out the video: